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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Louie, by Oliver Onions
+
+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 Story of Louie
+
+Author: Oliver Onions
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2011 [EBook #37838]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF LOUIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+  Words printed in italics in the original document are represented|
+  here between underscores, as in _text_;
+
+
+
+
+     THE STORY
+     OF LOUIE
+
+     BY
+     OLIVER ONIONS
+
+     Author of "In Accordance With the Evidence,"
+     "The Debit Account," etc.
+
+     GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+     NEW YORK
+
+     _Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton_
+
+
+
+
+     TO
+     GWLADYS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                          PAGE
+
+     PROLOGUE                9
+
+     PART ONE
+     RAINHAM PARVA          25
+
+     PART TWO
+     SUTHERLAND PLACE      109
+
+     PART THREE
+     MORTLAKE ROAD         175
+
+     PART FOUR
+     PILLAR TO POST        213
+
+     PART FIVE
+     THE CONSOLIDATION     259
+
+     ENVOI                 356
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+I
+
+
+In an old number of _Punch_, under the heading "Society's New Pet: The
+Artist's Model," is to be found a drawing by Du Maurier, of which the
+descriptive text runs:
+
+   "And how did you and Mr. Sopley come to quarrel, dear Miss
+   Dragon?"
+
+   "Well, your Grace, it was like this: I was sitting to him in a
+   cestus for 'The Judgment of Paris,' when someone called as wished
+   to see him most particular; so he said: 'Don't move, Miss Dragon,
+   or you'll disturb the cestus.' 'Very good, sir,' I said, and off
+   he went; and when he come back in an hour and a 'alf or so he
+   said: 'You've moved, Miss Dragon!' 'I 'aven't!' I said. 'You
+   '_ave_!' he said. 'I 'AVEN'T!' I said--and no more I 'adn't, your
+   Grace. And with that I off with his cestus an' wished him
+   good-morning, an' I never been near him since!"
+
+Du Maurier may or may not have been wrong about the newness of this
+craze of "Society's." If he was right, the Honourable Emily
+Scarisbrick becomes at once a pioneer. Let there be set down, here in
+the beginning, the plain facts of how, a good ten years before the
+indignant Miss Dragon "offed with" Mr. Sopley's cestus, the Honourable
+Emily found a way to bridge the gulf that lies between Bohemia and
+Mayfair.
+
+Except in the case of one person not yet born into these pages, the
+report that the lady had engaged herself, early in the year 1869, to
+"Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master," had only a short currency. It was
+probably devised by the Honourable Emily herself in order to soften
+the blow for her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to whom
+she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton. Under this name he
+appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon Guards as a trooper in the
+years 1862-1867; and as "Buck" Causton he attained some celebrity
+when, in the last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in
+the prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and ending
+with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.
+
+For all we know, it may have been Miss Dragon's Mr. Sopley who, seeing
+the magnificent Buck in the ring, first put it into the ex-trooper's
+head to become an artists' model. However it was, an artists' model he
+did become, and, as such, the rage. No doubt Sopley, if it were he,
+would gladly have kept his discovery to himself; but a neck like a
+sycamore and a thorax capable of containing nine-hours-contest lungs
+cannot be hid when Academy time comes round. Sopley's measure was
+known. If Sopley painted an heroic picture it was certain he had had a
+hero as model. The Academy opens in May; before June was out Sopley's
+find was no longer his own. Sir Frederick Henson, the artist who moved
+so in the world that in him the tradition of the monarch who picked up
+the painter's brush for him might almost have been said to live again,
+saw Buck, marked Buck down as his own, and presently had sole
+possession of Buck.
+
+The Honourable Emily Scarisbrick already had possession of Sir
+Frederick. To be sure, it neither needed a Sir Frederick Henson to
+teach her the stippling of birds' eggs and the copying of castles for
+the albums of her friends, nor was the great Academician accustomed to
+stooping to the office of salaried drawing-master; but--the Honourable
+Emily was a Scarisbrick, of Mallard Bois.
+
+In Henson's studio the Honourable Emily first saw Buck Causton.
+
+To say that she fell in love with him would demand a definition of the
+term. Certainly she fell in something with him. Perhaps that something
+was the something that at the last thrusts baronies and Mallard Boises
+aside as hindrances to a design even larger than that in which they
+play so important a part; but we have nothing to do with large designs
+here. Call it what you will: something proper enough to legend, but of
+little enough propriety in a modern lady's life; a feeble echo of
+Romance, perhaps, but never itself to become Romance unless, of it or
+present scandal, it should prove the stronger. At any rate, it was a
+very different thing from anything she felt, or ever had felt, for
+Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars, her brother's nominee
+for her hand.
+
+It was a word dropped by the gallant Captain, himself a follower of
+the fancy, that led her to the discovery that the hero of some feat or
+other of extraordinary skill and endurance, and the young Ajax, all
+chest and grey eyes and brown curls, who did odd jobs about the studio
+in the intervals of posing for Henson's demigodlike canvases, were one
+and the same person. Her already throbbing pulse bounded. She herself
+was twenty-eight, a small, dark, febrile woman, given over to
+discontents based on nothing save on an irremediably spoiled
+childhood, and perhaps hankering after an indiscretion in the
+conviction that indiscretions were of two kinds--indiscretions, and
+the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Naturally she became conscious
+of a quickened interest in her art.
+
+The first indication that this interest passed beyond birds eggs and
+castles was that she began "Lessons in Drapery." If here for a few
+moments her story becomes a little technical, it may be none the less
+interesting on that account.
+
+The study of Drapery _as_ Drapery has not much interest for anybody
+unless perhaps for a student of mechanics. For all that, it is, or
+then was, regarded by drawing-masters as a self-contained subject, to
+be tackled, ticked off, and thenceforward possessed. To the study of
+Drapery in this unrelated sense the Honourable Emily apparently
+inclined. Seeing her therefore, in this fundamental error, Sir
+Frederick, a master of Drapery, took from her the "copies" which had
+already supplanted the "copies" of castles in her portfolio, and
+good-humouredly began to tell her what she really wanted. What she
+really wanted, he said, was to rid her mind of the idea that folds
+existed for their own sake, and to endeavour to realise that their
+real significance lay in the thing enfolded. Miss Scarisbrick thanked
+him.
+
+So, at first from the lay figure, and then from Henson's model, she
+began to draw Drapery with special reference to the thing draped.
+
+About this time she gave Captain Chaffinger for an answer a "No" which
+he refused to take. His devotion, he said, forbade him. If by his
+devotion he meant his devotion to his creditors, his constancy
+remained at their service. In the meantime he was still able to pay
+his old debts by contracting new ones.
+
+The Honourable Emily's studies became diligent.
+
+There is little to be said about these things except that they do
+happen. A word now about Buck's attitude.
+
+Had the Honourable Emily's maid thrown herself at his head he would
+have known what to do. His sense of the holiness of social degrees
+would have received no shock. But the Honourable Emily, who could
+command her maid, could not command what in all probability her maid
+would not have had to ask twice for. The most she got (when after much
+that is omitted here, it did at last dawn on the bashful Buck that she
+had any will in the matter at all) was a blush so sudden and violent
+that it compelled an embarrassed reddening of her own cheeks also.
+Buck was not personally outraged. It was his sense of Order that was
+outraged. He remembered the lady's station for her, and, stammeringly
+but reverentially, put her back into it.
+
+Now to be merely reverential to a woman who is in love with you is to
+provoke impatience, anger and tears. On the other hand, to see a woman
+in tears because you will not permit her to humiliate herself is to
+have the other half of an impossible situation. It was one
+luncheon-time (the Honourable Emily now lunched frequently at the
+studio) that the tears came.
+
+"Oh, you don't care for me--you don't care for me!" she sobbed.
+
+Buck could not truthfully have said that he did care for her; but
+there she was before him, in tears.
+
+"If it were that Dragon girl, now----"
+
+Buck, while not failing to see the force of this, could only make
+imploring movements for the Honourable Emily to calm herself.
+Presently she did calm herself, sufficiently to change her tone to one
+of irony.
+
+"Do you read your Bible?" she shot over her shoulder.
+
+"Yes, miss," said Buck--"that is--I mean----"
+
+The reason for Buck's hesitation was that he had suddenly doubted
+whether the Honourable Emily would know a Racing Calendar by the name
+she had just used.
+
+"Do you mean _The_ Bible, miss?" he said, fidgeting.
+
+She snapped: "Yes--the one with the story of Joseph in it----"
+
+She burst into tears anew.
+
+"Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me! I hate myself--I
+hate you!"
+
+Her hatred, however, did not prevent repetitions of the scene. At the
+last repetition that need trouble us here her tears conquered. The
+helpless Buck comforted her after the only fashion he knew anything
+about--the fashion he would have used towards her maid--on his knee.
+
+He still, however, called her "Miss."
+
+They were privately married in the June of 1869.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Don't_ call me 'Miss'!" she broke out petulantly one day in the
+middle of the honeymoon. "And you are _not_ to have your meals with
+the servants! I shall lunch in my room to-day, and you are to be ready
+to take me out at three o'clock."
+
+"Yes, m'm," said Buck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Probably Lord Moone had less to do than he supposed with the
+separation that took place in the September of the same year. We may
+assume that a much more potent factor was the Honourable Mrs.
+Causton's remembrance of her own words, "That I should have to beg a
+man to marry me! I hate myself--I hate you!" She did very soon hate
+both herself and him. Poor Buck merely hated the whole subversive
+anomaly.
+
+He accepted the proposal that they should separate with perfect
+docility. It seemed to him entirely right. Indeed the only thing he
+had not accepted with docility had been his introduction to Lord
+Moone, on the only occasion on which the two men ever met, as "Mr.
+Buckley, the drawing-master." Buck hadn't liked that much. He had made
+himself Buck Causton in nine hours of terrific combat, and as Buck
+Causton he preferred to be known. But all else he suffered with
+touching obedience, and at the proposal that they should go their
+several ways his finger flew to his forehead.
+
+"Yes, miss," he said; and his heart, if not his lips, murmured the
+prayer that begins: "God bless the Squire and his relations----"
+
+They parted.
+
+They only met once more. This was in the January of the following
+year, in the great antlered hall at Mallard Bois, that was as
+regularly used on all occasions as if there had not been salons and
+galleries and drawing-rooms in a dozen other parts of the great place.
+The Honourable Mrs. Causton lay on a couch drawn up to the fire-dogs;
+her husband looked submissively down on her, dwarfing the suit of
+armour of Big Hugo by which he stood.
+
+She made a new proposal. It was that he should put it into her hands
+to set herself free once for all.
+
+"Yes, miss," said Buck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Then," said the Honourable Mrs. Causton a quarter of an hour later,
+"there's the question of cruelty."
+
+Buck's thoughts wandered slowly back to the Piker.
+
+"Yes, miss," he said.
+
+"I need hardly tell you that as far as--er--procedure--can be
+stretched it will be stretched."
+
+"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."
+
+Then wistfully Buck's eyes wandered from Big Hugo's suit of armour to
+his wife's face again.
+
+"Beg your pardon, about that cruelty, miss," he said unhappily.
+"Couldn't I go down--just for once, Miss--as Mr. Buckley?"
+
+"No; but I can assure you that _I_ don't want this talked about more
+than must be either. Perhaps I ought to tell you that I shall probably
+marry again."
+
+Buck's finger went to his forehead again, this time in a duty to his
+successor. Then his eyes grew grave. His wife had made a slight
+movement.
+
+"If I might make so bold, miss--there's another thing----"
+
+She knew what he meant.
+
+"You've nothing to do with that," she said quickly.
+
+Buck would have thought that he had, but if a lady said he hadn't,
+well, he hadn't, that was all.
+
+"Yes, miss.... And asking your pardon again--about that cruelty?"
+
+"Oh, that's over," said Mrs. Causton, closing her eyes. "Six months
+ago."
+
+"I--I don't remember," said Buck; but once more, if a lady said it was
+so, so it was. Again the grave look came into his eyes, and again she
+understood.
+
+"I can have it looked after better than you can," she said.
+
+"And--please--you will?" he dared to supplicate.
+
+She nodded.
+
+Still he hesitated.
+
+"If it's a little boy, miss--I might be opening a Sparring
+Academy--strictly for the gentry--I wouldn't charge him nothing----"
+
+And after a little further discussion the shameful piece of collusion
+came to an end.
+
+They were divorced in the March of 1870. On the 15th of April the
+child was born--a girl. Fifteen months later the Honourable Emily
+married Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars.
+
+
+II
+
+The child never got on well with her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger never
+forgave her her paternity. The gallant Captain, on the other hand,
+treated her as he would have treated his own child--that is to say, he
+bought her extravagant toys if the proximity of a toyshop put it into
+his head to do so, pinched her arms and cheeks and neck jocularly
+whenever he found her head at the level of his waistcoat, and then
+departed, as likely as not to pinch maturer arms and necks, not Mrs.
+Chaffinger's, elsewhere. He took his wife's former _mésalliance_ with
+perfect serenity. She had paid his debts and enabled him to spend a
+day or two in his father's house when he cared to do so, and the
+Captain, who was a gentleman and not very much else to boast of, held
+faithfully to his part of the bargain. He even dropped in once or
+twice at Buck Causton's new _Salle d'Armes_ in Bruton Street. The
+child was called by his name--Louise Chaffinger; he called her Mops,
+because of her quantities of thick brown hair. The Honourable Emily
+became querulous and an invalid; took to falling into dozes no matter
+who was present, and waking up again with alarming cries; and she
+busied herself with charitable works performed in an uncharitable
+temper.
+
+Louie was not pretty; but the jocular Captain pinched no prettier neck
+than hers, and he declared, as the child grew, that her "points" would
+be best displayed could she go about in the largest and shadiest hat
+and the most closely fitting tights possible. His house (which, by the
+way, he had begun to encumber again) was Trant, in Buckinghamshire;
+but the child was packed off occasionally, to be rid of her, to
+Mallard Bois, Lord Moone's seat, there to romp with her cousin, Eric
+Scarisbrick, already preparing for Eton, and such small fry as climbed
+trees and cheeked the gardeners with him. Here she revelled in the
+liberty that was denied her at home; and perhaps she already realised
+instinctively that her mother's relief at having her out of the way
+was tempered only by the invalid's resentment that the child could be
+happy out of her own not very cheerful company. Be that as it may, the
+girl was told, at twelve years of age, that she was getting too big to
+kick these limbs her stepfather so admired about among growing boys.
+She was given half-long skirts and French and English governesses: the
+French one, though she did not yet know it, as a preparation for
+sending her to a Paris convent.
+
+At fourteen years of age she had not heard of the man whose grey eyes
+and perfect shapeliness of body she inherited. The Scarisbricks, be
+sure, had allowed that episode to be hushed up. But the day was bound
+to come when she should hear of the Honourable Mrs. Causton and
+identify that lady with her mother. The day did come, no matter how;
+and, inwardly trembling but outwardly resolved, she sought her mother.
+Mrs. Chaffinger had just come with a cry out of a doze. Her daughter
+demanded to be told who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was. She was told
+that there was no such person.
+
+"Then who was she?" the girl demanded. There were few of her questions
+to her mother that were not demands.
+
+"Who's been telling you about her?"
+
+That did not seem to Louie to matter. She repeated the question.
+
+"She was a very great fool," Mrs. Chaffinger snapped. "Why aren't you
+with Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Who was she besides being a very great fool?" the child persisted.
+
+It had to come out.
+
+"Then papa _isn't_ my father?" Louie said, pale. All through her life
+she was pale in her moments of stress.
+
+"I'm your mother, and I tell you to go to your French lesson at once."
+
+But Louie did not move.
+
+"Then who was my father?" she asked.
+
+"Who do you suppose he is, when I was Mrs. Causton?"
+
+"Is?... Then he isn't dead?"
+
+Mrs. Chaffinger compressed her lips.
+
+"I was going to tell you all about Mr. Causton all in good time" (her
+daughter looked coldly unbelieving), "but since you are here I'll tell
+you now. Sit down on that chair and stop fidgeting----"
+
+And she told the girl the facts, not to be denied, of the divorcing of
+Buck.
+
+The end of the matter was that Louie now hated, not only her mother,
+but her father also.
+
+Her stepfather she thenceforward addressed as "Chaff." He liked it.
+
+Three months later she was sent to Paris.
+
+Eight months later still she turned up again, not at Trant, but at the
+Captain's club in London. She announced that she had run away from the
+convent and did not intend to return to it. Her arrival, though not
+unwelcome, was inopportune, for the Captain had a little party that
+evening and seemed disconcerted. The toyshops, he reflected, were
+closed, and then he looked at his stepdaughter again.... It could not,
+after all, have been one of the more characteristic of the Captain's
+parties, for he took Louie to it, pigtail and all, and for a whole
+evening pinched nobody. Then he took her to his chambers, winked at
+his man in token of something extraordinary, hesitated, and then, with
+an "Oh, be hanged to it!" expression, gave Louie the key of his own
+sleeping apartment. Louie examined his prints a little wonderingly,
+but approved of his ribboned haircurlers and large frilled pincushion,
+and then went to sleep. The next day the Captain took her down to
+Trant and left her there.
+
+The next few years were a constant succession of wrangles with her
+mother. She had flatly refused to return to the convent, and if the
+Honourable Emily was petulant, her daughter was merciless. She had
+been put off with the drawing-master version of her mother's marriage,
+but that was enough; she held it over her mother's head, and Buck, if
+he had desired revenge, had it. She knew herself to be hybrid, and
+treated the Scarisbricks and their drawing-masters with equal scorn.
+Worse, she treated them equally with a contemptuous tolerance. She
+harped with pride on the baser strain. In a word, there was no doing
+anything with her.
+
+She reached the age of twenty-one.
+
+At twenty-two she expressed a wish to go on the stage. The Captain,
+who was genuinely fond of her, stopped that. At twenty-three she
+declared plainly that "a girl in her position" ought to have a means
+of earning her own living--not necessarily drawing. The Captain being
+averse from this also, she took the matter into her own hands by
+writing to the secretary of a Horticultural College in Somersetshire,
+paying her fees, and enrolling herself as a student without saying a
+word to anybody. She packed her boxes, and in the second week of
+January 1894 presented herself before her mother, dressed for
+travelling, and announced that she had very little time in which to
+catch her train.
+
+"Oh, by the way," she said, turning at the door, "if you write, you
+might address letters to me in my own name--Causton."
+
+Then she left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Was die Mutter träumt, das vollbringt die Tochter._" Here, with its
+repetitions of and its departures from that of the Honourable Emily,
+follows her story.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+RAINHAM PARVA
+
+
+I
+
+The Horticultural College at Rainham Parva, now defunct, was hardly a
+college in the modern sense at all. Its technical books were
+antiquated; it had only one or two old microscopes; and it totally
+lacked the newer trimmings of specialisation. Its founder, a Bristol
+seedsman called Chesson, had bought the place cheaply, house and all,
+a dozen years before, and having five hardy daughters eating their
+heads off at home, had, as the saying is, economically emancipated
+them. That meant then (whatever it may mean now) that, realising that
+the wages of two men and a boy might be saved, he had had them down to
+Rainham Parva and had set them to work.
+
+The second Miss Chesson, Miss Harriet, had shown a real aptitude for
+the work. She had won, after three years, a Diploma, and this Diploma,
+together with the presence in the house as paying boarder of a niece
+of Chesson's, had put an idea into the seedsman's head--the premium
+idea. With the Diploma properly advertised, its grantee made
+Principal, a premium or so forgone (called a Scholarship) and the
+proper person installed over all as Lady-in-Charge, Chesson had
+foreseen a good deal of his work being done by young women who would
+pay for the privilege of being allowed to do it. There is no need to
+describe the development of the idea. The enterprise had prospered,
+and when Louie Causton had put her name down on the books and paid her
+fees the complement of thirty girls was full.
+
+She did not, after all, travel down alone. Her stepfather, hinting
+that it was not necessary to say anything about this to her mother,
+made the journey with her. The pair of them shortened the hours by
+guessing which of the young women in the same train were to be Louie's
+fellow-students; and when they alighted at Rainham Magna station the
+Captain put Louie and her traps into one of the nondescript vehicles
+that only saw the light when the Rainham girls arrived or departed,
+and drove off with her to the college. There he shook hands with the
+Lady-in-Charge, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, and asked her whether she was
+related to Lovenant-Smith of the 24th. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's reply did
+not actually affirm her regret that she was so related, but the
+Captain's affability dried up suddenly. He was returning to town by
+the four-o'clock train; before doing so he took a turn round the place
+with Louie.
+
+"Well," he said, as Louie took her leave of him at the gates, "it's a
+good growing country, I should say; rum idea of yours though....
+You've heard me speak of Lovenant-Smith, haven't you? Adjutant eight
+or nine years ago; not a bad chap at all, _I_ should have said. She'll
+be one of the Shropshire lot, I expect. I knew he had people down
+there.... Well, mind you don't run away with a gardener. 'Bye,
+Mops----"
+
+And he was off, tugging at his moustache and inwardly commenting that
+the whole escapade was "just like Louie."
+
+It was a good growing country. Chesson said that the mildness of the
+winters was due to the Gulf Stream; Miss Harriet Chesson attributed it
+to ozone--ozone having been a word to conjure with at the time when
+she had taken her Diploma. Ozone or Gulf Stream, it provided wild
+violets in December, lemon-verbena that grew in trees up the sides of
+the cottages and had to be cut away from the upper windows, and filled
+the deep lanes with the hart's-tongue fern. It also brought forth rich
+produce. The dairy business and poultry farm flourished; crates and
+parcels and returned empties kept the goods clerk at Rainham Magna
+station busy; and, when the heather bloomed on the hill that rose
+between Chesson's and the sea, the "Rainham Heather Honey," green as
+bronze and thick as glue, was at a premium. At the crest of the hill
+the seedsman's estate ended. Beyond that, dropping abruptly to the
+west, lay deep wooded coombes, green to the very rocks of the shore.
+
+Louie's age put her at once out of the class of the "new girl" who, in
+the school tales, sits pathetically on her box and waits for somebody
+to speak to her. She was twenty-four, and probably only one other
+student, the copper-haired girl with the long thin neck and the
+"salt-cellars" showing through her white flannel blouse, who asked her
+her number and offered to show her the way to her cubicle, was more
+than twenty-two. Her large black feathered hat (see the first part of
+the Captain's advice as to how she would make the most of herself),
+and her expensively simple navy blue coat and skirt down to her toes,
+further distinguished her among the tweed jackets and ankle-length
+skirts of the younger girls. No doubt she had her perfect management
+of these and her numerous other garments from her mother's former
+interest in the study of Drapery. If the Captain did not think her
+face pretty, it must be remembered that the Captain had standards of
+prettiness of his own. Pretty in the professional-beauty sense her
+irregular mouth and long chin perhaps were not. Her large, clear,
+pebble-grey eyes at any rate were arresting.
+
+The copper-haired girl, having shown Louie her cubicle, offered to
+show her the rest of the house also. They began upstairs on the first
+floor, where the girls slept. The place was an old mansion in the form
+of a hollow square, and as they came to each latticed embrasure Louie
+stopped to look at the famous Rainham yew that almost filled the
+grassgrown inner courtyard. The corridors were dark, and sudden steps
+where no steps were to have been expected made of the uneven floors a
+series of booby-traps for those not familiar with them. Memories of
+the Monmouth Rebellion seemed to linger round the corners and to be
+shut up in the cupboards of the place. They passed downstairs. Through
+the doorway of the handsome Restoration façade they saw the yew again,
+dark beyond the shining flags of the hall. Louie had already been in
+the reception-room and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's private apartments on the
+right of the doorway; on the left, she was told, were the quarters of
+Miss Harriet (who alone of Chesson's daughters remained there) and the
+staff. The domestics slept at the top of the house; the four male
+gardeners (all married) occupied the farm a furlong away at the back.
+
+"But wouldn't you like some tea?" said the copper-haired girl. "It's
+in the dining-room."
+
+"I was told to report myself to Miss Chesson at five," said Louie,
+looking at her watch.
+
+"Well, you've just time, if you're quick----"
+
+They sought the room where the housekeeper ran cups of tea from the
+tap of a large and funereal bronze urn.
+
+It was ten minutes to five when Louie entered the dining-room. Before
+the clock had struck five she had taken a certain position in the
+college.
+
+She herself hardly knew how it happened. The room was full of noise
+and chatter, and near Louie, talking louder and making more noise than
+anybody else, was a lanky child of sixteen, to be a tall blonde beauty
+in another three or four years' time, but so far only a mass of
+unadjusted proportions and movements that lacked co-ordination. She
+had several distinct voices, and in one of these she was now engaged
+in unabashed mimicry. Louie, who had got her cup of tea, heard a
+bell-like "_Os_-trich feathers!" and she was about to put a question
+to the copper-haired girl when, with a mock reverence and an explosive
+"Your _Ma_-jesty!" the child swept backwards into her. She barely
+saved her cup of tea. The girl gave a quick turn; her "Clum----" was
+changed to a "Sorry!" as she saw a new face, and Louie smiled.
+
+"Your feet were all wrong," Louie said.
+
+The blonde child turned eagerly again.
+
+"Can you do it?" she asked.
+
+The next moment, before Louie could get out "A drawing-room curtsy?
+Yes," the child had cried: "Girls! Girls! Here's somebody who knows
+how to do it! Do come and show us!"
+
+"Really?" said Louie, smiling, and handing her cup of tea to the
+copper-haired girl.
+
+"Yes--come here, Rhoda, and watch (that's my sister--she's to be
+presented, you know)."
+
+Louie laughed. "Quickly then--I have to see Miss Chesson----"
+
+And, pushed unceremoniously forward, and still in her feathered hat
+and navy blue costume, Louie made her first bow to her fellow-students
+at Chesson's in the deep and swanlike genuflexion she had practised
+with her cousin, Cynthia Scarisbrick, a couple of years before. Then
+she ran out, smiling.
+
+"_How_ ripping!" she heard somebody say as she did so. "I expect she's
+been presented."
+
+Louie sought Miss Harriet.
+
+The Principal, a businesslike, damson-complexioned woman of
+forty-five, with a deerstalker hat on her close-cropped curly hair,
+asked her what course of study she proposed to take. Louie replied (in
+other words) that all courses were the same to her. Miss Harriet had
+had that kind of student before. She asked a few further questions,
+and then put Louie down for the elementary course. She dismissed her
+with a marked syllabus and a copy of the Rules.
+
+Louie read the Rules, nodded, as much as to say, "I thought so!" and
+then laughed. There was no need to ask who had drawn them up; she
+remembered the frigid way in which Chaff had been put into his place
+that afternoon. There was a serenity about them that transcended the
+ordinary imperative mood. "_Students do not absent themselves from
+Morning Prayers or Divine Service without Permission._" "_Students do
+not give Orders to the Gardeners or Domestics._" "_Students do not
+pass beyond the Bounds of the College (Map appended)._" If on occasion
+students did all of these things, that did not detract from the
+_largior ether_ in which the Rules were conceived.
+
+Nor did mere evidence to the contrary ever in the least degree abate
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's persuasion that the young ladies of Chesson's,
+being the daughters of gentlefolk, were by that very fact almost to be
+trusted to do without Rules at all.
+
+On the following morning Louie, with leggings of doe-skin buttoned to
+her knees (see the second of the Captain's recommendations for the
+attire that suited her best), and wearing a wide-pocketed jacket not
+unlike a man's, began the practical study of Horticulture.
+
+
+II
+
+She was attached to the "posse" of six girls of which the
+copper-haired student, whose name was Richenda Earle, was the head.
+This girl, as the holder of the scholarship mentioned a page or two
+back, was the single non-fee-paying student in the place. Her father
+was a bookseller in Westbourne Grove, and she had kept his books for
+him before coming to Chesson's. She had picked up her knowledge of
+book-keeping at an obscure and ill-appointed Business School in
+Holborn, but, her health being anything but robust, she had taken up
+gardening under the impression that it was an out-of-doors pursuit. It
+was only this at Chesson's to a strictly limited extent. Whatever
+students did or did not learn, the output for the market had to be
+maintained, and this necessitated, for days and days together, work in
+the twelve long glass-houses, from the humid heat of which the girls
+came out limp and listless and relaxed. Richenda Earle suffered from
+these depressions more than most of them, and now only remained at the
+college because Miss Harriet had held out hopes for her of a place on
+the staff. She was easily head of all the classes of which she was a
+member, but was hopelessly incapable of making her personality felt.
+Add to all this that she was avid of popularity, and that her
+self-consciousness took the form of making her more assertive
+(without being a bit more effective) than any girl in the college, and
+you will see why Louie felt a little sorry for her without taking to
+her very much. She for her part had fastened herself on Louie from the
+start, and had been the first to put the question that Louie had had
+to answer a dozen times before she had been at Chesson's two hours.
+
+"No, I haven't been presented," Louie had said, finding herself
+waylaid almost at the door of Miss Harriet's room as she had come out
+again. "My cousin has; that's where I learned it. We practised it
+together."
+
+"I've seen them go in," Richenda had murmured, a little wistfully, a
+little dully; "the carriages and things, you know. I live in London."
+
+Thereupon she had volunteered some of the information stated above, as
+if inviting a confidence in return. "I'm glad you're in my posse," she
+had concluded, as Louie had turned away without giving any information
+whatever about herself.
+
+The remaining members of "Earle's posse" were the two Burnett sisters
+("B Major," the girl who was to be presented, and "B Minor," the
+sixteen-year-old beauty-to-be), a Scotch girl called Macfarlane, and
+one other girl, half French, Beatrice Pigou. There were four other
+posses at the college, and each was told off each day to put itself
+under the direction of one or other of the four gardeners, to pot,
+"prick out," water or whatever the task might be. The gardener at
+present in charge of Louie's posse was a sullen young Apollo called
+Priddy, whose face and neck and forearms ozone or the Gulf Stream had
+turned to the hue of some deep and old and mellow violin; and Burnett
+Minor and the younger girls, talking in terms of the life to which
+their eyes were yet sealed, discussed Priddy with a freedom perfectly
+innocent and entirely appalling.
+
+Louie had not been at Rainham Parva two days before she was wondering
+whether after all she wanted to stay. She didn't know really why she
+had come. Not one of the three commonest reasons for girls being
+there--a stepmother, to be able to earn a little pocket-money, or to
+get over a youthful love-affair--quite fitted her case. And then there
+were those ridiculous Rules. She supposed that if she stayed she would
+be on the same footing as the juniors, and she hardly thought she
+could submit to that. Not that the Rules did not seem to justify
+themselves; on the contrary, they did. Merely because Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith affirmed that students did not do this or that,
+students as a matter of fact either did not do these things, or else
+consented to class themselves as transgressors when they did.
+
+But Louie's own attitude in the face of a prohibited thing, inherited
+from her mother and now made inveterate by her upbringing, was
+invariably that of a wonder what would happen were the prohibition to
+be disregarded.
+
+It was just a wonder, nothing more.
+
+Then, on the night of her third day at Chesson's, she made up her mind
+to forfeit her fees and leave in the morning. The reason for her
+decision was this:
+
+During the vacation certain digging had been allowed by the gardeners
+to fall into arrears; and Earle's posse, together with another set of
+six girls, had been set to do it. Now digging was the hardest work the
+girls were ever called upon to do, and at the beginning of the term at
+any rate they were spared it as much as possible. But education or
+output required that this digging should be done, and accordingly the
+twelve girls had digged for the whole morning, and in the afternoon
+had varied the labour by carrying heavy pots from House No. 6 to House
+No. 10--a distance of perhaps sixty yards. The next morning twelve
+girls (or rather eleven, for Burnett Minor's unset muscles had
+suffered but little) were half incapacitated by stiffness, and that
+night there was an outcry for hot baths and arnica. Louie, clad in
+dressing-gown and slippers and carrying her soap and sponge and towel,
+hobbled to the bathrooms, and came, in the box-room, upon an
+indignation-meeting.
+
+This box-room was the common meeting-ground for students who awaited
+their turns at the baths. It lay over the back courtyard arch, and the
+four bathrooms adjoined it, two on either side. It was piled almost to
+the ceiling with trunks and boxes and dress-baskets, the white
+initials of which glimmered in the shadows cast by a couple of candles
+on the floor; but there were isolated boxes enough to make seats for
+the seven or eight girls already assembled there. They had slippers on
+their naked feet and single garments on their aching bodies; and on
+one of Louie's own boxes Burnett Major was peering at the little blue
+flame of a spirit-kettle and mixing in a row of cups the paste for
+that beverage of revolt--cocoa. Burnett Minor had traitorously turned
+the general righteous anger to private account, had "bagged" the
+hottest bath, and was now carolling at the top of her lungs in the
+right-hand bathroom.
+
+"----then if Earle won't do it I vote we draw lots!" Macfarlane was
+exclaiming shrilly as Louie opened the door. "Those lazy louts of
+gardeners are supposed to have all the digging done before we come
+up----"
+
+They were not--not if Chesson knew it; but "Of course they are!" cried
+five voices at once.
+
+"Well, I'm just not going to stand it--there----"
+
+"And I'm not----"
+
+"Nor me----"
+
+"And for two pins I'd tell Priddy so!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, but only because, all having spoken at
+once, all had to take breath at once.
+
+"It's abominable----"
+
+"Disgusting----"
+
+"Celà m'embête----"
+
+"Here's Causton--what do _you_ vote, Causton?" they cried, turning to
+her.
+
+"What about?" Louie asked.
+
+"Why, everything, of course--this beastly place--and setting us to dig
+the first week--and Priddy's beastly cheek----"
+
+Then every tongue was unloosed.
+
+"_And_ a row every time we want an extra blouse washed----"
+
+"_And_ washing two guineas a term extra----"
+
+"_And_ only the vuggles for dinner that aren't good enough for the
+market----" ("Vuggles" were vegetables.)
+
+Another pause for breath.
+
+"Let's what-d'-you-call-it--strike----"
+
+Louie laughed as she sat stiffly down by Burnett Major.
+
+"Oh, I'll vote for anything you like; I don't care," she said.
+
+Then they began anew.
+
+"Earle's head of the posse--_she_ ought to do it----"
+
+Richenda Earle's voice broke in in loud complaint.
+
+"How _can_ I? You know I would like a shot if it wasn't for my
+scholarship. But I should just be told that if I didn't like it I
+could go. Elwell's head of your lot. Elwell ought to go."
+
+"I don't care who goes, but I will _not_ be told to do things by
+Priddy."
+
+"Priddy!----"
+
+(Louie smiled again as there came from the bathroom the joyful voice:
+
+"_Early one mo-o-orning--as the su-un was a-rising!_----")
+
+"And those pots hadn't got to be moved--he was only making work----"
+
+"--gros tyran!----"
+
+"--like they kept us three weeks grading and packing tomatoes last
+autumn, and called it 'study'----"
+
+"--and the bruised ones for us----"
+
+"--not even fit for ketchup----"
+
+"--Dothegirls Hall _this_ establishment ought to be called!----"
+
+Another momentary pause: then:
+
+"--let's all sign a petition----"
+
+"--no, a what-d'you-call-it--an ultimatum----"
+
+"--just telling them straight----"
+
+"Your bath, Earle----"
+
+From the bathroom had come the gurgle of escaping water. Boiled pink,
+turbaned with her towel, smelling of somebody else's scented soap and
+radiating unrepentance that Earle's bath must be a tepid one, Burnett
+Minor bounced in.
+
+"Friends, Romans, countrymen, do lend me a dry towel, just to finish
+with. Oh, Causton, the curtsy, now that I've something loose on!
+Crocks! My cocoa, Major, and who said Priddy just now? 'Students do
+not fall in love with Priddy.' (I sha'n't hush.) Sugar, Mac, and,
+Causton, I wish you'd do my hair your way, just to see how it
+looks----"
+
+And, twirling twice in the midst of a corolla of pink cashmere
+dressing-gown, she sank to the floor and began to nurse a chilblain on
+her heel.
+
+Louie, her hands behind her head, leaned back and watched the scene
+with the greatest amusement. A master-rebel herself, she knew that
+here was no rebellion. The meeting, like other meetings, was merely
+letting off steam, and the girls who "wouldn't stand it" would be
+standing it exactly the same on the morrow. Well, on the morrow she
+herself would be off. Her boxes were only half unpacked; half-an-hour
+would put the other things back again. Already she saw that this
+Chesson's was an imposition. In the meantime, the indignation meeting
+was very amusing. She felt almost motherly towards these tractable
+revolutionaries. Her indulgence became still greater as they spoke out
+again.
+
+"Another thing," a girl of Elwell's posse demanded; "why couldn't I go
+to Rainham yesterday to have my photograph taken?"
+
+("Break the camera," Burnett Minor murmured to the chilblain.)
+
+"And just because somebody'd bagged my boots and I was five minutes
+late the other day----"
+
+"Je m'en fiche pas mal----" Pigou began.
+
+("Parly Angly, voo affectay feele," from Burnett Minor.)
+
+"I should like to see one of the gardeners at home looking at us the
+way Priddy does----"
+
+"Or Miss Harriet either for that matter--she's only a sort of
+forewoman----"
+
+"--applewoman----"
+
+"--tomatoes----"
+
+"--that's all she is really----"
+
+"--nothing else----"
+
+Louie laughed outright. Another gurgle had come from the bathroom, and
+Earle reappeared. Her announcement that the water was now cold added
+to the general sense of wrong.
+
+"Not even enough hot water!"
+
+"Scarcely a drop, ever!----"
+
+"Odious!"
+
+"Then will somebody come into my cubicle and rub me--not you, B
+Minor."
+
+("Just give a squint out of the window, Elwell.")
+
+("It's all right. Her lights are out. Lovey's too.")
+
+"Well, I _won't_ have a cold bath, to please Lovey or anybody else!"
+
+Nor did Louie want one. She had risen. She moved to the window that
+looked out over the courtyard yew--the window from which watch was
+kept to see when Miss Harriet and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith retired--and
+yawned. In the middle of her yawn she suddenly laughed again.
+
+"Good gracious!" she thought. It was too amusing.
+
+Suddenly Richenda Earle, who also was standing by the window, spoke to
+her. Evidently Richenda did not think she had been fairly treated by
+the meeting.
+
+"Do _you_ think they ought to ask me to?" she complained.
+
+Louie turned.
+
+"To ask you to what?"
+
+"To complain to Miss Harriet--me, the only Scholarship girl."
+
+Louie shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. "Oh, they won't complain to
+Miss Harriet!"
+
+"No--but one doesn't like to refuse things----" Earle said in injured
+tones.
+
+Before Louie would have had time to reply to this, had she thought of
+replying to it, a diversion occurred. Nobody had heard steps
+approaching, but all at once the door opened, and Authority, in the
+person, not of Miss Harriet, but of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith herself, stood
+looking in. The hubbub ceased as the boiling of a kettle ceases when
+cold water is poured in. Several of the conspirators rose to their
+feet; Burnett Minor, making no bones about it, bolted behind a box.
+Great is even the look of Authority; it was almost a superfluity when
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked in measured tones from the doorway: "What is
+the meaning of this?"
+
+Already the tails of two dressing-gowns had vanished out of the other
+door.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked again.
+
+Then she looked round to see on whom to fasten her displeasure.
+
+Louie saw her look, and instantly fathomed its purpose. She and
+Richenda Earle stood by the window, as it were the dramatic centre of
+some Rembrandtesque composition to which all else was merely
+contributory. The Scholarship girl was going to get into a row. She,
+Louie, had lived for years among rows; and was leaving anyway on the
+morrow.
+
+Before the "Miss Earle" had passed Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's lips Louie
+had stepped forward.
+
+"We've been waiting for our baths," she said.
+
+Perhaps already Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would have preferred Richenda
+Earle to Louie; there is expediency even in Authority; but the
+challenge, if it was that, was a public one. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+turned to Louie.
+
+"Do you know what time it is?" she asked freezingly.
+
+It pleased Louie to take Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's question _au pied de la
+lettre_.
+
+"I'm afraid my watch is in my cubicle. I could tell you in a moment,"
+she said.
+
+This the Lady-in-Charge saw fit to ignore. She drew her own watch from
+her belt.
+
+"It is ten minutes past eleven," she said. "Students are not out of
+bed at ten minutes past eleven. Neither are candles burning. Miss
+Earle----"
+
+But again Louie interposed. After all, it was rough on the Scholarship
+girl.
+
+"Miss Earle came in only a moment ago to send us to bed," she
+affirmed, without a tremor.
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, turning to Louie, and perhaps
+feeling herself once more headed off, "you, Miss Causton, as a new
+student, are perhaps not yet familiar with the Rules. Be so good as to
+come to me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning and I will explain them to
+you."
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith did not make the discomfited rebels file out past
+her. She herself retired with dignity. Students do not linger in the
+box-room when it is made known that they are expected to go to bed at
+once.
+
+But no sooner had the door closed on Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's back than
+the pent-up general breath escaped again in a fluttering exhalation.
+In it were awe, delight, homage.
+
+"Oh, Causton!" somebody breathed. "You _are_ a brick!"
+
+"_Isn't_ she?"
+
+"Wasn't it stunning of her?"
+
+"You'd have caught it, Earle!"
+
+"I saw it in her eye!"
+
+"But I say, Causton, you'll get a wigging!"
+
+"She didn't speak to you, you know!"
+
+"You cut in----"
+
+Louie felt quite confused, so much did they make of so little.
+
+"Good gracious," she said, "what are you all talking about? That's
+nothing, especially as I was thinking of leaving in any case
+to-morrow."
+
+There was consternation in the box-room. Had Rebellion found its
+leader only to lose her again immediately?
+
+"Leaving!"
+
+"Oh, I sha'n't leave till after ten o'clock now, you may be sure,"
+Louie laughed.
+
+"But--oh, I _say_!"
+
+The dismayed voices dropped. There was a blank silence. It was only
+after half-a-minute that Burnett Minor, who had issued from cover
+again, begged: "Don't leave, Causton."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't leave because of anything like this," said Louie,
+enormously amused at the thought. "The place is a fraud--that's why I
+should leave."
+
+"Oh, don't leave," another girl begged.
+
+"Well, we'll see what she says to-morrow."
+
+"She can't be _too_ down on you----"
+
+"Not the first time----"
+
+Something that can only be described as a pleasant hardening came into
+Louie's grey eyes. Her laugh dropped a note. She looked at the adoring
+faces.
+
+"That's just what I mean," she said. "If she _is_----"
+
+"What?----"
+
+"I'll stay."
+
+And that also her stepfather would have described as "just like
+Louie."
+
+
+III
+
+Punctually at ten o'clock on the morrow Louie knocked at the door of
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's office or drawing-room--it was both--and
+entered. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was writing at an escritoire that was not
+big enough to accommodate her elbows, and so supported her braceleted
+wrists only. There was something contradictory about her attitude. Its
+rectitude as she sat at the inconvenient little desk suggested that
+she expected Louie, her turn, pause and inquiring "Well?" that she did
+not. Louie's observant eyes had already noticed a curious
+inconsistency about the Lady-in-Charge. A great number of things
+seemed to lie on the tip of her tongue, ready, apparently against her
+own better judgment, to be detached from it by a perfectly-timed
+fillip of opposition.
+
+And Louie had only to remember the word or two with which she had
+dashed Chaff's affability to be fairly sure that though cocoa and
+candles in the box-room at eleven o'clock at night might seem a good
+enough reason for the present interview, as like as not another lay
+behind it. She stood just within the door.
+
+"Well, Miss Causton?"
+
+"I think you told me to come here at ten o'clock."
+
+"Ah, yes. Please to wait a moment."
+
+Louie listened to the squeaking of her quill and the faint jingling at
+her wrists as she continued to write.
+
+When Mrs. Lovenant-Smith turned again it was almost as if she had
+thought better of something or other--say of an encounter with this
+long-chinned, grey-eyed girl who stood, not dressed for gardening, but
+in a long grey morning frock, looking at her from the door.
+
+"I merely wished to impress on you, Miss Causton, that the Rules must
+be observed," she said. "I believe there is a copy of them on the
+smaller bureau by your right hand there. Take it and be so good as to
+study it. That is all I wished to say."
+
+Louie did not believe the last sentence, but no disbelief showed in
+her eyes. She inclined her head, but watched Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+waiting for more. She thought that if she waited more would come. It
+did. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, having just dismissed Louie, rescinded the
+decision by speaking again.
+
+"You are older than the others," she said, "and it ought not to be too
+much to expect of you that you will set a good example."
+
+Louie, perhaps gratuitously, read a meaning into the words. Perhaps
+you guess what it was. Many of the older people of her world still
+remembered her mother's first marriage, and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+though Louie did not like the look of her, was still undeniably of her
+world. With Louie herself the drawing-master theory of her paternity
+had long since gone by the board; the girl had not rested until she
+had discovered that her father was Buck Causton, pugilist and artists'
+model, none other; and if Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had ever chanced to
+hear of her as Louise Chaffinger, and identified that person under the
+name which (whether from pride, spleen, sensitiveness or what not) she
+had since reassumed, there would probably be something very near the
+tip of her tongue indeed. And just as Buck had always been a pale
+fighter, so Louie's own mixed blood, though it might surge at her
+heart, left her cheeks untinged in moments of stress. She still stood,
+making no motion to go.
+
+"I don't think I quite follow you," she said slowly. "Why do you say
+that something 'ought not to be too much to expect'?"
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stiffened and drew in again.
+
+"It is not necessary to follow me," she said. "You will find all that
+is necessary in the Rules. You may keep that copy; Rule 6 is the one I
+wish especially to call your attention to. Would you be so good as to
+pass me that bell as you go out--the small brass one on the cabinet
+there?"
+
+She half turned to her writing again.
+
+("Good gracious, what next!" thought Louie.)
+
+The bell was a small Dutch figure in a metal farthingale, and Louie
+passed it. As she did so she glanced at the hand that took it. Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith's face was wrinkled like a dried apple, and the hand,
+though beautifully kept, was wrinkled too, and had, moreover, rather
+stumpy nails. Louie's own hands were exquisite. The bell passed from
+hand to hand.
+
+Whether or not it was the glance at the hands, suddenly the word too
+much dropped from the tip of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's tongue. She put the
+bell down with a little clap.
+
+"The Rules of the college are not called into question," she said. "So
+far they have proved quite sufficient for the kind of student the
+college was founded for. By the way, why are you not dressed for the
+gardens?"
+
+("'Kind of student'--good--gracious!" Louie cried in astonishment to
+herself. "Very well, madam----")
+
+She spoke calmly, looking modestly down at her long cashmere skirt,
+but taking in her lovely hands (which toyed with the copy of the
+Rules) on the way.
+
+"My dress?" she said. "Oh, I wasn't sure whether I should be staying
+or not."
+
+Louie knew perfectly well that her leaving would make, at any rate
+until her cubicle should be filled again, a difference of something
+like sixty pounds a year, with extras, to Chesson's. That is rather a
+lot of money to hang upon a mere breach of Rule 6. Perhaps Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith betrayed herself in the quickness with which she took
+her up.
+
+"Do you mean you're thinking of leaving?" she asked.
+
+Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped them demurely
+again.
+
+"I mean," she replied, "that I didn't know whether _you_ were going to
+dismiss _me_ or not. You see, you may not want my--kind of student.
+I'd rather not be in any way considered as an exception," she added.
+
+Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would have known that
+she had now no intention whatever of leaving. As it was, there
+probably came into her head the thought that after all Louie was a
+Scarisbrick and a niece of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of
+horticultural colleges do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and
+Lord Moone. All at once her severity relaxed--but she hated Louie
+thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but the smile
+had a twitch in it.
+
+"I don't think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss Causton," she
+said. "All the same, I'm afraid the Rules are necessary."
+
+"I dare say," said Louie.
+
+"And so long as that is understood, that is the chief thing. In regard
+to candles in particular, in an old place like this there is always
+the danger of fire. In fact, I'm not at all sure that a fire drill
+ought not to be instituted. May I add that I quite appreciated the
+chivalrous way in which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night?
+Indeed, I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think that
+is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton."
+
+"Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out.
+
+As she crossed the Restoration hall, "'Kind of student'--good
+gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me as if I were Burnett
+Minor! 'Kind of student!'--I wonder it doesn't occur to her that
+somebody might have told me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener
+four years ago!--'Kind of student,' indeed!"
+
+Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past the orchards,
+up the hill, and sat looking down over the coombes to the sea.
+
+Leave Chesson's, now? Oh no, nothing was farther from her thoughts!
+She would stay, and why? Not because she had been treated as a junior,
+but because she had been taken, as it were, at her own word. She
+herself might be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her mixed
+birth, but she did not intend to allow anybody else--Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith or anybody--to show as much as a flicker of
+consciousness of it. "Kind of student"!--Oh no, that amusement was
+going to be Louie's own private preserve.
+
+For it had been her cynical amusement. Approximately, the mood took
+her once in five or six months, with or without occasion. Her mother
+knew its times and seasons, and its passings into abeyance, not into
+extinction. She did not call her sensitiveness morbid; quite on the
+contrary, she saw to it that it took the form of a pose of gaiety; she
+could be pitilessly gay with herself. Meek, harmless Cynthia
+Scarisbrick, for example, could have told tales about her gaiety when,
+not knowing whether she herself was eligible for presentation or not
+(but gathering from the tense silence on the subject that had reigned
+at Trant that she was not, or at any rate that her mother did not wish
+it), she had practised the ceremonial curtsy with her cousin. It had
+been Cynthia, not Louie, who had shed the tears.
+
+But to be agreed with by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that her origin was open
+to question (for the Lady-in-Charge had all but said that)--oh no,
+that was really too much!----
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, who took a seedsman's salary!
+
+She might have known that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would know all, all
+about her----
+
+Then, as she sat, she began to wonder where she had heard the name of
+Lovenant-Smith before. She had wondered it when first she had received
+her prospectus at Trant. Of course her stepfather knew these other
+Lovenant-Smiths, the adjutant's lot, and had probably spoken of them,
+but she did not think it was that. For a minute or two she sought in
+her memory....
+
+She was ceasing to think when the recollection came of itself. It was
+only a trifling one after all. One of the boys with whom she had
+romped at Mallard Bois--Roy she had called him then--had been, she now
+remembered, a Lovenant-Smith. He would be a connection of the
+adjutant's. Of course, she had heard the name at Mallard Bois....
+
+Then Louie bit her lip. If there had been any doubt at all that Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith knew the story of Buck there was none now. The
+association with Mallard Bois was quite enough....
+
+Louie was glad she had looked insolently at those stumpy hands....
+
+Beast!
+
+The trees below her tossed restlessly, and far out the grey sea was
+whitecapped as if it had been rasped with a file. No boat had put out
+for the pollock-fishing or to lift a spiller that morning; only a
+pilot, a couple of miles out in the Channel, slowly lifted her nose
+for a moment and then hid it again. Louie felt a little cold, and
+rose. She made an attractive picture as she did so. Her brown hair was
+tossed by the wind, and her long grey skirt cracked behind her and
+clipped her limbs almost as if she had worn the garments of a man.
+
+"Beast!" she muttered again.
+
+Then she thought of another beast--this father of hers whose name she
+had not needed to take but had taken out of rancour against her mother
+and despite against herself. (But not for Mrs. Lovenant-Smith to turn
+up her nose at!) He now (she had this from Chaff) kept a public-house
+somewhere up the Thames--Lord Moone's cast-off brother-in-law in a
+public-house!--and any fitful romantic light that might ever have
+shone about him was now extinguished. Of course the Captain had
+uttered his usual wistful formula: "Not a bad fellow at all, I should
+have said"; but that was rather a criticism on the Captain than on
+Buck. Yes. Buck was simply another beast. But though he were a
+potman, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith should give him every bit as much
+deference as if he had been a brewing peer....
+
+"And I don't care--if it _is_ the pride of the cobbler's dog, I'm
+going to keep his name," Louie muttered.
+
+Suddenly she turned and climbed the stile that led back to Chesson's
+land. As she did so she realised that she had been out of bounds. She
+laughed curtly. Rule 3! Much she cared for their Rules! What about the
+Rule: "Miss Hastings does not elope with What's-his-Name the
+gardener"?--but that would keep. In the meantime she would change into
+her gardening clothes before lunch. She had shown Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+that she had garments of freedom. The next time Louie threatened to
+leave she might be able to add to the force of the threat that she
+would take half-a-dozen girls with her.
+
+Well, lunch was in half-an-hour; she had just time to change.
+
+But as she descended through the orchards again she came upon Richenda
+Earle. The copper-haired girl was washing an espaliered plum-tree, and
+as she turned her head Louie saw that she had been crying. She asked
+Louie if she was going.
+
+"Leaving here, do you mean? No. What's the matter?"
+
+The girl turned her eyes away.
+
+"Thanks awfully for last night," she grunted. "It was ripping of you.
+But you see it hasn't made much difference."
+
+"How, not made much difference?"
+
+Richenda glanced at the tree, and from the tree to the syringe in her
+hand and the pail of disinfectant at her feet. "This," she said.
+"Anybody can do this job, and I've been sorting out pots over there
+all the morning," she indicated the yard behind the trees where the
+flower-pots and debris were kept. "And _I_ can't threaten to leave."
+
+"Your scholarship, of course?"
+
+"Yes. And I'm supposed to be working for the medal."
+
+Chesson's wanted a Horticultural Society's medal badly. They had never
+had one, nor were likely to get one unless Richenda Earle got it for
+them. Louie, who was quickly fathoming the real economy of the place,
+looked again at Richenda's red eyes.
+
+"Well, they won't send you away till you've failed," she said.
+
+But Earle made an impatient gesture, and her eyes began to stream
+again.
+
+"Oh, what's a girl like you know about it!" she broke out. "Yes, I
+know they'll keep me till then, but you don't know anything at all
+about it! You would if you'd had my upbringing! You don't know what
+the struggle is. You think digging and carrying pots is hard work; you
+wouldn't if you'd seen what I've seen! When you go to London it's just
+shopping and theatres and suppers and things; but just you try to keep
+a small bookseller's accounts for him, when they're hardly worth
+keeping, I mean, and collecting his debts when all his money's tied up
+in stock and your father's nearly bankrupt--not that he's ever
+solvent--you'd know what I meant then!"
+
+Then the unexpected outbreak stopped suddenly.
+
+Louie stood silently staring. She disliked seeing anybody cry.
+Richenda's words had little meaning for her; she supposed they
+contained a hidden meaning somewhere. Then the copper-haired girl
+went on, more quietly but no less bitterly:
+
+"I should get a hundred pounds a year on the staff here," she said,
+"that is, if they won't waste me half-days just out of spite, like
+they're doing this morning. That's nothing to you. You others are here
+just for pocket-money, but we live on your pocket-money. I suppose I
+oughtn't to have come here at all. Not among all you. But I begged
+father to let me. Father once apologised to me--that was when there
+was a distraint out against him, if you know what that is--because he
+wasn't rich. Fathers ought all to be rich, he said. There are seven of
+us girls at home, and only one married. Oh, I tell you, you don't
+know!"
+
+Louie wondered why she preferred Richenda Earle loud and striving for
+the popularity she never got to Richenda Earle unburdening herself
+thus. She herself went brightly masked, and disliked to see another's
+mind naked. Richenda's mind was stripped now. It was distasteful.
+Somehow or other Richenda contrived to miss both the balm of
+popularity and the solace of private sympathy.
+
+"I'm--I'm awfully sorry," Louie said awkwardly and a little stiffly.
+
+At the tone Richenda drew in instantly.
+
+"It doesn't matter," she said, compressing her lips and beginning to
+straighten her hair. "I shall just have to buck up, that's all. But
+girls of your class don't know anything about it, so you needn't think
+you do. There's the first gong. Come on."
+
+As they passed the dairies a rabble of students raced past the end of
+the house on their way to the boot-lockers. Louie and Richenda entered
+by the side door. Richenda plunged at once into the scramble for
+house-slippers, but Louie, not having put on her garden boots that
+day, did not need to change. It was too late now to put on another
+dress. She waited by the inner door.
+
+Suddenly she was spied by Burnett Minor. The child rushed towards her,
+a book in her hand.
+
+"Are you going, Causton?" she shouted.
+
+There was a loud "Ssssh!" They could be heard from the dining-room.
+The girls flocked round Louie, and hoarse, excited whispers broke out:
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"She's dressed!"
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"Did you see her?"
+
+"Does Causton say she's going?"
+
+"Ssssh--not all at once!----"
+
+"No, I'm not going," said Louie.
+
+Mouths gaped their very widest to make up for the inaudibility of the
+cheers.
+
+"Hooray!"
+
+"Is she going?"
+
+"No, she's not going--hooray!"
+
+Burnett Minor threw her book joyfully into the book-locker. Ordinarily
+her reading varied between an adoration of Tennyson and mocking and
+dramatic declamations either from the "Pansy Library," or from its
+brother-classics, of which the typical burlesque is "The Blood-stained
+Putty-knife, or The Plumber's Revenge." But this book was her album.
+
+"I saw you come down dressed, and I did want you to put something in
+it if you were going," she whispered gleefully; "but you're not going!
+Hoo----"
+
+Her voiceless mouth gaped wider than them all.
+
+That midday Louie walked demurely up to Mrs. Lovenant-Smith at the
+head of the table and apologised for not yet having changed. From her
+tone Mrs. Lovenant-Smith may or may not have inferred that she had
+spent the hours since their interview in contrite meditation. She
+inclined her head graciously. But Louie, taking her place for grace
+between Burnett Minor and Richenda Earle, was murmuring to herself
+once more:
+
+"'Class of student,' indeed!... Good gracious me!..."
+
+
+IV
+
+Louie quickly became the most popular girl in the college.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her studies she pursued very much as who should say: "I am Louie
+Causton--take it or leave it." Neither Miss Harriet nor the gardeners
+could ever tell when she was interested in a lesson; if she learned,
+she concealed her processes. Before April was out--(the intervening
+time may be slipped over; the daily work in the gardens and houses
+went on as usual, the usual number of crates and parcels was
+despatched from Rainham Magna station, and already the girls were
+looking forward to June, which was always a slack month)--before April
+was out she could "slip" and "bud" as deftly as any when she chose;
+but few made more mistakes than she, and none accepted correction with
+her remarkable nonchalance. Afternoon "theory" she had begun to cut
+almost entirely. A slate hung in the hall, on which students were
+supposed to write down where they might be found when they left the
+immediate precincts of the college. One day towards the end of April
+there appeared on this slate: "Gone to Rainham; L. Causton." Then she
+awaited events with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+
+There were no events.
+
+She sent to Trant for a bicycle.
+
+Truth to tell, as the spring advanced she needed the air. The
+glass-houses, with their smell of musk and mould and heated pipes and
+cherry-pie all mingled, oppressed her; the long forcing-house, where
+for the time being most of the work for the markets went on,
+completely took the starch out of her. She felt as if she was being
+forced herself. She hated the sight of the twelve houses; they merely
+meant so much ventilation, so much shutting-down for the evenings, so
+much watering, so much lassitude for the girls, so much money in
+Chesson's pocket. She was glad she had sent for the bicycle. Somebody
+else might read thermometers and close down and sprinkle floors and
+ply the hissing hoses. Louie wanted air.
+
+Yet even the outer air was not sharp enough. It is not an invigorating
+air in which the lemon-verbena grows in trees up the cottage walls and
+scented geranium flourishes out-of-doors like a common hedge plant. In
+the sunken lanes through which she idled on her bicycle the primroses,
+twice as big as she had ever seen them, and the cowslips, great
+sub-tropical clusters, were already past; and she expected to see the
+roses out presently, big as sunflowers. There was something almost
+rank in the sweet bursting out of the land. She thanked goodness that
+a daisy was a daisy still, modest and unmagnified. She was not used to
+hedges of fuchsia. Nature might have been a little more sparing of her
+myrtle too. Louie always dropped from her bicycle when, coming out of
+one of the canals of still and scented air, she saw, across a burnt
+heath-patch or a clump of hardy gorse, a glimpse of the sea. For the
+sake of a look at the sea she often walked up the hill behind
+Chesson's and sat on the stile she had crossed on the morning after
+her interview with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+
+Except by her example, however, she incited nobody else to break the
+Rules.
+
+It was curious that she should know herself to be popular, and yet at
+the same time should also be secretly aware that she was a little out
+of things. All went well enough for the present, but only for the
+present. She knew quite well what would happen did she, a year or two
+hence, chance to meet any of her present fellow-pupils. She would not,
+then, be older than they in quite the same sense that she was now.
+They would meet; there would be eager recollections of the old days at
+Chesson's; oh, for that matter she could make it all up now!... "Come
+where we can have a really good talk! Where's Burnett Major now, and
+her sister? And have you heard from Elwell lately? And I wonder what's
+become of that red-haired girl--what was her name--Earle--yes, Earle?
+And of course you know Macfarlane's going to be married.... Now tell
+me all about what you're doing!"... Oh yes, Louie could make all this
+up--the bursts, the pauses, the dead stops, and then the falsely
+bright, perfunctory talk about Chesson's again. For she and her
+fellow-students would not be doing the same things. They would have
+taken recognised places, and Louie was not sure that she herself had a
+place to take. Her father and mother had seen to that. She remained a
+spectator. If she was liked now, it was not because she went one inch
+out of her way to be so. She was just as ready to go out of her way to
+be disliked if she must go out of it at all.
+
+In the meantime, however, here she was at Chesson's, to all intents
+and purposes her own mistress, and made so much of that she had Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith largely at her mercy--for, had she been requested to
+leave, the two Burnetts, Elwell and others would now have left with
+her. So, doing exactly as she liked, and adored on every hand, Louie
+even wondered sometimes whether she had not been wrong in supposing
+that restlessness and discontent were bred in the very bones of her.
+
+She was at the very top of her popularity about the time Burnett Major
+gave the birthday "cocoa" in her cubicle. (That is to say, Burnett
+Major gave the nucleus of the "cocoa"; the rest of the party happened
+by a natural process of accretion.) This time the junketing was held
+by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission; it had been acceded readily.
+"Lovey's not such a bad old sort when you get used to her," B. Major
+said. It was in mid-May, on a hot evening, and, though Burnett's
+window was flung wide open, showing the dark yew outside, not a breath
+stirred, and the flames of the candles were four inches long in the
+air. Besides cocoa, Burnett had provided cake and biscuits and candied
+fruits and an enormous box of "assorted" chocolates; and Burnett's bed
+was like to break down with the weight of girls upon it.
+
+Louie had had Burnett Major especially in her mind when she had
+painted her fancy picture of a possible meeting with her
+fellow-students a year or two hence. The two sisters were the
+daughters of a Gloucestershire M.F.H., and Louie could forgive B.
+Major for being a little dazzled by her approaching presentation.
+There was nothing unfamiliar to Louie, either, in the rest of the
+things she felt herself, at one and the same time, both "in at" and
+"out of," for probably Mewley Hall, the Burnetts' home, was not very
+different from Trant or Mallard Bois. But Burnett Major's position a
+few years hence was a forgone conclusion; she filled it already in
+anticipation; and the noisy talk that was in progress as Louie joined
+the party threw bright lights on it.
+
+They were discussing the coming vacations. These were Chesson's yearly
+dread. They interrupted his supply of free labour, and there were
+always fewest girls when he most wanted them. As the vacation
+arrangements rested after all chiefly with the parents, he could do
+little except express his preference that as many of the girls as
+possible should take their holidays in the empty month of June, and
+his hope that those who did not do so would defer them until as late
+as they could. Otherwise he was, to that extent, no better off than
+his trade competitors.
+
+"Here she comes," Burnett Minor was crying as Louie entered the
+crowded cubicle. "I want to be here when Causton is. It's all
+right for Major--oh, you needn't think we don't know, Major--if you
+aren't actually engaged he's always about the place when you're at
+home--and I'm going to stalk you both with a camera and then
+what-d'you-call-it--blackmail him----"
+
+"Shut up, Minor, or I shall send you out," B. Major ordered.
+
+"Then I shall tell everybody who he is and shout his name through the
+keyhole. It's----" She moved her lips, threatening to pronounce the
+name there and then.
+
+"Sneak!" said her sister.
+
+B. Minor bridled.
+
+"I _will_ tell them if you call me that again! Causton, have you a
+young man? (That means, Avez-voo un jeune homme, Pig?)"
+
+"Not for you to shout his name through keyholes," Louie replied,
+smiling.
+
+"No, but do tell us--have you?"
+
+"At my age?" said Louie mockingly, sitting down on the edge of the bed
+and reaching for candied fruits.
+
+"Go on--you're trying to wriggle out of it--_have_ you?"
+
+"Hush, little girl--open your mouth----" She popped a fruit into the
+mouth that itself resembled an untouched fruit.
+
+Pigou, from the lower deck of the washstand, interposed loudly:
+
+"Elle a vingt-quatr'ans--elle est perdue!"
+
+"Uppé petite chose, avec voter Françay," commented Burnett Minor.
+
+"Cau-ston coiffe déjà Sainte Catherine," said the ruthless Pigou: "à
+vingt-quatr'ans on est déjà--pff!"
+
+"Non elle isn't pff--rude chose! But she'll tell me when we sleep out,
+because I'm going to have my mattress next to hers, sha'n't I,
+Causton?"
+
+"Mais elle vient d'promettre----"
+
+"--and we shall talk about all those things you always say 'Hush' when
+I come in--sha'n't we, Causton?"
+
+"Prrridd-ee!" taunted the French child: and B. Major spoke.
+
+"But I say, Causton, when do you take your vac.--June or September?"
+
+"And where shall you go?" somebody else demanded.
+
+"I'm going to Ireland--father's taken a house," cried a third.
+
+"Nobody cares where you're going! Causton, will you come home with
+us?"
+
+"No; come to Ireland with us!"
+
+"Well, can I come home with you? I loved that man who brought you
+here!" (Burnett Minor was the young woman who had loved Chaff.)
+
+"It wasn't Lord Moone, was it?" Macfarlane asked.
+
+"Or was it your father?"
+
+"Your cocoa, Causton," said B. Major.
+
+Louie had never been so run after before. She curled up among the
+slippered feet at the foot of the bed (there were four girls stretched
+upon it), and alternately stroked the hair and tweaked the ears of
+Burnett Minor, who had defeated Pigou in the scramble to put her head
+into Louie's lap. "I _can_ have the pitch next to yours, can't I?" the
+child demanded, her eyes turned up and her face (to Louie) upside
+down. "There, you see, Pig, she says I can--so voo juste pouvez
+sechey-up, là."
+
+This sleeping out was a summer custom at Chesson's. It began with the
+warm weather, sometimes in June, sometimes in July. On account of the
+morning and evening carrying of bedding and mattresses, the "pitches"
+nearest the house were deemed the most desirable, and weeks ahead
+there was bickering about the "bagging" of them. They bickered now,
+and then turned to the vacations again.
+
+Louie listened, saying little. For her, vacations in this sense hardly
+existed. Vacations lose their value when you study as slackly as Louie
+did. It might be amusing to go home with one or other of the girls for
+a week or two, but on the other hand she hardly thought she would.
+These were the things she was both "in at" and "out of." B. Major was
+talking about them now. Soon she would be taking her presentation
+lessons; she was coming out; she had an unofficial admirer; yes, Louie
+saw quite plainly what B. Major's future would be. What was her own
+going to be? She had not the least idea.... No, she did not really
+want a vacation. More or fewer, there would be girls at Chesson's
+throughout the summer. Chesson's still amused her; she could leave
+once for all when it ceased to amuse her. She was learning nothing.
+She neither wished to start a lavender farm, as Elwell, the daughter
+of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, did, nor to grow peaches, as did
+Macfarlane, nor to add to her pocket-money by selling pot-pourri at
+extravagant prices to her friends, which was Burnett Major's
+idea--until she should marry. She could hardly sell pot-pourri to her
+prize-fighting father. She might (she smiled) sell him hops--she
+seemed to remember that beer was made of hops....
+
+And she certainly did not intend to mug at theory for the sake of a
+medal, as Earle was doing at this very moment....
+
+The party was still discussing this life which was hers and yet not
+hers when Miss Harriet, going her rounds, tapped at the door and
+entered.
+
+"Bedtime, young ladies, please," she said. "Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+compliments, and she hopes you have enjoyed yourselves."
+
+Her tone was that of one who might say: "You see, young ladies, what
+liberty you have _within_ the Rules; isn't it much pleasanter all
+round?"
+
+The party broke up.
+
+The weeks passed. In June a number of the girls went home, Earle among
+them. Permission to sleep out was given, a little earlier than usual
+on account of the heavy mildness of the nights; and Louie lay in the
+orchard, between Burnett Minor and little Pigou. The convolvulus came
+out, great white trumpets in the hedges; the sea over the hill became
+of a milky blue; and there floated out to it dense tracts of odours,
+lilies, and syringa, jasmine and roses and hay. You wearied of the
+smell of meadow-sweet; in the houses you could hardly take breath. The
+sun was reflected piercingly from their glass roofs, and the girls
+spent the afternoons in deck-chairs under the shadow of the courtyard
+yew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The thing that (Louie sometimes told herself afterwards) made all the
+difference and yet (as she also sometimes told herself) made no
+difference at all, began very trivially. It was just such another
+accident as that which, nine or ten years before, had sent her to her
+mother with a demand to be told "who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was."
+
+Ordinarily, the girls at Chesson's were a little careless about the
+dressing of their hair. You cannot move constantly among banks of
+plants, and pick fruit, and net cherry-trees, and be for ever stooping
+over beds and frames, and keep your hair fit to be seen. Therefore,
+once a month or so, the girls might, if they wished, go in parties of
+four or five to a hairdresser's at Rainham, there to be
+professionally--whatever the word may be. These parties were made up
+more with a view to the enjoyment of the half-holiday than to the
+business strictly in hand; and Louie, had she cared, might have been a
+member of each detachment that went. On this particular day Louie had
+had much ado to free herself from Burnett Minor's affectionate clutch.
+
+"Oh, do come with our lot, Causton!" B. Minor had begged. "Oh, you
+are rotten! You know you went with Elwell before, and with Major
+before that, and I do want mine properly done like yours, not just
+punched up the way we do it!"
+
+"What, like Saint Catherine?" Louie laughed.
+
+"Do come."
+
+But Louie had shaken her off.
+
+"He'll remember how mine's done; I was there a week ago. No, I won't
+come. I'm going to do some theory this afternoon."
+
+"Oh, what a fib! You never do theory!"
+
+"Well, I ought to. No, I won't come."
+
+"Then will you lend me your bicycle?"
+
+"Yes, if you like; but the others are walking, aren't they?"
+
+"Well, I'll wobble with them."
+
+And Louie had watched the party set out, Burnett Minor on the bicycle,
+"wobbling" and leaving behind her a complicated track in the dust of
+the drive.
+
+She did not know why she had said she would do theory that afternoon.
+She supposed it was because she felt slack and bored. Nor did she do
+very much theory. She went into the classroom, languidly turned over
+the pages of an old "Balfour," wondered what it mattered to anybody at
+Chesson's (except perhaps to Earle) that "movements had been observed
+in the pollen-grains of Cereus Speciosissimus," or that "changes took
+place in the stamens by suppression and degenerations of various
+kinds." Then she glanced at a preparation on the stage of the
+microscope opposite Richenda Earle's empty chair, and yawned. She
+looked out into the courtyard. Three or four girls dozed in
+deck-chairs under the dark yew. There was an empty chair--but no; a
+clatter of washing up was going on in the kitchen under the box-room;
+she would go up to her cubicle.
+
+She did so, and, pushing off her slippers, lay down on her bed.
+
+Her window was open as far as it would go, but the yew seemed to shut
+out even what little air there was. All that entered was the faint
+acrid smell of consuming rubbish; they were slow-burning somewhere at
+the back. The sounds of the washing up were fainter now; a pigeon
+alighted on her sill. She had been an idiot, she told herself, to fag
+herself that morning listening to Hall's demonstration in the
+forcing-house. She wished there was a pond about the place, with a
+boat or a punt. She would have bagged the boat to sleep in. It would
+be jolly to be rocked to sleep in a boat or a punt.
+
+She closed her eyes. The last thing she saw before she did so was the
+little black-framed miniature of the fourth Lord Moone, the last but
+three, in his tied wig and ensign's uniform. Louie had tacked it up by
+her mirror merely because it had been in her room at Trant as long as
+she could remember and, if one might judge from the youthful face, he
+was less of an opinionated fool than the other Moones--much less so
+than Uncle Augustus....
+
+She turned over. Then she slept.
+
+Sleep also was deep, too deep, at Rainham Parva. It weighed on the
+girl like a mulch. At five o'clock Louie could hardly drag herself out
+of it. She fumbled at her loosened belt and pulled out her watch.
+Five! The tea-gong must have gone.
+
+Well, perhaps tea would rouse her.
+
+She felt by the side of the bed for her slippers, rose, touched her
+hair as she passed the glass, and went drowsily downstairs.
+
+As Mrs. Lovenant-Smith and Miss Harriet always took tea in their own
+or one another's rooms--which, for that matter, the students also were
+permitted to do if they chose--the meal was a noisier one than either
+lunch or supper. Louie heard one of Burnett Minor's several voices as
+she pushed at the door. The child saw Louie's face in the opening and
+sprang up.
+
+"Here she is--give it to me--I'm going to read it myself----" she
+cried.
+
+Burnett Minor always wanted to read it herself--"it" usually being one
+of the sublimer passages from the current number of the "Pansy
+Library" or an especially choice one from an office-boys' periodical.
+Louie smiled languidly now as the girl snatched a booklet from
+Elwell's hand and gave tongue.
+
+"I've punctured your back tyre, Causton, but Mac has some solution and
+we'll mend it after tea--and I'm always to do my hair like this,
+Harris says--do look at it, isn't it stunning?--and now--aha!"
+(somebody had made a grab for her book). "Thought you'd got it, didn't
+you, Elwell? Now I'll read it first and then show her the picture, and
+that reminds me, Mac, you've never given me my 'Jack Sheppard' back
+that I lent you----"
+
+Louie reached for a chair. She yawned again.
+
+"Do give me a cup of tea, somebody. I hope the watering's all done,
+for I'm not going to do any. What's the child got now? If it's 'Maria
+Martin' or 'Irene Iddesleigh,' I think I know them by heart."
+
+The child herself answered her question. She jumped on a chair and
+extended an arm for silence.
+
+"Ready?" she cried. "Now!"
+
+   "'THE LIFE AND BATTLES OF BUCK CAUSTON,'"
+
+she declaimed in her most ringing voice,
+
+   "'_Being the Full Story and Only Authorised Life of this Famous
+   Pugilist_'--
+
+("Causton's uncle, don't forget, girls)--
+
+   "'_Revised by Himself and now Published for the First
+   Time--including his Historic Encounter with the Great Piker
+   Betteridge_'--
+
+("Piker Betteridge--'Piker'--isn't it lovely?)
+
+   "'_Entered at Stationers' Hall and All Rights Reserved_
+
+     "'PRICE ONE PENNY'"
+
+B. Minor drew out every syllable of the linked sweetness, and
+concluded;
+
+"And lo and behold--on the cover--Buck himself--Uncle Buck,
+Causton--you needn't say he isn't--as large as life and twice as
+beautiful--there!"
+
+She held up the booklet in triumph.
+
+But she drew it back again, bubbling with enjoyment. "Wait till I find
+_the_ gem--the one about Piker," she cried.
+
+Her fingers fluttered rapidly through the precious pennyworth in
+search of the "gem."
+
+Louie's cup of tea had been at her lips, but not a drop spilt as she
+put it down again. If her colour changed at all it was only as that
+other pale fighter's had done whose story, Price One Penny, the
+unconscious Burnett Minor was rapturously searching.
+
+"Here it is!" cried B. Minor, peremptorily extending her hand again.
+"Listen, everybody!--
+
+   "'_But the redoubtable Buck refused to allow the wiper to be
+   skied. He recked nothing of his bunged optic and the claret that
+   flowed from his beezer. Game as a buck-ant he advanced for the
+   twenty-eighth round. The Piker, whose bellows were touched_----'"
+
+But Louie had risen and walked to the child. She held out her hand.
+
+"Let me look," she said.
+
+B. Minor gave her a suspicious look, as if she feared she might be
+reft of her treasure. "You will give it me back?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+Louie took the book.
+
+She supposed she was awake now, but somehow a curious air of unreality
+enveiled whatever it was that was happening. She looked at the cover
+of the "Life" in her hand. The most execrable of woodcuts could hardly
+disguise what she saw. Traditionally posed, nude above the waist, and
+clad below only in tights and fighting-shoes--formidably watchful,
+lightly poised for the blow--in appearance at any rate he was a man
+and superb. But really he had been cruel, faithless, divorced.
+
+As if she had passed merely from one state of half-wakefulness to
+another, she did not think of the bomb she was about to drop among the
+girls. She only wanted to look, and to look, and to look again at this
+man, who was her father.
+
+"Isn't it just Causton's mouth and chin?" she barely heard Burnett
+Minor bubbling. "But I can't say she has Uncle Buck's beezer----"
+
+Slowly Louie handed the "Life and Battles" back. At any rate she had
+now seen him, if only in a wretched woodcut. She looked quietly about
+her.
+
+"That's my father," she said, perhaps a shade distinctly and loudly.
+
+Then she looked about her again.
+
+Burnett Minor jumped down from her chair. Her eyes shone flattery on
+Louie. The very audacity of such a lie compelled her admiration.
+
+"O-o-oh--_what_ a whopper!" she cried. Louie turned her eyes to
+Burnett Minor.
+
+"You said uncle. You weren't quite right. That's my father," she said
+again.
+
+Burnett Minor's life was full of miracles. A miracle more or less made
+no difference. Her eyes sparkled. She alone of the girls believed.
+
+"Not really?" she gasped.
+
+Louie nodded.
+
+"Qu'est c'qu'elle dit?" Pigou cried excitedly, somewhere at the back.
+
+"Pooh, she didn't--she only nodded--nodding isn't a lie," a casuist
+scoffed.
+
+"Stupid, don't you see she's joking?"
+
+But Burnett Minor was watching Louie--only to be quite sure.
+
+"Honour?" she cried. "Spit your death?"
+
+"Honour."
+
+"How splen-_diferous_! And you never told us!"
+
+But Burnett Major had already looked at her sister. She was shocked
+into using her Christian name. "_Genista!_" she reproved her.
+
+"Let me look again," said Louie.
+
+She looked again at the man who had been cruel, faithless, divorced.
+Again she handed the "Life" back.
+
+"He keeps a public-house up the river," she said.
+
+At that the tension was suddenly relieved. That, of course, was too
+much. They breathed freely again. The derisive clamour broke out.
+
+"Oh, don't you see? They've made it up between them--frauds!"
+
+"Of course they have! Come and finish tea."
+
+"She'll be saying that was the man who brought her down next!"
+
+"Causton, I'll never, never believe another word you say!"
+
+"Come on--the housekeeper will be here in a minute."
+
+"Pig, you've stolen my piece of cake that I was saving!"
+
+"Hurl the bread and butter, Mac."
+
+And the crowd which had gathered about Louie dispersed to the tables
+again.
+
+Not until ten minutes later, when she had gone up to her own room
+again, did Louie begin to wonder what had impelled her to make her
+surprising declaration. But in an instant her ten-years'-old habit of
+thought asserted itself again. Why have made it? Rather, why not have
+made it? She would have made it sooner had occasion offered. Elwell
+and the Burnetts did not drag their fathers in; she had not dragged
+her father in either. She had not told them that her mother was Lord
+Moone's sister--it was known, but she had not told them; why should
+she have paraded the fact that her father was this redoubtable Buck,
+from whose beezer the claret had flowed as he had advanced for the
+twenty-eighth round? They could have known it any time they had
+wanted! Conceal it? Why, had she not all her life been glorying in
+that very pride of the cobbler's dog?
+
+And still, deep down in her, she wondered whether it had been even
+that sort of pride, and not rather that secret hunger of the heart
+that, while she was "in at" everything, she was also "out of"
+everything. Had it been that that had caused her to say quietly:
+"That's my father"?
+
+Or perhaps it was even something deeper still. Perhaps, in a word, it
+had been her blind groping towards that crude and strong and cruel and
+joyous life Richenda Earle had said she knew nothing about.
+
+She wondered whether the girls downstairs were talking about her now.
+
+Her eyes fell on the black-framed miniature of the fourth Lord Moone.
+Then, as if her brain had received a number of disordered impressions
+all heaped one on the top of the other, she sat down on the edge of
+her bed, not so much to think as to remember again exactly what had
+happened.
+
+Gradually the disorder cleared. Phrases and the tones in which they
+had been uttered began to stand forth more distinctly. Presently she
+was able to allocate each to its speaker. It was her first attempt to
+estimate differences in the future her declaration might have made.
+
+Burnett Minor, of course, she could dismiss summarily. To her it had
+been a high lark, that but endeared Louie to her the more. But Burnett
+Major? What about her? "_Genista!_" she had exclaimed, shocked at her
+young sister's apparent belief in the socially impossible. Yes, it
+would be interesting to see what difference, if any, was to be seen in
+Burnett Major's attitude now. And Elwell's "_Oh!_" What about that?
+And Macfarlane's blank look? And what did Richenda Earle think?
+
+Louie did not know yet.
+
+And what about Mrs. Lovenant-Smith? Undoubtedly Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+knowing about it herself, would have preferred Louie to keep silence.
+
+The thought of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, however, always braced Louie. That
+curious pleased coldness came into her eyes again. She would see about
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith by-and-by. In the meantime, the last thing she
+intended to do was to absent herself from them all. She would go down
+to supper.
+
+She took a clean blouse from a drawer, laid it out on her bed, and
+then, reaching for a towel, started for the bathroom.
+
+Before she reached the bathroom, however, one of her conjectures was
+already answered. Richenda Earle's cubicle was on the same corridor as
+hers, four doors lower down, and she met Richenda herself, who had
+come back from her vacation a week before, by the embrasure of one of
+the latticed courtyard windows. It was almost dark; in the recess the
+little reflectored oil lamp had been lighted, and it shone on the
+Scholarship girl's copper hair and angular shoulders. Louie stopped.
+She did so deliberately. Let Earle allude if she dared.
+
+"You washed?" she said, on a rising note.
+
+"No, not yet. I--I came up for a book," said Richenda.
+
+"You're not studying to-night, are you?"
+
+"Ye-es--oh yes, I must."
+
+"Classification?"
+
+"Ye-es--yes."
+
+"How far have you got now?"
+
+Louie's mood was on her. It was overdue, but it had come now, and she
+was challenging Earle. Nevertheless, she was ignorant of what she
+really challenged when she challenged Earle. Hard knowledge of the
+true weight of Life will tell, and Earle's knowledge of that weight
+told now. The girl's head was downhung, so that the nodule of bone at
+the back of her neck caught the light sharply. Suddenly she looked up.
+
+"But you are Lord Moone's niece, aren't you?" she said, without
+preface.
+
+Since her vacation, this daughter of a struggling Westbourne Grove
+bookseller had seemed less assertive than before, and was, somehow,
+none the worse for it. Louie didn't know what had made the difference,
+but she momentarily dropped her point.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Why?"
+
+"Then----?" Richenda halted.
+
+"Then what? The other that I told them downstairs is just as true, if
+that's what you want to know."
+
+"But--but----"
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+Earle evidently mitigated what she had been about to say.
+
+"I only mean that--that you must have thought it queer, my talking as
+I did--that morning, you know?"
+
+Louie saw the approach of the first attitude for her garner.
+
+"What morning?" she demanded.
+
+"When they punished me--when I was washing the fruit trees."
+
+"I remember. Well, why should I think anything queer?"
+
+Earle's head dropped again. Again the sharp nodule of bone showed.
+
+"Do you mean," Louie said, "that if my father's what I said, no doubt
+I know as much about what you were saying as you do?"
+
+"Oh no!" Earle said, the more quickly that that probably had been what
+she had meant.
+
+"Then what do you mean?"
+
+"Only that it's--so odd----"
+
+But suddenly Louie gave her towel a twitch and turned away. She spoke
+with her chin over her shoulder.
+
+"I don't love my mother," she said, "but for all that she is Lord
+Moone's sister--Augustus Evelyn Francis Scarisbrick, Lord Moone. And
+the other's my father. I wouldn't study too hard about it if I were
+you. You have your medal to get."
+
+She walked abruptly to the bathroom.
+
+That night, as usual, she sat at supper between Burnett Minor and
+Richenda Earle. The ordinarily irrepressible child on her left was
+silent; but others, two or three places removed from Louie, leaned
+back or forward from time to time to speak to her. She fancied Burnett
+Minor had been crying; she was sure of this when, giving the child's
+hand a pat under the table, she felt her own hand impulsively caught
+and squeezed. Then, in proportion as Burnett Minor cheered up (which
+she usually did very quickly), the others ceased to talk across to
+Louie. It was as if, whoever did it, some normal level of chatter must
+be maintained. Soon supper was as desultorily talkative as it always
+was. Louie, glancing at the top table, saw that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+knew nothing of what had happened at tea-time. She was, however, quite
+ready for her the moment she should find out something.
+
+
+V
+
+One afternoon about three weeks later Louie Causton had occasion to go
+into the carpenter's shed. This shed lay between the dairies and the
+boiler-house that was the centre of the hot-water-pipe system, and
+Priddy had a frame making there. Half this frame, protected by a board
+with "Wet Paint" chalked upon it, leaned against the outside wall,
+and, with his back to the sunlit doorway, a young man, whom at first
+Louie took to be Priddy, was doing something at a bench. Hearing her,
+he turned. It was not Priddy. Louie did not know him.
+
+There is in the British Museum a small helmeted head very like the
+young man Louie saw. It is on the upper floor, among the Tanagras, in
+a case on the left as you walk from the stairs. This young man, of
+course, was not helmeted. His face was handsome and slightly vacuous;
+his eyes in particular had something of the blankness of the little
+terra-cotta head; and his mouth was full and classically curved, and
+had the slightest of smudges of dark moustache along the deeply
+indented upper lip. A pair of rolling muscular shoulders showed
+through his white sweater; his old trousers were tucked into a pair of
+wooden-looking boots; and he was filing something. Louie wondered what
+business he had there.
+
+He told her. He spoke in a slow voice, as if he had got his
+explanation by rote. He was there by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission,
+he said.
+
+"We had a smash with the centre-board, you see," he explained.
+"Crash--just at tea-time. Izzard wanted to send it to Mazzicombe, but
+I told him they'd charge nearly as much as we gave for the beastly
+boat. So I'm doing it myself."
+
+Then, as if his presence within the precincts of a horticultural
+college for young women was quite explained, he bent over his filing
+again. Louie, who had come for a couple of boards that had been put
+aside for her, took them and went out. She was twenty yards away when
+she heard the young man call slowly after her: "I say--I ought to
+carry those for you, you know----"
+
+The boards were for her bed. This she had removed from the orchard.
+The new place lay quite beyond the orchard, at the foot of the hill
+between Chesson's and the sea. There, for the first time on the
+previous night, she had had the best of what breeze there was.
+
+It had been the attitude of her fellow-students during the past
+month--or, more fairly, what she had conceived to be their
+attitude--that had caused her thus to remove herself.
+
+It might be too much to say that she was still not as popular as ever.
+These things are not demonstrable. Popular she had been; now--well, it
+depended a little more than it had done. Burnett Minor, of course,
+would have eaten from the same plate with her by day and shared her
+bed at night had she been permitted--also had she not left for her
+vacation a fortnight before; but Burnett Major--Louie was not so sure
+about Burnett Major. Her attitude had been more than correct; it had
+been so correct that Louie had been put altogether in the wrong. The
+words, of course, had never been said, but Louie had imagined Burnett
+Major's private opinion to be as follows:--
+
+"But why didn't she tell us sooner? What earthly difference does she
+suppose it would have made? Who cares about things like that? I dare
+say her father's just as good as anybody else's father; for that
+matter, mother's grandfather was only a farmer--mother told us so
+herself; but nobody likes being treated as if they were snobs. It
+showed a lack of confidence, that's what it showed; and I don't
+know--now--I mean no girl, unless she _wasn't_ quite a lady,
+would----" Louie could supply that part too.
+
+"I don't care--I _love_ Causton!" she had also imagined B. Minor as
+having sobbed, bold and unconvinced. "He didn't sky the wiper when his
+beezer was bleeding, anyway!"
+
+Yes: for Burnett Major, presentation and all the rest of it lay ahead.
+
+Matters would probably have stopped at that had Louie herself allowed
+them to do so; but that would not have been like Louie. Allow them to
+stop there? Good gracious, no! Her cynicism had become bright indeed.
+_She_ was not the girl to contaminate the innocent Burnett Minor;
+neither--for she was a Scarisbrick when all was said and done--was she
+going to be driven willy-nilly into the society of Richenda Earle as
+company good enough for her. She could look after herself, thank you.
+Coventry is no unpleasant place provided you have the putting of
+yourself there, and at any rate her Coventry at the foot of the hill
+was cooler at night than the other one. It meant carrying her mattress
+and bedding a little farther, but she had a prizefighter's physique to
+carry them with, which was more than her nearest neighbour, Elwell,
+the daughter of the Treasury mandarin, could say.
+
+It is true that she did sometimes wonder (with Burnett Major, perhaps)
+whether she had not inherited also from the prizefighter something
+less desirable than his physique--a discontented and ill-conditioned
+nature. But that did not mend matters. It merely made her, if it did
+anything at all, distrustful of herself. And as this is the story of
+Louie, virtues and vices and all, her moods must go down with the
+rest.
+
+At any rate, rolled in her blanket at the foot of the hill, she could
+feel the night wind on her face, and see the stars, and in her fancy
+deride or boast of her parentage to her heart's content.
+
+On the afternoon following that on which she had fetched the boards
+from the carpenter's shed she went to the shed again, this time for a
+couple of tent-pegs and a piece of cord for the better securing of her
+blankets. The vacant young Tanagra was still there. But this time he
+was not quite so vacant. He had had leisure to think of quite a number
+of words.
+
+"I say," he said, lifting slow and bashful eyes of the colour of blue
+porcelain to Louie, "I've been thinking. Haven't I seen you before?"
+
+"Yes. Yesterday," said Louie shortly. He had had the bad luck to catch
+her at her brooding. But he did not seem to notice her curtness.
+
+"No, but I mean--before----"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Isn't--isn't your name Chaffinger?" He almost blushed.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Then she relented a little.
+
+"I was called Chaffinger for a time. My name's Causton. I suppose
+yours is Chesson, or you'd hardly be here?"
+
+"Chesson? Why Chesson? No. Mine's Lovenant-Smith--Roy Lovenant-Smith."
+
+"Oh!" said Louie. "Then you're right. We have met before, at Mallard
+Bois."
+
+Roy Lovenant-Smith appeared to be so relieved at being rid of a
+perplexity that he didn't much care if they never met again.
+
+"I thought we had," he said mildly. "You were Louie Chaffinger then. I
+knew you were."
+
+"But what," Louie asked, "are you doing here?"
+
+He radiated simplicity.
+
+"That centre-board, didn't I tell you? Izzard would make me go halves
+in the rotten old thing; just look at her; hardly a shroud on the port
+side, and the centre-board was hitched up with a piece of old rope
+instead of a chain and down it came the other tea-time. It's the cabin
+table as well as the centre-board, you see, and the whole thing shut
+up-just like that----"
+
+He set the inner edges of his hands together and then closed his palms
+with a slap.
+
+"All the tea--jam and all the lot," he said.
+
+He amused Louie. "That was a pity," she said demurely.
+
+"Wasn't it? But I say, I shall be catching it. I might use the shed,
+aunt said, but she told me it was a fixed Rule about men, unless
+you're a gardener, of course----"
+
+("An obedient nephew," Louie thought.) "Then I must go at once," she
+added.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't like to get you into a row too," said Roy
+Lovenant-Smith ingenuously.
+
+"No," Louie agreed, more demurely still. "They have to be strict, you
+know."
+
+"Rather!" said Roy Lovenant-Smith heartily.
+
+And Louie left him.
+
+She was hardly out of sight before her laughter broke forth. "'All the
+tea--jam and all the lot!'" she repeated softly, and laughed again.
+She scarcely remembered this delightful young man. When, as a child of
+eleven, she had played leapfrog, he could hardly have been more than
+seven, and she felt herself to be far more than four years his senior
+now. He was the adjutant's son, she supposed. Well, he would hardly
+need Chaff's usual extenuation about his being a bad fellow at all:
+Louie would be very much surprised if he had wit enough to be very
+bad, or, for the matter of that, very anything else either. Once more
+she laughed. At any rate she had to thank him for dispelling her
+megrims for the time being. Still laughing softly, she passed through
+the orchards, ascended the hill, and sought her favourite place by the
+stile at the top.
+
+She had not thought very much about young men. She had observed them
+as so many phenomena, obviously superior to the animals, yet not quite
+identifiable as beings with inner experiences akin to her own. They
+looked at her irregular mouth and elongated chin, said the things
+young men did say, and departed again, taking their various moustaches
+and their unvarying smell of tobacco to some girl of the kind she knew
+they accounted "pretty." They were quite different beings from the
+fairy prince of her childhood; and since her childhood's days she had
+grown gradually, she did not know how, to a fairly accurate estimate
+in retrospect of the "little party" to which Chaff had once taken her,
+pigtails and all. Her views of marriage too were coloured by that
+mixed parentage that made her, she supposed, not "common" and not "a
+lady." She would not marry unless this was clearly understood. What
+else there might be in marriage was shadowy, to be considered after
+this redoubtable magnanimity was safely out of the way.
+
+With no young man had she ever had "a lark."
+
+She was, however, more in the mood for a lark now--not necessarily
+with a young man--than she had ever been in her life before. "Cau-ston
+a vingt-quatr'ans--elle coiffe déjà Sainte Catherine," the remorseless
+Pigou had said: oh, had she? Did she? Moreover, you cannot put
+yourself gloomily into Coventry; others must be made to see that you
+consider your sequestration the most desirable of conditions. Indeed,
+she had said as much to Richenda Earle only the night before.
+
+Richenda was the only one of the girls who slept indoors, and Louie,
+carrying her bed-trappings out from the house, had come upon Richenda
+by the little green door of the espaliered wall that led to the
+orchards. Richenda had made an advance, willing, apparently, to forget
+the snub Louie had administered after the "Life and Battles"
+revelation, and had offered to carry her pillow for her.
+
+"Why do you go so far?" she had asked, as they had left the orchard
+behind.
+
+"Oh, I hate being disturbed," Louie had replied. "I'd go right down to
+the shore if it wasn't for the climb up again."
+
+"But suppose you wanted anything during the night?"
+
+"What should I want?"
+
+"Of course, I forgot. You don't have headaches. I have--frightful
+ones."
+
+"Then why don't you come out too? There's quite a jolly place here.
+I'd help you to carry your things."
+
+"Oh, I've got to read," Richenda had shaken her head.
+
+"You'd be heaps better for it----"
+
+Louie had not much in common with Richenda--save perhaps (she loved
+little cuts like this at herself) that both of their fathers were
+literary. But she had had that rather brutal snub on her conscience.
+That had come out next.
+
+"You do study too hard," she had said, "and--I say, Earle--I'm sorry
+for what I said that night--you know--when I snapped at you and said
+you'd your medal to get. Will you forget that?"
+
+The next moment she had almost wished she hadn't said it, Earle's
+hungry gratitude had shown so.
+
+"It wasn't your fault a bit," the red-haired girl had broken out
+impulsively. "It was all mine. I ought to have minded my own business.
+But I was so--so----"
+
+"Well, try sleeping up here," Louie had cut her short. "It's jolly."
+
+But Richenda had gone on. "I was stupid," she had murmured.
+
+"I don't know that you were. You see how it is."
+
+"Oh, I was, I was----"
+
+"Well, as I tell you, I don't think much of my mother's lot."
+
+"Ah, _you_ can say so," Richenda had replied, shaking her head. Then,
+as Louie had thrown down her mattress, "You don't mean to say you
+undress here?" she had asked.
+
+"Well, I don't sleep in my clothes."
+
+"But don't your things get wet?"
+
+"I wrap 'em in my waterproof.... You won't come up, then, and run down
+to the shore for a bathe before breakfast?"
+
+"Causton, they'll be dropping on you yet!" Earle had said, almost
+frightened.
+
+"Well, without the bathe?"
+
+"Oh, I should die!"
+
+And Richenda had gone back to sleep where she might find remedies for
+her headaches within reach of her hand during the night.
+
+Louie sat on the stile. The sea had a soft bloom, and the sky was of
+the colour of the whites of a baby's eyes. Bees hummed among the
+scabious, and blue and sulphur butterflies hovered over the patches of
+wild thyme. A tramp, sullying the air behind her, crept slowly up to
+Bristol; a single nodding grass-head near at hand shut her out almost
+completely. Mazzicombe, down under the hill, was hidden. Louie watched
+it all, thinking of nothing, or, if of anything, of how sweet it was
+to relax all her muscles to the point of not stumbling off the stile,
+and all her mind save that she might still be just conscious that she
+existed and was Louie Causton....
+
+"Hallo," said a slow, imperturbable voice behind her; "here we are
+again."
+
+She started a little. Roy Lovenant-Smith was returning with a baulk of
+old wood over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said. She did not know whether she was glad or
+annoyed to be interrupted.
+
+"Yes, it's me," he replied placidly.
+
+She was silent for a moment; then: "I thought you hadn't to hang about
+here?" she said.
+
+"Well," he put it to her candidly, "how can I get over the stile when
+you're sitting on it? How can I, now?"
+
+She laughed. "Well, I must get off on my proper side." She did so.
+"There," she said.
+
+He climbed over with great deliberateness, walked a few yards with his
+piece of timber, and then turned again.
+
+"No, you can't see her from here," he said. "She's down under the hill
+there. I don't think she's worth bothering about, but Izzard says
+she'll be quite all right with a new stay or two. I suppose I shall
+have to get 'em."
+
+Louie felt a return of her amusement.
+
+"Who's Izzard?" she asked.
+
+"Izzard?" He looked at her as if she ought to know that. "Izzard's the
+other chap. Always painting, you know. Painting and mooning about and
+leaving me to do all the work. He's away there somewhere now." He
+pointed vaguely across the Channel. "I suppose he'll come back when
+he's ready. She _is_ an old egg-box!--I say, how's your cousin Eric?
+And that girl--what's her name--Cynthia, wasn't it?"
+
+She didn't know, and told him so; she did not tell him that she didn't
+care either. He cogitated for a moment, and then said:
+
+"But I say--what do you _do_ at this place? Seems funny to me.... Mind
+yourself--somebody wants to get over----"
+
+She had not heard anybody approach. It was Priddy, going down to
+Mazzicombe. Louie stood aside from the stile. Priddy climbed over it
+and began to descend the hill. Lovenant-Smith looked at Louie in
+surprise.
+
+"I say," he said, "that's cool! Don't those fellows take their hats
+off to you?"
+
+"No," said Louie. Then she turned her clear grey eyes on him. She had
+been fairly caught.
+
+"Don't they? By Jove!... What are you looking at me like that for?"
+
+The rippling laugh with which Louie replied dropped a note. "Guess!"
+she said.
+
+"How can I guess?" he asked, with his innocent and statue-like stare.
+
+For answer, Louie glanced to where Priddy's brown bowler hat was
+disappearing over the edge of the hill. Roy Lovenant-Smith saw--he
+really saw----
+
+"What?" he exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that that chap will----?"
+
+She nodded. He stared.
+
+"What, get you into a row for talking to me?"
+
+"He may not."
+
+"No, but really, joking apart?" he said incredulously.
+
+"Perhaps he won't."
+
+"Oh, come, I say!... Look here, shall I go back with you and explain?"
+
+The innocent! "I don't think I would," said Louie, smothering her
+laughter.
+
+"But--hang it all! I say, I _am_ sorry!"
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"I mean sorry I've got you into a row, of course," he amended.
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant sorry you stopped and talked to me."
+
+"Of course not. That is, if it doesn't get you into a row."
+
+"And if it did----?"
+
+"Well, a chap doesn't like getting people into rows. Look here--that
+beggar wants talking to!"
+
+Louie dropped her eyes. "I've been in rows before," she said.
+
+Instantly he cheered up. "Oh, I see! You mean it wouldn't be much?"
+
+"Well, your aunt can't exactly skin me." At the recollection of Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith she glanced with satisfaction at her hands.
+
+"Oh, I'll make that all right with her," said Roy Lovenant-Smith
+hopefully.
+
+She looked at him. He _was_ an innocent! "You know what that would
+mean?" she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, merely that you wouldn't see me again."
+
+His look too rested on her hands. "Why?" he asked.
+
+She straightened herself. "Oh, never mind about it. I'm going now."
+
+He coloured a little. "But I say--Louie--you don't mind my calling you
+Louie, do you? I used to, you know.--I should like to see you again."
+
+"Perhaps you'd better not," she said, with great demureness.
+
+"Oh, rot!" he expostulated. "A fellow can't get a girl into a mess and
+then leave her in the lurch!"
+
+"You'd like to see me just once again, to see whether I'd got into a
+row or not?"
+
+"That's what I mean."
+
+It wasn't what Louie had meant him to mean, but "Well, once, if you
+like," she conceded.
+
+"All right. What about here, at this time to-morrow?"
+
+"I'll see if I can get away from my studies."
+
+"Right. And if I see that chap in Mazzicombe, may I say anything to
+him?"
+
+"Please don't."
+
+"Not about not taking his hat off?"
+
+"Oh, they don't trouble about that sort of thing here."
+
+"Well, they jolly well ought. All right, I won't. Good-bye----"
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+He took his board and followed Priddy; she turned back to the college.
+She laughed again. At any rate, a lark with a pleasant image was
+better than a hole-in-corner, Miss Hastings affair with a gardener.
+She would _not_ "coiffe Sainte Catherine."
+
+She duly got her wigging. She was put "on her honour" by Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith not to see the young man again who had betrayed the
+confidence put in him. This struck her as quite richly arrogant. To be
+put "on your honour" by somebody before whom you stand mute as a fish,
+and to have it assumed that you accept the bond, was the _largior
+ether_ indeed. Louie did not even feel called upon to say that she
+declined to consider herself bound. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith might take her
+"off her honour" again. She met Roy scarcely three hours later. The
+interview he himself had had with his aunt in the meantime affected
+the situation but little; his centre-board was now patched up, and the
+withdrawing of the privilege of the carpenter's shed made no
+difference.
+
+They met again on the afternoon following that, and again on the one
+after that. Louie found herself hoping that Izzard, whoever he was,
+would not return from "over there" just yet. Let somebody else attend
+to the hair-combing of the Saint.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A score of different things contributed to her enjoyment of that
+affair of atmosphere--her "lark." First, the initiative was hers--for
+her empty-eyed statue accepted everything with as much candour as if
+he had been born into a virgin world on the eighth day of its
+creation. Next, the mere disregarding of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was a
+pleasure she felt it incumbent upon herself not to forgo. Next, there
+was the instinctive courage with which she translated her sulks into
+carelessness and gaiety. Next--but allow what you will for the rest:
+pique, vanity, her derivation, her upbringing. When, the third time
+she met Roy by the stile, the half-French girl, Pigou, came upon them,
+and instantly flew to spread the news among such girls as still
+remained at Chesson's, Louie's Coventry was the coveted thing she had
+all along intended it should be.
+
+For she was more than merely popular now; she was romantic, apart, a
+being to be looked up to with something like awe. Meet a young man!
+She felt herself to be the channel by which every girl in the place
+might have access to her own dreams. They gave her longing glances,
+that mutely implored her to tell them all, all about it; she talked
+about everything else, but not about that, and hearts and mouths
+watered. They offered to do things for her--to carry her mattress, to
+do her Sunday watering, even to clean her bicycle; and Louie let
+them--but told them nothing. Nay, she even drew Richenda Earle to
+herself. Richenda actually carried her mattress to the foot of the
+hill one night and slept out. The two mattresses were placed not six
+feet apart, and, as the birds settled on the boughs and the stars
+came out, Richenda set herself wistfully to pump Louie.
+
+Then it appeared why Richenda had seemed changed since her vacation.
+Speaking in a low voice, she too admitted that there was
+now--Somebody. Weston, his name was, Louie learned, and he was some
+sort of a commercial schoolmaster at the same place in Holborn where
+Richenda herself had studied. So instead of Richenda pumping Louie,
+Louie pumped Richenda. What was her Mr. Weston like? Well (Richenda
+said), some might think him an oddity--the Secretary Bird, his
+nickname was--but he was, oh, a soul so sensitive, so gentle! Was
+there any prospect of their marrying soon? Richenda sighed; it would
+be a long time; if she got her post at Chesson's he might apply for a
+country schoolmastership somewhere near, and then she would get a
+bicycle; or if he got a "rise" in London she might relinquish her
+appointment--when she got it. But in any case it could hardly be for
+years. Louie asked flatly what Weston got, and was told one hundred
+pounds a year. She looked up in surprise. Her own dress allowance was
+treble that amount.
+
+"And you'd get a hundred here too?" she asked.
+
+"If I get the place--which means if I get my medal," said Richenda.
+
+Then, Louie thought, that would be two hundred between
+them--two-thirds of her dress allowance.
+
+"But--but----," she said, "I thought people got paid more than that!"
+
+"I told you you didn't know," said Richenda softly.
+
+"But--but--why, my aunt paid Miss Skrine one hundred and fifty pounds,
+just to go through her engagements, opening bazaars and charities and
+so on--just to write down on a slate what she had to do each day!"
+
+"Your aunt's Lady Moone," came from Richenda's couch.
+
+"I _know_ she got one hundred and fifty pounds, _and_ lived with them.
+One hundred pounds seems absurd."
+
+"That's what father said when he apologised to me."
+
+"But surely, all--all the people one sees aren't paid at that rate!
+Why, some cooks get a thousand--I've heard that for a fact----"
+
+"Some don't," came from the other pillow.
+
+"Well, some do, and if you strike an average, or whatever it's
+called----"
+
+But Richenda interrupted, softly and wearily:
+
+"Oh, you don't, don't, don't know."
+
+Louie asked further questions. She frowned, puzzled, at the answers.
+Of course Richenda herself wasn't a very effective sort of girl; if
+anybody had to be downtrodden it would very likely be she; but the
+things she was telling her now (Richenda had begun to talk again,
+resignedly rather than bitterly) were preposterous. There must be
+something wrong with Richenda, probably with her Weston too; she did
+not look quite right; she was very different from the rosy housemaids
+at Trant, for example. One hundred pounds a year!... She had forgotten
+all about Roy. When, presently, Richenda came as near to putting a
+question about him as she dared, she forgot about him again. One
+hundred pounds a year!... She lay on her back, her knees up, her hands
+behind her head, her sleeves fallen from her wonderful arms, the brows
+above the grey eyes knitted. She was sure that _she_ could do better
+than that! She even went so far as to say so. Richenda showed no
+resentment.
+
+"You've got Lord Moone behind you," she said.
+
+"I've got a prizefighter and a public-house behind me," Louie replied.
+
+"Yes--I know you think you know----"
+
+Louie lay awake, still pondering it all, long after Richenda had
+fallen into an uneasy sleep.
+
+On the following afternoon she met Roy by the stile again. She was
+restless, unsettled, she knew not what. She spoke almost sharply to
+him.
+
+"I'm not going to stand here with you," she said; "that's twice I've
+been seen. Come down the hill."
+
+Roy no longer urged the Rules. They walked together a hundred yards
+down the hill, and sat down under a gorse-bush. He made her move quite
+behind it, and even then tucked her skirt a little farther out of the
+gaze of a possible passer-by.
+
+"Now we're all right," he said. "How's Lovey this morning?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't seen her."
+
+"Well, don't bite a fellow's head off, Louie."
+
+"Then don't bother me to-day.--No, I don't want my hand held."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"If you don't leave me alone I shall go. I didn't sleep till nearly
+daylight."
+
+"I didn't sleep for quite an hour, either," he said sympathetically.
+"I say, isn't it funny, Louie, when you come to think of it, that till
+a week ago I hadn't thought of you for years?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't lying awake thinking of you," she said bluntly.
+
+"I was of you." He put out his hand again.
+
+His approach only made her impatient. "Oh, don't!" she snapped.
+"Really I shall get up and go if you worry me."
+
+He was, as he would have put it, "keen": keen enough to begin to sulk.
+She let him sulk, and watched the sea, always of a milky bloom, and
+the sky, still of the hue of an infant's eyeball. After some minutes
+she turned to him again.
+
+"What _do_ people get paid?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"What people?" He spoke over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, people--you know what I mean!"
+
+"We get dashed little, I know that." (He was going into the army.)
+"What sort of people? Servants and those?"
+
+"And those--yes."
+
+Roy expounded.
+
+"Jolly good pay, _I_ call it; lot of lazy beggars! Why, the fellow
+down there wanted to charge me two pounds for patching up that
+centre-board, that I did in about a day. I shouldn't mind getting two
+pounds a day!... Why?"
+
+"I want to know."
+
+"Some of your gardeners been grizzling to you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A wonder--rotten grousing lot! They ought to have uniforms to buy,
+and mess-bills and clubs and things; they'd know all about it then!
+Two pounds for filing a piece of iron and putting a patch on a piece
+of wood!--I think it will hold all right," he continued naïvely; "we
+shall make a deuce of a lot of leeway if it doesn't. We're
+flat-bottomed, you see, with only bilge-keels, and that reminds me;
+Izzard's coming back on Wednesday; I'd a note from him this morning.
+But he won't be in the way, dear, if you'll only be friends----"
+
+She could not help laughing. After all, Richenda's "grousing" was a
+little spoiling her fun. She turned to him again.
+
+"I haven't seen her yet," she said. "Let's go down to her now."
+
+He chuckled mildly. "You do play the dickens with the Rules, Louie."
+
+"Bother the Rules!"
+
+"Well, you don't want to go just this minute; it's jolly here----"
+
+This time she did not withdraw her hand.
+
+But he was very slow, she thought, in kissing her. He had never kissed
+her yet. What was the good of being caught at--nothing?
+
+Well, statues (she reflected), especially young ones, are slow----
+
+Even as she was thinking it he did that very thing. Perhaps it was to
+summon up resolution to do so that he had lain awake the previous
+night. He kissed her cheek.
+
+The result was curious. It was the law of her physique that most
+moments of perturbation only turned her paler; but at this particular
+form of perturbation she turned suddenly pink.
+
+In a few moments she was as before. The first sign that she was Louie
+again was that she forbade him to repeat the offence. He sulked again.
+
+"All right," he said resentfully; "then we may as well go and see the
+yacht."
+
+"I don't want to see the yacht."
+
+"Well, you needn't be stuffy about it----"
+
+Statues _were_ distractingly slow!
+
+Then she looked at him with a faintly mocking smile.
+
+"Aren't you going to say you're sorry?" she challenged him (but she
+had for a moment a faint return of the unhabitual colour for all
+that).
+
+He seemed to suspect that he was being mocked; nevertheless it was
+with a rather tremulous boldness that he answered "No."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You see," he explained, "you did let me hold your hand."
+
+She caught her breath. Good gracious! Why, he would be saying
+presently that she had asked him to kiss her! "You see, you did let me
+hold your hand!" What next?
+
+"You know you did," he argued simply.
+
+Even so it is written, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings----"
+
+Suddenly she laughed. O admirable innocence, that alone can defeat
+guile! After all, it was too unpardonable not to be pardoned. She
+turned her face away again.
+
+"You _are_ stupid!" she murmured, her face, even her neck, pink once
+more.
+
+At that quite a new gleam seemed to irradiate his good-looking clay.
+
+"I say," he said slowly, as he struggled with the newness of the idea,
+"you mean--do you mean?--about my not kissing you--properly?"
+
+Oh, the heaviness! But he should kiss her "properly," as he called it,
+now!
+
+"Oh," she said briskly, "it's too late now. You can't very well after
+that, can you?"
+
+But he beamed. "Of course I can!"
+
+"No, Roy!"
+
+"I will----"
+
+This was outrageous. She made as if to rise.
+
+"No, Roy--no--you know very well you don't think I'm pretty----"
+
+"Well, you aren't ugly," said he.
+
+(Great heavens! She "wasn't ugly"!)
+
+"Very well, Mr. Statue," she thought, compressing those irregular lips
+whose degree of prettiness he estimated so nicely. "I'm going to be
+pretty in a very few minutes, and you're going to tell me so."
+
+"No, Roy," she said aloud; "just let's sit and talk--sensibly--I don't
+know what made you behave like this all of a sudden----"
+
+And there was none to say "Provoking hussy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later they rose. It was too late to go to the yacht now. They
+walked together back to the stile. Their shoulders overlapped. The
+kisses came easily now.
+
+"Then we'll go aboard her to-morrow?" he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+"'Once aboard the lugger'--ha, ha--but of course she's a cutter, not a
+lugger. That's just a saying, 'Once aboard the lugger.'"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes, hadn't you heard it? 'Once aboard the lugger and the girl is
+mine,' it is. And I say, you'd better put some old clothes on if I'm
+to show you how the centre-board works."
+
+"All right."
+
+"What about Lovey?" he asked once more.
+
+"Oh, we write down on a slate where we're going."
+
+He held her a little away. "I--_say_!... You wouldn't tell her where,
+would you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"What--cheek!"
+
+"She put me 'on my honour'--impudence!" quoth Louie.
+
+"But I say--what frightful cheek!"
+
+"Good-bye----"
+
+"Just a minute----"
+
+"Well----"
+
+Then, "'Bye----"
+
+"Good-bye----"
+
+He called her name after her. "Louie!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Good-bye----"
+
+"Good-bye, boy----" She waved her hand.
+
+Anyway, she thought with satisfaction, she had made him
+say--swear--that she was pretty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next afternoon, as good as her word, Louie wrote on the
+hall-slate: "Gone to Mazzicombe: L. Causton." Then she walked,
+whistling, out of the house and up the hill.
+
+
+VI
+
+This time she fully expected to catch it, and did catch it. No time
+was lost. A note from Mrs. Lovenant-Smith just before supper ordered
+her to report herself immediately after that meal. At a quarter past
+nine she presented herself.
+
+The French window stood wide open, but night was fast falling over
+the front lawn, and a clipped peacock of box showed against a
+brownish-green sky. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stood by the window. It moved
+as she turned, and there swung slowly across the pane the reflection
+of the tall, yellow-shaded standard-lamp in one corner. Miss Harriet
+Chesson had followed Louie in. In her hand was a piece of
+paper--Louie's "conduct-report."
+
+The beginning of the encounter was no skirmish; its end was positive
+slaughter. This is no place for a report of it, round by round; it
+must be summarised, even as the "Life and Battles" summarises the
+combat between Buck and the terrible Piker. Louie "led," so to speak,
+by asking whether she might sit down, giving as her reason that she
+had had a long walk that afternoon; permission was only refused her
+after she had put her hand on the back of a wheatear chair and said
+again: "I think you said Yes?" She then placed the chair for Miss
+Harriet to sit on, as near as possible to that of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+She herself stood in the middle of the room.
+
+Miss Harriet, evidently wishing she was somewhere else, read aloud the
+conduct-report. It was longish and detailed. It also, as Louie well
+knew, did not contain one of the real points at issue. She looked from
+one to the other of the two women. The Lady-in-Charge wore a
+discreetly-necked evening frock, with a fichu secured by a mourning
+brooch; and her fingers kept touching this brooch, and also kept
+leaving it again, as if Louie's eyes had been capable of a physical
+plucking of them away. She had had Miss Harriet in, Louie knew, for
+moral support. The principal's dress, too, was a give-and-take between
+her gardening costume and conventional evening attire. Her indictment
+read, she seemed more than ever anxious to depart. Louie, for her
+part, was rather glad that she had been called in. Buck had always
+fought better for the eyes upon him.
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith began correctly; her first trace of acerbity
+showed only when Louie, having listened to her arraignment with
+downcast eyes, lifted them for a moment to make a modest and quite
+immaterial correction.
+
+"Have the goodness to cease this exaggerated deference, Miss Causton.
+It doesn't deceive me. It's only a form of veiled insolence."
+
+Louie heard her indictment out in silence.
+
+First blood was drawn when Louie mentioned the name of Roy
+Lovenant-Smith. She called him, with aggravating naturalness, "Roy."
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith rose nearly an inch in height.
+
+"'Roy!'" she echoed. "'Roy,' indeed!"
+
+"I quite expected Priddy would tell you that first time. Of course he
+would. The gardeners here don't like outsiders intruding," said Louie.
+
+The point told. There was no need to mention the name of Miss
+Hastings. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's face deepened its ochre.
+
+"Go on, Miss Causton," she said; while Miss Harriet timidly
+interposed: "I think that's all you wanted me for?"
+
+Louie went on. "And anyway, you gave your nephew permission to come on
+the premises, which seems to me quite as much against the Rules as
+anything there." She pointed to the charge-sheet.
+
+"Pray go on, Miss Causton," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, swallowing her
+wrath. Piker Betteridge, counting the moral advantage to be more than
+the pain endured, had formerly been wont to thrust out his undefended
+jaw in order to prove its invulnerability to attack; Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith was doing something of the same kind now.
+
+"Pray go on----" she said.
+
+"And of course that's all bunkum," said Louie, warming, and pointing
+once more to the paper in Miss Harriet's hand. "That isn't in the
+least what you mean. What you really hate is my having told the girls
+what you've had in your mind ever since I came--I mean about my
+father."
+
+"Pray go on!" The jaw was thrust out once more.
+
+("Perhaps I'd better go?" Miss Harriet still fidgeted. Seedsmen's
+daughters are not at their ease at these Olympian conflicts.)
+
+"All right, I will go on," said Louie, warming still more. "You would
+have preferred me to hold my tongue about it, and if you're thinking
+of asking me to resign I should like to say now that probably at least
+half-a-dozen others will go with me."
+
+Here, however, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith scored a point.
+
+"That may have been true a little while ago," she said, "but--go on."
+And Louie remembered certain little incidents and unbendings that had
+caused it to be indulgently rumoured that "Lovey wasn't such a bad old
+sort once you got to know her." Louie conceded the point.
+
+"Anyway, that's what she does mean," she said, turning to Miss
+Harriet--"that she didn't want me to tell them that my father was a
+prizefighter and kept a public-house!"
+
+"Address yourself to me, if you please," ordered Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+
+"Certainly! You've been set against me from the first, for that very
+reason; and as for your nephew, I've known him for years and years,
+and you've no business at all to have him here, and it would sound
+rather well, wouldn't it, if the tale got about that you allowed----"
+
+But at this Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's hardly held composure gave way with
+a snap. Well-born but necessitous Ladies-in-Charge of horticultural
+colleges do not submit to being told their duty by the daughters of
+pugilists. She stamped on the floor.
+
+"Silence!" she cried, shaking. "I was a fool ever to have had
+you here! You make discipline impossible. You corrupt your
+fellow-students--you make a boast of your unfortunate parentage--you
+show no respect for the Rules--you think yourself at liberty to come
+and go as you please--you carry on a vulgar intrigue----"
+
+"--not with a gardener----"
+
+("Oh, I _really_ must go my rounds!" murmured Miss Harriet; but she
+lingered; the spectacle of Olympians forgetting themselves does not
+occur every day.)
+
+"--disgracing yourself among younger and more innocent girls----"
+
+"--with a Lovenant-Smith, anyway----"
+
+Again the stamp. "I forbid you to mention his name!"
+
+"Roy----"
+
+"Leave the room!"
+
+("Please, please!" besought Miss Harriet.)
+
+"You will pack your boxes at once!"
+
+"I shall consult Lord Moone's lawyer first. You accepted my fees--your
+college is an imposition from beginning to end, and I'll see that's
+known. That will be another scandal----"
+
+"Ah!" choked Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, perhaps with some hazy recollection
+of the law of slander in her head. "You hear that, Miss Chesson? You
+hear that? You heard those words?"
+
+"No, I didn't quite catch--ladies--please!"
+
+"If you didn't catch it, I said the whole place was a shameless
+fraud," said Louie calmly.
+
+"Very good. Ring the bell, Miss Chesson!"
+
+But the servant appeared only in time to see Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+complete collapse. She sank, shaking, into a chair, and gazed
+unseeingly into a pigeon-hole of her desk, as if she might find some
+help against this devilish girl there. As she clung (as it were) to
+the ropes, Louie let her have it (so to speak) on the beezer.
+
+"You oughtn't to be here at all, really, you know," she said. "You
+ought to be in one of those places--you know--in the Queen's gift, at
+Kensington or Hampton Court, with the dowagers and maids-of-honour. If
+you like I'll ask my uncle whether he can't do anything."
+
+And without waiting for an answer she swept out, not by the door, but
+by the French window. The reflection of the yellow-shaded
+standard-lamp swung again as she did so.
+
+She entered the courtyard by the side door, passed under the dark yew
+and the arch beneath the box-room, and made her way through the
+orchard. She had reached her pitch at the foot of the hill before she
+remembered that she had forgotten her mattress and blankets. She
+returned in search of them. Twenty minutes later she was in bed, her
+knees up, her hands clasped behind her head.
+
+She was white with triumph. That woman! Well, Louie thought she had
+held her own. She had had the last word, at all events, and an
+optic-bunging one too. Now should she leave, or stay? It was entirely
+a question of balance between her desire to see the last of the place
+and her resolve to go at nobody's pleasure but her own. It might be
+that she would have to stay another week in order to avoid the
+suspicion that she was turning tail. The fraud of a place!
+
+She lay, pale and victorious, thinking the matter over.
+
+One thing was certain; she would not return to Trant. She supposed she
+was vindictive by nature, but that would merely mean at the most a
+week's gradually increasing strain on her temper and then another
+series of embroilings with her mother. A philosophic elf somewhere
+deep within her--it was hardly affection--bade her spare her mother
+what she had not spared Mrs. Lovenant-Smith. Why seek a known trouble
+at Trant? If she must take trouble with her wherever she went, she
+might as well take it to a fresh place.
+
+Before she was aware they had done so, her thoughts had flown to the
+vouched-for but incredible things Richenda Earle had said about life
+and London.
+
+Lord Moone had a house, and Captain Chaffinger chambers, in London,
+and she knew both. For the rest, her knowledge of the place was pretty
+much what Richenda had guessed it to be--shops, restaurants, theatres.
+Of her five visits two had been spent at Lord Moone's, two at
+Cynthia's friends, the Kayes, and one at an hotel--this not counting
+the night on which, having run away from the convent, she had occupied
+Chaff's room and had wondered at his large pincushion, his pictures,
+and ribboned haircurlers that he doubtless kept in memory of his
+departed youth.
+
+Her father, too, lived in London, or thereby----
+
+She fell to wondering about her father.
+
+There was a full but late-rising moon that night; it had not yet
+cleared the tree-tops of the eastern end of the orchard below. She
+watched its silver through the topmost boughs. Already it filled the
+heavens with a mist of light, dimming the stars; the glister on near
+leaves was brighter than the Plough over her head. Scents of the
+distant gardens stole undispersed through the night; that of the
+night-flowering tobacco-plant was for some minutes almost sicklily
+oppressive; and behind her she heard the scurrying of the rabbits at
+play.
+
+It was odd that she thought of her father rather than of Roy. Somehow
+only Roy's actual presence had the power to colour those now pale
+cheeks of hers. Certainly it had done so that afternoon. For an hour,
+aboard the yacht, the rose-peonies in the garden had been paler than
+she. But her father had her thoughts now, and the sum of them was that
+she would have given much to be able to think of him as not cruel, not
+faithless, not a man who had had to be thrust back into the ditch
+whence he had come. She might have sought him out then.
+
+For she was going to London; that was settled. She had her allowance,
+more by a half than the income Richenda and her Mr. Weston would
+gladly have married on, and not one penny more of it would she waste
+at Chesson's. The next day or two would almost certainly provide her
+with a "good exit." Then nobody would be able to say she had slunk
+out.
+
+Oh, if her father had but not been a brute!
+
+The moon cleared the trees, and another too-sweet tract of the
+night-flowering tobacco enveloped her. A bird or two stirred. Some
+time before she had thought she had heard the sound of a curlew's
+whistle, low and not very near, but she had disregarded it. Now it
+came again. All the effect it had was to turn her thoughts, tardily
+and almost unnoticed by herself, to Roy.
+
+She knew little about yachts; yachting was no pastime of Lord Moone's;
+but even her vaunting mood relaxed to a momentary smile as she
+remembered the yacht down under the hill there. Those two boys must be
+crazy to risk their lives like that. They had rounded Land's End in
+her, and in quite good faith evidently expected the miracle to be
+repeated. The only wonder was that the centre-board had gone before
+the rest of the crazy fabric. "I told you to put some old clothes on,"
+Roy had apologised for his vessel, "--and I say--I don't think I'd sit
+on the table if I were you--I'm not _quite_ sure about it, you
+see--may have to send it to Mazzicombe after all--come on the locker."
+So they had sat on the locker----
+
+She had felt safer when, half-an-hour later, she had clambered down
+into the little dinghy again. It would be Davy Jones's locker for
+Master Roy and his friend Mr. Izzard unless some fatherly fisherman
+took them and their boat in hand.
+
+Then came the thoughts of her unknown father again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Ee-oooo-eee!_"
+
+She sat up. The whistle came from the stile up the hill. And suddenly
+she knew it was no curlew. It was Roy.
+
+She listened.
+
+"_Ee-oooo-eee!_"
+
+It was Roy.
+
+She knew he would not seek her farther than the stile. Had there not
+been other sleepers just below the orchard, it would still have been
+the extreme of his boldness that he had got so far. But--she
+remembered how from the first she had been the prime mover in their
+entirely wanton flirtation--was it necessarily the extreme of hers?
+
+Then, as the devil would have it, something brought Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith into her head again.
+
+That woman!
+
+All the blood left her cheeks and thronged to her heart again.
+
+Roy would certainly not pass the stile----
+
+She hesitated for a moment longer, and then suddenly got up from her
+bed.
+
+Her clothes were wrapped in her waterproof; she took the waterproof
+and put it on. She thrust her feet into a pair of slippers. The
+waterproof was not so long as the garment beneath it; the moon was now
+well above the trees; it showed the hurrying white about her heels as
+she walked quickly up the hill. She drew the under-garment up a
+little. The waterproof was almost the colour of the scorched grass.
+The small shadow that preceded her was now the thing most plainly to
+be seen.
+
+Over the stile she saw the shoulder of his white sweater. Again her
+caution awoke.
+
+"You might have put a coat on," she said, a little out of breath. "You
+can be seen half-a-mile away on a night like this."
+
+"I thought you were never going to hear me!" he said.
+
+"Oh! You seem to have been sure I'd come if I did."
+
+"Well, you have come, haven't you?" he answered. "I say, isn't your
+hair different?"
+
+"Well, it isn't done for a call, if that's what you mean; I always do
+it like that at night, stupid. But I'm not going to stand here with
+you as white as a cottage wall."
+
+Thereupon he paid her the only compliment he ever did pay her--and
+that was unintentional.
+
+"It isn't any whiter than your feet, anyway," he said.
+
+"Well, I'm not going to stop a minute."
+
+"Oh, dash it all!" he protested. She did think him cool!
+
+"Good gracious, how long do you think I _am_ going to stay?"
+
+"Hardly worth coming for, I call it," he grumbled.
+
+"_Thank_ you!"
+
+"For you, I mean, of course--as if you didn't know I'd walk miles--how
+you take a fellow up!"
+
+"Well, two minutes."
+
+Two minutes can be a very short time; five minutes had passed when,
+making a movement to free herself, she said: "Let me go now, Roy--I
+think we're both as mad as we can be."
+
+"There isn't anybody about," he muttered.
+
+More minutes passed; then:
+
+"Do you really think my feet are white?" she whispered. A slipper had
+come off.
+
+Then, close against his breast, she made an inconsequential, halting
+little appeal. "Oh, Roy--don't go in that dreadful boat again! You'll
+be drowned--I know you will----"
+
+"Should you care?" he whispered.
+
+"Silly boy!"
+
+"No, but should you care?"...
+
+"Roy, let me go!" she ordered suddenly. The minutes were passing
+fatally quickly.
+
+"No--no----"
+
+"Oh--yes----"
+
+"I won't let you go."
+
+"Roy, let me go, I say!"
+
+But it was not a command now. It was a supplication--perhaps not even
+that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not love him; in her heart she knew she did not love him. He
+loved her--years afterwards; only years afterwards. The thought of her
+left him--but it returned to him, never to leave him again. The moon
+made the crest of the hill like day, but the shadows of the
+gorse-bushes lay dark on the short grass and stunted bents and the
+patches of wild thyme. The moon southed, then rode less high. In the
+short night a lamb called; and then the birds, reaching the shallows
+of their sleep, gave a drowsy twittering and went to sleep again. It
+was the false dawn. The stars grew a little brighter as a deeper
+darkness possessed the earth; then in the darkness a cock crowed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They met again on the next night. On the night after that they met
+once more.
+
+Only after that did she sit down, alone in the box-room, in the
+twilight, to think.
+
+Her boxes were packed and strapped, and the cart was coming for them
+from Rainham Magna in the morning.
+
+She wished Burnett Minor had been there. She would have liked to say
+good-bye to the child. There was nobody else it would break her heart
+to leave.
+
+Yet Roy was still down there under the hill. The centre-board had gone
+wrong again. She was to see him at the stile, in the morning, before
+leaving. It seemed, somehow, superfluous.
+
+But she did meet him. His face was set, and he had forgotten to
+shave.
+
+"Don't look like that; it wasn't your fault," she said composedly.
+
+"It was--it was----" he muttered, hands clenched.
+
+"Rubbish!" She gave a short laugh. "You've nothing at all to blame
+yourself for."
+
+"Oh, I have--I have."
+
+Then he turned to her. "Louie, you've got to promise me one thing----"
+
+But she stopped him. She knew what he was going to say.
+
+"That's quite out of the question," she said.
+
+"But look here!" He used the words he had used the second time they
+had met. "A fellow can't get a girl into a mess and then leave her in
+the lurch. You must marry me, Louie, if--if----"
+
+At that she had found a touch of her old irony.
+
+"Not unless, of course?"
+
+"Oh yes--yes."
+
+But she turned away. "No. Good-bye."
+
+"Won't you even kiss me?"
+
+"No."
+
+But there was a gentleness in her refusal such as he had never had
+from her before. Kisses came hardly now.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+SUTHERLAND PLACE
+
+
+I
+
+Richenda Earle could have told Louie Causton that an allowance of
+three hundred pounds a year, paid in quarterly instalments, only
+permits of a sunny little bedroom and a charming sitting-room in
+Lancaster Gate on certain terms, of which terms a dipping sooner or
+later into reserves of capital is certainly one. It is true that Louie
+still had capital of which she knew nothing. She did not yet, for
+example, count her wardrobe as capital, nor reflect that if its
+present standard was to be maintained money must be set apart for the
+purpose of maintaining it. She did not yet count her time as capital,
+nor write off the days she classed as days of "looking about her" as
+so many obligations against the time when looking about her would no
+longer serve her turn. She did not count her health as capital, nor
+her wild, resilient spirits, nor her "placeableness" at a glance among
+those whose possession of some capital may be assumed. All she
+reckoned as capital was the hundred odd pounds she had placed in a
+small but sound bank of her stepfather's recommendation, and (she had
+vaguely heard of such things) such additional credit as the Captain's
+name might command. But perhaps it is enough to say that she had this
+conception of the potency of the Captain's name.
+
+Nevertheless, her second week's bill at Lancaster Gate was enough to
+cause her to send for her landlady, and to ask that person whether she
+had not a single room anywhere empty that might combine the prettiness
+of her present quarters with the convenience of having all her
+belongings within a single door. She was conscious of reasonableness,
+almost of magnanimity, when she remarked that she didn't mind going up
+another flight of stairs. The landlady had such a room, but pointed
+out its lack of cupboard-space and the number of Louie's dresses.
+That, Louie replied, did not matter; she intended to sell a number of
+the older dresses; and her things were carried upstairs.
+
+Her idea in selling the older dresses was that thereby she might add
+another thirty pounds or so to her balance; the half-dozen she thought
+she could spare had cost thrice that amount. The wardrobe dealer who
+waited upon her offered her five pounds for them. Louie thanked her,
+told her that she had thoughts of going into a business so lucrative
+herself, and bade her good-afternoon.
+
+She had come to London at the beginning of September; before that
+month was out she had decided to leave Lancaster Gate. For some reason
+or other her quarter's allowance had not arrived, and she wrote to
+Chaff about it. Chaff promised to look to the matter. She wrote also
+to Richenda Earle, stating the kind of lodging she required, and
+asking whether Richenda knew of such an one. To this last letter she
+had a reply by return of post. Richenda proposed the house of her
+married sister, which was in Sutherland Place, Bayswater. Without
+prejudice to her choice, Louie took a walk along Sutherland Place, and
+received an impression of a quiet street with milk-carts drawn up by
+the kerb and virginia creeper covering the houses with crimson. As she
+passed the door Richenda had specified, the door opened, and a squarer
+and older Richenda came out with a string bag in her hand. That, Louie
+thought, would be Mrs. Leggat, the wife of the estate-agent's clerk.
+
+A week later Louie moved into Mrs. Leggat's first
+floor-front-bed-sitting-room. That night she counted her money. The
+result of her calculations caused her to jump up, as if she had
+thoughts of seeking some occupation or other that very night. Her
+quarter's allowance had still not come. Then Mr. Leggat, a
+lumpy-headed man with rabbit teeth and a Duke of Wellington nose, came
+in to fix a gas-burner for her, and she fell into talk with him. He
+wiped his hands ceaselessly on an old rag as he talked. He told her it
+was a pity that Rich had not stuck to her book-keeping; he himself
+would have been head clerk by this time had he had her thorough
+practical grounding instead of having had to knock about the world and
+fend for himself; and he asked her what sort of a villa-building-site
+Rainham Parva would, in her opinion, make. He added that it was nice
+to have "the rooms" (he used the plural) let to somebody they knew
+something about, and then, having omitted to shake hands with her on
+coming in, did so before going out, and evidently accounted their
+introduction complete. He came back presently for a pair of pincers he
+had forgotten, left her a Carter Paterson card for her window in case
+she should have need of one, said that one of these Sundays they must
+all go round to the Earles in Westbourne Grove to tea, made a pun on
+the words Earle and Lord, and went out again. An hour later Louie
+heard him tiptoeing discreetly past her door on his way upstairs to
+bed.
+
+Louie was resolved, however, to put a stop to the "Earle and Lord"
+business once for all. She was a Causton, not a Scarisbrick, in
+Sutherland Place.
+
+She felt herself to be already on the verge of a new life that
+was--let us say amusing--precisely in proportion as it was different
+from any life she had ever known. She must be--if the word may
+pass--amused; she told herself so, clinching the argument by adding
+that it was far better to laugh than to cry. She had promised Richenda
+that she would call and see her Mr. Weston at his Business School in
+Holborn; and this might be--well, amusing. She went without loss of
+time. She took the Oxford Street bus one morning and alighted at the
+door of the School.
+
+She mounted three floors of narrow, old-fashioned stairs, asked a
+fair, perky boy, who somehow managed to make a good suit of clothes
+look cheap, where she should find Mr. Weston, and presently found
+herself introducing herself to a thin and melancholy-looking man with
+a sparse and colourless beard, a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, and
+a gentle and hopeless voice. This was "the Secretary Bird," then. He
+shook hands slackly with her, placed a chair for her in one of the
+bays of a sort of =E= that was lined with books of reference, and
+she listened to his soft, dispirited voice and to the clicking of
+typewriters in an adjoining room. He thanked her for "all her
+kindnesses" to Richenda, whatever these might have been, and presently
+a skimpy little woman in green plaid, with eyes that peered
+quizzically behind spectacles and "destined spinster" written all over
+her, tiptoed for a moment at the end of the bay of books, uncertain
+whether to approach. Then the fair, perky boy who made good clothes
+look cheap also came up. Mr. Weston said: "Excuse me--yes, Miss
+Windus?" Louie saw that she was interrupting the morning's work. She
+rose.
+
+"I daresay we shall see one another again," she said. "Good-bye."
+
+And, outside on the Holborn pavement again, she said to herself with
+decision: "Thanks--but no Business Schools for me!--Poor Richenda!"
+
+Three weeks later she became a student at that very school.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no puzzle about it. Some things come no less unexpectedly
+that they are more than reasonably to be expected. To put this as
+briefly as it can be put, she had merely discovered that an affair of
+atmosphere had become an affair of fact. That was all--nothing more,
+nothing less. But that was no reason why she should not be amused.
+
+The natural thing for young women in such circumstances to do is to
+seek their mothers. If Louie did this natural thing a little
+unnaturally--well, she did it unnaturally, that was all. The row,
+scene, or whatever it was going to be, had better be got over; then
+she could proceed to amuse herself. She had wired that she was coming;
+the Captain had met her at Trant station; but she had had nothing to
+say to the Captain.
+
+The Captain, however, had had something to say to her. At first his
+mumbling into his moustache had not penetrated to her intelligence;
+she had only heard broken repetitions of "Dear old Mops--only for a
+week or two--knew you weren't without--meant to write, but dashed
+awkward thing to explain by letter, and was coming up in a week in any
+case--if she stuck fast he'd see what could be done----"
+
+"Eh?" Louie had said at last. "What's that, Chaff?"
+
+Chaff had repeated his mumblings. At the end of them she had gathered
+that the needy Captain had borrowed the quarter's allowance that had
+been entrusted to him for despatch. Louie had merely given a little
+preoccupied laugh and patted his hand.
+
+"All right, old boy; don't worry," she had said.
+
+A sample or two of her conversation with her mother must answer for
+the rest. For quite twenty minutes the Honourable Emily's head had
+been buried in the sofa-cushions, and the Trant coal-and-blanket
+charitable account had lain where it had fallen from her hand--across
+her cheek.
+
+"That's all," Louie had ended with hard composure.
+
+"Oh--oh----" the mother had moaned.
+
+"And as I say, I won't marry him."
+
+"Oh--you must--you must!"
+
+"Why? Because Uncle Augustus will say I must?"
+
+"Oh--you must!"
+
+"I'll go and see Uncle Augustus."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't--you mustn't!"
+
+Then, in an interlude, the reasons why everything must at all costs be
+kept from Lord Moone had been brokenly explained. In another interlude
+a few minutes later Louie had invented a fictitious name.
+
+"That conveys nothing to me," Mrs. Chaffinger had moaned. "What is
+he?"
+
+Louie had invented a station in life to fit the name. Her mother's
+face had disappeared behind the coal-and-blanket account again.
+
+"And this--this!--is your study of horticulture!" she had half
+faintingly wailed.
+
+"Yes. Yours was art, wasn't it?"
+
+Then Mrs. Chaffinger's querulous despair had shown a weak, vindictive
+gleam. Both pronouns had been a little emphasised as she had retorted:
+
+"I married your father!"
+
+It was only a flicker. Her head had gone into the cushions again.
+
+"That didn't last very long," the devilish girl had commented.
+
+"I married your father, I say--for your sake," had come from the
+cushions.
+
+"That's one of the differences. There are others. If you're thinking
+of wiring to Uncle Augustus I'll wait; if you're not, I'll go."
+
+Lord Moone had been wired for. He had wired back: "Impossible"; but a
+second wire had brought him over post-haste the next morning. The
+situation had been explained to him; the peer had walked away for a
+few moments; Louie had thought she had heard something about "our
+damnable women"; then, coming back, Lord Moone had abruptly convened a
+Committee of Ways and Means. Words like "Impossible ... once in a
+lifetime quite enough ... secrecy ... the Continent for a few months
+... institution," had been used; and at one other alternative Louie's
+eyes had become hard and chill as ice.
+
+"Thank you," she had come harshly in. "As you say, all these things
+may be possible. I decline them all."
+
+Then Lord Moone, whose habit of ordering masses of men probably misled
+him into thinking that the ordering of one young woman who says "I
+won't" was a comparatively simple matter, had made his pronouncement.
+
+"Very well," he had said. "Then as head of the family I order that
+your allowance shall be stopped till you come to your senses. You hear
+that, Emily?"
+
+"You mean you'll starve me out?" Louie had said, with dancing eyes.
+Like her father, she came up to time as long as she could stand.
+
+"I mean what I've said."
+
+"Then ring the bell, please--and don't light that cigar till I've
+gone. I shall be ill if you do."
+
+And Lord Moone himself had ordered the carriage in which she had
+turned her back on Trant.
+
+Burnett Minor, when Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had surprised the rebellion in
+the box-room, had not made herself more inconspicuous than had Captain
+Chaffinger during this scene. Indeed, probably considering that Lord
+Moone, his sister and Louie herself formed a quorum, he had presently
+been discovered to be not there. But it seemed to be the Captain's lot
+to receive and despatch Louie in her comings and goings, and before
+the carriage had reached the lodge he had stopped it and climbed in.
+Ordinarily, the whites of the Captain's eyes had yellowish marblings;
+the yellow had now deepened to the hue of cayenne. He had blown his
+nose repeatedly and violently, and Louie, glancing covertly at him,
+had suddenly had a pang. All at once he had shown his age. Somehow
+Louie resented his doing so. People and things you have never taken
+quite seriously have no right to come near the tragic. It was as if
+some puppet strutting within a proscenium should suddenly bleed.
+
+"Mops," he had said by-and-by, blowing his nose again, "that was a lie
+you told them, wasn't it?"
+
+Louie had tried to shut her eyes to Chaff's bleeding. Her hand had
+sought his.
+
+"The name I told them? Of course it was, you clever old Chaff, to see
+that."
+
+"You don't tell me that, do you, Mops?"
+
+"You?! No, poor old boy, it isn't worth while telling lies to you."
+
+"I'm glad of that, Mops----"
+
+So, for his private comfort, she had invented for Chaff quite a new
+lie, name, station in life and all.
+
+Then: "Oh, Mops, Mops, Mops!----" he had murmured sorrowfully.
+
+Little parties were one thing, but his Mops quite another.
+
+But her anger had stirred again. She had remembered her uncle's
+proposals.
+
+"Did you hear what he said--Moone? No; you'd gone out. Listen----"
+
+He had tugged unhappily at his moustache as she had told him, bringing
+out the words with vehemence and hate.
+
+"Well, but, Mops----" he had demurred wistfully.
+
+"What, are you going to tell me _you_ think so too?"
+
+"All right, Mops, all right, all right, old girl----"
+
+"Much I care for him and his family name! He could bully mother into
+marrying people, but he can't bully me.... Sorry, Chaff, that was
+clumsy; we're pals at any rate. Uncle Gus and his Scarisbricks!"
+
+Her exclamations of contempt had occupied the rest of the time to the
+station. Chaff had put her into her carriage.
+
+"You'll let me know where you are and what you're doing, won't you,
+dear?" he had pleaded. "I can't let you go like this!"
+
+"I hardly know where I shall be myself yet. Very likely I shall go to
+a Business School; I shall have to do something, and that's all I know
+anything about. Anyway, the bank will find me--no, you poor old thing,
+of course I don't mean the money! Of course I'll ask you for that
+when I want it. I've quite a lot yet. Good-bye, old thing."
+
+"Good-bye, dear."
+
+And this time he had not warned her not to run away with a student of
+book-keeping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went to the Business School partly (_bien entendu_) for amusement,
+and partly because there would be very little sense in sitting all day
+long in Mrs. Leggat's first-floor bed-sitter in Sutherland Place,
+Bayswater. Perhaps, too, Lord Moone helped to drive her there. Her
+very skin crept when she remembered the lengths to which he would have
+gone--he, the corner-stone of orthodoxy when such subjects came up for
+(very) full-dress debate--to save that precious thing, the family name
+of the Scarisbricks. Louie had had vanities of person, scores of them;
+but she had also the sense of the holiness of the body, and she had
+had enough of Trants and Mallard Boises and their masters for a time.
+The Business School would be as amusing as anywhere else; indeed, she
+knew of nowhere else. Here she was at last in a London that was not
+the London of shops and dinners and theatres and drives in the Park.
+She would have the fun--always the fun--of it. She would go with the
+Leggats to see Richenda's sisters and that father of hers who had
+apologised to her for having brought her into the world. She would
+learn these unfamiliar accents that met her ear, breathe this
+invigorating if dusty air. She would know what life meant to that
+skimpy woman in the green plaid, would inspect that new specimen, the
+jaunty boy who made his good clothes look like an ordinary
+"reach-me-down." And she knew, without knowing how she knew, that
+before long she would be seeing her father. Sit in Sutherland Place?
+Oh no, that wasn't amusing. Besides, she would presently have her
+living to earn. She had thought, when Richenda had told her those
+dismal tales, that there must be something wrong with Richenda and
+that she herself would be able to do better. Well, she would very soon
+know.
+
+
+II
+
+At Chesson's she had taken her proper place among her fellow-students
+at once; it was not her fault if here, at the Business School, she did
+not at first so much make friends as watch a number of amusing
+phenomena. She watched them with wonder; all was so very, very
+different. The building itself seemed once to have been some sort of a
+dwelling-house, for there were cabbagey wall-papers of a bygone
+fashion on the walls, broken ends of bell-wire stuck out from the
+mantel-sides and the cornices, and the gas-brackets were old and
+ornate and grimy. Louie was conscious of something like a shock the
+first time she approached one of the third-floor bay windows and,
+looking across the street, saw in the windows opposite men packing
+things in brown paper, waitresses carrying trays, and gas-jets burning
+in the dark interiors beyond. They seemed so near. The width of
+Holborn lay between, but they seemed to crowd on her much more closely
+than the yew at Rainham Parva had ever crowded on the inner windows of
+the courtyard. The yew, moreover, was thinned at intervals, but there
+was no cutting and lopping the forward-thrusting, amusing humanity
+across the way. They seemed to be caged there expressly for her
+observation. Well, she was there to observe--to observe, and, of
+course, to be amused.
+
+Her new companions, too, were unlike anybody she had ever known; they
+no more resembled them than the sweet heavy airs of Chesson's
+resembled these diverting smells of dust and damp and bad ventilation
+and the whiff of the Holborn pavement below. Their accents (amusing,
+however) struck her sharply; their faces--alert, sophisticated, highly
+entertaining but without candour--no less sharply. They too, like the
+buildings across the way, seemed to ignore intervening space and to
+press intrusively forward to look at her. She was glad that the first
+thing she had done had been to stop Mr. Weston's mouth on the subject
+of the Scarisbricks and Lord Moone; half the drollery of her
+experience would have gone had these people known who she really was.
+And the things these slovenly voices said had no candour. They struck
+her as a series of (merry) "scorings-off," a succession of (cheery)
+"chippings" of one another. If their reticences seemed all in the
+wrong places, and hand in hand with their defensiveness went an eager
+volubility about the things Louie would have kept to herself, why, so
+much the more laughable the whole joke.
+
+She had been only just in time in extorting her promise from Mr.
+Weston. She was sure of this from his manner of speaking to herself.
+It was extremely, syllabically distinct. To words that he had been
+pronouncing correctly and without thought all his life he gave (as if
+he must find something superior for her, and knowing better all the
+time) pronunciations marvellously new. He found new words, too; must
+look 'em up, Louie thought, in the dictionary. Richenda, who had begun
+by being his sweetheart, became his "intended," and once even his
+"inamorata." But he was to be trusted. Louie saw that. If he gave
+away her identity at all it would be only by the portentousness of his
+secrecy. As a matter of fact he never did so.
+
+It was the skimpy woman in the green plaid, Miss Windus, who answered
+most of Louie's questions about her new companions. She too was a
+delightful novelty to Louie. As if to make her own position quite
+clear at the outset, she had confided to Louie at once that she
+herself was "partly independent." Seeing Louie's slightly puzzled
+look, she had gone on to explain that by this she meant that she
+enjoyed an income of perhaps a pound a week "on her own." With this
+title to consideration thoroughly understood, she went ahead. When
+Louie asked a question about the high-heeled little Cockney Jewess,
+Miss Levey, Miss Windus answered it in terms of her own pound a week.
+"Miss Levey?" she said. Oh, she'd nothing; she lived at home and had
+her fees paid for her, of course, and wouldn't stick fast, being a
+Jewess, not she; but Kitty didn't suppose Miriam Levey had one
+shilling to rub against another; not, that was, "on her own." Louie,
+finding other questions answered from this same standpoint, took her
+cue and framed her questions accordingly. Had the other female student
+(there were only four women), Miss Soames, anything? Well, Kitty
+didn't know; she fancied her aunt must have a tidy bit coming in; they
+lived together in a boarding-house in Woburn Place, and as the aunt
+did nothing all day perhaps she too was partly independent, or even
+wholly so. Had Mr. Merridew, the swaggering boy who cheapened his
+clothes so curiously, a tidy bit coming in? Here Kitty evidently had a
+tale to tell. Had Archie Merridew a bit coming in, indeed! Why, his
+father was Mr. Merridew of Merridew and Fry's, the fancy stationers
+with branches everywhere, so Louie could judge for herself whether
+that meant a bit or not! Archie a bit? Why, Mr. Merridew Senior had
+retired, and lived at a big place near Guildford, with a tennis-lawn,
+if you please. Archie Merridew a bit!--Then what about Mr. Mackie?
+(Louie might have been estimating people by what money they had all
+her life.)--Mr. Mackie? No, Kitty shouldn't think Mr. Mackie had very
+much, but he had a splendid "permanency" offered him when he had
+passed his examinations, as an auctioneer's clerk, four pounds a week
+to start with--to start with, mind you--and a "rise" every year. Yes;
+Mr. Mackie was all right, and, oh dear! _wasn't_ Mr. Mackie funny?
+
+Louie thought this Mr. Mackie more than funny; in her inexperience of
+the type she could never believe he was quite true. For Mr. Mackie
+sang songs, imitated music-hall artistes, could "gag" for a whole day
+on end, and never forget for a moment the immense success he was. He
+fascinated Louie. "Ladies and bipeds in trousers!" he would begin,
+with rapid gestures and still more rapid speech, "before the applause
+I am waiting for has had time to subside--good word, subside--(thank
+you, Cuthbert, you can take the bouquet round to the stage-door)--as I
+was saying when Fitzclarence interrupted me, ladies and tripeheads in
+blouses, whoa, backpedal, never mind--as I was saying, I will now
+endeavour to give you my celebrated imitation of Roderigo the
+gasfitter at one o'clock on a Saturday with the thirty bob in his
+pocket and Hildegarde Ann his wife licking the paint of the lamp-post
+at the corner to squench her thirst--_heu_, her thirst!... Chord on,
+please, titillate the catgut, Professor, and take firm hold of his
+hand, girls----"
+
+Then, while the eyes of Lord Moone's niece would grow bigger and
+bigger, would follow the performance.
+
+"_Isn't_ he funny!" Kitty would giggle, faint with laughing; "oh, give
+us some more, Mr. Mackie!"
+
+And Kitty, like Saint Paul, died daily at yet another trick of Mr.
+Mackie's--the putting of his handkerchief to his nose, and the drawing
+of it slowly downwards to the accompaniment of a piercing whistle.
+
+But Louie was only moderately amused by young Merridew. Mr. Mackie had
+his own perfection; but vulgarity _with_ a tennis-lawn! "Good
+gracious, no," said Louie.
+
+She had entered the School as a day student; but within a week she had
+put her name down for the evening classes also. Even then she had the
+evenings of Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and the whole of Sunday
+quite unamusingly on her hands. She did not want time on her hands. As
+much Mr. Mackie as you pleased, but no time on her hands. So she
+joined the classes that met on the evenings of Mondays, Wednesdays and
+Fridays.
+
+On her very first evening she saw a student whom she had not seen
+before.
+
+She had taken a text-book on Elementary Book-keeping from one of the
+shelves of the =E= of books in which she had had her first talk
+with Mr. Weston (who, by the way, had said that he would like to see
+her for a few minutes before she left that evening), and finding a
+chair within the recess, had sat down where she was to read it. She
+had not looked up when somebody had passed the mouth of her little
+compartment and entered the next one. She had heard a book taken down
+from a shelf behind her, and, after some minutes, put back again; and
+had she not chanced to straighten her back at that moment she would
+probably not have seen the man repass. She had no time to notice more
+than that he was very big and not very well dressed. She went on with
+her reading, wondering, in the intervals of her slack attention to her
+book, what Mr. Weston wanted with her.
+
+She saw the big man again at the close of the class. This time he was
+standing at the head of the stairs, waiting for young Merridew. He
+really was immensely big, so big that a too prolonged first look at
+him seemed unpleasantly like impertinent curiosity. Indeed, he seemed
+already to feel her eyes upon him, for he moved as if to look back at
+her in turn; but young Merridew came up at that moment and they went
+out together. The big man's head and shoulders were to be seen beyond
+the handrail for quite an appreciable moment of time after young
+Merridew's had disappeared. But she had been wrong in thinking that he
+wore a shabby suit. His suit might be shabby also, but it could not be
+seen. He wore, and had apparently worn in class also, a tawny old
+ulster of yellow and black check. In spite of its age it seemed
+somehow a better garment than did the more expensive clothes of his
+companion. He did not, however, strike her as very amusing.
+
+She turned away to seek the Secretary Bird--Mr. Weston.
+
+For the moment Mr. Weston was engaged. He was standing near the
+lecture-room blackboard, talking to the girl who lived with her partly
+independent aunt at the boarding-house in Woburn Place. Louie had
+already remarked the likeness of this girl, who might have been twenty
+but looked younger, to Polly Ross, the pretty daughter of the tipsy
+veterinary surgeon at Trant. Polly too had sported that running of
+pale blue ribbon beneath the openwork of what Kitty Windus called her
+"pneumonia blouse," and the clumps of dark hair on her nape too was
+like Polly's, and she had Polly's dark and sidelong glance, and highly
+conscious air of unconsciousness when that glance had attracted what
+it had probably been meant to attract, attention to herself. She had a
+copy of the Pansy Library in her hand, and Louie smiled as she
+remembered Burnett Minor and her spoutings. She waited until Weston
+should be at liberty.
+
+As she waited, Kitty Windus, wearing an Inverness cape and a
+boat-shaped hat, came up. Miss Windus lived in a street off Tottenham
+Court Road, and already once or twice Louie had walked with her as far
+as the Oxford corner. She was waiting for the Polly Ross girl now,
+whose direction was the same. She asked Louie whether she intended to
+walk or to "hop on a bus." She always spoke in these rather sprightly
+terms, just as she always stiffened the line of her back a little the
+moment a man, any man, entered the room; and she referred, brightly
+and hopefully, to proposals of marriage as "chances." Louie was
+already learning when she might expect any given one of Kitty's
+innumerable _clichés_, and had several times (humorously) given them
+back to Kitty again with complete success. As they waited for the
+Polly Ross girl (whose name was Evie Soames) Louie asked Kitty who the
+big man who had gone out with Mr. Merridew was.
+
+"Oh, the Mandrill!" said Kitty, laughing even before Louie had got out
+the word "big." "That's Mr. Jeffries. Isn't he a caution? But he only
+comes in the evenings."
+
+She meant that Mr. Jeffries had not a pound a week on his own.
+Students who only came in the evenings were of a slightly inferior
+order to those who came during the day.
+
+"I suppose he had his brown paper parcel with him?" Kitty said, with
+more mirth in her peering little eyes.
+
+Louie remembered that Mr. Jeffries had carried a brown paper parcel.
+Kitty twittered.
+
+"Bet you can't guess what was in it--that is, if you haven't heard
+it?"
+
+She said "it" as if it had been a riddle or some sort of a joke. Louie
+admitted that she could not guess what had been in Mr. Jeffries'
+parcel.
+
+"Good old brown paper parcel!" Kitty chuckled. "You'll get to know it
+by-and-by! You see," she explained, "he goes to Archie's for a bath.
+Isn't it killing?"
+
+"I--I don't quite see what you mean," said Louie. She honestly did
+not.
+
+"Why, for a bath--you know, a common or garden bath, with hot water. I
+peeped into it once (the parcel, I mean; for shame, you dreadful
+girl!) and it had a clean shirt and a pair of socks in it. I suppose
+he wraps those he takes off up when he's done."
+
+Louie's eyes had opened very wide indeed. A man to have to ask another
+man for a bath! Well, that was something learned about London! A
+bath--a thing so necessary that its existence was assumed--how
+extremely amusing! She knew that entertaining word, "poor," but what
+was this other, this new and side-splitting word that meant that a man
+had to ask another man for a bath? She had never heard of anything
+so--so--there was no adjective that quite fitted the humour of it.
+
+The next moment she had wasted an irony on Kitty.
+
+"Hasn't he--a tidy bit?" she asked.
+
+But it took far more than this to get through Kitty's hide. She gave
+another little laugh and drew her gloves more smoothly over her thin
+hands.
+
+"Him? The Mandrill? (I always call him the Mandrill, my dear.) Not a
+penny to bless himself with; look at him!"
+
+"Nor a permanency?" Louie asked.
+
+"What, with those clothes? I ask you, now: it isn't a cold night
+to-night, is it? Well, why does he keep that heavy old coat on all the
+evening? Enough said, my dear. He works somewhere in the City, I
+believe--'something in the City'--sounds most prosperous, doesn't it?
+And Archie's awful kind to him, I think, but of course he is
+frightfully clever, and does help Archie with his work sometimes, so
+Archie gives him a bath (I don't mean what you mean, I mean lets him
+have one). Here's Evie. Are you coming along?"
+
+But Louie, besides being tickled, smarted a little too. To have to beg
+for a bath--and then to have the gift made a matter of common
+knowledge and a joke!--
+
+Well, if these people were different, differences, after all, were
+what she was here to see.
+
+She turned to Mr. Weston.
+
+What Mr. Weston wanted to say to her she could not guess; but he had
+hardly spoken twenty words before she was smiling at herself for not
+guessing. The examinations were to be held just before Christmas, and
+unless Louie could be ready for her Elementary by that time she would
+have a good many months to wait before she could enter for the
+examination again. What Mr. Weston had to propose was, in a word, that
+he should coach her privately.
+
+She knew what that meant. It meant that he would come to Sutherland
+Place on Sundays and talk about Richenda.
+
+Well, even talk about Richenda would make shorter that _dies non_.
+
+"It really would be a great furtherance of your aims, Miss Causton,"
+Weston said wistfully.
+
+Louie smiled at the periphrasis, and then considered.
+
+"It might be the best thing to do," she said; "but of course I should
+accept it only on one condition."
+
+"May I venture to inquire what that condition is?" Weston inquired
+deferentially.
+
+"That you let me pay you for it," said Louie promptly.
+
+But Weston put up a peremptory hand. "Oh no--no, no, no--I should be
+ashamed after all your kindnesses----"
+
+Louie laughed again. "Good gracious, what kindnesses?"
+
+"Ah, you once shielded an individual very dear to me and took the
+blame upon yourself, Miss Causton----" His tone was reverential, his
+eyes did her homage. Louie had forgotten all about the box-room
+rebellion and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith. She laughed once more.
+
+"Well, just as you like. But no pay, no coaching, that's all."
+
+Weston sighed. No doubt his acquiescence cost him a pang. If he took
+money for giving lessons, lessons he must give, and the talk about
+Richenda must go.
+
+"Do you dwell on the point with insistence?" he asked.
+
+"Very much."
+
+"I am far from denying that it would be of some assistance in the
+furnishing of our future nest, if I may use the expression----"
+
+"Of course it would. So that's agreed?"
+
+"So be it," said Weston.
+
+Louie half expected him to add: "Amen."
+
+She was in the habit of dispensing money a little largely, and for the
+present she could quite well afford to do this. For Chaff had done
+more than pay his debt. That very day she had had a letter from him,
+forwarded by the bank. He had paid one hundred pounds into her
+account, asking her to regard the extra twenty-five pounds as interest
+on his unceremonious borrowing. But she did not for a moment believe
+his cheerful tale that "things were all right again now"; poor old
+boy, ten to one he had borrowed pretty ruinously elsewhere in order to
+pay her. At all events, Weston should not give up his Sundays for
+nothing, and she might, after all, allow him an outpouring about
+Richenda and the future nest once in a while. It was only half-a-crown
+a week.
+
+But as she left Weston she was thinking of something else that
+half-a-crown a week had power to buy. Half-a-crown a week would have
+bought this big shabby student a bath almost every day.
+
+To have to carry a change of underclothing in a brown paper parcel to
+another man's place----
+
+And to have that parcel peeped into----
+
+How damnable--no, how funny, she meant!
+
+In the light of her knowledge of this extraordinary economy Mr.
+Jeffries had to practise she felt--she didn't know why--almost shy in
+his presence the next time she saw him. She felt that she possessed
+something of his--namely, this knowledge--which she ought not to have
+possessed. She wondered whether he knew how he had been given away.
+Something about him almost suggested that he might.
+
+Perhaps it was his mouth. It looked, except when he deliberately
+opened it, as if it might very well not have opened during the whole
+of the twenty-eight or twenty-nine years Louie guessed him to have had
+a mouth at all. The rest of his face, which would have been too large
+for any man less huge, was an unrelenting slab. It was in the mouth if
+anywhere that sensitiveness must be looked for. Certainly there was none
+in the eyes. These Louie found (it was on a Wednesday night that she
+noticed these things; she had seen him first on a Monday) remarkable.
+They were the eyes of a lion--clear amber, sherry-coloured. They were
+made more than ever to resemble the eyes of a lion by that tawny
+ulster he never removed, and she remembered Kitty's sinister and
+mirthful suggestion. Did his keeping on of that ulster mean something
+hardly less stark and laughable than the circumstance of the bath
+itself? (Louie felt that she was learning.) Then she noticed his
+hands. She always noticed hands. He stopped in passing to pick up a
+pen for her. The hand that returned it was not only a magnificent
+engine of sinew and bone and muscle, powerful and heroic; it was also
+(this was not so funny) exquisitely kept. Her own hand, pale and
+slender as the leaf of a willow by contrast with his, was not in its
+different way more perfect. He might cadge for a bath, but his hands
+he could look after himself for nothing. And that was true of his hair
+also. It was tawny, close-cut, and took the light as cleanly as a new
+silk-hat; hair-brushing was evidently cheap also. The man did what he
+could. She would have liked to hear his voice, but he handed her the
+pen in silence and passed on.
+
+"Well, he looks forbidding," was her comment on him as the great
+church-door of his back disappeared into the typewriting-room, "and
+he has got too big a face and a rather frightening jaw; but he does
+shave it properly, and I don't see where the 'Mandrill' comes
+in--wretched little creature with her pound a week! And he is like a
+lion, with those eyes and that ulster----"
+
+And merely because he seemed to be a person to be scored off and given
+meanly away, she was already prepared, had she been challenged, to vow
+that he was handsome--in his heavy and unhumorous way. As a matter of
+fact, if Roy Lovenant-Smith resembled the little terra-cotta head in
+the Tanagra Gallery of the Museum, this Mr. Jeffries suggested
+something from the Assyrian Gallery downstairs--something in black
+basalt, that might carry the doorway of a temple on its head. In any
+case, with the ulster, the eyes, and the silky tawny hair, he was as
+like a lion as needs be.
+
+When she had seen him twice only she took it upon herself to snub
+young Merridew on his behalf.
+
+She and Kitty were leaving the School at four o'clock on the Thursday
+afternoon when the son of the fancy stationer joined them, and, taking
+it quite for granted that his tidy bit and his tennis-lawn made him as
+desirable to Louie as they evidently exalted him in Kitty's eyes,
+walked westwards along Holborn with them. He wore a new red waistcoat
+with brass buttons, and perhaps it was in order to live up to his
+splendour that he made Louie an offer which she curtly declined. They
+were passing a confectioner's shop; perhaps he noticed--for he seemed
+a sharp enough little bounder--Louie's glance at the window; he turned
+to her.
+
+"Like some chocs?" he said.
+
+Had Louie not already detested him, this would have been quite
+enough. Priddy would have had less appalling manners. As it happened,
+she would have liked some chocolates; lately she had craved for
+chocolates as much as she had hated the smell of tobacco; but she
+wanted no chocolates of this young man's buying.
+
+"No, thank you," she replied; and presently she contrived to put Kitty
+(the straight-backed Kitty whom a man accompanied) between Mr.
+Merridew and herself.
+
+She had the outside berth of the pavement, and she was wondering
+whether she would not cross the road and hop on a bus, leaving Kitty
+and the heir to the tennis-lawn together, when something Kitty said
+detained her. It was something about Mr. Jeffries. Hitherto Louie had
+hardly been listening.
+
+"--oh, Jeff!" Merridew was saying. "He'll have to go till we come
+back. Anyway I shall save half-a-cake of soap."
+
+"There's such a lot _of_ him," Kitty giggled. "How big's your bath?"
+
+"Well, he's an awfully useful coach for the Method exam., I will say
+that for him; so we'll call it a fair swap. You know Evie's aunt,
+don't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Thought you did. Good old Aunt Angela! (She always gets ratty when I
+call her that.) I didn't know she was an old friend of the pater's
+till we saw 'em at the Zoo that Sunday. So that's why they're coming."
+
+"Oh, perhaps, perhaps not," said Kitty archly. "Perhaps it isn't the
+aunt they want to see----"
+
+A passer-by elbowed Louie off the pavement; all she caught of what
+followed was Kitty's laugh.
+
+"So that accounts for the new blouse! You never think of asking _me_
+down to Guildford, Archie!" she said reproachfully.
+
+"You must get a chaperon," Archie replied gallantly; "can't be did
+without, Kitt-oh. The mater don't allow running after yours truly."
+
+Then of another light passage Louie heard only the concluding laugh.
+
+"Well, what of it?" Archie was saying knowingly; and Louie heard
+something else about apron-strings. "Pale blue baby ribbon ones, eh
+what?" Archie added, with a grin.
+
+"Archie!" Kitty reproved him.
+
+"Oh, come off it!" replied the fancy stationer's son. "As if a fellow
+hadn't eyes! If you girls _will_ wear pneumonia blouses----"
+
+"Archie, you're dreadful!" said Kitty, deliciously shocked.
+
+"Well, it's a tannersworth at the Holborn Public Baths for Jeff next
+week-end----"
+
+Here Louie interposed. Even amusement can be too rich. "Good-bye," she
+said, "there's my bus."
+
+She heard Kitty call after her something about the penny stage, but by
+that time she was half-way across the road.
+
+Brass-buttoned little beast!
+
+She got on her bus.
+
+But a quarter of a mile farther on she descended from it again. She
+wanted to buy chocolates for herself. She bought them, walked to the
+Marble Arch, and there turned into the Park. She ate the chocolates as
+she walked.
+
+Little animal! He appeared to keep the whole School posted about Mr.
+Jeffries' personal habits. He could not go down to his home for the
+week-end, taking the Polly Ross girl and her aunt with him
+apparently, but Mr. Jeffries and half-a-cake of soap must be dragged
+in. And that pathetic, pathetic care the man took of his hair and
+hands! For all that, as she strode along, crunching her chocolates,
+she became almost angry with him too. Was soap so frightfully dear,
+and was there no water anywhere but at Mr. Merridew's rooms? She could
+not understand a man who had any sensitiveness at all suffering his
+mind to be turned over and inspected and thumb-marked by these people
+in this way.
+
+Still, she must not forget that these things were diverting.
+
+There was no class that night: Louie forced herself to apply herself
+to her book-keeping until half-past nine, and then went to bed. That,
+as has been said, was on a Thursday. On the following evening, feeling
+indisposed to work, she moved about the School, amusing herself to her
+heart's content. She was getting adept in the sport of it. She bandied
+back to Kitty Windus, with whom she found herself in talk,
+half-a-score of her own expressions: "Beg yours," "Granted," "As the
+poet says," and the like; and she all but openly stalked Mr. Mackie
+for the sake of the pearls that rippled from his lips. If Mr. Mackie
+had offered to take her for a walk or to a shilling hop at the Holborn
+Town Hall on the next blank evening, Lord Moone's niece, who must
+allow no chance of amusement to slip her, would have let him. Indeed,
+she was in two minds whether or not to go to this last place of
+entertainment alone.
+
+It was not for another week that her amusement at the School in
+general and at Mr. Jeffries in particular became almost painfully
+ecstatic.
+
+
+III
+
+On that Friday afternoon she did not go home as usual to Sutherland
+Place to tea. She went instead to the tea-shop across the street the
+waitresses of which seemed to crowd upon her as if the width of
+Holborn did not exist. As she sat down at her little marble table she
+glanced involuntarily across to the windows of the Business School and
+for a moment dropped the mask to herself. "Dingy place!" she thought;
+"well, we're a dingy crew inside it." Then, after a long, long walk
+down Chancery Lane and along the Embankment almost as far as the
+ship-breakers' yard at Millbank, she returned to evening class.
+
+It was the evening before the day when Polly Ross--she begged her
+pardon, Miss Evie Soames--was to go with her aunt to the house with
+the tennis-lawn at Guildford. Young Merridew was not at the School
+that evening; indeed, he had only been once in the evening all the
+week, and then, Louie had thought (dropping the mask for another
+moment) he had better have stopped away. In a word, she had not been
+sure that he had been entirely sober. But perhaps in that she had been
+wrong. It didn't matter. She set a wide difference between the
+gaieties of the sons of fancy stationers with a tidy bit coming in and
+such diversions as that to which her stepfather had once taken her,
+pigtail and all. Besides, if people didn't drink liquor she supposed
+her father would not be able to sell it.
+
+On two occasions already during the past week that mask of her
+amusement had not so much fallen off as been twitched off before she
+herself had been aware. Very remarkably, both times the big leonine
+student, Mr. Jeffries, had been the twitcher. In both cases the actual
+incident had been the same--a glance, nothing more. But those two
+glances had set Louie very curiously indeed waiting to see whether a
+third surprise of the same funny kind would follow them.
+
+The glances had been given by Mr. Jeffries, and they had been directed
+towards the Soames girl. There had seemed to Louie to be an
+extraordinary unfitness about them. Had the red-waistcoated boy stolen
+those glances Louie would have thought no more about it; he and Polly
+Ross were pretty much a pair; but they had surprised her coming from
+the other. Louie had been sure that on the first occasion Mr. Jeffries
+had fancied himself to be unobserved, for he had looked stealthily
+round about him, had waited for a moment, and then, moving his eyes
+only, had given that long, slow, daring, masterful look. This had been
+on the previous Monday evening, in the general room. A few minutes
+later Mr. Jeffries had gathered up his papers and had stridden past
+Evie Soames as if he had been unaware of her existence.
+
+Even had something very similar not occurred again on the Wednesday
+evening, Louie would hardly have forgotten that look; but it had been
+repeated. But this time, finding Louie's eyes on him, he had seemed to
+guard himself, to busy himself quite fussily with his papers, and a
+little to overdo his sudden affectation of indifference. Louie
+admitted that it would be at her own risk that she put any
+interpretation that was not amusing on these trifles; but about the
+glances, their surreptitiousness and the man's deliberate attempt at
+concealment, there had been no doubt whatever. Polly herself, Louie
+had to admit, had been quite unconscious of either look. To all
+appearances, she had been thinking of nothing but of the new
+novelette in the Pansy Library, or else wondering whether the new
+pair of shoes she was to go down to Guildford in would come home in
+time.
+
+On that Friday evening Louie again found herself a little less
+inclined for amusement than she knew to be good for her. She supposed
+she ought to work, for if book-keeping and typewriting and so forth
+were to be her living they might just as well be taken seriously; but
+she preferred to work where gossip was going on. So she began the
+evening in one of the days in the =E= of reference books, where
+Miss Windus and the thick-lipped Miss Levey were sitting on the short
+library-ladder, whispering and tittering. Louie opened one of the
+windows, for she found the place airless, and then idled towards her
+two fellow-students.
+
+She had gathered that Miss Levey did not like her. Miriam Levey was
+far less stupid than Kitty Windus, and it was not safe to hand her
+_clichés_ back to her. Indeed, she had given Louie a far too
+intelligent look when Louie had gratified this hunger for humour of
+hers at the unconscious Kitty's expense; and Louie had told herself
+that it might be as well to be a little more careful. They looked up
+as Louie joined them, but did not exclude her from their talk.
+
+"I _vill_ find out who she is!" Miss Levey was saying--her W's did
+sometimes become V's. "I shall plague him till I do!"
+
+"He won't tell you, my dear--not if he wouldn't tell Archie."
+
+"But did Archie actually say 'engaged'?"
+
+"Well, a person's either engaged or not, I suppose."
+
+"Oh no, my dear, not by long chalks! Vy, you might as well say that
+Archie and Evie are either engaged or not!"
+
+"Well, they aren't--yet."
+
+"'Yet'--there you are!"
+
+"Well, I'll bet they aren't, even after this week-end. Why, they're no
+age! _I_ don't believe in getting yourself engaged and done for before
+you've had a good look round!" Kitty tossed her head.
+
+"Vill you bet they aren't engaged in three months?" said Miriam Levey.
+
+No, Kitty wouldn't bet that. She returned to the original subject,
+whatever that had been.
+
+"It's all very well to say you'll find out, Miriam, but--how?"
+
+Miss Levey tittered, and then suddenly said: "Ssss--I'll show you now!
+Just you watch me----"
+
+She slipped noiselessly round to the cords of the window Louie had
+opened a few moments before.
+
+No doubt her sharp eyes had seen Mr. Jeffries approach. She gave him a
+helpless look, and he took the cords from her fumbling hands and
+closed the window for her. It was the more cleverly done that she
+detained Mr. Jeffries and managed to get closed the window which Louie
+wanted open at one and the same time. She turned her prominent brown
+eyes in gratitude to Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"Oh, thank you so much! You see, I've got rather a cold, and I'm going
+to a dance and don't vant to make it any vorse," she explained. "You
+don't dance, do you, Mr. Jeffries?"
+
+But Mr. Jeffries merely replied "No," and turned away at once. Miss
+Levey turned to Kitty again.
+
+"He needn't think he's put me off!" she said. "I _vill_ find out! I
+shall offer him some tickets now, for self and lady. And I bet if she
+dances I'll make him buy them!"
+
+Kitty tossed her head. "_I_ should expect the gentleman _I_ was
+engaged to to take _me_ to dances," she said.
+
+"But Archie didn't say 'engaged.' Just after somebody, I should
+say--and don't I just vish her joy!"
+
+"It's evidently nobody at the School," mused Kitty Windus. "Archie was
+almost certain about that."
+
+"Vell, it isn't _me_, if you're thinking of suspecting me!" said Miss
+Levey merrily. "_I_ vouldn't touch him with the end of a long pole."
+
+"Chance is a fine thing, my dear," remarked Miss Windus.
+
+"Opportunity's another." (This reply, Louie had noted, was _de
+rigueur_.)
+
+"I expect she types or something at his place in the City."
+
+"She might be in an A.B.C. shop--no, a Lockhart's."
+
+"Or a barmaid," Kitty hinted.
+
+"Or his vashervoman."
+
+"Oh, I expect he washes his own shirts."
+
+"Perhaps he'll vash her blouses, too, whoever she is."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+Louie, her mask once more a little out of place, turned suddenly away.
+
+Little as she had been inclined to work, she was now, somehow or
+other, not much more inclined for amusement. She wandered into the
+shorthand dictation class, but in a few minutes came out again. Then
+she walked into the lecture-room, where some example or other had been
+left chalked up on the big blackboard from the last lesson. Thence she
+went into the typewriting-room, and back to the lecture-room again.
+Finally she got from the "library"--the little back room where the
+files and presses and gelatine copiers and a few books were kept--a
+number of old examination papers, and, finding a chair near the
+folding door that divided the lecture-room from the general-room, sat
+down and began to turn them over.
+
+But she thought more of the conversation she had just overheard than
+she did of the examination papers. It had meant, as far as she had
+been able to make it out, that Mr. Jeffries had told young Merridew
+that he was engaged, or hoped to be engaged, to somebody outside the
+school altogether. That sounded--odd. Of course if Mr. Jeffries said
+so, Mr. Jeffries ought to know; but it is a difficult matter to
+disbelieve your own eyes. She supposed she had no choice but to
+disbelieve them, but--but--there _were_ those two glances he had given
+at the Polly Ross girl--whom, by the way, she must learn to call by
+her proper name, Miss Evie Soames.
+
+Louie was perfectly certain that she had not been mistaken in the
+nature of those two glances. Her reason for certitude was quite
+unassailable. She had known what they meant for the simple reason that
+she had never received such looks from a man herself.
+
+Suddenly she dropped this mask of fevered amusement entirely. As she
+had once sat on the stile between Rainham Parva and the sea, so Louie
+now sat by the folding door--relaxed, thinking of nothing, or, if of
+anything, certainly neither of her late resolute pose nor yet of
+study. Her mind was what she had determined it should not be if she
+could help it--an empty chamber for unknown devils to enter.
+
+Students passed and repassed. Weston had been through several times,
+and twice Evie Soames had come and gone again. This so-much-talked-of
+Mr. Jeffries went into the library for a book and walked past with it
+again. He still wore that concealing ulster; the Soames girl had on a
+brown tailor-made and a cap of knitted white wool. Louie was hardly
+conscious that she noticed these things. She still sat, all slack and
+unbraced, with the examination papers on her knee.
+
+All at once she came to herself. Why she should do so at that
+particular moment she did not know, but, doing so, she found herself
+completely awake again. To all intents and purposes she had come out
+of one of those naps which, lasting perhaps only a minute, have all
+the effect of a refreshing sleep. She could reassume her mask now.
+Evie Soames was talking to Weston by the blackboard; opposite her, a
+pale student called Richardson was copying down an exercise from a
+sheet on the wall; and she supposed Mr. Jeffries would be bringing his
+book back presently. Louie was as alive to her surroundings now as she
+had been oblivious to them a few moments before.
+
+A minute later Mr. Jeffries, returning with his book, passed into the
+library. A few seconds later still Evie Soames had left Mr. Weston and
+had followed him.
+
+"Now," thought Louie, "for a little more amusement."
+
+The library had only one communicating door; its other door led only
+to a small room called the old ledger-room, a dusty cubby-hole, seldom
+entered, that had no outlet save the small pivoted window, high up,
+that gave on the head of the stairs. Mr. Jeffries and Miss Soames
+would have to come out by the same way they had entered, and Louie
+rather wanted to see them come out. It was no business of hers, but
+she had remembered those two glances and the conversation between
+Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey, and she had a perfect right to sit by
+the folding door and to use her eyes if she wished. She was now almost
+preternaturally awake. No jot of the jest, whatever it was, should
+escape her.
+
+Evie came out first, after four or five minutes; but Louie was not
+interested in Evie. She was merely a dull tale: Louie wanted to see
+him.
+
+Then, a moment later, he came.
+
+But no amusement came with him. Instead, Louie knew not what sudden
+private ache stirred deep at her own heart. It was not a question of
+those two furtive, possessive glances now. Unmistakable enough those
+had been; you do not mistake the kind of glance for which you yourself
+have hungered when you see it given to another; but not only had Louie
+never seen--she had never, not even in her own rapt dreamings as a
+half-grown girl in her teens, thought it possible that a man's look at
+a woman could change his face as this man's face was changed now. It
+was irradiated, transfigured. He took no pains now to hide it. He
+could see clear down the room before him--could see (or so he
+evidently thought) any who saw him----
+
+And since he did not see Louie by the folding door, Louie knew that in
+his former passings and repassings he could not have seen her either.
+
+He disappeared. The Soames girl was waiting by the door, evidently for
+him. No doubt he was going to see her home. Probably she would have
+preferred the other, the little cad with the red waistcoat, but she
+had the lion----
+
+He returned, with his hat on, and they left together.
+
+But what had brought that sudden ache into Louie's breast? Mr.
+Jeffries was nothing to her. If his face shone, Louie's heart need not
+therefore ache. What ailed her?
+
+Unmasked, as alive to things within herself now as she had just been
+to things outside herself, she sat, deeply wondering.
+
+Against the wall at her left hand there stood a tall stationery
+cupboard. It had glazed doors, and the pale student called Richardson,
+coming up a moment ago to put his exercise-book back into its place,
+had left one of the doors open. The door moved on its hinges back into
+its place. With its motion there swung slowly into Louie's view the
+reflection of the grimy chandelier with its three naked gas-jets.
+
+Was it this that reminded her of the night when she had swept out of
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's French window with the yellow-shaded standard
+lamp mirrored in its pane?
+
+It had been on that night----
+
+Suddenly her eyes closed, as if closed eyes could have shut out a
+mental picture. Her lips trembled--voicelessly they shaped a name.
+
+It was the name of Roy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hitherto she had hardly known what her feelings towards Roy really
+were. It had been in order to avoid asking herself that question,
+among others, that she had amused herself with Kitty Windus and
+welcomed the buffooneries of Mr. Mackie. But it presented itself to
+her startlingly now. Her own complete ignorance had just revealed a
+shining thing to her, the beautiful thing that had transformed Mr.
+Jeffries' face; now--handy-dandy--that very transformation threw her
+brutally back on her ignorance again.
+
+She had thought she had sounded a mystery; had she, after all, _not_
+sounded any mystery, and was she to pay in labour and pain for
+nothing?
+
+Her thoughts had flown back; they remained where they had flown. Good
+gracious! What an escapade! Without mercy for herself she examined it.
+What had really happened? Anything worth what it was about to cost?
+
+The radiant look of another man at another woman answered her: No.
+
+She had courted him--what a conquest! She had made him say she was
+pretty--what a victory! She had schemed, planned, ensured her
+kisses--what a triumph!... Why, she now asked herself for the first
+time, had she wanted to triumph? Why had she not seen sooner that what
+she had really wanted had been to be triumphed over? Triumph?--It came
+to her with a strange newness that women didn't triumph by triumphing.
+That man with the back like the church door, for example, who had just
+gone out with that pretty snippet----
+
+Instantly, and with extraordinary resilience, her mind established a
+contrast.
+
+No woman would have to cajole this shabby, lion-eyed man into
+admiration of her beauty. Rather she would have to save herself from
+his onslaught--and then, in her very flying, she would triumph. Louie
+had found a fool invincible; but this other, when he loved, would go
+down with the vehemence of his own assault. When Louie had refused to
+kiss Roy at their parting she had not known exactly why she had done
+so: she had obeyed an instinct; a chapter had been closed, and had
+had to be marked as definitely closed; her heart had known no rancour
+against him. But now!--she might just as well have kissed him. Now, in
+this strange place, two strange people--or rather one, for the girl
+mattered nothing--had in a moment, and infinitely, enlarged her sense
+of what, at any rate to a man, love might mean. In the light of that
+enlargement any kiss she could have given to Roy would have meant
+nothing--nothing, nothing. Poor Roy, whom she had had to woo! This
+other would do his own wooing. Why, he was doing it now----
+
+Then a startling recollection caused Louie to sit suddenly upright.
+This lion, who had given those looks at that girl--this shabby giant,
+whose face she had just seen enheavened out of all knowledge--had told
+young Merridew, who had told Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey, that his
+heart was set on somebody outside this poky little Business School
+altogether!
+
+Involuntarily Louie drew a long breath of amazement.
+
+He had told them that!
+
+Then Louie became matter-of-fact. There was one thing and one thing
+only to be said. If Mr. Jeffries had told him that, Mr. Jeffries
+had--lied.
+
+She turned it over again--she found no flaw in it.
+
+Yes, if he had said that, he had lied.
+
+Louie pondered. The result of her pondering was that she said slowly
+to herself: "Ah--this is going to be more than amusing--unless I'm
+mistaken it might even become dramatic."
+
+Up to the moment of this astonishing discovery--for Louie knew that
+she had made a discovery--Mr. Jeffries had been to her a phenomenon,
+different from Mr. Mackie and Kitty Windus, but not to be observed
+very differently; now in a twink she placed him in quite another
+category. Or, if she still lacked a category in which to place him,
+she certainly removed him for ever from the other. He had called
+suddenly on her profounder attention, and, as if he had struck upon a
+rock, the waters of it gushed forth. Apparently to others he was a
+butt, a jest, a pathetic figure; he was not that to Louie Causton now.
+They had said, Kitty and the Jewess, that Evie Soames and the
+red-waistcoated boy, off to Guildford together to-morrow, would before
+long be engaged to be married; but Mr. Jeffries, the third person in
+the commonest of dramas, and Mr. Jeffries, the introducer into that
+drama of a preposterous, impossible fourth actor, whose name Miriam
+Levey was resolved to know, were not one and the same man. Louie sat
+astounded again at his lie. It struck her as really in its way
+stupendous. Others thought he was below his fellows in this shabby
+little hutch of a Business School; not so Louie now! She saw those
+clear yellow eyes again. Ruses and machinations lived in them. A butt,
+with his brown-paper parcel? A pathetic figure, with his cadged baths?
+No--good gracious, no! The faces of butts and pathetic figures were
+rather less capable of irradiation. This man's kind made great
+somethings--great men, great saints, great lovers--if it came to the
+worst great criminals. Had she, Louie, been that jaunty young man in
+the red waistcoat, she would have chosen for a rival and enemy anybody
+she had ever seen rather than this needy, gigantic Mr. Jeffries, who
+made this barefaced attempt to throw dust into people's eyes by means
+of apocryphal women he was "after" elsewhere.
+
+And he helped this youngster he must hate with his studies--cadged on
+his probably-to-be-successful rival for a bath.
+
+He was masked too, then.
+
+Yes, at this dingy School in Holborn Louie had found something even
+more interesting than amusement.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+§_a_
+
+Louie had not yet allowed herself much time for fear of what was to
+happen to herself physically; she had amused herself too heartily. She
+bought chocolates and hated the smell of tobacco; and so far that was
+all. What hung over her was as inevitable as Death, and for that
+reason was, like Death, to be kept at arm's-length as long as
+possible.
+
+But she had already seen enough of Richenda's sister to be aware that
+in all probability her stay in Sutherland Place would not be a long
+one. Mrs. Leggat was formally kind, to Lord Moone's niece rather than
+to herself; but for the rest an armed neutrality seemed to exist
+between the two women. The Leggats were childless, and for that reason
+the less likely to be charitable. Louie had, in fact, found the social
+layer that is bounded on the one hand by the wickedness of pugilists
+and on the other by the scapes of young gentlemen about to enter the
+army. Within these limits Virtue reigned--not always harshly, always
+consciously. Not the wives of the Cæsars (it seemed to Louie) were
+above suspicion, but the Mrs. Leggats; not the saints, who confessed
+that they were tempted, but the Westons, who did not know of
+temptation's existence. It was as if some unseen, august Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith had decreed that landladies and teachers in business
+schools did not do these things. And they did not.
+
+Louie went to the house of Richenda's father, the bookseller--once.
+She had no wish to go again. As Richenda had described him there had
+been something tragic about him; to Louie he had appeared merely as a
+grey-bearded, rheumatic, complaining old man, a picture of pathos
+without dignity. And those six other Richendas, of various ages,
+struck her as horribly superfluous. She wanted Life's colour, not its
+greyness; she greatly preferred the garnish, incredible Mackie.
+
+The weeks passed. Weston came regularly on Sunday mornings, and on
+Sunday afternoons she took long walks. On the nights when there was no
+class she rode on buses, along Oxford Street, down Regent Street to
+the Circus, and back by Park Lane to the Marble Arch and Notting Hill
+Gate again; or sometimes she went Paddington way, up the Harrow Road
+and out and back through Kilburn. She began to know something of the
+streets of London. Her health was far better in London than it had
+been at Rainham Parva. It was perfect. She still feared nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Christmas Examinations drew within sight, and hand in hand with
+the preparation for them another and a more lightsome preoccupation
+engaged the School. This was the Christmas Social with which the last
+term of the year always closed. An Executive had been formed; on it
+Louie's name appeared; and it met frequently at the close of afternoon
+school. One of the younger students was sent across to the teashop
+over the way for scones and cake; a kettle was set on the
+general-room fire; and the social was discussed over tea.
+
+Mr. Mackie was the life and soul of these meetings. He was especially
+strong on the subject of whether evening-dress was to be obligatory,
+permissible or debarred. He declared himself at one of the earlier
+meetings as out and out for fancy dress, but was outvoted.
+
+"See me as a Woodbine, girls, beg pardon, miss-cue, a Columbine, I
+mean, nearly cold with the kilt, kilt with the cold, I should say,
+sixpence in the box for the opera-glasses, Gerald, but don't ogle me
+while mother's in the wings, wishing she was twenty-one again--good
+old mother--
+
+     "'Here's to the happiest hours of my life,
+     Spent in the arms of another man's wife--
+                               My Mo-the-rr!'"
+
+(The shake on the long note produced by a rapid play of Mr. Mackie's
+fingers on Mr. Mackie's Adam's apple.) "Thought I'd have to backpedal,
+didn't you, Miss Causton? Nay, fear not, fair damsel, the intentions
+of Ferdinando are honourable, as long as you watch him, pip-pip,
+phee-ooo!" (The shrill whistle behind the handkerchief closed the
+strophe.)
+
+But this was rushing matters. Kitty Windus spoke, no doubt on behalf
+of the students who hadn't a pound a week on their own.
+
+"Fancy dress would keep a good many away," she said. "I should love
+it, but it really is an expense, you know."
+
+"Weston can buy a penny bottle of gum and come as a foreign stamp."
+
+"Do be serious, Mr. Mackie, now! We want the social to be for
+everybody here----"
+
+"_And_ their friends," Miss Levey interpolated, with a look of private
+understanding at Kitty Windus. There was a short interlude between the
+two women.
+
+"You _won't_ find out, Miriam!"
+
+"I _vill_!"
+
+"Did you offer him tickets for the Holborn?"
+
+"Yes; but he vouldn't buy them."
+
+"Doesn't Mrs. J. as-is-to-be dance?"
+
+"I don't know. He vouldn't buy the tickets."
+
+"I'll bet you another half-crown you don't get him there, let alone
+her!"
+
+"Done vith you, Kitty Vindus!" cried Miss Levey excitedly.
+
+Here Mr. Mackie interposed. "Who's that? Jeffries? He can come in his
+ulster as Boaz--_heu_, how Ruthless! (Beshrew me, but have I not a
+pretty wit?)"
+
+"He's got that new brown suit to come in--or did he get it
+second-hand, Archie?" asked Kitty.
+
+"New," quoth Archie authoritatively. "Allworthy's, in Cheapside. Two
+ten."
+
+"I nearly died when he turned up without that old ulster!"
+
+"Vasn't it screaming?" simpered Miss Levey. "No, don't, Archie!"
+(Young Merridew was pulling out the frill of her jabot.)
+
+"Do tell us exactly what he said when you congratulated him on his
+engagement, Evie!" said Kitty Windus, turning to Evie Soames.
+
+The girl coloured a little. In common fairness Louie had to acquit her
+of full participation in the joke of Mr. Jeffries and his unknown
+_fiancée_. Louie had learned that it had been in order to congratulate
+Mr. Jeffries on this supposed engagement that she had followed Mr.
+Jeffries into the library on that Friday evening before her departure
+for the week-end to Guildford. She thought little more of her on that
+account. In being too ready with apologies and congratulations Evie
+Soames merely showed the vulgarity of the rest of the place.
+
+"No, do let's get on with business," Kitty Windus broke in. "I vote
+for ordinary dress."
+
+"Yes, ordinary dress," came the chorus.
+
+"Vith vite gloves, of course," said Miss Levey.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Vot do you say, Miss Causton?"
+
+"White gloves, of course," said Louie, with her demurest look. "And
+flowers in their buttonholes."
+
+"Some gentlemen don't like to vear flowers," said Miriam Levey
+suspiciously.
+
+"Aha, doesn't he?" from Mr. Mackie. "_I_ saw you at the Holborn, Miss
+Levey--naughty, naughty----"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean very big ones," said Louie, sipping her tea.
+
+And the discussion went on, and meeting followed meeting; but the
+examination was to take place before the social.
+
+The only fear Louie had for her Elementary was whether it would be
+worth very much when she had got it. She supposed that as an earnest
+preparation for the struggle of life this place was not quite such a
+fraud as Chesson's, but that struggle could hardly be as fierce as
+Richenda Earle had said if this Elementary took her very far. Indeed
+she had wondered more than once lately, especially since she had
+ceased to amuse herself quite so desperately, whether it was likely
+that typewriting and book-keeping were to be her destiny after all.
+She supposed they were, but she couldn't quite realise it. But she was
+fully prepared, and hoped Mr. Jeffries was as sure of his Honours
+paper as she was of her simple Pass.
+
+For she had gathered that success in the coming examination was of
+importance to Mr. Jeffries. She did not know the nature of his
+studies; later she surmised that those had been only loosely linked to
+the ordinary school curriculum, and that while for his Certificate's
+sake he must acquire all that text-books could tell him, his real
+broodings had been over matters that are antecedent to text-books.
+That was probably the difference between him and Mr. Weston. Mr.
+Weston was said to be clever, but his cleverness ended at the point
+where real inquiry began. More than this Louie did not know. You
+cannot, after all, ask the pioneer what he goes forth for to see. He
+goes forth to see whatever there may be to be seen.
+
+The weeks that had intervened since that evening when Louie had seen
+that wonderful radiance of his face had done nothing to alter her
+conviction that if there was a dark horse in that Holborn stable at
+all the name of that horse was Mr. Jeffries.
+
+As it happened, Mr. Jeffries was almost the first person she
+encountered when, on the Friday morning of the examination, she
+entered the School at half-past ten. He wore the new brown suit that
+had been remarked on at the meetings of the Executive of the social,
+and he was looking with curiosity about him. They had made quite
+extensive preparations for the examination. The whole place had been
+divided into compartments with hired yellow-painted screens, and
+screens also barricaded the =E= of reference-books near the bay
+window of the general-room. New pens and new blotting-paper lay on
+the desks, and the little porcelain inkwells had been newly filled.
+Then it occurred to Louie that it was more than likely that Mr.
+Jeffries had never been in the place in the daytime before. He must
+have got the day off from that "somewhere in the City" that Kitty
+Windus had said sounded so prosperous. His tawny hair was as flat and
+silky as ever, and his chin as cleanly shaved. He passed her with a
+curt bow and continued his inspection of the place. The candidates
+stood talking in groups, waiting for eleven o'clock.
+
+"Have you discovered your--er--appointed place, Miss Causton?" said
+Weston, coming up to Louie. "Good, good! I must now take my departure.
+Members of the Staff are not permitted to remain on the premises
+during the hours devoted to the examination. I wish you--er--good
+luck."
+
+He seemed to change his mind about saying "a happy issue from all your
+afflictions."
+
+By eleven o'clock Louie was seated in her little screen-enclosed
+compartment. A sort of hired mourner read a formal caution to the
+candidates. She noticed that it lacked the _largior ether_ of the
+third person indicative, being, indeed, in the second person
+imperative; and then she drew her paper to her.
+
+Quiet fell on the examination-rooms.
+
+She found her papers no more difficult than she had anticipated. On
+one point only, a matter of indenting in actual practice, was she a
+little in doubt, and a minute in the old ledger-room at lunch-time
+would tell her whether her answer had been right or wrong. She read
+over again what she had written; it seemed, with the possible
+exception of that single point, all right; and she tilted her chair,
+put her hands behind her head, and leaned back. The candidates had
+been warned that they must bring lunch with them. It was half-an-hour
+from lunch-time yet.
+
+Her place was by the folding door of the general-room. From it she
+could see nothing save the stationery cupboard on her left, and,
+beyond it, the next screen-enclosed compartment. She was wondering who
+was in it when a foot moved beneath the yellow screen. It was the foot
+of Mr. Jeffries. Louie hoped that he was getting on well, and then
+dismissed him from her thoughts. She began to wonder about the
+practical usefulness of the examination again.
+
+Doubtless it was well enough in its way, but less than ever could she
+persuade herself that this kind of thing was to be her destiny. There
+were too many other likelihoods--not to speak of the one certainly so
+huge that she had sometimes been actually in danger of leaving it out
+of the account altogether. Idly she counted them. First, there was the
+certainty.... Next, she would probably be leaving Sutherland Place
+soon, to go--where? She did not know. At the price of submission to
+Uncle Augustus she could go back home; or Chaff would have her looked
+after; but both these courses were rather out of the question. They
+were out of the question because lately something else had been more
+and more in her thoughts--her unknown father. That father might, for
+all she knew, be the bugbear her mother had always made him out to be;
+but on the other hand he might not. She knew her mother, and the more
+she thought of it the more she gave her father the benefit of an
+increasing number of doubts. Until she should have seen him it was now
+no more than fair that she should do so. Moreover, she could see him
+at any time without his being any the wiser of the--inspection. Chaff
+knew where he was; Chaff, who was always fetching or taking her
+somewhere, would take her there also. She was resolved to go sooner or
+later, and later might be--who knew?--too late.
+
+For at last she had admitted a dread.
+
+In any case, her destiny was quite as likely to be determined by a
+visit to that public-house up the Thames as by writing, in this stuffy
+Holborn third floor, answers to ridiculous questions about _pro forma_
+invoices and bills of lading.
+
+She was still turning these things over in her mind when the bell rang
+for the close of the first part of the examination.
+
+She ate her lunch in the company of Kitty Windus and Miss Levey, and
+then the three women passed out on to the staircase and sat down
+half-way down the stairs. But the men had flocked to the staircase for
+their noxious smoking, and Louie re-entered the general-room again.
+Then she remembered the doubtful point in her paper and walked to the
+library. She passed through it into the old ledger-room. Any old
+ledger would settle the point on which she was not quite sure.
+
+The room was almost dark, but Louie knew where the musty old books
+were. She put out her hand to the nearest of them. But suddenly she
+withdrew her hand. The high window that gave on the head of the stairs
+afforded no more than a glimmer of light, but Louie thought she had
+seen something move. She peered into the twilight, "Is anybody there?"
+she said, but she had no answer.
+
+But the room was occupied. The next moment she had seen and fled.
+
+Her irregular lips were pursed as she came out into the light again.
+There was a confusion, too, in her eyes, probably as much as there had
+been in the eyes of the two she had come upon in there. They must have
+seen her come in, and have realised that their only chance of escaping
+detection lay in keeping perfectly still.
+
+Polly Ross, cheek to cheek with that horrid little bounder!
+
+There was no question now of whom the girl preferred.
+
+Louie, wondering what right she had to do so, felt nevertheless a
+little sick.
+
+But the next moment her fastidiousness had vanished. The door that led
+to the stairs had opened; Mr. Mackie's voice sounded loud for a moment
+on the landing; and then Mr. Jeffries lurched in, stumbled, and almost
+ran to his compartment between the yellow screens.
+
+How he too knew what was going on in the old ledger-room, Louie could
+not guess; but she knew that he did know.
+
+She walked slowly to her own place and sat down.
+
+A few minutes later the bell for the second half of the examination
+rang, and a new paper was put before Louie. But she neither glanced at
+it nor yet heard the voice of the hired mourner repeating his caution.
+She sat with her chin in her hands, looking straight before her. She
+was wondering what was taking place behind the yellow screen beyond
+the stationery cupboard. Amusement was hardly the word for that.
+
+For she had seen Mr. Jeffries' face as he had stumbled in. She
+sought words for the expression that had been upon it.
+Lost--despairing--devilish----
+
+There was not much doubt about who _he_ was in love with either.
+
+Devilish, despairing, lost----
+
+"Poor--soul!" she thought compassionately....
+
+She wondered why she should be so unaccountably nervous. She was
+nervous. She even jumped a little when somebody on the other side of
+the folding door allowed a pen to fall to the floor. She could see the
+feet beneath the lower edge of the screen in front of her; they did
+not move; the examination quietness had fallen on the place again, and
+the very quietness grew on her. Strong drama, if not tragedy outright,
+was being enacted behind those half-inch yellow boards beyond the
+stationery cupboard, but the quietness continued. It was such a
+quietness as she had read of in tales when, somebody's ears being
+sharpened for an expected scream, their eyes had not at first noticed
+the little dark rivulet of blood trickling slowly across the floor.
+Involuntarily her eyes went to the yellow screen.
+
+But rubbish; this was morbid.
+
+Morbid or not, however, her lips almost shaped the words, slowly and
+deliberately: that boy with the red waistcoat would do well to be
+careful. He would do especially well to be careful if, after this,
+after the glare on the other's face, he should still have help offered
+him with his studies or be asked for a bath. For something would
+happen then. Eggshells such as he did not come into collision with
+bronze without something happening. And if anything not easily to be
+accounted for did happen to that odious little whippersnapper, nothing
+would ever persuade Louie that she did not know a likely quarter in
+which to look for the reason.
+
+Blind, devilish despair!
+
+And all for an empty-headed little thing who could have been found in
+her dozens behind twenty shop counters not a quarter of a mile away!
+What on earth, what on, or under, or above the earth, could this
+brooding, clever, gigantic, laughed-at creature want with such a doll?
+Why could he not leave her in her proper place--cheek by cheek with
+the little bounder of her choice in that smelly, unlighted old
+ledger-room? The man must be blind, or a fool.
+
+Then a sort of lethargy took Louie. Suddenly she cared for nothing.
+Let the fancy-stationer's cub take his risks; let the other eat his
+heart out if he would; it was no business of hers. Nor was that absurd
+table of questions before her any business of hers. Kitty Windus might
+answer that sort of thing; Mackie might answer it; but the
+Scarisbricks were not Kittys, with her "part-independency," not
+Mackies, to stuff their heads and ink their fingers like this for
+their "permanencies." She did not know now why she had ever come to
+the place, and she wanted no more of it. What she was going to do she
+did not know. She did know, however, that she was not going to answer
+that silly paper.
+
+So, by-and-by, she allowed the paper to be collected again, as blank
+as when it had been placed before her.
+
+She came upon the perverse Mr. Jeffries once more before she left. He
+almost ran her down bodily as they met in the doorway of the
+typewriting-room. But this time she did not look at his face. With a
+swift intaking of her breath she fell back to save herself. She did
+not hear whether he apologised or not; in one moment, without
+premeditation, her whole being had become constrained to a new,
+protective, instinctive attitude.
+
+Slowly and thoughtfully she left the School.
+
+She alone of the students was unsurprised to hear, four or five days
+later, that Mr. Jeffries, who had passed with distinction in the first
+part of his paper, had, like herself, failed in the second part.
+
+
+§_b_
+
+For the examination the rooms had been cut up with screens; for the
+breaking-up social they were cleared of everything that could be
+stowed away into dark corners. Never was such a hoisting and calling
+as those with which the hired piano was got up the three flights of
+stairs. Most of it came from Mr. Mackie, turned for the nonce into a
+shabash-wallah.
+
+"Mind her funnybone--all together--up with her! Oh, pursue me,
+wenches, I've got my muscle up, first time since the second housemaid
+ran away with the dustman! Don't tickle her parson's nose, Archi-bald,
+or she'll sneeze when I sing, key in the usual place--and mind the
+stair above the top, it isn't there. This way--excuse my
+shirt-sleeves, Miss Windus, I'm in mourning."
+
+And so the piano was trundled to its place in the corner by the big
+blackboard.
+
+Mr. Mackie was of service, too, in the French-chalking of the floor,
+for the men hauled him about by the arms and legs on a piece of
+sacking in order to give it its final polish for dancing. Half the
+students, male and female, helped to wind the blackened old brackets
+and chandeliers with red and green tissue paper, to set evergreens on
+the tops of the cupboards, and to affix the trophies of little
+Christmas tree flags on the cabbagey old walls; and Louie helped with
+the refreshments. Three women had been got in, one to make coffee and
+the others to preside in the cloakrooms, and Miss Levey had won
+half-a-crown from Kitty Windus.
+
+For Mr. Jeffries was coming to the party after all. More, it had been
+Louie herself who had asked him, though it had been Miss Levey's
+cunning that had made her do so. On no grounds at all save that it
+appeared to annoy, the Jewess had once or twice twitted Louie that Mr.
+Jeffries favoured _her_ and, when Mr. Jeffries had declined her own
+invitation, had nudged Louie. "_You_ ask him, and see whether he
+doesn't come!" the nudge had meant. Louie entered into no contest with
+Miss Levey. She had turned at once to Mr. Jeffries and repeated the
+invitation. He had accepted it.
+
+Louie doubted her own wisdom in going to that social at all. Even when
+she had reached Sutherland Place and spread out her frocks on her bed
+she still doubted. But suddenly she gave a short laugh. Of course she
+was going! It was her first "social," and it might be her last; she
+was going, and she was going to wear the oyster-grey satin that, ever
+since she had had it, had always seemed to "live" so on her shoulders.
+
+She declined Mrs. Leggat's help in getting into it; if Mrs. Leggat
+would be so good as to get her a hansom instead----Mrs. Leggat went
+out. The oyster-grey was one of the oldest of her frocks; Louie knew
+every stitch of it; and she smiled as she thought that for that very
+reason she would have chosen it had she deliberately intended to make
+a conquest. She surveyed herself in it in the tilted glass. Yes, she
+thought she would do.
+
+"It's your last time on, poor old rag," she muttered.
+
+She heard the pulling up of the hansom; she put on a light shawl and
+descended; and Mrs. Leggat lingered in the doorway as she drove off.
+
+They had set candles on the floors of the landings of the Holborn
+stairs, but they guttered in the draughts, and showed little but the
+feet of those who ascended. Louie followed a pair of orange
+silk-stockinged ankles and a trammel of orange petticoats (she didn't
+know whose) up the stairs, and entered the general-room. The library
+had been converted into a ladies' cloakroom, with the old ledger-room
+as an annexe; and in this last room Evie Soames, with an elaborate
+running of pink ribbons beneath the openwork of her cream net blouse,
+was putting on her slippers. She only showed Louie the top of her dark
+head; in this and other ways she had displayed reserve since the lunch
+interval of the examination day. A woman with a pair of very chapped
+hands and a very clean apron took Louie's shawl; and Louie, first
+glancing at her hair over the powdered shoulders of the person in
+orange, went into the double room that had been prepared for dancing.
+
+Students and their friends had turned up in their best bibs and
+tuckers. Most of the men wore swallow-tailed coats; one of the
+exceptions was Mr. Jeffries in his brown jacket-suit. He was talking
+to Miss Levey, or rather Miss Levey was gasping to him; she had just
+given him, or rather hung upon his wrist, one of the violet-written
+cards, printed from the gelatine-copier, which served as programmes.
+Weston wore a tightly fitting old frock-coat, which Mr. Mackie
+humorously likened to the overcoat of sausage that had spent the night
+in the coal-hole. Archie Merridew had a white waistcoat. All the men
+stroked the wrinkles out of their white gloves without ceasing. The
+women, to the reflective eye, had lost little by the foregoing of
+out-and-out evening-dress. There was an "I could an' if I would" about
+their long sleeves and high necks. Kitty Windus, in her blue foulard,
+with a cutlet-frill about her thin neck, graciously consented to the
+level of those who had not a pound a week on their own; Miriam Levey,
+in a maroon pinafore-frock with broad braces over her shoulders,
+instantly put every simple blouse in the room at its ease. One frock
+only flouted the modest agreement to which the executive had come;
+this was the orange satin one which Louie had followed upstairs. It
+partially clothed a friend of Mr. Mackie's. Louie heard the words in
+which Mr. Mackie introduced young Merridew to its wearer.
+
+"Mr. Merridew, Miss Dulcie Levine, Miss Levine, Mr. Merridew, two of
+the best, seasonable weather for the time of the year, ain't it, what?
+Permit me, Dulcibella, a bit of fluff" (here Mr. Mackie cast aside the
+bit of fluff, if there was one, which he had taken from Miss Dulcie's
+shoulder, and represented the noise of its falling by a loud stamp on
+the floor). "Ought to be dancing soon; what time is it by your clocks,
+Dulcie? _I_ saw them as you got out of the Black Maria, the cab, I
+mean--_heu_, desist, Mr. Mackie, you wag!" (Mr. Mackie smacked his own
+wrist in reproof of himself.) "Why am I not in me usual spirits, gin
+cold, to-night, Dulcinea? 'Tis thy fatal beauty has undone me; what
+ho, a needle and threat, O fairest of thy socks, sex I should say....
+Ay, she dances, Archibald, but not with thee, base varlet; she dances
+at the Theatre hight Alcazar, nigh unto ye Square called Leicester."
+
+Louie heard Kitty Windus whisper to Evie Soames that Mr. Mackie was
+going to be splendid to-night; but her approval did not extend to Mr.
+Mackie's friend, who was already too splendid. Kitty's head was held
+so high when Miss Levine passed that she appeared to be looking at her
+with her nostrils. With her eyes she saw only the orange creature's
+back. This was a rather handsome =V=, and that did not improve
+matters. Kitty whispered behind her fan about "some people." Miss
+Dulcie used Kitty as a quizzing-glass for the inspection of whoever
+happened to be behind her.
+
+Mr. Jeffries stood with his back against the thrown-back folding door.
+He did not dance, but he had not at all the air of a wet blanket; on
+the contrary, his face wore a quite lively smile. He was smiling at
+the red and green tissue paper that enswathed the central chandelier.
+Louie saw Evie Soames pass him; his eyes rested on her for a moment,
+but only as they rested on everybody else, and then went back to the
+red and green tissue paper of the chandelier again. He had accepted
+the inevitable, then. Indeed, had he not done so, Louie could hardly
+imagine that he would have been there. Well, it was the most sensible
+thing he could do. Louie would go and speak to him presently.
+
+Louie made a tour of the rooms. The =E= of reference-books had
+been turned into a place for sitting out, and in the typewriting-room
+the lids of two or three desks had been wedged up to form card-tables.
+Into the room beyond, which was the smoking-room, she did not
+penetrate. Already a fiddle was tuning up, but Louie had told young
+Merridew, who had magnanimously asked her for her card, that she did
+not intend to dance. None the less he had taken her card and scrawled
+something on it. She had tossed the piece of violet-written pasteboard
+into a corner.
+
+At nine o'clock there was a tapping on the top of the piano, and the
+music began. Mr. Mackie and the lady in orange glided out over the
+French-chalked floor. Two minutes later the room was full of waltzing
+couples.
+
+Louie had sat down on the opposite side of the room to Mr. Jeffries.
+Through momentarily clear spaces she saw him from time to time. He did
+not move from his station by the folding door, where, among the
+hoppers and caperers who sped past him, he seemed to have something of
+the stability of a monument in some centre of apparently aimless
+traffic. Still, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and Louie intended
+to go across to him when the waltz was over.
+
+A word she overheard, however, caused her to change her mind and to
+rise to her feet at once. Mr. Mackie, passing with his orange partner,
+had repeated his jape about the Ruthless Boaz.
+
+Without more ado Louie threaded her way through the dancers and stood
+before Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"Won't you try to dance?" she said.
+
+As he turned the amber eyes on her she had the feeling that she slid
+all at once into the field of some piece of apparatus with an
+object-glass. She was the object. For a moment he forgot his smile; he
+looked attentively at her; and then the smile returned. He answered in
+an easy, deep voice, the accent of which was neither Cockney nor yet
+quite of the mode of the men Louie knew.
+
+"Oh, I--I don't dance," he said.
+
+"Won't you let me teach you?"
+
+His eyes were still on hers. He seemed to give the simple question
+weighty consideration. Then his eyes dropped to his hands.
+
+"Hallo," he said, as if to himself. His programme was where Miss Levey
+had put it, dangling from his wrist as if from a hook. Apparently he
+had not noticed it before. Then, looking at Louie again, he said: "I
+mean, my gloves--I've no gloves."
+
+"Gloves!" she said quietly. "Come."
+
+She took the absurd programme from his wrist, threw it away, and put
+her gloved hand into his naked one.
+
+She drew Mr. Jeffries into the current.
+
+Louie had danced with ignoramuses before, but never with a man quite
+so awkward as this. She did her best to steer him, but before they had
+gone half-way round the room they had collided with Evie Soames,
+leaning back in the crook of young Merridew's arm--with Kitty Windus,
+tiptoe and leaning forward over her partner--with Mr. Mackie, who had
+lighted a cigarette and was singing the refrain of the dance as he
+passed. Then Mr. Jeffries begged her, out of consideration for
+herself, to stop. But she had no desire to stop. She wondered why,
+bumped and trampled so, she should want to go on, but she gave that
+riddle up. He did not cease to apologise for his ungainliness.
+
+But the riddle of why she did not wish to stop refused to be given up.
+It renewed itself with each of his apologies. Stumbling ludicrously,
+she knew that she still wished to go on. What she did not know at
+that time of her life was that she had secrets that hitherto she had
+kept even from herself.
+
+Then, all in a moment, the strange thing happened. She felt that
+colour, that stress and anger never brought there, rise slow and warm
+into her cheeks. Her glance had merely rested for a moment on that
+hand of hers that lay slender as a willow leaf in his, but the riddle
+was a puzzle no longer. Abashed, she _had_ surprised a secret.
+
+She had caught herself wishing--half wishing--she did not quite know
+what--that she too had taken off her glove.
+
+Her colour lasted for half-a-minute; then, perhaps because of the
+colour, her voice became matter-of-fact. She glanced up at him.
+
+"I'm sorry you failed in your examination," she said.
+
+Louie was tall, but his head was clear and away above hers. He looked
+down, earnest, anxious, smiling, all three.
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said. "Why should it?" he added.
+
+Louie had thought that it had mattered a great deal, but she was still
+a little bewildered. Even out of the answer to the riddle another
+seemed to have sprung already. She laughed a little.
+
+"Oh--only that one doesn't like to be beaten," she said.
+
+This too he seemed to give profound yet (if such a thing may be)
+absentminded attention.
+
+"Is anybody ever beaten?" he asked slowly. "I mean, unless they
+deserve to be?"
+
+Archie and Evie Soames had just overtaken them again, laughing
+together, as, hand in hand, they took a running glide towards the
+door. His remark came oddly from a doubly beaten man. What then did he
+call a beating?... She looked covertly at the two hands again.
+
+"But--mayn't circumstances be too strong for you?"
+
+This again he considered. "Circumstances are strong," he admitted.
+"But then, if one's a fool, so are a good many other people. There's
+always that chance, you see."
+
+He spoke as gently as if he had been speaking to a child, but Louie
+suddenly found herself wondering whether he had accepted the
+inevitable after all. This hardly sounded like it. She spoke quietly.
+
+"Nobody thinks you're a fool just because you failed--at least I
+don't."
+
+"Failed?" he repeated, as if puzzled.... "Oh, you mean the
+examination! Of course I ought never to have gone in for it. (Oh dear,
+another bump--I'm afraid you find me hopeless.)"
+
+"Not have gone in for it? Why?"
+
+The lion's eyes looked at her in surprise.
+
+"Why? Why, because I failed." He seemed to consider it an entirely
+conclusive answer.
+
+"But you'll surely try again?" said Louie.
+
+"Eh? 'Try,' did you say?... Oh, the men who have to try are no good.
+For that matter it's always the duffers who try the hardest. I admit
+they pull it off, but then things are arranged so that the duffers can
+pull them off--have to be, I suppose. But the men who aren't
+duffers----"
+
+He stopped suddenly.
+
+"What?" she said.
+
+But once more she had the feeling that she had only just swum into
+the field of his vision. It was singularly disconcerting. His smile,
+which had disappeared, appeared again. He seemed to remember that he
+was at a dance.
+
+"I suppose you're coming back after Christmas?" he said.
+
+It was not very likely, but she said: "Very likely. You were saying,
+about the men who aren't duffers----"
+
+Again he got her focus. "Was I? Well, there aren't so many of them
+that we need bother about them. So you are coming back?"
+
+Louie found him extraordinary, unclassifiable. She could not say that
+his answers were not ready; they were instant to the point; but
+somehow they weren't answers. Of course, they _were_ answers if you
+liked, but they seemed in some way to be private communings as well.
+She wondered whether he was in the habit of talking much to himself;
+he spoke rather as if he was--as if, his consciousness of her presence
+notwithstanding, he considered himself to be as good as alone now.
+
+Louie had heard the expression "second self"--well, this, "second
+self" or not, was certainly a curious accord. And then he allowed that
+deliberate, altogether discordant smile (that might just as well have
+been hooked round his ears like a false beard) to come between, and
+asked her if she was coming back after Christmas!
+
+Then--this came suddenly--she knew for a certainty what hitherto had
+hung in doubt--that she would not be coming back after Christmas. She
+must sit down. Of course, it was to have been expected. She had been
+unwise to dance.
+
+She spoke faintly. "Please take me to a seat."
+
+Quite automatically he did so. He led her to the =E= of
+reference-books. The waltz closed. So did Louie's eyes.
+
+"Please leave me alone for a few minutes," she murmured.
+
+He bowed, and retired as automatically as he had come.
+
+In a few minutes she felt better, but she still sat in the little
+book-lined recess. Her eyes remained closed, but not now altogether
+from faintness. She heard Mr. Mackie's voice, apparently a long way
+off, shouting, "Come on--let's get the ice broken!" and partners were
+being chosen for the Shop-Girl Lancers. More minutes passed. Louie,
+her eyes still closed, had begun once more to think of that secret she
+had surprised within herself.
+
+She doubted herself profoundly now. For all she now knew her nature
+might contain other such secrets as this that had sent the warm blood
+into her cheeks at a touch--nay, at the thought of a touch. She might
+have, so to speak, a basic, unsuspected layer of them, needing only to
+be stirred to provide surprise after surprise. Those surprises might
+make all she had hitherto known--all--seem stupid and flat and
+commonplace. If so, why must the discovery come now? Secrets from
+herself--now? Impossible!
+
+But, as if limned on her closed lids, she saw the two hands again, her
+own like a lanceolate leaf, lying within that great masculine engine
+of his.
+
+And all at once she felt unutterably lonely.
+
+It was some time before she opened her eyes again. By that time Mr.
+Mackie had succeeded in breaking the ice. The floor shook to the
+fourth figure of the Shop-Girl Lancers, and Louie saw, beyond the
+reference-books, the Alcazar beauty swung clear off the ground, a
+goldfish whirling almost horizontally past. Miss Levey's skirts
+followed, their owner crying, "Help, help!"... "_For it ain't the
+proper way to treat a la-ady!_" Mr. Mackie's jubilant voice sang--and
+when the figure ended there were shouts and clapping of hands and
+uproarious cries of "Again, again!"
+
+By-and-by Louie rose. She walked up the room again. At the piano Mr.
+Mackie, who was to sing, was now confidentially humming the air of his
+song into the hired pianist's ear. Mr. Jeffries, once more looking as
+if he needed a niche and a plinth, was standing in his original place,
+by the folding door. Miss Levine and Archie Merridew were half hidden
+behind the piano; and Kitty Windus, radiant, was openly flirting with
+the pale student called Richardson. Evie Soames had just spoken to Mr.
+Jeffries; she was sulking at Archie's desertion of her. Then Mr.
+Weston announced, solemnly and distinctly, that Mr. Mackie was about
+to add to the enjoyment of all present by singing a song entitled
+"That Gorgonzola Cheese." Applause greeted the announcement, and Mr.
+Mackie, who had slipped behind the piano for a moment and returned
+with his coat on the wrong side out, began.
+
+Louie found herself once more by the side of Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"I should like some coffee," she said.
+
+The coffee was in an adjoining room. For the first time since she had
+been at the School Louie did not want to hear Mr. Mackie.
+
+But the hint was lost on Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"Eh? Certainly," he said, and went away in search of the coffee.
+
+     "'Oh--that--Gorgonzola Cheese!'"
+
+Mr. Mackie sang,
+
+     "'It must have been unhealthy, I suppose,
+     For the old Tom Cat fell dead upon the mat
+     When the niff got up his nose!'"
+
+Kitty was laughing almost hysterically.
+
+     "'Talk about the flavour of the crackling of the pork!
+     I guess it wasn't half so strong
+     As the delicate effluvia that filled our house
+     When the Gorgonzola Cheese went wrong!'"
+
+Mr. Jeffries had returned with Louie's coffee, but Louie barely
+touched it. Great stupid fellow!
+
+Then he turned to her with some merely banal remark, and Louie, giving
+it all the answer it deserved, turned and left him.
+
+That unspeakable loneliness had come upon her again.
+
+Louie made no further attempt to talk to Mr. Jeffries. She watched
+another dance, heard Mr. Weston recite "The Raven," and then went to
+the cloakroom for her shawl. There she came upon Kitty Windus, who had
+found it necessary to do up her hair again.
+
+"You surely aren't going?" Kitty exclaimed. She herself was a-tremble
+with flirtation and happiness. "Why, you're as bad as Mr. Jeffries!
+Though I will admit that even _he_ came out of his shell for once. I
+shall begin to think Miriam's right soon!" She gave Louie an arch
+look.
+
+Louie's opinion was that Mr. Jeffries had never been more completely
+concealed in his shell than he had been that even, but "Oh, has he
+gone?" she said indifferently.
+
+"Yes, a few minutes ago. Isn't everything going splendidly! Why, Mr.
+Mackie's a host in himself!"
+
+"Quite," said Louie, passing her shawl over her head.
+
+"I suppose we shall see you in the morning?" said Kitty. "Everybody's
+coming to help to clear away."
+
+"Very well," said Louie.
+
+And as the piano broke into the prelude to the waltz cotillion she
+left.
+
+But she did not leave that dingy Holborn third floor, never to enter
+it again, without a grateful word to Mr. Mackie. She came upon him on
+a landing. His trousers were French-chalked almost to the knees with
+the vigour of his dancing, and for his next song he had put on a false
+nose with blue whiskers attached to it. He was making sure that the
+adornment did not interfere with his whistle.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Mackie," said Louie, holding out her hand.
+
+Mr. Mackie stopped the whistle. "What, you toddling, Miss Causton?" he
+said. "Why, we ain't properly warmed up yet!"
+
+"I must go. And"--she smiled almost fondly at him--"I should like to
+thank you."
+
+Mr. Mackie was quite conscious of desert. "Not at all," he said. "You
+mean the 'Gorgonzola Cheese,' I suppose? Went all right, didn't it?
+Never known that song fail yet: it always gets 'em----"
+
+"Oh, for more than that. If you're ever thinking of setting up a cure
+I daresay I could find you a few patients. You're wonderful.
+Good-bye."
+
+"Say olive oil, but not good-bye--and Merry Christmas," said Mr.
+Mackie.
+
+But Louie knew that it was good-bye.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+MORTLAKE ROAD
+
+
+I
+
+On a sunny morning in mid-January Louie Causton went to see, but not
+necessarily to be seen by, her father. Captain Cecil Chaffinger
+accompanied her. As they walked across Richmond Park they talked.
+
+"You're sure the walk isn't too much for you, Mops?" said the Captain
+solicitously.
+
+She pressed his arm. "No, I'm ever so much better for it."
+
+"We could get a cart or something at the Star and Garter, you know."
+
+"I'd much rather walk, Chaff. We can take the train back."
+
+"All right, little Mops."
+
+They walked for a few minutes in silence; then--
+
+"That woman wasn't--wasn't a beast, was she?" Chaff asked.
+
+"Mrs. Leggat?"
+
+"If that's her name. I mean, there was no row?"
+
+"Not the least in the world."
+
+The Captain tugged at his moustache. "H'm! Not like you. Ever leave
+anywhere without a row before, Mops?"
+
+Louie laughed a little. "Now you mention it, I don't think I ever
+did," she admitted. "But there wasn't a word said. She knew, and I
+knew she knew. So I cleared out. That was all. She made me some
+beef-tea before I left."
+
+Again they walked in silence.
+
+The daintiest of hoar-frosts lay over the Park; on Putney Heath they
+had passed skaters. The keen wind had reddened the Captain's nose, and
+Louie could not help smiling as he took out his handkerchief for the
+twentieth time. She had remembered Mr. Mackie.
+
+"Ought to have a silk one a day like this," Chaff grunted, blowing
+hard. "Makes you perfectly raw.... I say, dear old Mops----"
+
+"What, old boy?"
+
+"Anything _I_ could have done, you know----"
+
+She squeezed his arm again. "I shall be giving you plenty to do
+presently. And you say he's not a bad sort."
+
+"Oh----" said the Captain doubtfully.
+
+"Well, you'll take me in, and then wait outside till I've seen for
+myself."
+
+But at that Chaff rebelled. "Hanged if I do--dash it all, it's a
+public-house! You'll find me in the parlour or whatever it is."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Let me see: he'll be fifty. Yes, he'll be fifty. Your mother's
+fifty-four."
+
+"You'll remember your promise, Chaff?"
+
+"About where you are? Oh, I'll be mum as the grave. Don't you forget
+yours."
+
+"No. You shall come and see me."
+
+The Captain sighed. His Mops was a strange being. That fool Moone had
+taken the wrong way with her, but a better way might have been found
+than this. Well, Chaff would have a word or two with Mr. Buck Causton
+himself.
+
+They continued their walk.
+
+When Louie had first resolved that she would seek her father, nothing
+had seemed more natural. In prospect, the thing had been simplicity
+itself. But it was, somehow, less simple now. Indeed, its difficulties
+had increased with every step she took. What about Buck? Must he
+necessarily make her so very welcome? Suppose, when she made her
+announcement, he should shake hands, ask how her mother was, offer her
+tea (or whatever publicans did offer ladies), say he had been very
+glad to see her, and let her go again? How, in the face of that, could
+she say: "I am your daughter; I really don't know why I have come; I
+have stayed away a good long time, but here I am, needing friends; why
+I need friends I will explain to your wife." Was it not likely that
+Buck had had more than enough of her family?
+
+Had Chaff, as they descended to Kingston, once more urged that she was
+on a wild-goose chase, as likely as not she would have turned back at
+the first word.
+
+They reached Buck's public-house--The Molyneux Arms, near the corner
+of Kingston Bridge.
+
+"Well," said Chaff, stopping, "what do we do now, Mops?"
+
+"We go in, I suppose," said Louie. Without pausing, she moved towards the
+largest door (there was "Public Bar" written upon it) of an establishment
+that, if it lacked the garishness of a modern drinking-palace, was yet
+not quite the red-curtained, lattice-windowed, Christmas-number
+hostelry of Louie's imaginings. But Chaff, with a "No, not there,"
+drew her round the corner to a quieter door, where small bay-trees
+stood in green tubs. The step had a brightly polished brass sill and a
+thick rubber mat perforated with the name "Molyneux Arms." Beyond the
+little vestibule were double doors with cut-glass panels and a
+diagonal brass bar on each and a piston for automatic closing at the
+top.
+
+"Perhaps you'd better wait here," said Chaff.
+
+"All right," said Louie, now heartily wishing she had not left her new
+abode in Mortlake Road, Putney.
+
+With a soft sigh of the piston, the brass-barred doors closed behind
+Chaff.
+
+This entrance lay in a short blind alley off the main street, the end
+of which seemed to be closed by a stableyard. Somebody over a brick
+wall was walking a horse over cobbles, and a man's voice muttered,
+"Come up." There was a light clashing of harness, and the same voice
+began a soft but strong singing, hoisting itself to the higher notes
+as if the interpolated aspirates had been so many stirrups:
+
+     "No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave
+     For the pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----"
+
+Then a back door opened, and a woman's voice was heard.
+
+"A gentleman to see you, James."
+
+The song ceased. "A what, Susan?" said the man's voice. "Remember----"
+
+"A gentleman--in a top hat," said the second voice.
+
+"You know that travellers sometimes have top hats, Susan," cautioned
+the first voice.
+
+"I'm sure it's a gentleman, James----"
+
+"Very well, let us hope you're not mistaken and that you were hooked
+up behind. Ask the gentleman to wait a minute."
+
+The voices ceased.
+
+Instinctively Louie had walked to a half-open coach door and had
+looked through. She saw a bright little picture. A horse was being
+put into a gay yellow trap, and the man who was buckling the harness
+had begun to sing again:
+
+     "Oryn--thia, my Belovèd!----"
+
+All that Louie could see of him was a pair of glossy black boots and a
+pair of grey check trousers cut close about the knee. The harness
+twinkled; the horse's coat shone in the sun like Mr. Jeffries' hair;
+and somebody within the stable was running water into a bucket. Then
+the man came round the horse, and she saw him--cropped silver hair,
+long dewlapped chin, and a back and shoulders that might have served
+Henson's turn yet. And as Louie watched, with no more emotion than if
+the scene had been one on a coloured bioscope, he sang again:
+
+     "Oryn--thia, my Belovèd!----"
+
+Then, as she watched, it came over her for the first time that she had
+planned and was performing a suspect thing. She had no right to
+inspect this man and then to know him or not to know him, as she
+chose. He had no less right to inspect her. She, not he, stood to
+gain; cards on the table, then; either she must go away at once,
+taking Chaff with her, or else take her courage in both hands without
+further spying.
+
+Which was, perhaps, as much as to say that she had already seen and
+was willing to risk it.
+
+She passed through the half-open door into the yard.
+
+Yet even as she advanced she had a final cowardice. By a man at any
+rate, anything would be forgiven her, and she really had had a long
+walk.... There was a bench by the stable door.... But she pulled
+herself together. No, not that. She was not faint, only very, very
+pale. She continued to advance.
+
+Then Buck looked up, and their eyes met.
+
+They say of a newly born infant that your first impression of facial
+resemblance is that to which the child, grown a man, will return. So
+perhaps it was for one moment with father and daughter. But, if so, it
+passed instantly. Buck made an upward, deferential gesture of his
+fore-finger.
+
+"Sha'n't be three minutes, m'm," he said. "Now, Judson, the lady's
+here! He's just ready, m'm. A beautiful day!"
+
+Then something in Louie's look seemed to strike him.
+
+"It _is_ for Mrs. Allonby's, m'm, isn't it? For one-fifteen;
+one-fifteen Allonby, Richards, seven to-night. You needn't have come;
+he'll be there sharp."
+
+Louie was looking steadily at her father. "You've made a mistake," she
+said.
+
+"What? Hi, Judson! What's this?"
+
+"I came--I came--with the gentleman who's just asked for you. Don't
+you--don't you----" she faltered and stopped.
+
+"But aren't you from Mrs. Allonby's?"
+
+Louie was conscious that she was becoming pitifully flurried. She
+could not believe now that she had ever thought this would be an easy
+thing to do. And she would have to do it all herself; he had a
+handsome, slightly pompous face, but it was not the face of a man who
+apprehends things by intuition. She tried again.
+
+"You are Mr. Causton, aren't you?"
+
+"Beg pardon, m'm? You see, one ear----" The Piker had burst the drum
+of one of Buck's ears. He inclined his head. "What did you say, m'm?"
+
+Suddenly Louie put one hand on the shaft of the trap and sank half
+sitting on the step. The trap dipped. Her pallor was now extreme.
+
+"The gentleman who wishes to see you----" she began again.
+
+"Yes, m'm?"
+
+"I--I came with him----"
+
+"Yes, m'm--aren't you well, m'm?"
+
+"Don't you know me?"
+
+"If it isn't Mrs. Allonby's, one-fifteen----" said Buck.
+
+"His name--the gentleman's name----"
+
+Then, as the horse lifted a foot, she slipped a little on the step.
+She might not have fallen, but his old and instinctive muscular
+discipline counted for something. Buck had made a remarkably swift
+movement, and his arm now supported her. Suddenly she surrendered her
+weight to him.
+
+"Here, m'm," said the astonished Buck, "come and set down on the
+bench."
+
+Louie turned up entreating eyes. "You can't guess?"
+
+"If it's Richards, seven----"
+
+"The gentleman's name--I came with--is Chaffinger----"
+
+"You said----?"
+
+"Chaffinger."
+
+She was too close to him to notice that he too had suddenly become
+white. He still held her, but slowly half a cubic foot of air came
+from his chest. Probably with a purely mechanical movement he set her
+on her feet. His hand was at his sound ear.
+
+"Will you say it again, m'm?" he said huskily.
+
+Louie did so.
+
+"Cap-Captain Chaffinger, m'm?"
+
+"Oh," Louie choked, "don't call me 'm'm'!"
+
+"You did say Captain Chaffinger?"
+
+Then, leaning limply against the shaft, Louie began to speak low and
+rapidly.
+
+"Send me away if you like--perhaps I was stupid to come--but I
+wanted--I wanted--I couldn't bear it any longer--I'm all
+alone--father! I'm Louie--Louie----"
+
+Only Buck's Maker knows whether even then he fully understood. His
+grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes. Her voice, as she continued
+to mutter broken phrases, possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but
+some other sense informed him that she was telling him that she was
+his daughter--his daughter----
+
+And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come sluggishly to life.
+He repeated the phrase after her.
+
+"Putney, m'm? Did you say Putney?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I live there----"
+
+"You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?"
+
+"Mortlake Road."
+
+Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a century and more
+before he had said to the Honourable Emily: "_The_ Bible, Miss?" Now
+he said to his daughter:
+
+"_The_ Mortlake Road?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"You live there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically remote from
+Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness of the Scarisbricks. But
+Putney was near. To keep himself in spring and condition, he
+frequently walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could walk
+to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings' bus. And they
+rowed the boat race there. Therefore, while it outraged all Order that
+a Scarisbrick should live there, that fact nevertheless brought his
+daughter into the same world with himself. For the first time he
+looked seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more quickly
+than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her had beguiled his
+fancy through the years.
+
+This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with head back, lips
+parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her whole pose an appeal.
+
+"Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through those rare things,
+her tears----
+
+Judson came out of the stable. Buck gave him a curt order, and the
+trap moved away. Its departure left Louie standing by the little bench
+outside the stable door. Buck had taken a step towards her. He was
+murmuring something quite ridiculous--something about "strictly for
+the gentry." Perhaps he remembered that had his little girl been a
+little boy he would have given her instruction for nothing at the
+Sparring Academy in Bruton Street.
+
+All in a moment he passed his arm about Louie. Scarisbrick or not, she
+was going to be a Causton and his for once--just for once. In an hour
+he might be calling her "m'm" again, but just for once--his face was
+beautiful.
+
+"That little girl," he said foolishly, holding her with as gentle a
+fear as if she had been still in her cradle.
+
+Louie's answer was to faint suddenly on his breast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of the Molyneux Arms in a moment. A word about Mortlake Road
+first.
+
+Two houses had been thrown into one to form the establishment at which
+Louie had now resided for a week. Officially it was a nursing home;
+actually it accepted declared invalids and quite well but unrobust
+lodgers alike. Miss Cora Mayville "ran" it; her cousin, Miss Dot
+Mayville, was "sister," and from four to eight uniformed nurses came
+and went continually. None of them had theories, moral, social, or of
+any other description; to them things were as they were. Nurse Meekins
+made Louie's bed as who should say, "Helpers of people in trouble do
+not go beyond their proper business"; Nurse Chalmers brought her
+letters or called her to dinner in the narrowminded spirit of one who
+leaves the systematics of charity to others. All were reprehensibly
+incurious and shockingly affectionate, and so far was Louie's case
+from being peculiar that, in the eyes of the law at any rate, Miss Dot
+Mayville was herself twice a parent. Twice (when, from reasons Lord
+Moone could have explained, the real parents had refused to do so) she
+had signed the birth-certificates of undesired infants. This
+irregularity the registrar for the district held perpetually over her
+head. She laughed, and held other things over his head in return. They
+were engaged to be married.
+
+It was to this retreat that Buck drove Louie back that January
+evening, cutting "Richards, seven" without compunction. Poor Chaff had
+been sent off soon after lunch; there was somebody else to fetch and
+despatch his Mops now. Buck lifted Louie from the trap and rang the
+bell of one of the two brass-plated doors. A German youth dressed as a
+waiter appeared, and Buck bade him hold the horse. Then he went with
+Louie up to her room. He took off her hat and coat for her; he seemed
+unable to leave her. He had learned how it was with her.
+
+He had hardly turned a hair at the news. He accepted it as part of the
+Scheme of Things. To him also indiscretions were of two
+kinds--indiscretions, and the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Only
+a wistful look had crossed his face; he had hoped Louie's somebody was
+a gentleman otherwise than in the top-hat sense of the word; and Louie
+had reassured him about that. For the rest, it was not for Buck to
+inquire into the private affairs of these great ones. He would as soon
+have allowed the young German who held the horse to inquire into his
+own.
+
+"That little girl," he said once more, holding her away from him at
+the side of her bed.
+
+"And you won't call me 'm'm,' daddy?" Louie laughed.
+
+Buck gave it thought; it was not so simple as it looked. "And you
+really took daddy's name?" he asked. He had asked it twenty times
+already.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And told all those young ladies?" (Louie had related the incident of
+Burnett Minor and the "Life and Battles.") "All about daddy and the
+Piker?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Buck found it too wonderful. He enfolded his little girl again.
+
+"But you must go now," Louie said by-an-by.
+
+"But I can come in the morning?"
+
+"Yes. And, daddy----"
+
+"Little girl?"
+
+"You'll be good to poor old Chaff? He's fond of me too."
+
+Buck promised that he would. Had there been none other, the tantrums
+of the Honourable Emily were no doubt bond enough between them.
+
+The next morning Buck had to be told that eight o'clock was too early
+for a visit, and so, on the next morning again, he did not turn up
+until eleven. After that eleven became his accustomed hour. Wet or
+fine was the same to him, and he cancelled all afternoon orders for
+the trap; his little girl must have the trap at her disposal for a
+daily drive. And because his fidelity to the Social Order and their
+own professional tolerances amounted in Louie's case to pretty much
+the same thing, the nurses one and all fell in love with Buck.
+
+And here, once for all, or at any rate for a long time, a cogent
+matter may be dismissed, even as those pagan nurses dismissed it. It
+is Louie's conviction of moral guilt as apart from her persuasion of
+the practical inconveniences of it. Louie Causton would have been poor
+stuff for the hot gospeller to practise upon. There were things she
+would have had undone, and that not merely because the consequences
+pressed upon her; as they could not be undone, she had begun the tune
+and intended to fiddle it out. What she saw fit to hide her historian
+hides also. Louie seized what happiness she could, and it served. She
+was sorrier for Chaff than she was for herself. She would have been
+less happy had she taken Uncle Augustus's way out.
+
+And whether the days were happy or not, at any rate they were
+peacefully alike. Breakfast with the nurses, a morning or afternoon
+drive with Buck or a walk along the river bank or on Putney Heath,
+tea (if they drove) perhaps at Kingston, supper with the nurses again,
+and bed--that was the tale of them. She kept her promise to Chaff;
+several times he came to see her. Twice he met Buck. At these meetings
+the shade of the Honourable Emily almost visibly presided.... Chaff
+tried to talk of "Lives and Battles," Buck of the same--it was not for
+him to choose topics before his betters. And once, but once only, Buck
+brought Mrs. Buck, formerly Susan Emmidge, the chemist's servant at
+Mallard Bois. He hooked her up behind himself before they left
+Kingston, and Louie did her the same service at the end of the visit.
+For the rest, if Louie wanted to see her father's second wife she had
+to go to the Molyneux Arms to do so.
+
+
+II
+
+As the singer of "The Pilgrim of Love" Buck was known far and abroad
+up the Thames. It will be believed that he contrived to get an
+infinite personal pathos into the song; he also made of it, by means
+of those gratuitous aspirates, an affective athletic exercise in
+breathing.
+
+     "No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave
+     For the Pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----"
+
+As he closed his eyes at each soaring, the effect was as if he
+inwardly looked back on that remarkable pilgrimage of his own. Bidden
+to marry, he had married; bidden to unmarry and to marry again, he had
+done so; and at a word from Louie he would have taken up the
+pilgrimage once more.
+
+But while Buck exalted the Scarisbricks high above himself, so also
+he exalted himself high above all beneath him. He ruled the Molyneux
+Arms with a rod of iron. Only mediately and through him would the two
+barmaids have dared to address Louie; and his wife's position was
+altogether anomalous. It was only because Louie would have it so that
+she sat down to tea with them; and, what with her hooks and eyes and
+Buck's perpetual admonitions, there was little rest but the grave for
+her either. Buck subscribed to the _Almanack de Gotha_ and _Modern
+Society_; these were always to hand; but _The Licensed Victuallers'
+Gazette_, which he took in the way of business, was kept out of
+Louie's way. Mr. Mackie he would have torn from limb to limb. Far more
+royalist than the king was Buck; Radicalism was chaos, which word he
+pronounced "tchayoss." Of pugilism, save to Chaff, he never spoke.
+"God bless the Squire and his relations."
+
+And (Louie thought) God bless this simple-hearted father of hers also.
+Buck in the ring had been a better man than Uncle Augustus in the
+House of Lords, and Henson would not have looked twice at Chaff.
+Granted he was pompous; with a little more pompousness her mother
+would have come more creditably out of that old affair. So much for
+the Scarisbricks. Already, in January, Louie loved her father; by
+March his daily visit was a necessity of her life. She had been right;
+her destiny was quite as likely to be bound up with Buck and his
+beer-pumps as with anything in that dingy old Business School.
+
+Of the Business School she still thought a good deal, however. She
+could not forget the interesting little drama of which she had seen,
+as it were, the first act. Somehow, time and distance had simplified
+some of its details without diminishing her interest in it, and, as
+she walked along the Putney towpath by day, or lay awake in her
+white-painted room at night, she wondered that this should be so. By
+the brutal logic of events, Rainham Parva should have been nearer to
+her than Holborn; but Rainham Parva seemed now disproportionately
+remote. Why?
+
+Had the conclusion which persisted in presenting itself not been
+impossible, perhaps she would not have faced it so frankly. It was
+impossible--manifestly absurd--that Mr. Jeffries should have any hold
+on her imagination. Therefore she allowed herself to consider it. No
+doubt the fancies which filled her head would pass and be forgotten.
+
+Give them a month, then--two months.
+
+She gave them that, and more. They did not pass. But that, no doubt,
+was due to the curious interrupted story. She felt as if she was
+reading an interesting serial tale, for the next instalment of which
+she was suddenly required to wait another month. She wanted to know
+what was going to happen among the fair, perky boy, the girl who
+resembled Polly Ross, the lionlike Mr. Jeffries, and that apocryphal
+fourth actor in the piece. When she had learned that she would close
+the book. In the meantime she occupied herself, as serial readers do,
+with guessing.
+
+The spring was advancing towards May when there happened something
+that suddenly precipitated her guessings. Buck still came daily, but
+she walked more in the back garden of the nursing home now and less on
+the heath and on the towpath, and drove, when she did drive, more
+slowly. Sometimes on her drives a nurse accompanied her. Her doctor
+found her health excellent.
+
+The thing that happened began with Richenda Earle. Some weeks before,
+Louie had had a letter from Richenda forwarded from Sutherland Place,
+which she had neglected to answer; and Richenda had apparently written
+again, this time to her sister. Louie now gathered that Mrs. Leggat
+had kept the reason for her disappearance from Mr. Weston, but not
+from Richenda. By way of Richenda and Mr. Weston it had now reached
+the Business School. A hastily scrawled letter from Kitty Windus
+informed Louie of this. Kitty wanted to come and see her.
+
+Well, there was no reason why Kitty should not come. Louie wrote and
+told her so.
+
+She came on a Saturday afternoon. It was not urgently necessary that
+Louie should have received her in bed, but the recollection of the
+spinster's peering eyes held some obscure prompting. Moreover, to
+receive Kitty in bed would be an intimation that the call must not be
+a long one, and she had arranged its duration with Miss Dot Mayville.
+
+"Miss Windus," Miss Dot announced, and Kitty entered.
+
+She had brought Louie a bunch of violets; that was the first of
+several new amenities Louie noticed in her manner. Louie discouraged
+the second amenity, which was a shy motion as if to embrace her. And
+the third showed when, after a few minutes in which Kitty's fluttered
+spirits had become a little calmer (_she_ was not the one to turn her
+back on people in trouble, she had said, let others hold up their
+heads as they pleased), she wistfully took Louie's hand on the
+coverlet. She had cried over Louie a little. Her eyes were still wet.
+
+"Of course--but I don't know whether you've heard--I might have been
+just like everybody else, only something else has made an awful
+difference too," she said, her eyes downcast.
+
+"Oh? What else?" Louie asked a little offhandedly. She had not wanted
+to be wept over.
+
+"Oh, then you haven't heard.... I'm engaged. I've been engaged nearly
+two months."
+
+"Really? Then I must congratulate you. Is it a secret who to?"
+
+"No," said Kitty. "It's to Mr. Jeffries."
+
+Slowly Louie sat up. She turned, as if, like Buck, she had been deaf
+on one side. "_Who?_" she asked.
+
+"Yes. To Mr. Jeffries. Since early in March. You remember he told
+Archie there was somebody?--and," Kitty became suddenly voluble, "I
+couldn't believe my ears at first. I'd never dreamed--never dreamed.
+And after I'd been such a beast--I don't mean a beast exactly, but
+getting at him, you know. I was just as bad as the others--about his
+baths and all that. Oh, I did feel ashamed--as mean as mean--oh!" She
+choked a little. "I don't mind saying it now, but I'd--I'd begun to be
+afraid I should _never_ get off!"
+
+"Yes--no, I mean," Louie murmured, dazed.
+
+"Just fancy, it's being me! That night, when he asked me, I thought I
+should have gone clean off it. Sometimes I can hardly believe it yet.
+I hadn't a notion--not a notion! And it makes everything perfectly
+wonderful, knowing a man's so struck on you, though he _is_ quiet and
+don't say much about it. Of course they mean all the more, that sort.
+We walk along the streets, but he won't let me stop out late for fear
+of tiring me, and he always takes me right to the door, and I'm trying
+hard not to be selfish, but it makes me so sorry for other girls who
+haven't got off--and perhaps if I sell some of my shares to start us
+with we can get married next year--if he gets a permanency, that is."
+
+Louie was still thunderstruck. Mr. Jeffries engaged to--Kitty Windus!
+That unnamed personage was--Kitty Windus! She, Louie, was asked to
+believe _that_, in the face of all she had seen!
+
+"I am glad," she found herself murmuring again.
+
+"Did _you_ guess?" Kitty asked eagerly. She would have given her ears
+to be told that somebody else had guessed.
+
+"No," Louie replied, and added, seeing Kitty's fallen face: "I should
+have thought Mr. Merridew. You seemed such great friends."
+
+At that Kitty broke in: "Poor Archie! I said it made one selfish....
+His father's very ill. We were going on Putney Heath to-day, all four
+of us, Archie and Evie and Jeff and me; but Archie had a wire to go
+home this morning, poor Archie, and so I'm going to meet the others
+by-and-by. But anyway, if anything does happen, he'll be able to get
+married as soon as he likes--he's an only son."
+
+At this Louie was even more startled. Mr. Jeffries and the Soames girl
+together at that moment! She remembered those irrevocable looks.
+
+"So Mr. Merridew and Miss Soames are engaged, then?" she said.
+
+"Well," Kitty admitted, "it comes to the same thing. They're as good
+as. I wish Jeff was coming into a bit, like Archie."
+
+"You say they're here, at Putney, this afternoon?"
+
+"Jeff and Evie? Yes. I'm meeting them at five."
+
+Even as Louie was inwardly predicting that Kitty would not see her Mr.
+Jeffries at five, Miss Dot Mayville entered. But Louie did not want
+Kitty to go just yet. She wanted to know more of this extraordinary
+development of her drama. "May we have some tea?" she asked, and Miss
+Dot went out again. Louie lay back on her pillow and frowned at the
+foot of her white-painted bed.
+
+"It's very kind of you to give up your afternoon to me," she said
+by-and-by.
+
+"Oh, my dear, as if I wouldn't!" Kitty broke out almost reproachfully.
+"I keep telling myself I mustn't be selfish, when Jeff and I have
+years before us--I'm just beginning to realise it--years--and, oh
+dear, here I am, selfish again, talking all about myself and never a
+word about you."
+
+But Louie did not want words about herself. She wanted to hear all,
+all, about Kitty and Mr. Jeffries. The thing became more incredible
+moment by moment.
+
+"I'm sorry about Mr. Merridew's father," she said presently. "I
+suppose Miss Soames is very much upset?"
+
+"Frightfully," said Kitty. "But Jeff's looking after her. It was he
+who persuaded her to go out this afternoon. It's better for her than
+moping indoors."
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Merridew asked him to."
+
+"Oh no. He only got the wire this morning. But it isn't a surprise.
+Jeff saw him last night----" She checked herself. She had no gibes
+about brown-paper parcels now.
+
+"Well, you'll be quite a courting quartet," said Louie presently, with
+a brightness she did not feel.
+
+"Yes; jolly, isn't it? But there, I'm simply _not_ going to talk
+about myself one moment longer. I feel a regular beast. But it's only
+because I'm so happy. Now let's talk about you. How long are you going
+to be here? What sort of people are they? Isn't it fearfully
+expensive? Are you frightened?"
+
+The suppressed inquisitive questions and Louie's preoccupied parries
+lasted through tea. At a quarter to five Kitty rose. Again Louie found
+herself wondering whether Kitty would see her Mr. Jeffries that day.
+Kitty bent over her.
+
+"I should like to kiss you, dear, if you'd let me," she said timidly.
+"You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes. And I'd love to come
+again; I love little babies. Now I must run. I won't say a word to
+Miriam Levey; you know what she is--but I simply must learn not to say
+those things. Good-bye, dear."
+
+And she was off, waving her skimpy hand from the door.
+
+Louie did not know why her heart should ache already, as at a
+premonition--for she had no certitude. Indeed, in all that portion of
+her relation to Mr. Jeffries she had no certitude; but she was only a
+little less certain on that account. Already she entirely rejected the
+figment in which Kitty so pathetically believed. Months before she had
+snapped her fingers at his impudent tale of a shadowy _fiancée_; now
+she wondered whether he had not been caught in his own trap and found
+himself compelled, by mere daily exigencies, to give that shadow
+substance--the substance of Kitty. Impossible--and yet the conceivable
+alternatives were equally impossible! Incredible that he should have
+chosen Kitty for his stalking-horse--yet whom else had there been to
+choose? If this really was a putting-upon the Business School, Mr.
+Jeffries would see to it that his dupe was as known as his purpose
+was secret. That left him three candidates from whom to choose
+indifferently--Kitty, Miriam Levey, and herself.
+
+In her indignation she was unconscious of the pink that crept like a
+danger signal into her cheeks.
+
+That poor, unconscious, betrayed woman!
+
+Good gracious! It was blackguardly and monstrous! Kitty of all women!
+To have "predestined spinster" written large all over you was bad
+enough, without being played upon thus and then cast back into
+spinsterhood after all! And this new softness of Kitty's, this timid
+opening of the heart, this new, awkward unselfishness, these pathetic
+little maxims of conduct! The man must be a cur. Deliberately to waken
+a heart that was sealed, asleep and not unhappy, and then to leave it
+to a pain it must keep for ever--good gracious!
+
+Still ignorant of the tell-tale red in her own cheeks, she found Mr.
+Jeffries vile.
+
+But she must be just to Mr. Jeffries. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps
+there was--nay, there must be--something she didn't know. Why, even if
+Mr. Jeffries could be so cruel, Kitty herself could hardly be so
+blind. Struggle with new magnanimities as she would, jealousy was
+native to Kitty, and jealousy has sharp eyes. No, she, Louie herself,
+was building a fantastic fabric. It was mere common-sense that Kitty
+must be supposed to be capable of looking after herself.
+
+But it was one thing to tell herself that she must suspend her
+judgment and another to do it. That theory of hers seemed to unroll
+itself brightly and convincingly before her again. She would discard
+it when she found one that better explained the known facts. Mr.
+Jeffries was with Evie Soames at that moment. Louie's thoughts flew
+to Evie Soames.
+
+It was then that she became conscious that her cheeks were hot. It was
+then also that she told herself angrily that they were not, and found
+them grow hotter still. The hotter they grew the more she denied their
+heat. Why should they grow hot? And even granting that they were hot,
+wasn't this imposture that was being practised on Kitty enough to make
+anybody's cheek hot? That was it. That discovery made, she admitted
+the heat--for Kitty's sake. That that great, taciturn, clever man
+should be infatuated by that pretty fool she resented--for Kitty's
+sake. That his sleek head, bright as the coat of Buck's horse, should
+stoop over that empty dark one she found ironically unfit--for Kitty's
+sake. She told herself all this, forgetting that she had just set
+Kitty's engagement down also as an absurdity. Her indignation would
+have been neither more nor less honest had Mr. Jeffries engaged
+himself (as according to her theory he might quite well have done) to
+Miriam Levey.
+
+Or to herself.
+
+She lay, the colour coming and going.
+
+At last she roused herself and sat up. "Pretty thoughts for an
+expectant mother!" she muttered. "I'll go downstairs and talk to Dot."
+
+She dressed, and descended to the nurses' sitting-room in the
+basement.
+
+Miss Dot and her Registrar were there; they had just come in from a
+walk. They were telling of a nightingale they had heard sing near
+Queens Mere. "Oh, and we saw your friend again, the one who came to
+tea," said Miss Dot, turning to Louie.
+
+Louie pricked up her ears. "Oh? Alone?" she said quickly.
+
+"Yes. Coming down Putney Hill."
+
+"Yes, she said she was going to take a walk," Louie remarked.
+
+But to herself she cried with conviction: "I knew it--I knew it--I
+knew it!"
+
+For the rest of the evening she was lost in her own thoughts. Miss
+Cora Mayville worked a hand sewing machine; Miss Dot and her Registrar
+played bézique at a separate table; other nurses, in print aprons or
+cloaked and bonneted, came and went; but Louie sat and gazed into the
+fire. When spoken to she smiled mechanically and then resumed her
+gazing. There was no more continuity in her thoughts than there was in
+the shape of the flames that illumined her grey eyes. Roy appeared in
+them for a moment or two--she had seen Roy's name in _The Gazette_ a
+week before--and then Roy was supplanted by Burnett Minor. Her old
+French governess at Trant popped up for no particular reason, and then
+she too gave place to Mr. Mackie. She heard Buck saying again, "That
+little girl"--and then came a wrangle between Dot and her Registrar.
+In the adjoining kitchen she heard sounds of frying, and then somebody
+came in to lay the table for supper. The gas rose and whistled as the
+stove in the next room was turned off. The three night nurses came
+down. Louie had her gruel where she sat, and at half-past nine went
+upstairs again. She got into bed, and dreamed that night that she was
+dancing with Mr. Jeffries again at the breaking-up party. Her hand lay
+like a willow leaf in his. "_You_ understand," he was saying to her;
+"it's no good hiding things from _you_; _you've_ got the key of it
+all. It had to be somebody, and you'd left. There was only Kitty for
+it. You see what an ignominious thing you escape. Don't tell me how
+degrading it is; I know it; but I'd do it a thousand times for the
+woman I loved and meant to marry."
+
+Louie knew, in her dream, who that was.
+
+Then she awoke with a start. The street lamp outside, shining through
+the venetian blinds, made long bars of light on the walls and ceiling.
+The hot-water bottle at her feet was cold. She heard the creaking of
+Dot's bed in the little dressing-room adjoining, and the minute
+ticking of her watch on the table by her bed-head. But what had woke
+her had been the sound of her own reply, in her dream, to Mr.
+Jeffries.
+
+"You'll shuffle Kitty off," she had replied, still dancing with him,
+"but _I_ should have found a way to keep you."
+
+Then, with a deep sigh, she turned and went to sleep again.
+
+
+III
+
+Her boy was born towards the end of June. Her mother did not visit
+her; instead, she sent a letter the chief characteristic of which was
+fright that she had dared even so far to disobey her brother. Louie
+understood, and in her dictated reply made allowances. She wondered
+whether she should write to Roy also, but in the end did not. The
+child was born at three o'clock in the morning; he was hardly six
+hours old when Buck arrived. The old champion stood looking down on
+his little girl's little boy. It was long before he spoke.
+
+"I wasn't let see you," he said, two big tears rolling down his
+cheeks.
+
+"You shall teach him to box, daddy," said Louie, smiling up at him.
+
+But Buck shook his head. "No, no," he said gently--"except just to
+take care of himself--when he's fourteen, perhaps--if I'm here.
+Swimming, not sparring. They're a queer lot, them in the ring."
+
+"You must go now, Mr. Causton," said Miss Dot.
+
+The boy was thirty hours old when there arrived for him a great case
+of toys suitable for a child of four. Buck and Chaff had been round
+the toyshops together. Mrs. Buck, disobeying her husband for the only
+time in her life, came by stealth with a flannel binder that might
+have enwrapped a six-pounds' child; Jim (as Louie had decided to call
+him), weighed ten pounds, beef to the heel.
+
+He throve at once, and continued to thrive.
+
+The pair of them were the pride of that pagan Putney Nursing Home.
+
+The first of the two incidents that may be allowed to close this
+portion of Louie's story was a second visit by Kitty Windus to Louie.
+
+She came at ten o'clock at night, and only with difficulty obtained
+admission. She was allowed ten minutes, on the condition that Louie
+was awake. Louie was awake. Kitty neither lifted her veil nor asked to
+see the child. There was no trace now of her little maxims of conduct;
+she spoke agitatedly, and out of a stinging, jealous pain.
+
+"I've come to ask you something, Miss Causton, and you've got to tell
+me," she announced, without preface. "I've a right to know."
+
+"Speak a little lower," said Louie, glancing at the babe. "Sit down
+and tell me what it is."
+
+But Kitty would not sit. Incapable of grandeurs of style, she
+nevertheless attempted them.
+
+"I don't know whether you happen to be aware what people are saying
+about you," she said. Her boat-shaped hat and Inverness cape gave her
+a little the appearance of a scanty tree with which some topiary
+artist had done his best.
+
+Louie could not help smiling a little; she could have that kind of
+thing out with herself without calling in Kitty.
+
+"My dear! Of course I know they might be saying anything!" She drew
+her child a little closer to her.
+
+"Suppose we keep the my dears till we've finished talking," said Kitty
+coldly. "I mean what they're saying at the Business School."
+
+Louie spoke quietly. "I suppose you mean about me and my boy?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean that, and I've come to ask you to your face; _I'm_ not
+the one to beat about the bush! I want to know who----" There was no
+need for Kitty to complete the sentence.
+
+"You won't know that," said Louie, more quietly still.
+
+"Ah! perhaps you won't tell me because you daren't?"
+
+"I've not told anybody, and I'm not going to tell you. I'd die first.
+Perhaps before we go any further you'll tell me why you want to know?"
+
+"You don't suppose I'd ask you if it wasn't my business, do you?"
+
+Slowly Louie turned her eyes on her. She spoke slowly too. "We should
+get on more quickly if you didn't jump so to conclusions," she said.
+"I don't know what your conclusions are, but you seem to have made
+your mind up about something. If you'll change your tone I'll talk to
+you; if you won't, I won't."
+
+At that Kitty began to sob. She had to lift her veil in order to put a
+wisp of wet handkerchief to her eyes. But she changed her tone.
+
+"I only want to know," she said. "And I don't want to know if it isn't
+my business. But I _have_ seen him look at you, and he _did_ dance
+with you, and when they said----"
+
+"Who said?" Louie interrupted; but she had already made a guess. "And
+said what?"
+
+"Jeff, of course," Kitty replied. "Miriam Levey noticed him looking at
+you first, but after that I saw for myself. And you did dance with
+him. I might forgive him, but I'd never, never forgive _you_."
+
+Louie suddenly put a question. Apparently it was for nothing less
+preposterous than that question that Kitty was here.
+
+"One moment," she said. "Do you mean there's something about Mr.
+Jeffries and myself you want to know?"
+
+"Yes; and I mean to know," Kitty snapped.
+
+"And that's all?"
+
+"Enough, _I_ should say!"
+
+"Please hear me out. In fact"--Louie paused for a moment and then
+rapped out sharply--"you want to know whether my lover was Mr.
+Jeffries?"
+
+"That'll do to be going on with," said Kitty sullenly.
+
+"Then I'll tell you if you'll tell me who said he was."
+
+"I don't see what that's got to do with it, but I'll tell you if you
+like. Archie Merridew said so. There!"
+
+Archie Merridew!--But Louie restrained her gasp. "Thank you," she
+said. "May I ask whether you've asked Mr. Jeffries? _He_ might be in a
+position to know, you know."
+
+"No, I haven't."
+
+"But evidently you've seen something in his manner that would make it
+not quite impossible?"
+
+"I tell you, you've danced with him, and he's looked at you in a sort
+of way--more than once, Miriam says--and you're trying to shuffle out
+of the question," said Kitty, her suspicions aflame again.
+
+"Oh, I'll answer the question! If it had been he"--she glanced at the
+little head under her breast--"I'd tell you in a minute--for my baby's
+sake, you see. But it was not; and you might have saved yourself a
+journey if you'd gone to him first. And now please tell me a little
+more."
+
+Kitty still looked at her suspiciously. "You said you'd die sooner
+than tell," she cried quaveringly.
+
+"You mean you don't believe me? Well, I can't make you. If I told you
+the truth you'd just think I'd made up a name."
+
+"It _was_ somebody else?" cried Kitty eagerly.
+
+If it wasn't Mr. Jeffries, naturally--there was the child----
+
+"Oh, I _want_ to believe you!" Kitty suddenly broke out.
+
+Louie laughed desperately. "Well, my dear, you may. If it was so, I
+suppose you'd get it out of me. It isn't, that's all. And now I think
+I've a right to know exactly what this Mr. Merridew has been saying."
+
+Kitty looked hard at her for one moment longer, and then sank on her
+knees by the side of the bed. She had no choice but to believe. She
+broke into a torrent of words, low-spoken, not to rouse the child.
+Louie heard them, amazed. Slowly her incredulity turned into contempt.
+
+The horrid little beast! But, after all, she was not surprised. It was
+all in his character. Perhaps he had been drunk; perhaps it was merely
+a fancy-stationery idea of humour. Not that she minded a straw; she
+laughed; she supposed she was there to have stones thrown at her; it
+was merely a little annoying that they were not thrown straighter. She
+could picture the over-pocket-monied little bounder, measuring all
+pecks out of his own bushel, leaning up against a bar somewhere,
+probably too fuddled to distinguish his own humorous fancy from a
+story of life with names given, and believing it himself by the time
+he had repeated it once or twice.
+
+The little worm!
+
+"But," she said presently, disgustedly smiling, "_you_ remember when I
+came to the School, and that I asked _you_ who Mr. Jeffries was----"
+
+"Of course!" said Kitty, suddenly entirely believing. "How absurd! But
+oh, I do love him so."
+
+Louie mused.
+
+"And he--Mr. Jeffries--knows nothing about this, you say?" she asked
+presently.
+
+"No. He thinks something's wrong. He's been teaching at the School,
+you know, and of course he must have wondered what was the matter all
+this last week."
+
+"It's a week since Mr. Merridew--did me this favour?"
+
+"Yes. But perhaps Jeff thought----" She checked herself.
+
+"What? I think I ought to know what Mr. Jeffries may have thought."
+
+Kitty hesitated, and then, with a little burst, told her. It was
+curious. It appeared that Mr. Jeffries had been very hard up indeed,
+so hard up that, quite recently, he had actually had to take a
+position as a commissionaire. It was known, and possibly he had set
+any oddities of behaviour towards himself down to that.
+
+A commissionaire! Louie was astounded.
+
+"And aren't you going to tell him?" she managed to get out.
+
+"I must, the very next time I see him."
+
+"You mean to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know. You see"--Kitty hesitated again--"he's left the School.
+Practically been dismissed. He's got some work at Bedford now."
+
+"Dismissed on account of this?"
+
+"I expect so."
+
+"And now, of course, you've got to tell him that you believed this?"
+
+Kitty dropped her head on the bed. She gave a little moan. "I don't
+know how I shall ever do it!" she groaned in the bedclothes.
+
+Louie considered herself entitled to agree that it wouldn't be easy.
+
+Presently Kitty rose. She crossed to Louie's mirror and adjusted the
+boat-shaped hat. Then she came back to the bedside again and craned
+her head forward.
+
+"May I see the baby?" she asked.
+
+"Another time, I think," said Louie, her lips compressed.
+
+Kitty left.
+
+Louie's mind was in a whirl. At her request, Kitty had turned out the
+gas before leaving, and only a nightlight glimmered on the little
+invalid's table. She gazed at it. So she too had been haled into the
+drama!
+
+On the young fancy stationer she wasted never a thought, either of
+indignation or of anything else; but Kitty--Evie Soames--Mr.
+Jeffries--Roy--herself!--What a nightmare--what a pantomime! What an
+incredible genius this Mr. Jeffries seemed to have for getting himself
+into complications and dragging other people after him! It might well
+have puzzled anybody--anybody who had not the key of the puzzle--to
+know which among them all he really had honoured with his choice! Only
+Miss Levey seemed to be immune. Surely, for the sake of completeness,
+he could have found a way of dragging her in too!
+
+Louie had to hold her key exceedingly firmly in order to retain even
+that lunatic theory that seemed to be the truth.
+
+By dint of holding fast, however, the theory still stood the strain.
+Evie Soames and Mr. Jeffries were still the central figures of the
+piece. Kitty was still the stalking-horse behind which, for whatever
+reasons, he machinated. She herself was still merely dragged in at the
+whim of a vicious little scoundrel over whose tongue whisky and
+calumnies ran indifferently, and this little beast was still engaged,
+or all but engaged, to Evie Soames. Yes, the triangle re-established
+itself. Kitty and herself were no more than imported complications.
+The big man and the red-waistcoated youth were still the protagonists,
+and they faced one another over the stupid little head of Evie Soames.
+
+And yet Louie, lying with her boy at her breast and blinking at the
+nightlight, refused to class herself with the superfluous Kitty. She
+did not see herself in a "walking on" part. Though she made her entry
+late, something told her that she would have a word to say--or else it
+was a botched and mangled piece indeed. Of life itself as a botched
+and mangled piece she had no conception; though she kept her thoughts
+of Him locked within her own breast, it was still the bed of them that
+there _was_ an Artist over all. But for a false start she would have
+been on the stage now, and she would have given a voice to that
+pitiful part of poor Kitty's. Say she had not left that Holborn School
+when she did--she remembered that breaking-up dance--had one more
+opportunity like that been given to her----
+
+Then in the darkness she coloured violently. She had realised her own
+thoughts. This was as much as to say that she would have accepted
+Kitty's rôle--would have consented to be an understudy--would, like
+other understudies, have ousted the principal in time--would have
+topped the bill with a man the latest of whose mysterious activities
+was that he had been a commissionaire----
+
+She loved, or was on the point of loving, Mr. Jeffries----
+
+"Nonsense!" she ridiculed herself.
+
+But nonsense or not, it was stronger than all her efforts to think
+about something else. Perhaps it was her own false start that set her
+wondering, and ever returning to her wonder, whether he had not made
+one too. He seemed to have set up the figure of Evie Soames in his own
+imagination, and probably had not looked at Evie Soames as she
+actually was since. He seemed to have his full share of that masculine
+vanity which will have nothing to do with the compromise by which the
+world jogs on; his rapt, lion's eyes might see visions afar off, and
+he would not as much as know that his shins were black and raw with
+the bruises of the hard facts among which he stumbled. Little as Louie
+knew of him, she thought she knew that. Lucky Evie Soames, who might
+be as stupid as the mud beneath her feet, yet in one man's blind,
+far-seeing eyes could do no wrong!
+
+But of course it was nonsense that Louie should have to recognise Evie
+Soames for her rival.
+
+Yet, on one other point, as she lay with the babe at her breast and
+her eyes fixed on the little flame of the nightlight, she was already
+prepared to make a wager with herself. Her theory was still only a
+theory; she could not prove it; but it could prove itself. It would
+work out or it would not work out; if it worked out--well, Louie was a
+woman, and no woman hesitates for a single moment to put on the mantle
+of the prophet. Indeed, she had prophesied long before. "Circumstances
+are strong," this Mr. Jeffries who had since been a commissionaire had
+admitted when she had danced with him, "but is anybody ever beaten
+unless they deserve to be?" And he had taken his failure in the
+examination as a sign that he ought not to have gone in for it, and
+had refused to enter again. Yes, the earthenware vessel was on the
+point of collision with the one of bronze, and which would break the
+months or the weeks or the days would show. Kitty must not think that
+it availed a predestined spinster anything that she got engaged; Mr.
+Jeffries would never marry Kitty.
+
+And if Louie herself had returned to the Business School after
+Christmas----
+
+Her dream of how she had danced with him, and he had said "_You_
+understand," and she had replied, "_I_ should have found a way to keep
+you," returned vividly to her----
+
+She would have found a way.
+
+Then she remembered that which even then had stood between.
+
+Excitedly she clutched her boy to her--he woke with the pressure, and
+gave a little croaking cry.
+
+This, then, was the first of the two things that remained to be told
+about this part of Louie's story.
+
+For the second of them she had neither years nor months to wait, but a
+bare fortnight. A very few words will tell it.
+
+One evening after the boy had been put to bed she went down into the
+nurses' parlour and helped Dot and Nurse Chalmers to overhaul the
+blouses in which the doctors operated. Besides themselves, only Miss
+Cora was present; she was reading an evening paper. Louie saw her
+purse her lips and then throw the paper away. Presently Louie, tossing
+a patched blouse aside, reached for the paper.
+
+A few minutes later Miss Cora, with a "Why, what's the matter?"
+started forward and bent over her. Louie had gone deathly white.
+
+"It's nothing--I shall be all right presently," she muttered, her eyes
+closed.
+
+Miss Cora took the paper. The page at which she herself had last
+looked was still uppermost. It contained an account of a suicide.
+
+"What is it, dear?" Miss Cora asked again. "Not that?" She pointed to
+the paragraph. Indeed, there was little else of interest on the page.
+
+"I shall be all right in a minute," Louie murmured again.
+
+There was nothing remarkable about the suicide. A young man had hanged
+himself behind his bedroom door, and a verdict in accordance with the
+evidence (which, it was suggested, was largely medical) had been
+returned. He had left a letter for his mother, precisely like almost
+every other such letter, and parts of it were quoted. The young man's
+name was Archie Merridew. He was to have been married on the morrow.
+
+"Is that it?" Miss Cora asked again.
+
+Louie nodded.
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+Louie made no reply.
+
+They are experienced women at nursing homes; especially about
+suppressed medical evidence they are able to draw conclusions. The
+next morning a few rapid guarded words passed between Louie and Miss
+Cora. The effect of them was to give Louie a sudden feeling of nausea.
+Miss Cora's whispered explanation seemed only too probable. That also
+was all in his character.
+
+"That's it, you may be sure," said Miss Cora. "They ought to be
+lethal-chambered, nasty little sewer-rats; one of 'em's saved them the
+trouble at any rate. Did you know the girl he was going to marry too?"
+
+"Yes," said Louie.
+
+"Well, she's had an escape. But don't think about it. You have your
+own little boy. Come into the garden till your father comes and then
+have a nice long drive. Shall we wrap Jimmy up and let him go with
+you?"
+
+That, then, was the second thing; but already Louie had heard a
+prophetical whisper in her soul.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+PILLAR TO POST
+
+
+I
+
+When, in the October of 1896, Louie Causton left Mortlake Road, with
+half the nurses of the home waving their handkerchiefs after her, she
+went to a house near the Parson's Green end of Wandsworth Bridge Road.
+As she left that house before Christmas, going to another one near the
+Walham Green Town Hall, there is no need to describe it. Neither need
+the Walham Green house be described, since from there she went, in
+February 1897, to yet another house, in a street off the Bishops Road,
+Fulham. These and other removals did not necessitate the use of a
+pantechnicon; a four-wheeler sufficed on each occasion. Louie, the boy
+and the nurse went inside; the top was quite big enough for her
+belongings. She stuck to the south-western district; at no time did
+she move farther east than when she took two rooms in Cheyne Walk,
+over a bicycle shop near the Chelsea suspension bridge--which rooms,
+by the way, she was forced to leave at an hour's notice, her landlord,
+a man of straw, being himself ejected and involving his sub-tenant in
+his own catastrophe. She kept to this district because of its nearness
+to Kingston and the Molyneux Arms. By the time the boy was nine months
+old she was living in Tadema Road, not far from where the Chelsea
+power-station now stands.
+
+The nurse whom she had engaged was a link--save for Chaff the only
+one--with Trant. She was, indeed, her own old French governess, once
+Céleste Martin, now Céleste Farnier and a widow. She was a
+Provençale, from Arles. On the death of her husband, which had taken
+place while Louie had been still at the home in Mortlake Road, she had
+sought out Chaff with a sheaf of testimonials, and by-and-by Louie had
+engaged her. She paid her ten shillings a week, on the distinct
+understanding that she must not hesitate to accept the first decent
+post that offered. It was already plain that, even if Céleste could
+have brought herself to leave the little girl to whom she had taught
+the order of the personal pronouns in French, her affection for Master
+Jim would have haled her back again.
+
+Louie changed her abode so frequently for one reason and another. In
+perhaps a third of the cases the landladies to whom she offered
+herself as a lodger found reasons for asking her to leave when they
+saw that her letters were addressed to "Miss Causton." Then, to save
+cab fares, Louie began to make her position plain at the outset.
+Sometimes this made a difference, sometimes none. On the whole, London
+S.W. showed itself charitable or merely indifferent. By May 1897 she
+was at another house in Wandsworth Bridge Road.
+
+She had not refused to accept, easily and as a loan, a sum of money
+from Buck; but thrice she had well-nigh quarrelled with Buck because
+she would accept it only as a loan. Twice, for the same reason, she
+had had tussles with Chaff. But money, until she should find something
+settled to do, she must have. No doubt Richenda Earle would have
+shaken her head and have pointed out that now Louie not only had the
+Scarisbricks behind her, but a prosperous publican also; but Louie,
+though she lived as frugally as if she had to earn every penny, did
+not see why her boy should go short while there was money to be had.
+She took the sensible view of the matter, and borrowed, while walking
+her shoes out and answering advertisements for this, that and the
+other.
+
+Up to the summer of '97 her occupations had been almost as various as
+her addresses. She very soon discovered that her Holborn training was
+of little use to her, and she could not (as also she discovered) play
+the piano well enough to give lessons. What she dreamed of, of course,
+was a comfortable private secretaryship; no young woman is so
+ill-trained or so incompetent but she fancies herself good enough for
+a private secretaryship. Perhaps Uncle Augustus might have helped her
+to one, but she would have nothing to do with Uncle Augustus; and
+Chaff was unable to beat up anything of the kind. Buck's proposal,
+that she should keep his books, had been the cause of their second
+altercation. Common-sense in the matter of borrowing she was prepared
+to be; beyond that point she remembered her pride and Richenda's
+words. So for the present she was spared the worst of the pinch.
+
+So, in the early part of that year, she was in an A.B.C. cash-desk,
+traveller for a History, and saleswoman at an Earls Court
+chocolate-stall. Then, in June, she obtained, actually in the face of
+considerable competition, a place in the showrooms of a Bond Street
+photographer. Perhaps her dresses, of which several still remained,
+helped her to this place. She wrote letters, arranged appointments,
+answered press and other calls on the telephone, and received sitters.
+No doubt some of these knew Uncle Augustus. Robson, of the Board of
+Trade (who came one day), would probably know him; so would George
+Hastie, Robson's friend and colleague, and perhaps Sir Peregrine
+Campbell and others. Some of them, the more sporting sort, might even
+know Buck too, for Buck was still a tradition; in short, Louie's own
+position amused her immensely. By taking her letters home with her and
+leaving a younger assistant in charge, she was frequently able to
+leave the showrooms by half-past four and to spend the evenings with
+Céleste and her boy. Incidentally, Louie improved her French a good
+deal, for Céleste crooned over the boy in French and English
+indifferently.... "The darleeng--the lo-ove--the précieux--oh, oh, oh,
+mais il existe--il manifeste, le petiot----"; and she would break off
+to sing, in a cracked voice, "Le Pont d'Avignon," or some lullaby of
+Frédéric Mistral. She idolised the infant; when he was put to bed she
+did not delay long to follow him, for Louie, who had her work to do
+during the day, must not be roused at night; and so Louie frequently
+sat alone, writing her letters or wrapped in her own musings. She
+received thirty-five shillings a week. Her job had the appearance of a
+"permanency." In July she got a "rise" of three shillings a week. She
+also got ten days' holiday, the greater part of which she spent in the
+company of her father. She was beginning to know what holidays meant
+now.
+
+On one of those days she had an unexpected little meeting in Richmond
+Park. Céleste and the boy had gone on by train, and she was walking.
+The meeting was with a girl called Myrtle Morris, who, when Louie had
+kept the confectionery stall at Earls Court, had sold cigarettes at
+the stall adjoining. Miss Morris was accompanied by a tall young man;
+she stopped to greet Louie, and the young man walked slowly on. Myrtle
+asked Louie what she was doing now. Louie told her. "And you?" she
+said.
+
+"Oh, I've gone back to my old trade," the girl said, nodding towards
+her retreating companion. "Artists' model. That's my present
+employer--Izzard."
+
+"Who?" said Louie. The name seemed familiar.
+
+"Billy Izzard. Know him?"
+
+"No," said Louie. But she remembered now where she had heard the name.
+
+"Jolly clever painter," said the model authoritatively. "Nice fellow
+too. Shall I call him?"
+
+"Thanks, but I must be getting on," said Louie. "Good-bye."
+
+"So long. Come and look me up some time, won't you? 25 Edith Grove."
+
+"Thank you. Good-bye."
+
+So that was Roy's friend! They had not gone down with the yacht that
+had lain under the hill at Rainham Parva. But she had only seen Mr.
+Izzard's back. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought of
+Roy; then the sum-total of a long sequence of reveries returned to her
+again.
+
+Or rather, the factors that made that total returned. In spite of her
+broodings late at night, when her letters were written and Jimmy's
+food prepared for the night, she was still unable to cast them up. Had
+she been asked to state her relation now to Mr. Jeffries her attempt
+would have been something like this:
+
+"It's perfectly absurd, of course. There is no relation--nothing that
+can properly be called a relation. How can there be, with a man I
+don't see--haven't seen since that queer party? I don't even know
+where he is or what he's doing; he may be a commissionaire again for
+all I know."
+
+"Yes, but," she now answered herself, as if it had been some form of a
+dialogue, "don't forget that other night, at Mortlake Road, after
+Kitty'd gone."
+
+She did not forget that night. She had told herself that night that it
+was nonsense that she should love Mr. Jeffries. Again she answered
+that critical objector within herself.
+
+"But it _is_ nonsense after all! How _can_ I? I suppose I mean that if
+things had been different I might have loved him. Moping about a man
+you never see is all very well for a schoolgirl for a week or two, but
+not for grown women, and mothers at that."
+
+"Then you mean he's just the same to you as Buck and Chaff?" the
+dialogue continued, as she walked.
+
+"All I mean is that he might have been more."
+
+"Well, suppose you were to hear now that he'd broken off with Kitty,
+and--you know--that other were to happen?"
+
+She did know what she meant by "that other." It was the most familiar
+of her thoughts. It was what in her heart she was stilly waiting
+for--to learn one day that Mr. Jeffries had broken off with Kitty and
+had become engaged to Evie Soames. And at that point she always tried
+to stop the dialogue. Beyond that point lay something that she vaguely
+apprehended might be horrible.
+
+She had no definite reason for supposing this horrible thing to exist.
+The horror, indeed, was that it might exist, and to entertain morbid
+thoughts about something that merely might exist was neither pleasant
+nor wise. But at times she could not forget the promise she had once
+made to herself--that if anything unaccountable ever happened to a
+certain young man she would know in what quarter to look for the
+likely cause of it. And something had happened. Part of what had
+happened she had had from Miss Cora; "A lethal chamber--the nasty
+little sewer-rat!" Miss Cora had said; and it had happened on the eve
+of his wedding to Evie Soames. To commit suicide had been the only
+thing to do.
+
+And of course he had committed suicide....
+
+Then that second voice within her tried to speak again. "Remember," it
+said, "that this Mr. Jeffries, of whom you can't help thinking when
+all's said and done, had suffered innumerable insults from him--you
+yourself were dragged into one of them----"
+
+"Quiet!" the other self commanded peremptorily.
+
+"--and as far as that girl you hate's concerned--Evie Soames--if the
+reason was good enough for suicide it was good enough for the other
+thing."
+
+"What other thing?" Louie, in spite of herself, could not help asking.
+
+"Oh--_you_ know!"
+
+"Do you know what you're saying?" This was an attempt to browbeat the
+other Louie.
+
+"Oh, perfectly well! _I_ know myself--you--us--Louie Causton--better
+than you do! And I know that lion better! Have you forgotten? Don't
+you remember what you thought of him, that if he set his mind on a
+thing he'd get it sooner or later, one way or another? Don't you
+remember what he said--'I wonder if anybody's ever beaten who doesn't
+deserve to be?' They are dangerous men who believe that! And the way's
+clear for him now, isn't it? Of course it is! Why, suppose you hear,
+first, that he's thrown Kitty Windus over; suppose you hear, next,
+that he's forging ahead in his business, whatever it is--you know he's
+as ambitious as Satan; then suppose you hear that he's engaged to Evie
+Soames--married to her. Suppose you hear all this?"
+
+"Oh, anybody can make up an _a priori_ tale like that!" the other
+scoffed.
+
+"Perhaps they can; but what _is_ a murder anyway? Whoever sees one
+committed? Don't they hang men on just such _a priori_ tales, as you
+call it? Suppose that, rather than let him marry that girl----"
+
+"Oh, stop, stop!" Louie positively shrieked within herself.
+
+She was white. This scene always turned her white. She quickened her
+pace, but her ghastly pallor remained unchanged. A hundred times she
+had argued it all before, and she knew the conclusion that would
+presently come.
+
+It came, the conclusion. That portion of herself that always seemed
+resolved to convict Mr. Jeffries of a hideous thing spoke, as it were,
+softly, seductively.
+
+"And what then, Louie? What then? Come, don't be afraid of yourself!
+You know it in your heart all the time! Roy--you remember--_you_ had
+to make the love there; and you want to be _made_ love to, not to make
+love. _You_ didn't find Mr. Jeffries a butt and a laughing-stock, you
+know. You envied that little chit of a milliner's hand--envied her and
+hated her. And she hates you, and always will, because you caught her
+in the dark with that other creature. Yes, yes, I know you were
+overstrung at that time, and didn't see yourself very clearly, but
+look at the thing now--you're calm now. When you saw his eyes, all
+full of perils and stratagems and deceits, all for her sake, you know
+you longed to have a man do all that for _you_! And when he did that
+mad thing with Kitty Windus, you know you wanted a man who would go
+even to those lengths for _you_! And you know that when he throws her
+over--brutally, heartlessly, without conscience--you'll want a man who'll
+be just as brutal and heartless and conscienceless for _you_! You all
+want it! You all love a ruthless man! You know it's the men who are the
+merciful sex when sex comes into the question; you're only merciful
+when it doesn't--just as those stupid men are merciless about the
+abstractions you don't care a straw about!... So suppose--suppose----"
+
+"Oh, stop!" Louie besought herself faintly.
+
+"--suppose it turns out as I say! Won't you immediately love him a
+little more when poor Kitty's sent about her business? And won't you
+love him a little more still when you hear he's engaged to Evie
+Soames? And won't you, when you learn that he's been willing to go all
+lengths--all lengths--for love, love him past all mending? You will,
+you will, you know you will!" The cry rang out almost exultantly.
+
+"But--but--those people--coroners' juries--are supposed to know all
+about these things."
+
+"Coroners' juries!... Do you remember his eyes?..."
+
+Beyond that point Louie never got. She usually rose quickly and went
+out to post the photographer's letters. There, then, were the elements
+of her sum. Sometimes some of them presented themselves, sometimes
+others; more and more she shrank from casting the total. And often, to
+shake off the hideous, fascinating obsession, she did the most trivial
+thing she could think of--went to a drawer and overhauled her
+dresses, selecting the one she would wear at the photographer's
+showroom on the morrow.
+
+It was in her to turn from the thought of a possible murder to the
+shaking out of a crumpled dress.
+
+But she never wore the oyster-grey at the showrooms in Bond Street.
+Nevertheless she shook it out frequently, putting it back into the
+drawer again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That day, at the Molyneux Arms, Buck was alternately at his fondest
+and at his most tyrannical. The fondness was for Louie and the boy,
+the tyranny for everybody else. As Louie entered the little private
+parlour (she was not allowed to set foot in the rest of the premises)
+she heard loud crowings; they came from Jimmy, and were for the
+Pilgrim of Love who held him up at arm's-length in the air; but the
+next moment Buck was scolding a barmaid who had had the temerity to
+borrow the current number of _Modern Society_ before Louie had seen
+it. "Not that I don't make 'em all read it," he said, "but at times
+and seasons, and in their proper places; what with all these Radicals
+and what not we don't want chayoss coming again! You bring it back
+this minute, miss!--'Oryn--thia my Belovèd!"
+
+Buck kept his divided humour through tea; then there was another
+outburst. This time it was about a letter that had not been given to
+Louie immediately.
+
+"And how do _you_ know that it isn't important?" he broke out on his
+wife. "Not a word--not a word! I _know_ it is important--all letters
+addressed so are important, mind, for the future! Those letters aren't
+about the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, I'll have you
+know! Give it to her at once, and let Madermoselle hook up the back,
+or your next dress shall fasten down the front, I promise you!...
+What, little man! A granddad, eh? 'No re-(_h_)-est--but the
+gra-(_h_)-ave----'"
+
+For all Louie was able to guess from the signature, her letter might
+have been from butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, all three; the
+name--"hers to serve, Frank Hickley"--was unknown to her. But the
+single other name that the letter contained was known. It was that of
+Kitty Windus. She was laid up somewhere in Vauxhall, and wanted to see
+her.
+
+The next morning, in a shabby respectable street off the Vauxhall
+Bridge Road, Louie rang a bell beneath which, punched in a strip of
+aluminium, was the sign, "F. Hickley, Agent." F. Hickley himself
+opened the door. Later Louie learned that he was an agent for his
+wife's shopping, boot-cleaning and potato-peeling. Mrs. Hickley was
+Kitty's cousin, but the bit she had coming in was not enough to
+relieve her of the necessity of keeping a lodging-house. That it was a
+lodging-house Louie guessed from the number and variety of hats and
+coats that hung in the narrow yellow-painted hall. Mrs. Hickley
+appeared from somewhere below; Mr. Hickley, descending again, passed
+her on the stairs.
+
+"Are you Miss Causton?" Mrs. Hickley asked.
+
+"Yes. I've had a letter saying Miss Windus was here."
+
+"Will you come up? Don't take too much notice of her, what she says,
+especially about tracts; Uncle Arthur's side's liable to it. This
+way."
+
+"Is she ill?" Louie asked.
+
+"Not to call ill. She'll go to Margate in a week or two, for the air,
+though Margate's too strong for me; Littlehampton's my favourite. And
+Bognor. Mind the stair-rod--I must tell Frank to fasten it down."
+
+As Kitty had formerly found Louie, so Louie now found Kitty--in bed.
+Her muteness as long as Mrs. Hickley remained in the room seemed
+obstinate, _voulu_; the rapid speech into which she broke without
+preface when her cousin's step had ceased to sound on the stairs
+confirmed some vague impression of secretiveness. Louie was uneasy at
+the change in her.
+
+"You're not to talk about it," Kitty said, the words falling one over
+the other; "that's what the doctor meant, though of course he didn't
+know what it was. And Mr. Folliott too--the Reverend Mr. Folliott of
+St. Peters. He gave me the address in Cliftonville, quite the best end
+of the town; there's such a lot in a good address, don't you think?
+You know Margate?"
+
+"How are you, dear?" said Louie gently. "Yes, your cousin told me you
+were going away for a bit."
+
+"Right away," said Kitty. "I can, you see; I haven't got to work if I
+don't want to; though I'm not rich, of course. Neither is Annie, but I
+don't like to see men doing the housework like Cousin Frank for all
+that. I've told Frank so again and again. '_Be_ an agent,' I've said
+time after time; 'for typewriters, or mangles, or tea, or anything you
+like, but get out of the house; it isn't a man's place.' And it
+isn't.... You've heard?" she broke off suddenly to say.
+
+She blinked at Louie. Her neck above her nightgown was hardly more
+substantial than that of a chicken; her hands seemed to have become
+as veined as a skeleton leaf. Louie took one of them.
+
+"Always running errands and setting the table--it isn't a man's life,"
+Kitty continued. "'What does agent _mean_?' I said to him. 'Pull
+yourself together and _make_ it mean something, Frank!' I said.
+'You're not very big, but you're strong, and you've got your wits
+about you,' I said.... You've heard?" she demanded once more.
+
+"Well, tell me how you are," said Louie, patting the thin hand
+soothingly.
+
+"But have you heard the news? Glad tidings for all. 'Come unto Me, and
+I will give you rest'--that's what we all want--rest; though why they
+should print 'Come' in red and 'unto' in green and 'Me' in purple, and
+all the letters like twigs, I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear. And
+always Oxford frames. I must ask Mr. Folliott. 'Though your sins be as
+crimson----'"
+
+"You haven't asked how my little boy is, Kitty," said Louie.
+
+"'Suffer the little children, and forbid them not'--how is he?"
+
+But she did not wait for an answer. She was off again--the doctor, the
+Reverend Mr. Folliott, her approaching visit to Margate. And always
+she returned to the indignity of a man's doing women's work about the
+house. It was in this connection that she suddenly mentioned, in a way
+that gave Louie a slight start, the name of Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"I will at least say that for him," she prattled; "I shouldn't have
+got sick of the sight of him; out of the house at half-past nine he'd
+have been, and that would have been the end of him till six o'clock;
+not always bumping into you like Frank. I suppose you know Miss
+Levey's there too, at his Company? He's getting on there like
+anything. So's Mr. Mackie; you remember Mr. Mackie? He takes the
+auction himself now on Mondays and Thursdays; in Oxford Street;
+everybody stops as they walk past; he's a caution, is Mr. Mackie, I
+can tell you! But of course Jeff"--here she became mysterious, and
+nodded once or twice--"Jeff's on the way up--up. It's a different
+class of work from Mr. Mackie's; better, as you might say; he's in the
+Confidential Exchange Department, Miriam says----"
+
+"How is Miss Levey?" Louie asked, at a loss what else to say.
+
+"Oh, in the pink--but the soul's the chief thing; what shall it profit
+a man; and I don't know whether her soul's in the pink. Do you always
+_hold_ with the Church of England, Louie?" she asked earnestly.
+
+There was nothing to be made of her. She ran on weakly, irresponsibly,
+from trifle to trifle, and it was at Louie's own risk that she gave
+her talk any significance at all.... Suddenly she insisted that she
+herself had broken the engagement, not he. She spoke of his place in
+the Company--it was the Freight and Ballast Company; it appeared to be
+a "permanency." He was getting on--on; _he_ wouldn't polish brasses
+and take the lodgers' boots to be mended!... As she talked, Louie
+looked round the poor, neat little bedroom. It had framed texts and a
+picture of a lady shipwrecked in a nightgown; this was entitled
+"Simply to Thy Cross I cling." There was a good deal of muslin about,
+tied back with flyblown bows.
+
+But suddenly Kitty seemed to remember something. Louie was once more
+gently patting the hand on the counterpane when she gave a quick
+little clutch and sat up.
+
+"They wrote to you to come, didn't they?" she asked, looking hard at
+Louie.
+
+"Yes, dear. I'd have come sooner if I'd known. The letter was sent on
+from Mortlake Road. I came as soon as I got it."
+
+"That's all right," said Kitty, nodding mysteriously again. "I want to
+talk to you. Is the door shut?"
+
+"Yes; but don't talk. Let me talk to you instead."
+
+"No; there's something I want to say, and I shall forget it if I don't
+say it now.... You heard about it, didn't you? I don't mean the glad
+tidings for all----"
+
+"Lie down, dear." (Kitty was squatting up in bed.) "Tell me the next
+time I come. I'll come again."
+
+"No, I must tell you now. Though Jeff's sins be as scarlet. Of course
+you heard about Archie?"
+
+"Hush."
+
+"Of course you'd be down on him; quite right; so was Jeff. Jeff didn't
+half give him a talking to, I can tell you! 'Oh, I'll give him a
+dressing down,' he said; he was pretending it wasn't much, so as not
+to alarm me; but _I_ know him! 'Miss Causton and me?' he said. 'What a
+ridiculous idea!' And he made Archie apologise before the whole
+school. And now Archie's gone, and they said it was suicide; but what
+I can't understand is about Jeff's having that black eye, that very
+day. He'd fallen when he was drunk, he said, but Jeff never got drunk.
+He said he tripped on the step; but he never _got_ drunk, if you
+understand what I mean. Wine is a mocker, isn't it, Louie? But I'm
+sure Jeff wasn't drunk. He isn't that kind of man."
+
+Louie herself wondered why she should interpose as quickly and
+peremptorily as she did. She wondered, too, why she should do so in
+the words she used and in a voice so thin and harsh.
+
+"Oh--of _course_ he was drunk! My father keeps a public-house, so I
+ought to know. And they often get black eyes when they're drunk. Let's
+talk about something else."
+
+"Well," said Kitty, with her head on one side, "a public-house is as
+paying a business as there is, especially in a poor neighbourhood. But
+I'd rather have my little bit in tramways. People ought to be careful
+how they invest their money; dividends aren't everything; what shall
+it profit a man? So you think I needn't worry about Jeff's black eye?"
+
+All at once Louie felt an almost hysterical need to turn Kitty's weak
+wanderings into another direction--any other direction. Glibly she
+began to improvise.
+
+"It's horrid," she said, her voice a little raised. "I've seen them at
+my father's. They get drunk, and fall, and then they get black eyes
+quite easily. And," she ran on regardlessly, "they knock themselves
+about fearfully! I saw a man in the Harrow Road one night----"
+
+Feverishly she extemporised. To something she had once seen from the
+top of a bus she gave colour and circumstance. Kitty was impressed.
+"Dear me!" she said.
+
+Then, when the danger, whatever it was, seemed to be averted, Louie
+turned, though not much more calmly, to Margate. Kitty was perfectly
+docile; Margate or that dangerous other were all the same to her.
+Louie had never been to Margate, but she compared Margate with other
+places--Bournemouth, Ilfracombe, Scarboro.
+
+"I should like to go to Scarboro," Kitty mused--"Harrogate
+too--Harrogate's tremendously toney, isn't it?"
+
+"Very; all hotels and kursaals and pump rooms and things," averred
+Louie, who had never been to Harrogate either.
+
+Then, ten minutes later, she rose. She said good-bye. But even as she
+did so she received another start. Kitty had suddenly called in a
+sharp, loud voice.
+
+"Was that Annie at the door?"
+
+"No," said Louie, her nerves all on edge. "There's nobody."
+
+"Open the door and look!"
+
+Louie did so. There was nobody. She returned to the bed again. Kitty
+was once more squatting up. She still spoke sharply.
+
+"It's all very well to be so cocksure," she said, "but if Annie was to
+guess, or Miriam Levey or any of them, it would be all U P, I can tell
+you! Or Evie Soames either! I only told you because you're different
+and can hold your tongue! The tongue is a little member, so the best
+thing people can do is to shut up, you take my tip! And _I_ broke it
+off, mind you! There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,
+without girls making themselves cheap, and if he ever wants to know
+I'll tell him straight--no drunks and black eyes for me! Not that I
+don't forgive my enemies; I'm as good at that as the next one; but
+when I'm engaged again it'll be to somebody who's TT absolutely,
+though he does clean the knives!" Then, dropping her voice again, she
+said equably: "Good-bye, dear--you will come again, won't you? I
+sha'n't be going for a fortnight--the rooms aren't at liberty
+yet--there isn't a sea view, but it isn't a minute from the Ramsgate
+tram--you must come and stay with me----"
+
+Louie left her. Downstairs in the hall she had a few words with
+Kitty's cousin. She asked when the engagement with Mr. Jeffries had
+been broken off, and was told a year ago. Part of the time since then
+Kitty had spent with another cousin, Alf Windus, who lived in Kilburn
+and played the first fiddle at the Metropolitan in Edgware Road; part
+she had spent at Alf's sister-in-law's at Wealdstone; and for the rest
+of the time she had been at the Hickleys'. She was only a little
+flighty at times, and Mrs. Hickley was too busy, what with breakfasts
+at different hours and some liking one thing and some another, to pay
+much attention to her. She would have taken her for nothing if she
+could, but life was a struggle and business was business, and Mrs.
+Hickley had been lucky enough to let her room for the time she would
+be away at Margate. If Kitty really had anything to keep from her
+cousin, apparently (Louie concluded) she had kept it. Probably Kitty's
+condition (Mrs. Hickley added) was a result of the shock of Archie
+Merridew's suicide, coinciding with her rupture with Mr. Jeffries.
+Beyond that Mrs. Hickley minded her own business--plenty, too,----
+
+"Thank you for coming," she said, opening the door for Louie.
+
+"I shall come again if I may," Louie replied.
+
+Already she knew that she would go again--must go again--though it was
+only when she had left the house behind her that she began to ask
+herself why. Then followed another dialogue. The critical Louie began
+it.
+
+"Well, what did I tell you? His engagement's off, and he's getting on
+in his business. I'm right so far, eh?"
+
+"Too right," the other Louie muttered. "Let it rest."
+
+"Will it let you rest--that's the question! Well, what do you want
+next--his engagement to Evie Soames?"
+
+"I don't want anything. I've got my boy and my living to earn. That
+fills my life."
+
+"Then why are you going to see Kitty again? Come, don't shirk it. You
+know why you're going. You're going to----"
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+"You're going to protect him! If that poor creature thinks she
+guesses, you're going to tell her the notion's perfectly absurd!
+You're going to lie to her! If she has weak fancies, you're going to
+see that they're just as wide of the truth as they can be. Do you
+still deny what the truth is? After whatever the tale is he's been
+telling about drunkenness and a black eye? _Is_ he that kind of man?
+_Isn't_ that just as likely as not to be one of his blinds? A man has
+to be cunning, you know, to hoodwink a coroner's jury, but somehow he
+seems to have done it."
+
+"I don't know anything about it."
+
+"You mean you believe he hasn't done it? Then why are you going to see
+Kitty again? Oh, don't pretend to me! I tell you you're going to
+protect him. And why are you going to protect him? (Ah, I didn't think
+of that before, but I see it now!) You'll love him a little more still
+just for that! You'll love him because you have his safety in your
+hands. You'll keep it in your hands. Even if you have to take Kitty to
+live with you, so that you can watch her every spare moment, you'll
+take care she never, never knows. You're planning it now. You're
+going to have a right in that man no other woman on earth has, Evie
+Soames or anybody else. And you're going to take him from Evie Soames
+too, if you can!"
+
+The other attempted irony. "What, me? With my story?"
+
+"You only regret your story because it stands now in your way of
+getting him! Would you marry Roy now even if you could gain a kingdom
+by it? Why, you wouldn't before, let alone now! What are you going to
+see Kitty again for--to-morrow? We shall see! Your nerves are all
+a-jump at this moment; you don't feel it safe to leave here even for a
+few hours! And another thing. Miriam Levey seems to be at his place,
+wherever it is, and you're positively trembling about _that_! While
+you're trying to worm things out of Kitty on the one side, she'll be
+at the other--_you_ know what she is! So the first thing you'll do
+will be to find out exactly what Kitty's got into her head."
+
+But here the normal Louie temporarily triumphed. "What a tale you're
+making up!" she laughed. "These things simply do not happen. Actually,
+you're trying to force it on me that I love a man simply because he's
+committed a----"
+
+"Not simply because----"
+
+"Well, that I'm in love with a man who has committed one. Tell that to
+the world, and see how you're laughed at!... Oh no, it's too much.
+People don't do it, especially when it's guesswork, pure and
+simple----"
+
+So she triumphed. The other Louie held her peace.
+
+But for all that she went to see Kitty again on the morrow.
+
+
+II
+
+It was an error of judgment that caused Louie to leave the
+photographer's in Bond Street. The money she owed to Buck and Chaff
+was on her mind; she saw that Richenda Earle had been right; she was
+not yet out in the open. She sought to diminish her indebtedness by
+finding a better-paid post.
+
+The opportunity presented itself. She obtained, at a salary of three
+pounds a week, the coveted secretaryship. Never mind to whom she
+became secretary; he is now a renowned author; and Louie was with him
+for just a fortnight. At the end of that time he offered to double her
+salary. Louie's answer was to walk immediately out of his house. She
+had now no job at all.
+
+The story of the pinch shall be passed over lightly. The boy did not
+feel it; it was she who tightened her belt. Promising herself that it
+was for the last time, she borrowed of Buck, and then removed to Edith
+Grove, taking two small rooms in the same house as Myrtle Morris, the
+model. But Myrtle had gone for the Christmas season into pantomime,
+and as Louie was out all day, and asleep when Myrtle returned at
+night, she saw little of her. She would have gone into pantomime too,
+but she was too late, and still hoped for something better. Of
+necessity Céleste remained with her; Céleste kept the place going with
+her needle. This was at the beginning of 1898. February found her
+again in a cash-desk, this time at Slater's. The desk had a mirrored
+panel in the front of it that extended from the narrow counter to the
+floor, and at first Louie wondered why clerks and shop-assistants put
+down their money, stood back from the desk, and grinned. Then one
+day, when somebody else was inside the box, she noticed the illusion.
+The head and shoulders of the girl in the cage appeared to be
+continued downwards by the trousers of a man. As she could not afford
+to throw up her job, she continued to bear the grins disdainfully.
+After her day's work she acquired from Céleste the art of crochet. Her
+mats and table-centres and borders for teacloths went in with
+Céleste's own work.
+
+Her improved French enabled her to pass, in April, from the cash-desk
+at Slater's to one at a foreign restaurant in Soho. She still lived in
+Edith Grove. For several weeks that summer she was again at Earls
+Court, but with the reopening of the theatres she obtained a place in
+the ladies' cloakroom at His Majesty's. One night she helped Miss
+Elwell, the daughter of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, off with her
+cloak. She was unrecognised. She wondered how B. Minor was getting on.
+
+She was still at His Majesty's at Christmas 1898; but the New Year saw
+her at still another place--a Ladies' Turkish Baths, in St. James's.
+Buck, angry and disapproving of the whole course of her life, liked
+this least of all; massage somehow brought it home to him. But there
+was a worse shock still in store for Buck. In the spring of '99 Louie
+became an artist's model.
+
+Myrtle Morris introduced her to the profession and to Roy's friend,
+Billy Izzard, at the same time. This also was in Edith Grove. Billy
+Izzard, whose large, boyish face and loose, shambling figure somehow
+gave Louie the impression that he had either grown too quickly or else
+not yet filled out, was telling Miss Morris, with a candour entirely
+disarming, that for some purpose or other her own form was no good at
+all; and Miss Morris asked him why he didn't try the Models' Club. He
+snorted.
+
+"Try it? I have tried it; tried everything. Fact of the matter is,
+it's like going to a Registry Office for servants; you find the rich
+people have snapped up all the best before they get there. Old Henson
+gets 'em. He's got the very girl I want; Miss Gale; but I can't pay
+what Henson pays. And the rest of you are like that egg--good in
+parts."
+
+Louie wondered whether Billy had ever heard her name before; she found
+a way of making sure. The talk turned to holiday-places for the coming
+summer, and Louie contrived to mention the Somerset coast and the
+Bristol Channel. The unsuspecting Billy told her that he had once been
+yachting there with a fellow and had had a smash-up. It was amusing.
+According to Billy, the other fellow had rather fancied himself as a
+patcher-up of broken centre-boards and suchlike, had put in at some
+place or other, and had said he'd made the centre-board all right; and
+he'd come pretty near drowning the pair of them off a place called
+Combe Martin. Luckily they'd been spied by the coastguard, and a boat
+had been put out to them. "Rottenest piece of navigation in England,"
+Billy grumbled on; "there's a place called the Boiling Pot----" He
+described it....
+
+Louie felt a little gush of gratitude towards Roy. He had not
+chattered. But of course he would not----
+
+She did not offer at once to sit to Billy; it was a fortnight later
+that she screwed up her courage to do so. During that time she thought
+the matter out. Perhaps the stark simplicity of the thing attracted
+her. No acquirement she was ever likely to possess would greatly
+improve her circumstances; it would probably be the same to the end of
+the chapter--cash-desk, waitress, Earls Court--Earls Court, mannequin,
+and a private secretaryship with an offer of double wages. At two
+colleges she had learned little or nothing; she lacked application;
+but here was something that quietly brushed acquirements
+aside--something that went flagrantly by favour. It was femininity
+reduced to its simplest statement. She had no fear of Billy Izzard.
+She guessed that to him she would be little more than a more complex
+whitewashed cube or cone or pyramid.
+
+She did not even colour when she made her proposal to him....
+
+"But I expect you'll go off to old Henson or some other swell
+presently," he sighed, as she stood before him....
+
+And of course Chaff, barring her face that was best suited with a
+large shady hat, had given her her testimonial long before.
+
+Buck was furious. The original, genuine Pilgrim of Love had reason
+enough to know what happened in studios. Young women of high birth (in
+Louie's case it would probably be a young man) began to take their
+lunches there, and one day burst into jealous unhappy tears, and after
+that the Pilgrimage began. But Louie only laughed at him. She reminded
+him that she had reason to regard herself as a pilgrim too. At that
+Buck looked hard at her.
+
+"Little woman," he said slowly, "d'you mean--that there is somebody?"
+Louie laughed again, but more consciously.
+
+"Once or twice lately," Buck continued, still looking hard at her,
+"I've wondered whether there might be----"
+
+"How can there be, daddy?"
+
+"Well, the other isn't befitting," said Buck, shaking his head and
+returning to the original point.
+
+"My daddy did it."
+
+"Ah, men's different. For high ladies it--it isn't befitting."
+
+"I'm not a young girl, daddy."
+
+"No." Buck sighed. If he had only known her when she was a young girl!
+But the whims of the Scarisbricks were still the Scarisbricks' whims,
+and as such above his judgment. "But I want to see this Mr. Izzard,"
+he added grimly.
+
+"That you certainly sha'n't," Louie replied promptly. "Fancy your
+taking me round everywhere I go!"
+
+"Everywhere?" Buck repeated, alarmed anew.
+
+"Of course. If it's a business it's a business. Why, Mr. Izzard alone
+would be--dreadful! It's no good, daddy; you can't change my mind."
+
+He saw that he could not, but he still tried. It only delayed a little
+her carrying of her point. In the end--well, she was her mother's
+daughter. There was no more to be said.
+
+So she began to make the round of the Chelsea studios, and presently
+moved, with Céleste and the boy, to more comfortable quarters in
+Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction. This took her farther from her work
+in Chelsea, but brought her nearer to the Lambeth and Westminster
+Schools of Art, where also she obtained sittings, sometimes during
+the day, sometimes in the evenings also. She sat for Billy when Billy
+could afford to pay her. "No, no--no tick, Billy," she told him once;
+"I don't do this for amusement." Of the boy Billy knew nothing....
+Buck, still strongly averse from the whole proceeding, at first
+refused to hear her gossip of the day's work; but, as his silence did
+not alter matters, little by little he began to come round. Soon they
+exchanged experiences quite freely. He told her what Sopley had said
+about his deltoid, Henson about his thigh. "You vain old daddy!" she
+said, stroking his cheek, "I believe for two pins you'd do it again!"
+She took a pleasure in fondly shocking him in the same sort. Sometimes
+he mused long. You will admit that it was something to muse over. And
+so--well, so Louie, throwing acquirements aside with her clothes,
+became, by virtue of her peculiar commodity, economically emancipated.
+As female models, women are eminently better than men.
+
+She did fairly well at it. So well did she do that from the three
+rooms in Lavender Hill (the third one Céleste's) piece by piece her
+landlady's furniture began to disappear. Her own took its place. She
+intended, when she had enough of her own, to save the difference in
+rent between furnished and unfurnished quarters by taking a small
+flat. So her two chests of drawers and her wardrobe were her own; so
+were much of her cutlery and bed and table linen; and so, of course,
+were Jimmy's various paraphernalia. But she was not ready to leave
+yet. The summer of 1900, she thought, would be early enough.
+
+And in one particular at least she was now able to hold up her head.
+She still owed money both to Buck and Chaff, but she knew as much
+about the struggle for a livelihood as Richenda Earle herself. And
+she had not grizzled. Life had not knocked her out. She was her
+father's daughter after all.
+
+And yet, once more, she felt herself her mother's daughter too. The
+reason, which was not very far to seek, was this:
+
+The earlier stages of that furtive romance that in the end had left
+her former husband no Rest but the Grave were known only to Mrs.
+Chaffinger herself. Henson had not guessed them; Lord Moone had seen
+only the resultant scandal of them. But Louie understood a little now.
+She could at least guess what had happened to her mother between her
+first setting eyes on the splendid Buck and that final petulant,
+pathetic cry: "Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me!" By
+sympathy she was able now to divine the sighs, the half-acknowledged
+longings, the half-shamed daydreams, the revulsions, the sinkings back
+again. For Louie now knew something of these things within herself.
+
+Not that there was not harder stuff in Louie. There was. There was,
+for example, that sense of proportion which is humour. How could her
+thoughts of Mr. Jeffries not be rather preposterous? She found it
+difficult sometimes to remember even his personal appearance; she had
+well-nigh forgotten his voice; many idle repetitions had dulled the
+memory of that odd little thrill she had felt when her hand had lain
+in his. True, she remembered these things in a way. She remembered the
+tawny bulk of him, the lion's eyes, the gloss of his hair, the
+modeless fashion of his speech; but these were mere noted facts, no
+more hers than everybody else's. Yet what (she asked herself) had
+become of her sense of humour that she should want something of him
+that nobody else had? What had happened to her sense of proportion
+that she did not forget him as she had forgotten scores of people of
+whom she had seen far, far more? And how had it come about that, for
+one thought she cast on Roy, Mr. Jeffries had twenty? And why this new
+and curious understanding of her mother?
+
+She asked herself these questions behind the grilles of her
+cash-desks, behind the counters of her Earls Court stalls, posing or
+crocheting on her model thrones, riding backwards and forwards to her
+sittings or what not on the tops of omnibuses. Usually she answered
+herself more or less like this:
+
+"It looks very much as if I was making of him what he seems to have
+made of that Soames girl--a sort of _idée fixe_; if I were to fall
+really in love now, I suppose I shouldn't think any more about him.
+Luckily it doesn't matter; it's my own affair. Good gracious, suppose
+he knew! He'd think me as imbecile as I am!--There I go again!" (This
+probably, some minutes later.) "Suppose I _had_ met him earlier, and
+things _had_ been different--what about it? What's the good of
+remembering all that now? Well, it puts the time on down this beastly
+Kennington Lane.... Thank goodness I'm not likely to come across him;
+I can't help thinking something would happen if I did.... Poor
+mother!" she usually ended inconsequentially, "I suppose she'd be
+about my age. I'm turned thirty--thirty-one in fact--shall have to
+stop counting soon. Time you stopped counting when it occurs to you
+that your mother had dreams just as silly as yours----"
+
+And so, whether this Mr. Jeffries meant much or little to her, he did
+not mean so much but that any trivial near occurrence--a cold of young
+Jimmy's, a cold of her own that prevented her from sitting for a day
+or two, or a fall in the crochet-market--put Mr. Jeffries and the wild
+and tangled ideas that seemed to cloak his image temporarily quite out
+of her thoughts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When early in the year 1900 she got regular sittings for a time with
+an artist who lived in St. John's Wood, she never went up or down
+Tottenham Court Road in the Victoria bus without half expecting to run
+across Evie Soames, who lived in Woburn Place. Because she did not
+meet her, she concluded that very likely she lived there no longer.
+But, late on a windy afternoon in March, at about the time when the
+street lamps were being lighted, she did meet her.
+
+It was opposite the Adam and Eve, in Euston Road, and on either of the
+two women's parts there was a curious momentary hesitation. If Evie
+Soames still lived in Woburn Place and was going home, the first bus
+that came would do for her, and Louie had already seen her glance as
+it approached; but as it happened, that bus was the Victoria bus for
+which Louie herself was waiting. Louie spoke; it seemed to her that
+not to speak would be to apologise, by silence, for that episode in
+her career that had brought Kitty Windus in haste to the Nursing Home
+in Mortlake Road. A large parcel she was carrying gave her an excuse
+not to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do?" she said.
+
+Something, she could not have told what, had instantly drawn her eyes
+to the girl's attire. Evie Soames was wearing a black jacket and black
+fur cap, but the wind, turning the jacket aside, showed the narrow
+black and white stripes of the blouse beneath.
+
+"Oh--fancy meeting you!" Evie said, turning her dark eyes as if she
+had only that moment seen Louie. There was something in her manner
+that Louie interpreted as meaning, "Very well, if I've got to be
+cordial I'll _be_ cordial!" "Are you going by this bus?" she added.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh! Where are you living now--Putney?"
+
+It may be that Louie met any slight the last word might have conveyed
+half-way and more. She replied, a little shortly: "No, Lavender Hill;
+I change at Victoria. After you----"
+
+"Oh no--after you!"
+
+Louie ascended; they couldn't stand on the kerb discussing points of
+precedence. "Let's go in front," Evie said, "and then men won't smoke
+on us," and they settled down.
+
+"Well," Evie said, adjusting the apron, "and how are _you_?"
+
+"Thank you," said Louie, "perfectly well."
+
+"There's room for your parcel here. Such ages since we met! Let me
+see, when was it?"
+
+They discussed when it was, and then, "And have you seen Kitty Windus
+lately?" Evie asked.
+
+Since her first visit to the Hickleys' Louie had seen Kitty perhaps
+half-a-dozen times in all, not oftener. Kitty had been to Margate,
+thence to Whetstone, and after that to Alf Windus the violinist's.
+Louie had simply not been able to see her oftener; she had had far too
+much to do. And, after all, nothing (the nothing of Louie's fears and
+fancies) seemed to have happened. Except to herself (Louie guessed)
+Kitty made no mysterious allusions to black eyes. She was merely
+puzzled, pathetic, harmless. She had not that perilous thing, a
+preconceived theory into which events had a fulfilling way of dropping
+of themselves. So Louie replied to Evie Soames in a tone as casual as
+her own:
+
+"Oh yes, I've seen her several times. Of course you heard that her
+engagement to Mr. Jeffries was broken off?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Evie, looking straight in front of her.
+
+"Have you seen her, then?"
+
+"Oh no. But of course Mr. Jeffries himself would know, wouldn't
+he?--that is, if you call it breaking off when a person just
+disappears without saying where she is or anything about it. Don't
+bother to unbutton; I have some pennies----"
+
+But Louie also had pennies. "Any more fares?" the conductor called,
+and then went downstairs again. The two women fell into a silence. The
+early lamplight came and went on their faces as the bus jogged on.
+
+Presently the silence seemed to have taken almost the character of a
+contest as to who should speak next, with either resolved that it
+should not be herself. Louie knew perfectly well what was the matter.
+Miss Soames might speak glancingly of Mortlake Road and offer to pay
+her bus fares, but really she hated Louie because of Louie's discovery
+in the old ledger-room on that examination day that now seemed so long
+ago. The girl seemed to be still in some sort of half mourning--but
+Louie did not want to think much of that and all that it might mean.
+Rather desperately, she strove to forget that she had ever had a
+theory about what might have driven Evie Soames into black and of
+what might happen when she went into colours again. She must, she told
+herself sharply, have a hideous mind ever to have thought these
+things. Indeed, she was so short with herself about it that,
+relinquishing the contest of silence, she again made the small
+immediate thing banish the large shadowy one behind.
+
+"Do you ever see Miriam Levey nowadays?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No," Evie replied. At any rate she had not been the first to speak.
+
+"Oh? But aren't she and Mr. Jeffries at the same place now?"
+
+"Yes, I believe they are--in fact, I know they are. I suppose Kitty
+told you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Poor Kitty! But let me see: was Miriam at the office when Kitty came
+to Mortlake Road? I thought it was after that she went."
+
+"I've seen Kitty more than once," said Louie, compressing her lips.
+The bus was slowing down opposite the Oxford.
+
+"Ah, yes, you said so. Well, remember me to her when you see her
+again, won't you? I get down here. I hope you'll get your parcel home
+all right; it's rather a large one, isn't it? Good-bye."
+
+As Evie Soames's figure was lost in the crowd that jostled in the
+lights of the Horse Shoe Louie did not look round. She was too angry.
+"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "the insupportable little creature!
+Why, I never looked at one of my mother's housemaids so! _De haut en
+bas_--her to me! But I did catch you that day, Miss Polly Ross, and
+you know it!"
+
+But as the bus moved southwards again, she was trying once more to
+forget that white stripe in Evie Soames's dress. She did not want to
+think that anything had suddenly seemed to come a stride nearer. And
+she would now rather not have been told, what apparently was the fact,
+that, whether frequently or not, Evie Soames did see Mr. Jeffries.
+
+The parcel she was taking home contained a dress; she had been sitting
+in it; but it was not the oyster-grey. The old oyster-grey, too,
+served to bring her nearer to her mother and that weak flicker of
+romance long ago in Henson's studio. Not for worlds would she have had
+Céleste see the idiotic looks she sometimes gave that dress in which
+she had danced with Mr. Jeffries. And sometimes she would suddenly
+toss it aside, roughly, anyhow. She was not seventeen (she would tell
+herself), to moon over a flower a man had given her or a dance
+programme on which he had scrawled his name. She was a woman of turned
+thirty-one (she rubbed it in), with her living to earn and an
+illegitimate son to provide for.... But sometimes she was very wistful
+too. She had never (she sighed) really been a girl of seventeen at
+all; looking back, she saw that she had missed that. She blamed
+nobody; no doubt she had been unruly, ill-conditioned, unmanageable;
+still, she had missed that. The thought always sent her off into her
+reveries again; and then, how differently, how much more admirably,
+she was able to plan everything to herself! Over and over again she
+built it all up, unbuilt it again, rearranged it, played with it. Had
+she, as a girl of seventeen, met Mr. Jeffries--had this circumstance
+been different, that particular not been the same--had she nursed no
+grudge against her mother--had it been Mr. Jeffries, not Roy, with
+whom she had kicked her long legs during the vacations at Mallard
+Bois--had she, in a word, had the arranging of the world herself and
+the choosing of the places she and he were to occupy in it----
+
+"Bosh!" she usually cut herself abruptly off. "I shall be afraid of
+turning a corner soon for fear of walking into the gentleman! What
+shall I take in for supper?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not know yet--indeed it was only some months later that she
+learned it, but it is set down here--that already, at a Langham
+Exhibition, Billy Izzard had one day seen a big stranger standing
+before one of his sketches, had gone up and spoken to him, and had
+liked the fellow--had liked his hewn slab of a face with the yellow
+eyes in it so much that presently, having an old sketch he was never
+likely to sell, he had given it to him. But Billy would at any time
+rather give away a sketch to somebody he liked than sell one to
+somebody he didn't like, and he still set, moreover, less than their
+real value on those paintings of flowers that he "knocked off" in a
+couple of keen and nervous hours. One of these sketches, by the way,
+Louie herself coveted--a straggle of violets, a few white ones among
+them, in a lustre bowl; and she offered a certain number of sittings
+in exchange for it--another elementary example of the transaction in
+kind. But Billy shook his head. He wanted that for a wedding present
+for a fellow, he said. He'd give Louie another some time--after he'd
+found another studio. He was sick of Chelsea; when a fellow got to
+know the cracks in the flagstones it was time he moved. He thought of
+going up north somewhere, Camden Town or Hampstead or St. John's
+Wood--better air. So Louie could make up her mind to the bus-rides,
+or else move too. He wasn't going to let Henson get hold of her.
+
+But Louie still delayed to move from Lavender Hill.
+
+
+III
+
+Louie's adventures, as she continued to sit, would fill a book: but
+not this book. Her sittings were the accidents of her life; her real
+life she reckoned from Sunday to Sunday. Sundays were the blest days
+she devoted to Jimmy.
+
+He was now nearly four years old, and (as Céleste continued
+delightedly to exult) "existed" and "manifested" indeed. Louie herself
+gave him her bath before she set out of a morning; she did so in a
+waterproof and little else--why, the splashed condition of the
+wall-paper in the poky little bathroom explained. It was the same old
+waterproof she had worn at Rainham Parva. Buck's admiration of the
+boy's chest and limbs was merely fatuous; he himself was teaching him
+to swim at the Public Baths. He had announced to Louie, with a great
+show of harshness, that the money she was fool enough to refuse, the
+boy would have the benefit of; that at least was something she
+couldn't prevent, he informed her, and though Louie scolded fondly
+back, it was a weight off her mind. Chaff, the other grandfather, came
+occasionally on Sundays; he came, for example, on the Sunday after the
+opening of the Royal Academy. He brought a catalogue with him, and,
+taking Louie into a corner, desired her to mark the numbers for which
+she had sat. Whether the poor old fellow meditated the buying of them
+all up, or what else, there was no telling. Her sittings, too, were
+"just like Mops." Perhaps that was more than some of the pictures
+were.
+
+But it is not true, as has been reported, that for Henson's last
+picture, "Resurgam," Buck Causton and his daughter posed together.
+Buck never posed after his first marriage. Louie only posed for Henson
+once, and that was in wet drapery. She caught a pretty cold in
+consequence. She exulted in that cold; it gave her three whole days
+with little Jimmy. They played with tops and balls and soldiers on the
+floor. The boy wanted an ensign's uniform, like that of the fourth
+Lord Moone in the miniature, and Chaff bought him a dragoon's helmet
+and cuirass. Buck laughed because the cuirass was already too small;
+and then he sighed. Perhaps he remembered the suit of armour of Big
+Hugo at Mallard Bois.
+
+Well, if a little money was all that was necessary, the boy could be
+put into the army by-an-by.
+
+And so things might have gone on had they been destined to do so; but
+into Louie's life of busy sitting and foolish dreaming and Sunday's
+rompings with her boy, there came a disruptive force. Kitty Windus
+brought it on a Sunday morning in early June.
+
+Céleste was reading a story to Jimmy when she walked in; Louie was
+putting the last touches to a piece of crochet; and all three were
+awaiting Buck's arrival with the trap--he was going to take them to
+Hampton Court. She entered unannounced, and, to Louie's way of
+thinking, would have been better in bed. Her face seemed unusually
+small and thin; she spoke in a high, painful voice.
+
+"Louie, I want to see you--quick----"
+
+It was as if Louie too caught an instant alarm. Hurriedly she dropped
+her just-finished crochet and rose.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Come into my bedroom."
+
+In the quite prettily furnished little bedroom Kitty began to walk
+rapidly to and fro. Once or twice she turned her looks to the
+brown-papered walls, as if she expected to find texts there; for the
+rest the blinking little eyes roved ceaselessly at about knee-height
+from the floor. Then she stopped before Louie.
+
+"They're getting married in a fortnight," she cried harshly,
+accusingly.
+
+There is no need for Louie to ask who, nor did she know what instinct
+again, as before, bade her take up a definite attitude without a
+moment's delay. She only felt in her very bones that delay would be
+perilous, and that not the shade of an expression must cross her face
+that was not natural and unsurprised.
+
+"Yes, of course; didn't you know?" she said quietly. "Mr. Jeffries and
+Evie Soames, you mean?"
+
+Again Kitty made that painful little sound--_à bouche fermée_. "You
+knew?" she cried.
+
+A simple lie would not have availed; this was so obvious that Louie
+lied deliberately, circumstantially and at length.
+
+"Yes, of course I knew. Of course I did. Do you mean to say you
+didn't? I made certain you did; I was going to write to you. In about
+a fortnight, isn't it? I'm--I'm giving them a wedding present;
+it's--it's that piece of crochet you saw me doing. It isn't much, but
+these things don't go by value; it's the intention. What are you going
+to give them?"
+
+She almost blushed for the lameness of it. As a matter of fact, she
+had intended that piece of crochet for the new flat, when she should
+take it; but to soothe Kitty now was of more importance than crochet
+for new flats. She watched her covertly, anxiously.
+
+"How did you know?" Kitty flashed out, again stopping in her walk.
+
+"Sit down, dear; sit on the edge of my bed; I'm sure you're tired. How
+did I know? Why, I saw Evie herself. I saw her on a bus one day in
+Tottenham Court Road. It was near the Adam and Eve. And--I say,
+Kitty"--dropping her voice confidentially, she made an appeal to
+Kitty's hunger for gossip--anything for a diversion--"I doubt if
+they'll have too much to live on--it takes a tidy bit to get married
+on--and I don't suppose she has any shares to sell."
+
+But Kitty did not seem to hear. She flashed out again.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"My _dear_! I made sure you'd heard it from Miriam Levey. And I wasn't
+sure where you were; you move about so, you know. I wonder what Miriam
+will give them! Something far more expensive than mine, I expect. And
+you ought to give them something too, Kitty. What's done's done, you
+know, and after all, lots of engagements are----"
+
+But once more Kitty flashed out. "Oh, _I_ shall give him a bottle of
+arnica, or whatever it is, for black eyes!"
+
+Louie laughed almost hysterically at the joke. The tension was getting
+almost too much for her. "Oh, come, he isn't a wife-beater yet!" she
+protested.
+
+"But he will be, that man!" Kitty cried aloud with frightening
+vehemence. "He'd do anything--anything--much he cares! Did you know I
+got lost the other night? In Lincolns Inn Fields; policemen coming up
+to me, if you please, and asking me where I lived! Much he cares! I
+believe it was her all the time--he never wanted me at all, and as
+soon as Archie's out of the way he goes and marries her! Miriam Levey
+herself says she can't help thinking it's funny--and I can't think
+what _your_ game is either, to be going on as if it wasn't! I'll tell
+you what _I_ think, if you want to know----"
+
+"Hush, hush, hush!" came from Louie. She had her arms about Kitty.
+"Perhaps you're right, dear; he was cruel to you! And"--she rushed
+into another extemporisation--"I don't know that I would give him a
+present, after all. If one can't forgive an injury one can't, and it's
+no good pretending. He did wrong you, and perhaps he oughtn't to be
+let off, after all. I won't send him one either."
+
+She said it because it was better to confine Kitty to her own wrongs
+than to allow her to approach a number of frightening unknown
+possibilities that began with black eyes. And apparently she
+succeeded. Kitty fell back on her own injury, and became a little
+calmer.
+
+"Oh," she said cunningly, "but you'd have to send yours, and Miriam
+Levey'd have to send hers too--then, don't you see, I should be the
+only one who didn't, and he'd notice it! I just hope he does notice
+it. Serve him right. I wasn't as hard up for a fellow as all that--I
+carried on with a fellow at that breaking-up party. I did--you ask Mr.
+Mackie.... You _do_ think Jeff never intended to marry me at all,
+don't you, Louie?" She peered curiously at Louie.
+
+Well, better that, Louie thought. "I don't think he meant to for a
+single moment," she replied.
+
+"Oh, the _rotter_. Come on, let's send your present now. We'll show
+him!..."
+
+She was quite eager about it; but Louie kept her in the bedroom a
+little longer. Kitty began to speak of texts again. Again she wondered
+why "Come" was written in green and "Unto" in red and "Me" in purple,
+and why all texts had Oxford frames. "You haven't any, I see," she
+said, glancing again round the brown-papered walls. "You ought to have
+'Remember thy Creator,' you know, Louie; it always reminds you, you
+see. What's this?"
+
+It was one of Billy Izzard's etchings. Kitty examined it with her head
+a little on one side.
+
+"It's very nice, whatever it is," she conceded; "but where's the other
+one? I always think pictures look better in pairs. But you can get odd
+ones cheap sometimes; Mr. Mackie had a great sale of Art Engravings
+one day in one of those Oxford Street places--you can hear his voice
+right across the street--and _he_ said they were cheap because they
+weren't pairs, but they'd do splendidly for the middle of anywhere,
+like over a mantelpiece. And what a nice looking-glass! Really, you're
+quite comfortable here!"
+
+She seemed to have forgotten all about Mr. Jeffries again. She walked
+round Louie's bedroom, bestowing encomiums and preening herself on her
+own pound a week.
+
+At midday Buck came, but Louie did not join the party; she sent
+Céleste and Jimmy, and herself stayed with Kitty. She hoped Kitty
+would not stay long; she wanted to lie down and think--think. Nor did
+Kitty stay very long; but before she went she returned to the subject
+of the crochet. She wanted the article--it was a teacloth--sent
+immediately; she would run out and post it herself, she said; and
+_then_, when he got presents from Miriam and Louie and none from
+herself, _that_ would be rather a nasty one for Mr. Jeffries!
+
+"Do pack it up. _I'll_ show him I'm not to be trampled on like the
+dirt under his feet!" she persisted vindictively; and another approach
+to the subject of black eyes caused Louie to yield hurriedly. She
+folded the cloth and found a piece of brown paper; Kitty did not
+notice that she enclosed no message.
+
+But suddenly Louie had an odd little hesitation. She knew it to be
+ridiculous and a sentimentality, but while she did not want to send a
+particular message, she yet did not want to send the teacloth entirely
+without one. The opportunity for the little secret luxury would
+probably not occur again.... Kitty was condescendingly appraising her
+furniture again; on the mantelpiece lay a piece of blank card; it
+seemed to be there almost for a purpose, and furtively Louie took it.
+She scrawled an "L" upon it and slipped it into the parcel.
+
+A few minutes later Kitty left, taking the wedding present with her.
+
+Left at last alone, Louie once more went into her bedroom and threw
+herself on her bed. She lay with her hands clasped behind her head,
+her gaze now resting on Billy's etching, now straying idly over the
+brown-papered walls.
+
+So they were to be married. And after that?
+
+Well, she thought that on the whole she was glad. The curtain was
+about to fall on that drama that had begun at the Business School in
+Holborn, and so there would be an end of _that_.... What now? What
+about those fancy pictures with which she had beguiled herself as she
+had ridden on buses and trams and worked at her crochet during the
+rests? What about those half-whispered, nonsensical conversations?
+What about those drowsy, secret quarters of an hour out of which she
+had come with slight starts to smile at herself? They were to be
+married. What next?
+
+The answer came as if for months it had been merely awaiting her
+pleasure. It was as plain as day that she could now have as much of
+these as ever she pleased. For what it was worth, the freedom of her
+cuckoo-cloud-land was about to be definitely made over to her. Because
+nothing else was hers, that was all the more hers.... Kitty's tidings
+brought it so sharply home to her that she forgot that those sweet
+hours of licence were no new thing. She forgot that it was no new
+thing to walk, in fancy, the woods of Mallard Bois and the lanes of
+Rainham Parva with him by her side, no new thing to call his name down
+the remembered glades--"Jim!" (not, as others called him, "Jeff"). She
+forgot that it was old and outworn already; she saw in it only newness
+and liberty and delight. A Jim of sorts was now hers, ineluctably and
+for ever--a Jim who did not fool predestined spinsters--a Jim who
+would know better than blunder into a blind and stupid marriage--a Jim
+whose relentless hand had not--had not--had not----
+
+But here, as she paused, the colour that had made her cheeks rosy
+ebbed as if a brush loaded with white had been passed over them. His
+ruthless hand had--had--almost certainly had----
+
+It was as if, in her fancy, a prison bell had tolled and a black flag
+had been run up in the morning breeze----
+
+He was certainly a murderer; over the threshold of that hideous fact
+she must step before she could enter her palace of insubstantial
+delights. Stained she must take even the phantom of his hand, or not
+at all. Suppose the joy were to leave her, but the horror to remain?
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+But she opened them again. She faced it. Say he was--that; what then?
+The joy and the horror were fatally one. A man capable of
+all--all--even of that--and her lover! Oh, the moment the shudder had
+passed the worst was over! He had killed; yes, but for a cause! He had
+been horribly to be feared; yes, but without the dread of him too she
+would not have had the whole of him, and she wanted the whole of him.
+_Not_ kill, with such a reason? Withhold death, with something
+approaching that was worse than death? Oh, Louie knew all about that;
+Miss Cora had told her....
+
+A murder? There were things by the side of which a murder, once you
+had made up your mind to it, was a trifle!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are women so? Is it so that they will place their soft hands, like
+willow-leaves, in those other hands that may be black with dreadful
+work, red with destruction, yet, seeing less than man and more than
+man, they care not? Is it so that they will set their lips, as if for
+a kiss, against the mouth of war itself with its ten thousand deaths?
+It seems to be so. Their loved ones, when they die, do not do so of
+fevers and shattered tissues, but of their own clear and trusted
+heroism. "Go," they say to the next one, even to the little Jimmy,
+"go--and come back if you may--and, though wooden props keep you
+together, you shall be beautiful to the mother who bore you--to the
+wife whose task it must be to take you to pieces and put you together
+again--to the woman who, because of her own heavenly dreaming, cannot
+think of the fiend you were in that hour when the call sounded and you
+dropped the point of your lance to the charge."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But one thing was clear: her dreams must remain dreams. If she would
+keep what was left her, she must never, never, never see him now!
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+THE CONSOLIDATION
+
+
+I
+
+The habit of sitting for artists leaves its mark on a woman. This mark
+is the lack of mystery--the "looked at" appearance. But it has its
+compensations. Chief of these are a physical unconsciousness, an
+absence of coquetry, and a liberation of the mind so complete that a
+sudden recall has all the effects of shock. Thus, a model posing for a
+whole class of men has been known to faint because she has been seen
+through the skylight by a "man" who mended the roof.
+
+In some such state of liberation Louie, on an afternoon late in the
+June of 1900, posed for Billy Izzard. It was in Billy's new studio, a
+large upper room in Camden Town, opposite the Cobden Statue. The place
+was so light that Billy had actually had to cut some of the light off.
+The upper part of the far window, that towards which Louie's face was
+turned, was darkened by a linen blind; the lower part of it was
+shrouded with tissue paper. The whole corner was enclosed by a screen.
+It was there that Billy did his etching. Behind another screen was
+Billy's bed. At present Louie's clothes lay on it.
+
+It was half-past five, but the best light of a changeable day. They
+had had tea; the tray with the tea-things lay on the floor; and,
+except that he grunted occasionally, "Raise your hand a bit," or "Head
+a bit more round," Billy's absorption in his work was complete. He had
+even worked through the short rests. During these intervals Louie had
+crocheted. The crochet, only a little whiter than the foot near it,
+lay on the throne now.
+
+Louie was not thinking; you can hardly call it thought when any trifle
+on which your eyes rest gives your mind its cue. Louie's eyes, the
+only parts of her that moved, had rested on the crochet, and that had
+brought Céleste into her mind. Céleste was leaving her; it had
+something to do with phylloxera and a brother's vines; Céleste,
+between two loves, must leave the boy and return to Provence. Then
+Louie's eyes fell on the chair in which Billy etched, and presently
+Kitty occupied her--Kitty, who liked her etchings in pairs, but
+surmised that odd ones came cheaper. Louie had really no choice but to
+do what she was going to do about Kitty. Jimmy must have somebody
+during the day, and Louie, moreover, must have ten shillings a week
+from somewhere. As a matter of fact, Kitty had agreed to pay her
+fifteen shillings, and, in the intervals of looking after Jimmy,
+proposed to type. Then, as her eyes moved to the screen round the bed,
+she remembered that her boots must be resoled. They would carry
+another sole, and it had been raining off and on during the greater
+part of the day. And then something else brought little Jimmy into her
+mind again.
+
+For a wonder, she had not thought of a bigger Jimmy all the afternoon.
+But on other afternoons she had. Billy sometimes remarked on a passing
+tender colour; she always had to restrain a smile at that. Her tender
+colour? There was not a particle of that looked-at superficies of hers
+that, often and often, did not answer to a secret thought.... Perhaps
+Billy, plain common-sense man, could have told her what those secret
+thoughts really meant. Perhaps Billy, sensitive painter, could have
+told her how sweet and pale and charming things must shun comparison
+with the robuster stuff. As, in some delicate pastoral or _fête
+galante_, art might turn its happy eyes inward on itself, so that the
+putting on of a slipper and the nymph's hand trembling in a silken
+fold and the promised favour of a smiling look hardly die because they
+hardly live, so Louie too turned her eyes inwards. What she found
+within herself still sufficed her.
+
+"Better rest a bit," said Billy, looking up as he began to scrub in a
+background.
+
+Louie stepped down from the throne, cast a wrap about her shoulders,
+and began to crochet again.
+
+Again she hoped she was not doing an unwise thing in having Kitty to
+come and live with her. But the flat was at last taken. It was a top
+one in the New King's Road. A Board School now blocks out the pretty
+view that Louie presently had at night, of the distant cupful of light
+that was Earls Court, with the illuminated advertisement of the Big
+Wheel appearing and disappearing as the structure slowly turned. Well,
+Kitty's fifteen shillings would pay the rent, and the experiment would
+be a good thing for Kitty also. Louie had furniture enough--in fact,
+it would be a very good thing--all round.
+
+"Come along--time," Billy grunted. "And I say, can you stop a bit
+later to-night? I've got to go out, but if I don't finish this thing
+to-day I never shall----"
+
+Louie mounted the throne again, and again the silence was broken only
+by Billy's stepping back from his canvas and forward again.
+
+The light began to fail, and Billy began to work the more furiously.
+"Give me just another ten minutes," he muttered, a brush between his
+teeth; "this'll make some of 'em sit up, I think; it's _painting_,
+this is!... But I don't know, perhaps I'd better let it go as it is;
+it's a job, anyway. All right, Louie, thanks.... Right-o, Jeffries; I
+didn't think it was so late."
+
+The last words were spoken to the man who had knocked at the door and,
+without waiting for a reply, walked in.
+
+Louie had heard the steps on the stairs; perhaps--she could not
+tell--she had already thought it unusual that the steps had not
+stopped at the water-tap on the landing below that was the supply for
+the two upper floors. Billy used that tap when he washed his brushes;
+he was looking for his palette-knife now.
+
+But Louie neither saw Billy nor heard his grumblings because the knife
+was not to hand. She was looking past Billy, past the easel with the
+study upon it, at the man who had entered. For one moment she was
+wondering that she had not always known, not only that he would come
+some day, but that he would come that day; the next moment she had
+told herself that she had always known that.
+
+Of her whole body, from the foot near the crochet to the last brown
+hair of her head, her lips were the only portion that did not receive
+him with a lightsome, quiet, fair, trusting smile.
+
+Absurd ever to have supposed that they would never meet! Wise to have
+known so perfectly what would happen when they did!
+
+What had happened? Oh, every particle of her seemed to sing to every
+other particle what had happened! Those pittings of her profession?
+Oh, there they went, washed out, all out, in the baptism of a look!
+Her fancies--those idle promises to pay drawn on a non-existent bank?
+Oh, they had gone, and here was payment itself, the solid, actual
+cash! She was suddenly rich. As she stood there, rich in seeing him,
+rich in being seen by him, every one of those worthless bills was
+honoured in full. She could have laughed at her past poverty. She
+could have cried aloud: "Jim, I'm here--look at me--no, not my eyes
+only----"
+
+And he too seemed to be as she had always known he would be--singled
+out, down to his very manner of wearing his clothes--among men.
+Stupid, that of all those times she had thought of him she had never
+once thought of him as in evening-dress! But that, in all this
+perfection, was only one more reciprocated perfection: she so--he
+so----
+
+"Oh, Jim--_not_ my eyes only!" she well-nigh cried again.
+
+But the lion's eyes never moved from her own grey ones.
+
+"Right, Louie, I've finished," said Billy, looking up from his
+palette-scraping.
+
+And within herself she wailed: "Oh, _so_ soon? Must it be over
+already? Must I sit for men all these days, and then, when _my_ man
+comes----? Oh, a moment!... Well, he shall see me move--and I won't
+look at him--I'll tell myself--oh, just one more fancy!--that he isn't
+here."
+
+She descended from the throne and passed behind the screen.
+
+Was it strange that already, as she dressed in Billy's studio, she
+knew that she would never dress in an artist's studio again, and made
+of her fastening of hooks and strings a grave little
+ceremonial?--(There! With that fastening yet another chapter was
+closed; oh, trust her, there should be no reopening of it!)--Or that
+she should have a little shiver, at the thought that he might not have
+come? Suppose he had knocked at the door, and Billy had cried:
+"Half-a-moment--slide, Louie--come in!" Suppose--but the tremor
+passed. She had always known he would come; she had known it just as
+she had known everything else about him. Again every fibre of her was
+joyous. She was here on the earth--she, Louie Causton, daughter of a
+pugilist and of a Scarisbrick, gardener, typist, artists' model, and
+all else she might ever be--that she might know all about this man. To
+have ever doubted it would have been not to deserve him. And here he
+was, in the same room with her--he, beyond the screen, she behind
+it--only the two of them, for Billy had gone down to the tap to wash
+his brushes.
+
+_Now_ what should she do?
+
+No, she would not go out and join him; not as she now was; not a skirt
+and blouse, after that fairness. Nor yet would she speak. Surely it
+was for him to speak now! She had been speaking to him, singing to
+him, all music to his eyes; there does come a point (she told herself)
+when the woman ceases to do everything; he must speak now. She knew he
+would speak. So she stood, upright, close to the screen, waiting.
+
+He did speak, and like smoke another flock of fancies fled for ever.
+They were the fancies in which she had tried to remember his voice. It
+came, henceforth unforgettable, pure rest after her strivings. He too
+seemed to be near the screen; only a screen between them; but the
+phrases that were breaking their long silence were merely automatic.
+He was saying something about seeing her presently; she heard him
+pronounce the word "Piccadilly," and the most familiar image of
+Piccadilly sprang up in her mind. "Swan and Edgar's," she was
+whispering back over the screen.
+
+"No, no." This came quickly, protestingly.
+
+"At half-past ten," she whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then the dialogue was at an end. Billy had returned. Some moments
+later she heard more words, a laugh, and the closing of a door. She
+realised that he had gone.
+
+Only then did she come out from behind the screen.
+
+Billy was wriggling into his overcoat and muttering something about
+being late. "Got to go and keep that chap's wife company," he said.
+"Regular little Philistine, she is; I suppose that's why I go; can't
+stand these blessed artists. I say, he'd no idea I'd a model, you
+know--sorry."
+
+"All right, Billy," said Louie demurely.... "Sorry!" So was not she!
+
+"And I say, I'm afraid I shall have to pay you next time. I'm cleaned
+out."
+
+"It doesn't matter. Send me a steak in as you go out; I'll have my
+dinner here."
+
+"Right. Odd-looking chap that, isn't he? A good sort though. I picked
+him up at the Langham one night. I took this place from him when he
+got married."
+
+"He lived here?" (What, another wonder?)
+
+"Yes. Well, I'll send your steak in. Good-bye." Billy bolted.
+
+He had lived there too! How ex--how entirely to have been expected!
+Louie walked round the room, looking at the walls, the ceiling, out of
+the windows, anew. He had lived there: read, eaten, slept there; what
+a coinci--what a perfectly natural circumstance! Then, leaning against
+the wall, she found Billy's study. Her eyes devoured it. She set it
+against the throne, and then walked to where he had stood when he had
+entered. She gave a rich, low laugh; she told herself what a fool she
+was; but folly so lovely made life. Again she looked at the wet
+painting. She had looked so to him----
+
+She put the study back against the wall, but in another place. "That
+study's mine, Billy," she muttered; "mine, not yours or anybody
+else's, do you understand? You gave him my violets; he's welcome to
+them; this belongs to me. Jim! Jim!" she murmured.
+
+"Well, I suppose it's crochet now," she went on by-and-by. "Do you
+realise, Louie Causton, that you've sat your last? And have you any
+idea of what you're going to do instead? It looks as though Kitty's
+fifteen shillings would come in useful after all."
+
+As if otherwise she might have forgotten it, she repeated to herself,
+over and over again, that she was to meet him at Swan and Edgar's at
+half-past ten. At one of the repetitions--it was as she was cooking
+her steak over the little gas-ring that, perhaps, had once been
+his--it occurred to her why he had muttered that quick "No, no," when
+she had proposed that meeting-place. She glowed, she laughed through a
+sheen of tender tears. "Dear, dear one! _You_ don't think that corner
+good enough for us, my sweet little outcast and me. Well, we won't
+thank you; we won't belittle him by thanking him, will we, Jimmy?----"
+
+But she did not promise not to look her thanks when she met him at
+Swan and Edgar's at half-past ten.
+
+Presently she pushed her plate away; she could not eat. She had felt
+her bosom rise once more. It had risen as it had never risen for
+anything or anybody save for the little Jimmy, and it rose, it seemed
+to her, for a similar reason. For in her hands even his physical
+safety lay. He was to be mothered too. Her unfelt arms were to be
+about him, the milk of her protection to be his life. By his strength
+he had thought to give himself to somebody else, but by his need he
+was still hers. A gladness richer than she had ever, ever known
+swelled within her. He, the great weakling--she, the strong one, to
+cherish and support----
+
+"Jim!" she murmured, smiling, uplifted, lost. It was as if his weary,
+tawny head was on her breast.
+
+And she was going to hear his voice again, at Swan and Edgar's, at
+half-past ten.
+
+She feared that her own emotion might have exhausted her ere ever the
+hour came.
+
+
+II
+
+"Your hat will be spoiled if you don't take your share of the
+umbrella," she said. It was a silk hat, and she supposed that silk
+hats cost money. A fine, persistent rain was falling.
+
+She thought that he answered that it didn't matter.
+
+"Then you might at least turn your trousers up." Her own shabby old
+grey coat didn't matter, but his trousers----
+
+He seemed to be on the point of replying that they didn't matter
+either, but changed his mind. He stooped and turned them up. She held
+the umbrella while he did so, and then gave it to him again,
+replacing her right hand where it had been--on his left forearm.
+
+It was on these mere externals of him--his hat, his coat, his
+trousers, his boots--that she had hardly for a moment ceased to feed
+her eyes. Anything else might wait; for the present the stuff of his
+sleeve was more to her than the stuff of his soul. She luxuriated
+shamelessly in the smallest actualities of his presence; why, even
+mirth stood but a remove away. His overcoat, for example: it was not
+that old tawny one that had made him so much like a lion, but it was
+an old one for all that; was she _never_ to see her man in a new
+overcoat? Jim and his overcoats! But the rest of him was beyond
+criticism. Certainly he must be making money. She wished she could
+have called money to him with a wand, conjured it to him, as much as
+ever he wanted. Had it not been that she would have had to take her
+hand from his sleeve, she would have liked to step back to look at his
+great church-door of a back again. Of his face she could see little,
+but that did not prevent her looking until it would hardly have
+surprised her had he flushed and said, "Don't gloat over me like
+that." His hat was tilted down, the large peaks of his overcoat collar
+projected like wings.
+
+No, she did not want to know what he thought or felt; bother all that
+part of him! When her thirsty senses had drunk their full, then would
+be time enough for the other things.
+
+They were walking somewhere behind the Horse Guards. Stretching before
+them was the long, empty avenue of the Mall. She was looking at the
+perspective of lamps and trees and drizzle, when suddenly he spoke.
+Instantly all her faculties seemed to become one overgrown faculty,
+that of hearing. Not that he was saying anything; he was, as a matter
+of fact, only asking her whether she was warm; and she replied,
+"Quite." She was almost amused that he should ask. His nearness warmed
+her more than did her garments. Her hand thrilled deliciously on his
+sleeve again....
+
+Oh, the satisfaction of that, just that, after all her past
+inquisitions into his soul!
+
+But come to speech they must, and that very soon; and perhaps that
+curious magnification of trifles made it easier. Indeed, half the
+formidableness of the single question she wanted to ask him had
+vanished already. To say to him, now or in a few moments: "Did you
+kill Archie Merridew?" seemed somehow not very much more unusual than
+asking him the time. Now that she came to think of it, even that
+question seemed less important than another one: "Can you kill
+somebody and still be happy?" She hoped in her heart that he could. It
+would be his justification. Had it been an unrighteous killing, that
+would have been another matter; as it was, she would have had him
+unhappy only had he not killed. And, as he showed no sign of breaking
+silence, she might as well ask him that now.
+
+So, reluctantly turning her eyes from his face and looking ahead into
+the haze of the rain, she suddenly said: "Are you happy?"
+
+She wasn't surprised that he didn't reply at once. Of course men
+didn't. They had their usual formalities to go through, of "Why do you
+ask?" and so forth--a sort of routine before they could answer a plain
+question. As he began to go through it now she made a little impatient
+movement. She didn't want all that. Then he deigned to reply to her
+inferior intelligence. Yes, he was happy.
+
+"You _are_?" she said, with an exultant little leap.
+
+Yes, he was; but again, apparently, he couldn't say a thing and leave
+it. In the middle of more stupid, logical, masculine things (he seemed
+to be qualifying his statement with something or other about his
+conduct to Kitty Windus) she cut him short.
+
+"Tell me," she said, repeating the little impatient gesture, "you
+killed that boy, didn't you?"
+
+They had been following the railings that divided the Mall from St.
+James's Park, but she had stopped to ask her question. And she was
+looking full at him now. But she could not see him very well; a lamp
+and a plane-tree made all an obscurity of vague shadows and wet
+reflections. But then he stepped slowly back, taking her umbrella with
+him, and twice, as he held the umbrella unsteadily, the light came and
+went on his cheek and chin; and then, as he took a step farther back
+still, the umbrella bobbed on the railings, from the points of it came
+little bright slivers of drops, and she found herself searching under
+a lamplit sector of alpaca for his eyes.
+
+The danger of asking, actually, a question you have asked, but not
+actually, a hundred times before, is that your own mere familiarity
+with it throws you out in your calculation. Now she found herself
+suddenly hoping that what she felt to be working beyond the umbrella
+edge--for she felt it rather than saw it--was not fear.
+
+For, of course, she had miscalculated a little--had been stupid to
+think that it was all as old a story to him as it was to her.
+Obviously it would not at once occur to him that there had been
+nothing to find out, but that instead the whole thing had been merely
+enacted before her eyes; he was sure to be thinking that on some
+point of evidence he had been betrayed. What sort of point that could
+be, unless it had something to do with the black eyes that seemed to
+haunt Kitty, he might know, but she could not guess; and all at once
+she had a purely physical shrinking. She would rather not know. She
+could string herself up to the thought of murder, but the bestial
+details--no, not those. Those were his affairs. They were to be taken
+for granted as things necessarily involved. And already she was on the
+point of feeling herself a little disappointed in him. For in the
+shadow of the umbrella her eyes had now found his; his head was a
+little turned, and she saw the whites of them.
+
+It _was_ fear. She, it seemed, could contemplate unafraid a sacrifice
+that he quaked to have carried out.
+
+But as, with another little falling of drops from the umbrella, he
+steadied himself and stepped forward from the railings again,
+additional light came to her. It was fear, but not that fear, that
+haunted the amber eyes. The fear was of herself. He feared, not the
+information she possessed, but her whole understanding and
+condemnation. He feared lest she also should say: "It was murder; you
+are here to be judged; me too, with all the world, you must account
+against you; I set my mark too upon your brow."
+
+And as he appeared sorrowfully to acquiesce in that also, nothing
+could have seemed lonelier nor more touching than the quietly spoken
+words with which he held the umbrella over her again:
+
+"You're getting wet."
+
+It was as though he told her that though he went outcast she must not
+get wet.
+
+Her answer was to put her hand under his sleeve again. They walked on.
+
+But he had not answered her question. Perhaps he thought he had: to
+all intents and purposes he had; but she wanted, not so much the word,
+as that he should not withhold the word. He was walking slowly,
+heavily, like a tower by her side; she had the sense of his fearful
+overweight; she would give him time. They continued to walk, their
+mingled shadow on the pavement as they passed each lamp creeping away
+before them as if the beam of some lighthouse had had the sinister
+property of obscurity.
+
+Then, within a little distance of Buckingham Palace, she stopped
+again. Again their eyes met under the wet, black mushroom of the
+umbrella.
+
+"You did kill that boy, didn't you?"
+
+He had a slight start. It seemed to her that he even apologised for
+having kept her waiting for the answer. Formerly she had seen
+stratagems in his eyes; now, as he dipped the umbrella for a moment
+and stood full in the light of another lamp, she looked only into
+grave, candid depths.
+
+"Yes," he said. "You know I killed him."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Again her hand slid, as if of itself, back into its place. Again they
+walked on. The next thing that came to her was another ridiculous yet
+oddly precious trifle. She wore kid gloves; before, when she had
+danced with him in an old frock of oyster-grey, she had worn white
+ones; must she (she wondered) always wear gloves with him, as he
+always wore old overcoats? She longed to take one glove off; yet
+she--she, who had met Roy by the stile at night--for very bashfulness
+dared not. The circumstance struck her; how was that? Gifts of
+understanding for her he had: had he that gift too, the gift of her
+own bashfulness back again? Up went her spirit on wings....
+
+Yes, it was that--or for a night at least she would have it so. As
+impossibilities are reconciled in a dream, so he seemed, by his mere
+towerlike presence, to resolve in one large atonement, her own life as
+it had been and the sweet and virginal and dear smiling thing that it
+might have been. In no less a miracle than that she seemed to herself
+to be walking. He could not only have kissed her; he could have had
+her first kiss. He could not only have turned, as he did turn, leaning
+against the pillar-box by the Equerries' entrance of the Palace, to
+look at her again, but he could have received in return--did receive
+in return--such a look as she knew he also could hardly have had the
+like of before. And it made no difference--as in a dream such a thing
+might make no difference--that he had a wife, she a son. Let him have
+his wife, she her son; she could find room for wives and sons too.
+To-morrow, perhaps, it would not be so; to-morrow might be like
+yesterday again; but to-night--to-night--oh, the first garden was not
+less trodden than these rainy streets, the Barracks, Gorringes', and
+Grosvenor Road! Her hand moving again on his sleeve was telling him
+even now, if he would but listen, that though man may not know that it
+is not good for him to be alone, woman knows it, and maybe still
+remembers it out of her knowledge of the place whence she came later
+than he.
+
+And he too understood now, for she was not so rapt but that she
+remembered that he asked her, somewhere between a sandbin and a street
+lamp, whether she was happy too, and that, looking up at him, she
+smilingly whispered: "Yes, now." And she was not so rapt but that she
+remembered telling him, flatly and with another happy and laughing and
+triumphant look: "You can't prevent it!" But she was so rapt that of
+much else that he and she said she had no very clear recollection.
+Words that seemed unforgettable when they came had eluded her almost
+in their own echo. But she knew that she gave him the liberty of
+herself with no more reserve than she had claimed that of him. She
+knew that because, later, but she did not know when, he muttered, in
+some street or other, she did not know where: "God bless your boy."
+
+Well, if she forgot things now, there would be many days to come in
+which she would remember them.
+
+Merely because it must be very late--she had no idea what time it
+was--she grudged the going of the moments almost angrily. Already she
+was becoming as hungry again as if she had not broken that long, long
+fast. But she admitted that it was not unnatural that he should think
+of his own concerns a little too, and want to ask her questions. She
+began to answer the questions hurriedly, to get them over.--Kitty
+Windus? Oh (she told him) he might leave Kitty to her; she'd answer
+for Kitty!--His wife and her complete ignorance? (His wife's ignorance
+appeared to be complete.)--Miriam Levey? (Oh, why would he not be
+quick, and she so hungry!)--And then back to his wife again; what
+about her? (he wanted to know). Louie wondered a little that he should
+consider her to be his wife's keeper also, but she answered his
+questions. That, she told him, was his private affair; but, if he
+really wanted to know what Louie thought about it, Louie could not
+conceive of a marriage with so huge a secret in it continuing
+undisclosed. _Voilà_; there he had it; and _now_ might she please be
+permitted to enter into her own happiness again?
+
+She was back into it, bathing in it again, almost before she was
+aware. A minute before she had not known what street they were in; now
+she saw the Chelsea Hospital on the other side of the road. On this
+side was a row of houses; she knew one of them; a painter for whom she
+had sat lived there; his studio was in the yard at the back. The
+thought of a studio was all that was needed. She thrilled again.
+
+No more studios! So poignantly did she burn that she could hardly
+imagine that her glowing did not communicate itself. Studios, after
+that beautiful, beautiful sketch of Billy's? Good gracious, no! She
+was going to Billy's to fetch that sketch on the morrow; she would
+like to see Billy deny it to her! And that poor, poor old oyster-grey!
+Just because he had seen her in it once she had mooned over it, smiled
+over it, sighed over it; but it could go now--she had a richer
+memory!... Furtively during the last few minutes she had been working
+off her right glove; it slipped from her hand to the pavement; but she
+was afraid to stop. Let it stay; somebody would turn it over with the
+point of a walking-stick in the morning and perhaps wonder who had
+lost it.... She stole another look at him; her hand crept along his
+sleeve; the tips of her fingers were on his wrist; her lips shaped his
+name: "Jim!"
+
+Then, unexpectedly, it rushed upon her in full measure. She knew these
+streets familiarly; they were in Swan Walk now; and the thing happened
+all in a moment. Again, during those anxious questions of his about
+Kitty Windus, Miriam Levey, his wife, she had that sense of his
+terrible overweight: now, passing a doorway, he suddenly reeled. He
+began to sink....
+
+In an instant her arms were about him. Not the unfelt, immaterial arms
+of her mothering vision in Billy's studio, not that other breast,
+offered but impressed, sustained him; she held him within her two arms
+of flesh and blood, upon that firm, warm bosom that changed its shape
+to his weight upon it--the bosom he had seen yesterday, white hives,
+all their honey his.... She bent and kissed the shoulder of his coat.
+Oh, if he might but faint, quite, that she might carry him somewhere,
+or, if she could not carry him, stay with him where he was--she cared
+not--rest by his side through an endless night! Her heart, yes, her
+lips too, called him; a whisper might not reach him; she called him
+aloud:
+
+"Oh, come, come! Come, come!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Afterwards she thought of it as a hail from a ship to another ship
+across a stretch of water so narrow that it was all but a stepping
+aboard. How could such a hail be a farewell also? They were not
+passing; as they glided side by side together, either seemed
+stationary. Other things, the whole offing of Life, were in motion;
+these slipped past, as it were sky, shore, shipping; but for a space
+he and she spoke from bridge to bridge. And he heard the hail too, for
+he opened his eyes. Though they never looked on her again they did so
+now, relinquishing all to her. Was there anything she had not known?
+There was nothing she might not know--now----
+
+By-and-by she had helped him to a seat on the Embankment and had made
+him sit down. She took off his tie and collar; she smiled as he
+thanked her. "That was absurd," he said.
+
+Then he asked her where she lived.
+
+It was over.
+
+Well, perhaps more would have been more than she could have borne.
+
+But when she sat at last alone in the hansom he had called, conscious
+that she was wet to the skin and that her boots needed to be resoled,
+she still had the image of the ships before her eyes, gliding together
+side by side, with all else in quiet, relentless motion behind them.
+She held fast to it. She could not have endured to think that of that
+night's long wandering all that would remain on the morrow would be
+yet another dream and a wet glove left behind in an empty Chelsea
+street.
+
+
+III
+
+Louie Causton would have been more than human had she not frequently
+thought, as her life became a moving from pillar to post again, that
+there was an exasperating proportion of absence in her heart's story.
+But at first she was not petulant. Some absences are brimful, as other
+presences are mere vacancy, and, now that she no longer sat, she had
+other things, plenty of them, to think of.
+
+There was little money in the sale of crochet; there was not much more
+in sitting in costumes hired from the Models' Club. From both these
+things she quickly turned. Perhaps she turned from them the more
+quickly because of Kitty Windus--for Kitty was now with her in the
+flat in the New Kings Road, and the way in which Kitty, without
+spoken words, paid over her weekly fifteen shillings, was in itself a
+spur. Not that Kitty always spared her the words either. Two words at
+least that she did not always spare her were "rise" and "permanency."
+Often Louie felt all the amazement, and now quite without any leaven
+of amusement, that she had felt when first she had entered the
+Business School in Holborn; but she was not keeping Kitty (or Kitty
+keeping her) either for love of Kitty or her own mere necessity. To
+keep Kitty was part and parcel of that absence she was already
+beginning to resent. It was merely safer to keep Kitty than to have
+anybody else keep her. Besides, as long as she kept Kitty, she had
+only to write a note, justifying it afterwards as best she could, and
+two ships (so to speak) would come together again. She delayed to
+write the note; none the less it was in her power to do so.
+
+So (to turn for a moment to that moving background of Life in the
+offing) the September of 1900 found her answering the advertisement of
+a Bayswater seedsman and discovering the precise market value of her
+old Rainham Parva training. But by the end of the same month she was
+temporarily installed at the clerk's table of an exhibition of French
+paintings at a Mayfair gallery, and glad of the job. Say (the question
+is hardly worth going into) that it was the influence of the paintings
+themselves that once more caused a manager to propose that Louie's
+wages should be substantially increased, for a consideration; it
+didn't matter; Louie, who did not now throw away jobs for nothing,
+merely told the man not to be silly--than which, as it happened, she
+could have done no better thing, for at the close of the exhibition
+the manager, now looking upon her almost as a dear daughter, found her
+another place, this time at a gallery academic both artistically and
+morally, warned her against dangerous young men, and kissed Louie on
+both her laughing cheeks. After that her French again served her turn,
+for she entered the office of an illustrated weekly; or if it was not
+entirely the French that did it, so much the luckier Louie to possess
+even yet a frock that was a rest to the proprietor's eyes after a
+succession of applicants in walking skirts and white muslin blouses.
+This job Louie actually kept till June 1901; then an amalgamation took
+place that threw her out of work again. Three weeks later, after a
+severe trial of her temper by Kitty, she was a "carpet designer"--that
+is to say, she coloured, in an upper room near St. Paul's Churchyard,
+pieces of paper so minutely chequered that sometimes for an hour or
+two she could not get the flicker out of her eyes. She made a grace of
+retiring from this occupation as soon as she saw that if she did not
+do so her employer would retire from the office of paymaster. After
+that she was reduced to sitting again, in costume. Nothing else
+offered. Jimmy must eat, Kitty's fifteen shillings be covered. The
+female figure in "The Two-stringed Bow," which caused such a
+(journalistic) sensation in the Academy of the following year, is
+Louie. Chaff did not recognise it. Billy Izzard, who had seen the
+costume at the Models' Club, did. He persecuted Louie to sit for him
+again as before.
+
+Of the Models' Club she was still a member, and she got on well with
+the girls. Once she took Kitty Windus there, but only once; a
+black-and-white man, knowing nothing of Kitty's pound a week, asked
+her to sit to him as Miss Tox, in "Dombey and Son"; and Kitty,
+presently reading the book, treated Louie for some days with marked
+superciliousness. That came of making yourself cheap, her manner
+seemed to say; and she reported Miriam Levey, whom she met near
+Piccadilly Circus one day, as having said, "Vell, vat do you expect?"
+Louie did not much like this meeting with Miriam Levey. She remembered
+the Jewess's pertinacity and curiosity for curiosity's sake. Many such
+meetings between Kitty and Miriam Levey might easily complicate her
+own life.
+
+There were two bedrooms in the flat in the New Kings Road. In the
+larger one, that at the back that Louie shared with Jimmy, there hung
+at first the sketch she had begged ("stolen" was Billy's word) after
+she had ceased to sit. When Louie took this down one day and put it
+out of sight, she told herself that she did so on Jimmy's account; but
+perhaps those absences that she had to convert into presences as best
+she could had something to do with it too. Perhaps, if she did not see
+the thing for a time, its first freshness would return.
+
+Sometimes she thought these absences really too bad; she began to
+think so with increasing frequency as Kitty's fits of patronage became
+no rarer. Really it didn't seem fair that she should be asked to bear
+them. The least Jim could have done, since she bore them for him,
+would have been to let her know that he still existed. She did not
+much mind looking after Kitty, but it was a little too much that on
+his part _all_ should be absence!
+
+And that was why, with Kitty always at hand for her excuse, she did
+not write to him.
+
+In a word, the joy of bearing for him was becoming fainter in
+proportion as the burden itself increased.
+
+Then a piece of news with which Kitty came home one night added its
+trifle to her smart. She was alone in the flat that night; Jimmy had
+been in bed two hours and more, and Louie, after having folded his
+clothes, cleared up his litter of toys from the floor, and tried to
+read a newspaper, had turned low the gas, drawn up a chair to one of
+the three windows that looked down on the New Kings Road, and sat
+gazing out over the trees and houses and scattered lights that
+stretched away to Earls Court. It happened that that night the
+Exhibition was closing for the season; a firework demonstration was in
+progress; and out of the little pool of orange light rockets rose from
+time to time, falling again in slow showers of red and green and
+white. If no cart was passing she could just hear the muffled
+detonations.
+
+She knew that if an impossibility could have happened, and Jim could
+have walked into the room, sat down by her, and watched the white and
+green and red rockets with her, that slight constant smart at her
+heart would have gone; but now she told herself that it was not as if
+she was young, with unlimited time before her. She was thirty-two, and
+too much absence is not sustenance enough for thirty-two. But that,
+she supposed, meant nothing to a man. Men did not appear to get old in
+quite the same way. The man who had tried to make love to her at the
+French picture exhibition was sixty if he was a day; sixty, and still
+fiery; and apparently he had found her still desirable also. But it
+was not for much longer. Women died with their beauty. Of course she
+had her little darling asleep there; men had the comfortable theory
+that women wanted nothing more than to "live again" (as they called
+it) in their children; well, all that Louie could say was that she did
+not agree with them. She knew one woman who wanted more. It might be
+wicked and unnatural to endow Jimmy, as she had done, with a sort of
+vicarious father, but Roy was gone out of her life--gone; to have
+married him would have made more mischief than it would have cured;
+and Louie saw no reason for not telling herself the truth about
+herself. But a vicarious father who stayed away was altogether too
+vicarious....
+
+Well, well, she supposed that if a woman would have a man at all she
+must put up with a selfish one.
+
+He, of course, knew exactly what he wanted, and had got it; nor could
+she say that he had not earned it--grimly. But now that he had got it,
+what about somebody else who was helping him to keep it--somebody
+called Louie Causton, who stepped in when she was wanted, took half
+the burden off his back, and was presently sent about her business
+again? (For she had remembered now the quite personal, preoccupied
+questions, about Kitty and Miriam and his wife, that he had put to her
+on the night of their long walk.) Oh, no doubt she would be there when
+she was next wanted, to share with him the thing another woman ought
+to have shared (but thank goodness the other woman had not!). It had
+not in the least surprised Louie that his wife knew nothing. It would
+have surprised her very much indeed if she had known anything. Jim
+might humbug himself as he liked, but at the bottom of his heart (she
+now saw) he knew better than to tell her. She was not the kind; it was
+Louie who was that kind, and he knew it too. But there: she was
+pretty, and men asked no further; give them hair and eyes and an
+unlined brow and the rest could go hang. Heart and vision--no; courage
+and devotion and the strength to bear--no; but twenty years, a curving
+eyelash, and a bloom more quickly gone than the falling rockets
+yonder, and ah, how they ran! But they didn't trust them. No, the
+other sort was sent for then. And it was the business of the other
+sort to be, always, as strong as they sometimes thought themselves.
+
+The last rocket fell; the lights of the big wheel began to make
+quicker revolutions; and Louie left the window and turned up the gas
+again.
+
+As she did so the electric bell in the kitchen rang. It rang again,
+and then Louie remembered that the street door four floors below would
+be closed for the night. She passed out on to the landing and
+descended the stairs. It was Kitty. She had forgotten her key. Kitty
+panted as they ascended again.
+
+"How long have you been in?" she demanded, as she took off her hat and
+coat in the little hall.
+
+"All the evening," said Louie. "Have you had supper?"
+
+"No, I haven't," said Kitty shortly, and then came her grumble. Why
+hadn't Louie had the gas lighted? Fireworks indeed! And there Kitty
+had been waiting for twenty minutes and more, thinking nobody was
+in--anybody might forget their key once in a while, mightn't they?
+Hadn't Louie forgotten hers not a week ago, and that not the only
+time? Kitty had a right to forget her key sometimes. And there had
+Louie been in all the time, watching fireworks! Well, what was there
+for supper? And the fire almost out too; really, if Kitty paid for the
+coals, Louie might at least keep the fire in!
+
+Louie mended the fire and got Kitty's supper. When Kitty had finished
+she cleared the little round table again, and by the time Kitty had
+put on a pair of red bedroom slippers and turned up her skirt to the
+blaze she deigned to relent a little. She admitted that it wasn't as
+if Louie had known she was waiting in the street, but all the same it
+was annoying.
+
+"And now I've got a piece of news for you," she said, warming her
+hands. "It's a dead secret, but I don't suppose Miriam would mind my
+telling you. She's in for no end of a good job in a few weeks! But she
+always gets good jobs. She has determination, Miriam has, you see."
+
+Louie was standing by the end of the mantelpiece, stirring a cup of
+cocoa. She only said "Oh?" Her own lack of determination was now an
+old reproach.
+
+"Ra-_ther_! Have you heard me speak of a Mr. Pepper ever? But no, you
+won't have; you're always a bit sniffy about Miriam, you see, and that
+doesn't encourage people to talk. Well, she's his confidential clerk
+at the Freight and Ballast Company, but he's chucking that, and who do
+you think with?--James Jeffries!"
+
+She paused to see the effect on Louie, and then continued.
+
+"Yes, James Jeffries! What do you think of _that_? They're going to
+start on their own, in no end of a swell way, and Miriam's going over
+with them. It's Mr. Pepper's doing, of course, and as Mr. Pepper isn't
+exactly a nobody even where he is, you may bet your boots he won't
+change for the worse! Oh, James Jeffries knows the kind of person to
+hang on to! He's to be a partner, if you please, as good as Mr. Pepper
+himself; how's that for greasing in? Friends of the mammon of
+unrighteousness, I _don't_ think!"
+
+Kitty had this way now of speaking of her former _fiancé_. Sometimes
+she so extended his name that it became "Mister James Herbert
+Jeffries." And however Jim now "got on," his advancement would still
+be, to Kitty, a magnification of her own superiority in those days
+when she had had a pound a week and he nothing. She began to take out
+hairpins and went on.
+
+"Oh dear, I wish my brushes were here!" (Louie fetched them.) "What
+was I saying? Oh yes, about Miriam. She's to have an office to
+herself, perhaps, or at any rate she's not going to sit with the other
+girls; and when I tell you it's in Pall Mall, you can judge for
+yourself--not just a couple of offices rented, but a whole
+building--what ho! The stone that the builders rejected if you like!
+And she'll have her own extending-bracket telephone, the very latest,
+and arms to her chair to put her elbows on, not like the typists! And
+Mr. Pepper's most friendly with her--she takes down his conversations
+with no end of swells! And I say, Evie Jeffries won't be half set up
+over it all, oh no! Even _his_ office--James Herbert's, Miriam
+says--is going to be perfectly scrumptious!"
+
+Her head was on one side; her short hair, as she brushed it, hardly
+reached farther than the sharp point of her shoulder; and Louie was
+thinking of that spurious engagement again. And suddenly--this had
+happened before, but never before with so keen a stab--the thought set
+her raging.... She herself had been so near!... Her elbow caught her
+cup of cocoa; it spilt, and ran in a little stream from the corner of
+the mantelpiece.... So near! And once again she cried to herself that
+_she_ would have known how to keep him, Roy or no Roy!... Kitty? What
+could his courtship of Kitty and her bones have been? _She_ would
+have shown him the difference! To have been so near and then--Mortlake
+Road, Putney!
+
+Suddenly there seemed to her to be a great deal to be said for
+conventional morality after all.
+
+For a moment her heart was full of hate--hate of Kitty, hate of Evie
+Jeffries, hate of Roy, hate of herself. To have been so near!
+
+But the sharpness of it died down to a sullen ache. In his affairs he
+seemed to be going up, up; she had always known he would; and less
+than ever might she expect to hear from him now. And he would take his
+common little wife up with him. He might go anywhere, meet anybody;
+but sourly she wondered what sort of a figure he supposed his Evie
+would cut up there--would have cut at Trant or Mallard Bois? Oh, Louie
+would dearly have liked to see her there, to have pointed to her, and
+to have told Jim to his face that whatever ability he might have
+seemed to be yoked with an unimaginable stupidity, since he had not
+known instantly the one woman for him.
+
+Well, there was simply no accounting for these things.
+
+But if he was going up, Louie did not very much like the channel by
+which she had received the information. She had known that Kitty saw
+Miriam Levey; now she seemed to hear her thick voice again, "I _vill_
+find out!" She was aware, too, that there was little love lost between
+Miriam Levey and herself. She herself had encouraged Kitty in her
+present attitude of "Mister Jeffries," but it only needed the Jewess
+to propose the contrary attitude and in all probability there would be
+a struggle between them for the possession of Kitty. She detested
+Kitty; yet in order that Evie Jeffries might make an exhibition of
+herself among the people whose equal Louie was, Louie had to put up
+with her, bones and chilblains and all! Much he left her, didn't he?
+Good gracious, yes! And it was about time he was told that flesh and
+blood women weren't made like that!
+
+Kitty, remarking that it was a shame to leave the now glowing fire,
+had passed out of the room for a minute; she now returned, in her
+slippers and nightgown. Her feet, she said, were still cold with
+waiting on the pavement; she would say her prayers with them turned to
+the fire. She knelt by a wicker chair, and set the red slippers on the
+low kerb, their worn soles to the fire. Louie, still from the end of
+the mantelpiece, watched her. At a slight sound she made Kitty turned
+her head for a moment; then she put it on the cushion of the chair
+again.
+
+Yes, certainly Louie must have a wicked heart, or she would not have
+looked on the kneeling woman as she did. She wondered what, texts
+apart, Kitty could have to say to God. To pray--with her feet in a
+warm place! Why, Louie mortified herself more for an absent man than
+Kitty seemed to do before her Maker!... And even when she had stifled
+the thought she still had no more than a negative compassion for
+Kitty. She was not unsorry for her and her weakheadedness; beyond that
+Kitty was not, or ought not to have been, her affair. What was her
+affair was herself and what little remained of her youth. Kitty was
+hardly more than a year or two older than she, but she looked a dozen
+years older; Louie wondered whether her shoulder blades too would soon
+resemble the set-squares in Billy's studio, whether her waist also
+would seem a broken thing within empty looking folds....
+
+Kitty continued to pray and to warm her feet. Louie, wondering what
+her next snappishness would be when she rose from her knees again,
+continued to watch her.
+
+Then Kitty rose. She turned to Louie.
+
+"By the way, did you brush that blue skirt of mine?" she said. "Oh,
+very well, it doesn't matter now; perhaps I oughtn't to have asked
+you; thank you; I can do it myself in the morning. Sorry I spoke."
+
+Louie turned away.
+
+These were the times when she could hardly tell what had possessed her
+ever to have supposed that she would be able to keep watch and ward
+over Kitty at all. Kitty was perfectly free to meet Miriam Levey or
+anybody else she had a mind to meet. And why, she asked herself at
+these times, should she not meet her? Where, hanging and such
+moonshine apart, was the risk to Jim? Indeed, it seemed to Louie that
+that story that seemed so to weigh on Jim was quickly becoming
+altogether beside the mark. The whole venue of his difficulties was
+rapidly shifting. What he had done had not been discovered and
+probably never would be discovered; what he wanted now was, not to be
+protected from remote and shadowy and nonsensical dangers, but to be
+told how he was to be happy with the wife whom he had seen fit, in the
+great heap of his wisdom, to keep in ignorance. Of course the remoter
+danger need not be entirely forgotten, but this, or else Louie was
+greatly mistaken, was what those scarce-heard questions on the night
+of that long walk had really meant.
+
+And, in that case, what the devil was she, Louie Causton, doing in
+this gallery at all, with nothing of Jim but silence and absence, and
+nothing but peevishness and petty tyranny from Kitty? Roy, it might
+be, was still ready to marry her; Buck never ceased to importune,
+sulk and implore; Jimmy, one way or another, would be to provide for;
+and she knew now how little she could do for him alone. Even her
+desire to "show" Richenda Earle had now passed. She wanted,
+desperately wanted, all the things she persisted in rejecting. Why was
+she becoming morose, disillusioned, devil-may-care? It was a familiar
+question now, but as she undressed that night she asked herself again
+what it all meant.
+
+She answered herself that there was no mystery about it. She supposed
+it happened to every woman. It meant, of course, the passing of her
+youth.
+
+But, her head on her pillow, she had her compensating hour. No need to
+re-describe its kind; there was now added again that forced and
+desperate illusion, of the unity of herself, her boy, and the man she
+would have had his father. She knew she merely abused her fancy and
+must suffer for it afterwards, but no matter; if it was a drug it was
+a sweet one, and that it might stay with her a little longer she chose
+uncomfortable positions that would keep her awake. She could hear
+Jimmy's breathing across the dark room. Jim, Jimmy and herself----
+
+It was against her own will that, at two o'clock in the morning, she
+slept.
+
+
+IV
+
+It was his voice over the telephone of the Models' Club that broke the
+long silence. Ten chances to one but the bell had rung in an empty
+room, for, save for a woman who was washing the hall floor, Louie was
+alone in the place. She unhooked the receiver. "Hallo!" she
+called.... "Yes, this is the Models' Club.... This is Miss
+Causton...."
+
+At last!
+
+He did not say why he wanted to see her; he only said that he wanted
+to do so at once. His minimised voice, with its suggestion of
+distance, seemed to her curiously symbolic of their whole relation. A
+telephone was supposed to bring voices near, but far more than that
+the smallness and the distance struck her.
+
+"No, I'm afraid not," she continued to speak into the instrument, "but
+I can give you dinner here. You know the address?... Yes, at seven....
+All right...."
+
+Seek him? No, she certainly would not seek him. He must come to her.
+She could give him tea and chops. As she hung up the receiver again
+she glanced at the clock over the little service counter. Eleven.
+Eight hours.... She had waited for months, now she must wait another
+eight hours. She could have faced the months again with more
+composure.
+
+Only to look at the advertisements in the papers had she come to the
+Club that morning at all. Well, she was not going to answer that
+clairvoyant's announcement she had seen in _The Telegraph_ now. Kitty
+would ask her that evening whether she had been looking for work, and
+would hold up Miriam Levey and her determination as an example; let
+her; Louie couldn't be bothered with clairvoyants and their
+advertisements to-day.
+
+And Kitty little dreamed how near Louie had more than once been to
+showing herself as determined even as Miriam. Miriam was not the only
+one who might be "taken on" at this new Consolidation of Mr. Pepper's
+and Jim's, whatever it was. There is such a thing, when a man doesn't
+come to you, as a miserable, ignoble yielding to the ache to go to
+him. There is such a thing as the willingness even to keep a door all
+day for the sake of seeing him go through it just once. After a
+certain time pride becomes a poor staff, and--but he was coming, in
+eight hours. That was why she had refused to dine with him. Your pride
+stiffens again when you have just been on the point of throwing it
+aside.
+
+She knew that she would be good for nothing for the rest of the day;
+in that case she might as well go and see her father. She had money
+enough for her bus fares; half-past one found her at the Molyneux
+Arms.
+
+Buck was in high feather. His name had been proposed, in the interests
+of Church and State, as a candidate for the Borough Council; and the
+chief plank of the platform which Buck occupied during the whole of
+that afternoon, descending from it with the greatest reluctance only
+when Louie vowed that she could not stay another moment, was that as
+long as England had Queensberrys to make her P.R. Rules it didn't
+matter what Radicals tried to make of her laws. Louie fondled his
+silver hair; dear old dad! Then she made him drive her back to
+Chelsea.
+
+(Buck, by the way, was returned at the head of the poll, a few weeks
+later, amid acclamations that might well have rendered him deaf in his
+other ear also.)
+
+Back in the Club once more, Louie set aside the best chop, and made a
+tour of the place in search of the narrowest table. The one she chose
+was so narrow that the backs of the two chairs she turned up against
+it almost touched. Lightheartedly she rebuked Myrtle Morris, who asked
+her whether she was expecting "a boy"; and she laughed as Myrtle went
+off to tell another girl that "Causton was on the warpath." Her
+warpaint consisted of a white blouse, low and perfectly plain at the
+neck, and a navy blue skirt. She was waiting at the window for Jim
+twenty minutes before he came.
+
+She had schooled herself to a rigorous composure. She opened the door
+for him and told him to mind the hall lamp, within an inch of which
+his hat reached; and the hand she gave him was not gloved this time.
+But she barely touched his hand; had she not two whole hours before
+her? He put aside a cheap hanging of rustling beads for her to pass,
+and then followed her into the large room on the left of the hall,
+empty save for a piano and a few chairs, that was used for parties and
+tableaux. Myrtle and another girl appeared for a moment in the
+doorway; the minxes appeared to be waltzing, but they had come to see
+who "Causton's boy" was; and as they sat down she asked him, as if
+daring him to find any but the plainer meaning in it, how Billy Izzard
+was. She exulted that she could say these things and he could not.
+Then she was told that their chops were ready. They passed into the
+next room.
+
+The table--it was a flimsy card-table covered with a cheap traycloth
+stiff with starch--accounted for all awkwardnesses and proximities;
+again she found it secretly delicious to murmur a demure apology for
+its smallness. She lingered over the eating of her chop merely because
+her plate was edge to edge with his; she would manage badly if she
+could not keep him at least two hours! Then, when she could linger out
+her eating no longer, she asked him for a cigarette and a light--for
+in the studios she had learned to smoke. He gave them to her. Her lids
+hovered as he held the match; she wondered whether she should look
+straight into his eyes or keep her lids downcast. In the end she did
+both, looking at him first, then down. Whether he looked at her at all
+she did not know; the first at any rate was a miss. She did not ask
+for a second match (she had, she told herself, some shame); instead,
+she put her elbows on the table and said, without further delay:
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+She nodded as he began to tell her; it seemed to be pretty much what
+she had expected. She listened, or half listened; she would not have
+sworn, had he challenged her, that her attention did not wander a
+little. Her thoughts were ahead of his, but a little patience--he
+would catch up; he would see presently that what his wife might think
+or what she might not think (for that was what he was talking about)
+was of less practical importance than he supposed. Naturally his wife
+must be thinking this and that; marriage that left such a thing as
+a--call it a private execution--out of the calculation might even turn
+out to be a little difficult; but she might as well hear what he had
+to say about it. She waited for the cropping up of the names of Miriam
+Levey and Kitty Windus; they duly appeared. Mrs. Jeffries, it seemed,
+wanted to see Kitty, and Miriam Levey wanted her to do so. Why they
+wanted these things was not very clear, but possibly, if Louie was
+giving him only half her attention, Jim was not saying all he knew
+either. He still considered that aspect of the affair to be wholly and
+solely the problem: but no doubt he would wake up by-and-by.
+
+Suddenly she asked him whether he and his wife had quarrelled. He
+shook his head that apparently, in spite of its stupidity, she must
+still love.
+
+"No--oh no."
+
+"Well----"
+
+And on he went again, still quite a number of leagues behind--the
+complication of his former engagement to Kitty, Evie's sense of
+unexplained things, Miriam Levey, her voracious curiosity, her
+presence at this new Consolidation.
+
+But here she interrupted him. "One moment. When do you start--this
+Consolidation?"
+
+He was toying with a knife; the little reflection passed over his
+massive face as he turned the blade. "In a few weeks. Why?"
+
+"You don't intend to take Miriam Levey over with you?"
+
+He put the knife down with a little slap. "I do not," he said. Louie
+had thought as much. So, no doubt, in spite of what she seemed to have
+said to Kitty, had Miriam Levey.
+
+"Well, go on; I interrupted you," she said.
+
+He went on. It seemed to her that if nothing had actually happened his
+overcarefulness was the one way likely to bring it to pass. Then, she
+supposed, he would ring her up on the telephone again.
+
+By this time she was thinking far more of Miriam Levey's empty chair
+at the new Consolidation than she was of things unaccounted for
+between her guest and his wife.
+
+And as for those unexplained things (Louie neither knew nor cared what
+they might be), she could only tell him now what she had told him that
+night when they had walked together, that wives must either be wives
+or not, must be told things or else be something less than wives.
+Perhaps she had not put it quite so plainly to him as that before,
+but that was what it had amounted to. Men with secrets ought to marry
+the right women.... She stole a daring look at him across the table.
+He was mumbling and twiddling a spoon now. His shoulders, bigger than
+Buck's, were clothed in an exquisite iron-grey cloth; she wondered
+whether he knew that she had kissed one of them that night in a
+Chelsea doorway.... And then, as he paused and looked up, she spoke.
+She did so almost curtly. If not telling hadn't answered, she said,
+she could only suggest, once more, telling. As for Kitty, he might put
+her entirely on one side; as long as she remained with Louie, Louie
+would answer for her.
+
+Then, for the first time, he seemed to show a gleam of interest in her
+affairs. He asked her how she got her living, now.... Her pulse
+quickened. Billy had told him, then; by "now" he meant now that she no
+longer sat; and his eyes avoided hers. He coloured; apparently he
+thought he was doing her an honour in wiping out all memory of that
+discovery in Billy's studio. An honour! She could have laughed at him.
+He little knew how she longed to tell him more--to tell him about the
+oyster-grey too--to tell him that for her it was as long ago as that.
+But no, he had seen the pearl----
+
+And it appeared that his talk really had an object now; but, as usual,
+she had seen the drift of it before he had. He was thinking of Miss
+Levey's place, if his absurd delicacies would only allow him to get it
+out.
+
+"Would you accept it?" he managed at last to ask, sounding her
+earnestly with his eyes.
+
+"Steady, silly woman," she whispered to herself, brightly flushing....
+
+But, glancing at him, she suddenly winced. Twice before men had
+offered her posts, at more than their market value, and there had been
+no colour in her cheeks as she had refused them; had she coloured now
+at the quick thought that if _he_ had made such an offer she might
+perhaps...? If so, there was mortification and despite in her colour.
+Why did he offer her Miss Levey's place? Was it his wife again--always
+his ninny of a wife? If that was so, so much the worse for him; it was
+time he learned that if he got into a mess he must make shift to get
+out of it again. There was a new little twang in her voice as,
+suddenly looking into his eyes, she said: "You've no right to expect
+that of me!"
+
+And as soon as the words were spoken, she saw too where she herself
+stood, and to what point beyond she was prepared to go. She knew now
+that she would have taken his job, not at added wages, but without
+wages at all. But to the humiliating thought that he imagined himself
+to be doing her a kindness was now superadded that of his entire
+ignorance that she might be making an attack upon his faithfulness at
+all. Suddenly she saw herself merely wonderful to him--_she_
+wonderful!--she, who had thought she could spend all her life up in
+the clouds, be content to be magnanimous for magnanimity's sake,
+virtuous for the mere love of virtue! Oh, if that was all, he needn't
+think _that_ any longer! Wonderful?... What she wanted was not
+wonderful at all, oh dear, no: merely something common, coarse,
+filling; nothing more wonderful than that.... Wise mother, to have
+known that that was the end of it all, and to have taken, long ago, in
+Henson's studio, the short cut! She did not even try to check a wild
+little exclamation....
+
+And he evidently saw something too, though what, as he blundered
+deeper, she did not stop to inquire. He gave a groan. "Poor woman!" he
+said compassionately.
+
+He might just as well have set a spark to a fuse. There broke from her
+a peremptory cry.
+
+"Not that, Jim--that's the one thing I will _not_ bear--I will _not_
+be called 'poor woman'----"
+
+And the rest now had to follow. It was the sum of her broodings,
+resentments, hatreds, dreams, desire, despair. Evie, him, herself--oh,
+it was not her fault if he didn't see now how the three of them stood.
+He knew only too well what he wanted: what Louie wanted she also knew
+only too well. Except to offer her a job that would save him even the
+trouble of ringing her up on the telephone when her help was required,
+had he ever, until this moment, looked at the thing from her point of
+view? He had not. She would help him still; but if their ships must
+part like this, at least no false tidings should pass from bridge to
+bridge: he should know exactly what it was he asked, and why she gave
+it! She began to speak rapidly, uncertainly, but sparing him nothing.
+Perhaps, after all, she said, his wife would understand; he had only
+to tell her that her husband made away with her sweetheart; perhaps
+she could bear it; if she couldn't well--he knew what was his for the
+holding up of a finger....
+
+Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped. Her voice dropped.
+"I've had no luck," she said, with quiet bitterness. "I'm out of it,
+and there's no more to say. Give me a match."
+
+And then she rose. He might sit there if he liked.
+
+He rose too, and they walked down the room in silence together. The
+bead screen of the hall parted and tinkled together again behind the
+great church-door of his back. Without a word he took down his coat
+and, under the coloured hall lamp, hoisted himself into it. And then
+he looked at her.
+
+Already in her heart she knew that that look was the end. Her offer
+had been rejected. Whatever else might happen, she, Louie Causton,
+would never come between him and his wife. The woman who had those
+eyes would keep their looks; had it been Louie's fortune to have them,
+she would have kept their looks. He was a plotter, but not of amours;
+a carrier through too, but not of intrigues. So grave an innocence was
+his that probably he didn't know that his look told her all this; if
+so, it was final indeed.
+
+So she took her dismissal, and then, with her hand on the letter-box
+of the door, stood gazing meditatively on the ground. She had wanted
+to be wooed; failing that, she had once more brought herself to woo;
+and this Joseph had gravely repelled her.
+
+At last she looked up.
+
+"About what you were saying--I mean that place of Miss Levey's," she
+said. "I don't think it would do--not now."
+
+The man who could plan a murder but not an affair looked humbly up.
+
+"Why not?" he murmured. It was as if he said: "I don't remember that
+meetings of ours in Billy's studio; I forget this too. You see how it
+is. Your taking the job would make no difference."
+
+Slowly she shook her head. "I should be seeing you," she said. "It
+wouldn't do. Good-night."
+
+She saw that she had missed even more than she had imagined.
+
+And yet, before Christmas came, she was at that self-same
+Consolidation. In October a lofty refusal; in December a creeping back
+again with her tail between her legs. Where, she asked herself, was
+her pride now?
+
+The answer was that that had been in October, and this was December.
+
+When she told Kitty that she was succeeding to Miss Levey's place
+Kitty had certain things to say about treachery and broken
+friendships. She said them at some length, and then remarked that
+after that of course Louie could hardly expect her to stay with her.
+
+"You never liked her," she said, as if not to like Miss Levey was an
+offence in itself. "And I know you tried to keep me from seeing her.
+Oh, you think I don't notice things, but you never made a greater
+mistake; I could tell you things that would surprise you! You and
+James Jeffries have got some game on; don't tell me he didn't give her
+the push; Evie and Miriam both say so; oh, you're a deep one, Louie
+Causton! First you come between me and Miriam; and then that day your
+father came and I was asking him about black eyes and he told me you
+could have one _without_ having one till you came to blow your
+nose--oh, _I_ watched you! And then to go worming about till you got
+Miriam fired and then bag her job yourself! Thank goodness, some
+people have better ideas of friendship than that! I have, for one.
+Never mind the bit you owe me; you can pay Carter Paterson with it and
+we'll call it quits. Perhaps it wouldn't be troubling you too much to
+ask you if you knew where the luggage labels are?"
+
+So Louie let her go. The tract she received by post on the following
+day: "God's Eye Everywhere, or No Sins Secret," she dropped into the
+fire. Even if Kitty really was groping blindfold on the track of that
+stale old private execution, Archie Merridew didn't matter now. The
+question had already entered the stage of blank fatality.
+
+
+V
+
+Louie did not succeed to Miss Levey's chair at once. Somebody else got
+that, who made room for somebody else, who made room for Louie. And
+her arrival at the Consolidation appeared to be the signal for Jim's
+almost immediate departure from it--that is to say, she saw him for
+three weeks, then missed him for some days, asked (in another week or
+so) a question, and was told that a fall of some sort, supervening on
+many weeks of concentrated work, had necessitated a trip to Egypt. She
+hinted that she would like to know what his fall had been, but nobody
+seemed able to tell her. As a matter of fact, she never knew. It was
+merely an act of spite on the part of the stars against herself.
+
+The ordeal by absence began again.
+
+This time she was able, somehow, to endure it. She always remembered
+him when she passed a shipping company's office, with a model of a
+liner in the window and pictures of palms and pyramids and a sphinx
+not altogether unlike himself looming up out of the tawny sand; but at
+other times she well-nigh forgot him for whole days together. She
+could hardly question her immediate superior, a Mr. Whitlock, about
+him, and probably Mr. Whitlock could not question Sir Julius
+Pepper--for Mr. Pepper was made a knight in the new year. Sir Julius
+had altogether too much _nous_ and urbanity to be questioned; he
+asked, not answered, questions. Such an indiscretion would have
+stamped Mr. Whitlock himself as a man of a barbarous mind.
+
+The place itself, its plate glass and marble, its gilded lifts and
+high galleries and lofty central dome, its floes of desks and counters
+and the tessellated floors over which rubber-tyred trollies ran to the
+strong-room every night--astonished Louie. What had been consolidated,
+who the men had been who had reconciled interests so great that the
+mere overcoming of their mass and inertia must have been accounted a
+wonder, she never really knew. Perhaps nobody really knew; perhaps not
+so much men as forces had accomplished that task. In some of its
+aspects the concern was a huge amalgamation of mercantile companies,
+mostly railway and shipping; in others it more nearly resembled a
+Government Department. But she knew that Jim knew all about it. Jim,
+Mr. Stonor (Mr. Whitlock's junior) told her, and Sir Julius, had
+planned the whole enterprise. Acting alone, Mr. Stonor said, Jim might
+have done the work and then have been shouldered out of the rewards by
+such bustling men as Robson, of the Board of Trade, George Hastie and
+Sir Peregrine Campbell, and others to whom Louie had lifted up her
+eyes when she had kept the appointment-books for the photographer in
+Bond Street; but Sir Julius had seen to that--trust Sir Julius! Sir
+Julius could cut a throat smiling with the best of them; if Jim was
+the genius, Sir Julius was the impresario of the enterprise. And
+by-and-by, from the frequency with which Sir Julius and other
+potentates said, when puzzled: "What d'you suppose Jeffries would do?"
+or "Why the deuce isn't Jeffries here?" Louie came to much the same
+conclusion.
+
+At first she was set to work with twenty other girls who, each sitting
+under a porcelain-shaded incandescent that burned all day long, tapped
+typewriters in the back part of the building that looked down on the
+white-tiled well; and for some weeks it was a question whether she
+kept her job or not. For she was dreadfully inefficient, and daily
+expected a reduction to the level of the girls who, with rigid
+"dolly-caps" clamped round their heads, manipulated the rubber worms
+of the big telephone switchboard. But again her improved French served
+her turn. Miss Lingard, who sat in Miss Levey's chair behind a screen
+twenty yards away, was absent one day; Mr. Stonor haled Louie off to
+Sir Julius's room; and Louie, following Sir Julius and a Frenchman
+from one to another of the spring-roller maps with which the room was
+lined, took down in English short-hand a conversation in French about
+the boundaries of some concession or other. It was a badly botched
+job, but it was initialled and passed; and Sir Julius, who did not so
+much open doors and place chairs as allow it to be discovered that
+doors were opened and chairs placed exactly when they should have
+been, looked at Louie, thanked her, and presently sent for her again.
+One night she had to wait on him after dinner at an hotel, to make
+notes of certain conversations; and perhaps Sir Julius noted the
+little dipping of Louie's mouth when she was summoned from the
+ante-room where she had been kept waiting. She wondered whether he had
+expected she would turn up in a dolly-cap. A little after that he
+asked her out to dinner, without any business excuse at all. Presently
+she was wondering whether she would have to walk out of the
+Consolidation or else to tell Sir Julius Pepper not to be a fool.
+
+It never came to that; exactly how near it was to doing so, Louie
+never knew. It was her Uncle Augustus of all people who saved the
+situation. His name came up; Louie could not restrain a sour little
+smile; and "Do you know Lord Moone?" Sir Julius asked. "Oh yes," Louie
+replied. That was all. Sir Julius's charming smile never varied. But
+the case was altered. Amanuenses of sorts are one thing, ladies with
+private information about the peerage another. Perhaps Sir Julius was
+a little of a snob. At any rate, he did not allow his little
+gallantries to interfere with business.
+
+So Louie became a quite superior writer of Pitman's shorthand. The
+weeks passed. Jim still remained away.
+
+Nor had she any news of Kitty Windus, of Miriam Levey, nor yet of Evie
+Jeffries. She still, however, remained good friends with Billy Izzard.
+It was from Billy that she heard, one night in April, something that
+filled her with a vague and ineffectual trouble.
+
+She had gone up to his place in Camden Town, intending to spend an
+hour or so with him; but five minutes was all the time Billy had to
+spare for her. He was just off to Victoria to meet a fellow, he said;
+if she was going that way they could go together; and she needn't
+think he was going to leave her in the studio to steal his sketches.
+"One of our heroes just come back from South Africa, a fellow called
+Lovenant-Smith," he said. "Coming?"
+
+"I'll go with you as far as Charing Cross," said Louie.
+
+Before she left Billy at Charing Cross she had learned quite a lot
+about his friend, Mr. Lovenant-Smith. There was nothing especially
+heroic about Roy's homecoming; no doubt his work had been useful, but
+it had not been fighting; for a year and a half he had not left Cape
+Town. He had now come into money, and was handing in his papers; he
+would hunt and manage his estate somewhere down in Shropshire. "I
+shall go and stop with him," said Billy. "I only hope his horses are
+better than that old yacht he nearly drowned the pair of us in." And
+at Charing Cross he left Louie.
+
+Roy was back home, then.
+
+Well, it made not one atom of difference. Jim away was all to her, Roy
+in England nothing. No doubt it was wicked.
+
+So much the worse for Louie.
+
+Then, not a week later, Jim returned from Egypt.
+
+But he returned only to go away once more, this time to Scotland. She
+saw him, for just one moment, coming out of Sir Julius's room. He was
+very brown, but much thinner, and he had a new overcoat. He went
+straight on to Scotland that day. Mr. Stonor said that he intended to
+stay there for the rest of the summer. "Overwork, of course," said Mr.
+Stonor.
+
+So yet another absence in her story of absences began.
+
+She filled it chiefly with work. She rarely got home before ten, and,
+save on Saturdays and Sundays, had to leave Jimmy entirely to the
+young woman who had succeeded Céleste. Billy had left town, and had
+probably gone to stay with Roy in Shropshire. Of Councillor Causton
+she now saw little. She wished she could save more money. Jimmy was
+now five and a half years old.
+
+Then, in October, Jim returned from Scotland. Louie half expected that
+it would be she who would have to leave now, but this did not happen.
+Not that she saw much of him; he did not come until eleven, and went
+home again for tea. Sometimes, after he had left, she or Mr. Stonor
+had to ring him up at his house in Well Walk, Hampstead; for the rest,
+he remained in high seclusion. She was glad it was so. A half absence
+such as this had not all absence's pangs, nor was his half presence
+too much perturbation; she could take a command with calmness, and she
+had nothing but commands to take. She knew by this time that he had a
+second child, a little girl, and that seemed definitely to close and
+bar the door against any wild and lawless hopes she might ever have
+entertained. And so things went on until early in December.
+
+The thing that entirely changed their course may have seemed an
+accident to Jim, but a little reflection made it plain enough to
+Louie. She had not seen Evie Jeffries since that afternoon when they
+had met at the step of the bus opposite the Adam and Eve; and Evie's
+whole face and manner gave the lie to the story she told when, at a
+little after three o'clock one afternoon, Louie came upon her in the
+counting-house of the Consolidation itself. Near the table with the
+calculating machines Louie heard a clerk whisper: "Mrs. Jeffries!"
+Forty pairs of eyes were furtively watching her over desk-rails and
+glass screens. Some of the clerks even made errands in order to get a
+better view of her. If she wanted her husband she had only to ask to
+be taken to his room at once, but she stood, a slender figure in new
+black furs, by a waiting-room door. Then, seeing Louie, she almost ran
+to her.
+
+"Oh, how are you?" she cried, in an acquired voice, touching Louie's
+hand then dropping it again. "Really, this place almost terrifies me!
+I came to fetch my husband home to tea--the car's outside--but of
+course I know I'm early. I'd such a lot of shopping to do, but I got
+through it quicker than I thought. Well, how are you?"
+
+It seemed to Louie that she did not do it very well; the manner of the
+_grande dame_ was the last thing she ought to have attempted. As Evie
+put up her hand as if it held an invisible quizzing-glass, Louie
+wondered whether she had come primarily to see her husband at all.
+
+"Really, this is stupendous!" she said. "I wonder if you could show me
+round--that is, unless I'm interfering with your duties? Do tell me
+what these things are!"
+
+They were the mechanical calculators; her comment on them was: "How
+quaint!" Followed by eyes, Louie took her to the lifts; she said they
+must have one like that put into the new house they had taken in
+Iddesleigh Gate. "It used to belong to Baron Stillhausen--you've heard
+of Baron Stillhausen, the famous diplomat?" she said. From the lifts
+Louie took her to the department where the girls in dolly-caps pulled
+at the snaky telephone plugs. "Oh," she exclaimed, "so _this_ is where
+you talk to my husband in the evenings from, is it?"... Louie had a
+little start.... She answered, however, that the private line was in
+another place, and led the way. No, Evie Jeffries oughtn't to attempt
+this kind of thing; her touch was too heavy. She told more about
+herself than she ascertained about anybody else. As they left the
+private line Louie somehow had the impression that Evie Jeffries was
+counting the paces from Louie's chair to her husband's room.
+
+She returned to her own place slowly. She wished Evie Jeffries had not
+come. Her coming seemed all at once to have diminished Louie's
+composure; it was as if a closed question had been clumsily opened
+again. "Where do you live? I should like to come and see you," Evie
+had said, as they had parted at the door of Jim's room; and that was
+odd, since for quite a number of years Evie Jeffries, had given no
+sign that she wanted to visit her. Kitty Windus, yes; Miriam Levey,
+yes; but she had not wanted to see Louie Causton. But she wanted to
+see Louie now, and had come that afternoon, Louie was now convinced,
+expressly to see her. Why? Had Jim been talking? Had Kitty and Miriam
+Levey been talking? Louie did not know. She only knew that she had
+been settled and at peace and was now so no longer.
+
+And through it all shone an unquenchable recollection--the recollection
+of how she had once stumbled upon Evie Soames, not in wonderful furs,
+asking for her lordly husband, but dressed in a skirt and blouse,
+cheek to cheek in a dark back room with a fancy-stationer's son.
+
+Evie would never forgive her that discovery.
+
+With all the elasticity gone out of her, she resumed the work she had
+left half-an-hour before.
+
+But as she lay in bed that night in her little flat, Louie ate her
+heart out again. She hated Evie Jeffries. She had remembered, too, an
+old, old slander--the slander to know the truth about which Kitty
+Windus had come to the Nursing Home in Mortlake Road. Was it that that
+had brought Mrs. Jeffries to the Consolidation now?
+
+Louie tossed and tossed. Oh, she cried vindictively, if it only _had_
+been so.... But to have to submit to the indignity of Evie's jealousy
+and not to be able to give her grounds for it! And Mrs. Jeffries
+wanted to see her flat! Well, she should be welcome. Louie would
+hardly be at the trouble to lie about things, but every stick of
+furniture in this place in which Jim had never set foot might
+silently lie for her if they would! Would that be to drag Jim in?
+Well, let him be dragged in; a woman with a husband like Jim, to be
+jealous! Why, with Louie ready and glad to lose her soul for him, he
+was the very egotist of faithfulness! He could not be virtuous without
+damning Louie with his grave and candid looks! She could almost have
+laughed at him. When all was said, such virtue was a byword, and the
+story of Joseph a thing for a quiet smile! Then Louie's laugh became a
+cry aloud, that woke Jimmy. Jimmy went to sleep again, but she was no
+calmer.
+
+Bitter as spurge was that old story of hers now, and bitterer still
+the only moral lesson it now appeared to her to have. Oh, no doubt
+there was a deal to say for their conventional morality, but a pretty
+moral lesson it was, after all, that you repented of a history with
+one man only when it forbade a second history with another! And she
+swore again that that first history should not have stood in her way;
+more, far more than that was his own headstrong virtue, and perhaps
+that was not all either. She had been born for him, she knew it; he
+had had never a secret from her save those large open secrets that
+scarce a woman shared with a man yet; his hands, that could take life
+for love, were made to hold her. She knew it in her soul.... But huge
+as it was, he didn't see it. He allowed a pretty face to blind him to
+it all. "Oh, come, come!" she had called to him on the only night, of
+all those nights, when he and she had walked together; and his answer
+had been to take himself away. When she had kissed his shoulder she
+had merely kissed the spot where another woman's head had lain.
+
+Oh, if that slander _could_ only have been true!
+
+She looked at, and almost tossed aside unread, a letter that came for
+her in the morning. Not for a single moment had she slept, and she
+wanted no letter from Roy--for it was from Roy. Still she might as
+well read it. She did so.
+
+Billy Izzard was with him; it had come out that Billy knew her, and he
+wanted to see her. "I've come back for you," the letter said, "and I'm
+not going to let you go this time. Do write when I can come and see
+you. Off out now, but do write." She threw it into the fire. Marry
+Roy? She would far rather commit another sin than such a reparation.
+The trouble was that she could not commit the sin.
+
+That morning she was sent for by Jim. As she turned the handle of his
+door she was ready to make a bet with herself about what he wanted her
+for. She was not mistaken. He wanted to thank her for showing his wife
+round the day before.
+
+His wife--always and for ever his wife.
+
+"If you feel that you must----" she said, biting her lip with
+humiliation and passion.
+
+"It's merely----" he rumbled heavily on....
+
+As if she needed to be told what it "merely" was! If he cared to hear
+it _she_ could tell _him_ what was "merely" the matter with his wife!
+
+"Oh, must you?" she said, quivering under the torture. He was playing
+nervously with a pen. "Must I what?" he said, not looking up.
+
+"Must you do this?"
+
+He looked up. "Shut the door," he said. "Now----"
+
+She listened to him almost scornfully. Again harping on that informal
+execution, as if he had been right and not right, and as if it now
+mattered one straw whether he "told his wife" or not! He was saying
+something about a doctor; the doctor, Louie gathered, had said she
+mustn't have another shock; what had Louie--always and for ever
+Louie--to say to _that_? Louie clutched at her skirt with both hands.
+
+"Don't you know?" she said, clenching the skirt hard.
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Then ask me again and I'll tell you," she threatened him.
+
+"I do ask you."
+
+Well, if he would have it.... "She's jealous," said Louie.
+
+The smile that stole slowly over his face set her almost beside
+herself. Even Potiphar's wife was probably not smiled at. Louie cut
+short the easy words that accompanied the smile.
+
+"Then if she isn't, why does she want to come and see me at my home?"
+she demanded.
+
+With quite remarkable clumsiness he pretended he had known his wife
+wanted this, and smiled again. She stamped on the ground.
+
+"My good man----" she broke out wildly....
+
+What she said she did not remember very clearly afterwards. It was
+spoken less to him than to ease her own breast. With nothing to give
+her, he still could not hold his tongue nor restrain that smile when
+she told him his wife was jealous. Jealous?...
+
+Yes, and with a jealousy that could now never pass away! For, out of
+absences, silences, refusals, virtues, smiles, everything, Louie had,
+after all, secured something that all the smiling in the world could
+not take away. She _had_ the secret he had feared to share with his
+wife. She _had_ the answer to every riddle in his riddle-haunted
+eyes. His wife _had_ grounds for her jealousy, after all, had she but
+wit enough to know where to look for them. But she too was hopelessly
+behind. She too was smelling at cold scents--telephones and visits to
+flats. She suspected a gross infidelity, and never dreamed of the
+existence of one so fatally searching that the other would have been a
+mere incident by comparison with it. Little dullard, how should she?
+Her conception even of jealousy was as limited as everything else
+about her; a call or two on the private wire at night, and she was
+found asking questions at the Consolidation the next day.
+
+And suddenly Louie saw--fool that she had been not to see it
+before!--why Evie Jeffries wanted to come to her flat. It was not to
+see the place and its furniture. It was to see Jimmy.
+
+Oh, if her boy could only have had eyes like a young lion!
+
+
+VI
+
+When Kitty Windus had come to Mortlake Road and had refused to sit
+down until Louie had told her the truth about the wanton slander that
+had linked her name with Jim's, Louie had dismissed the matter with
+amused contempt. But now there seemed something rather terrible in it.
+Its author's stamping-out notwithstanding, for Evie Jeffries it
+appeared still to live. What had brought it up anew Louie could not as
+much as guess, but there it seemed to be.
+
+"So that's it?" she muttered to herself. "In that case I may certainly
+expect to see you again soon. You won't say anything to your husband;
+he'd only smile and disbelieve his eyes and ears if you did--his
+powers that way are really tremendous; but you'll probably go to
+Miriam Levey, who's rather a gift for these things, and Kitty'll back
+her up, and you'll make out your case one way or another. Very well.
+When the water's troubled there's the best fishing. _I'm_ not above
+certain things now; good gracious, no! I'll find a reason for ringing
+him up to-night, and if you go to the telephone yourself so much the
+better. And you'll be round to see me at my flat before very long."
+
+Evie delayed to come, but Louie knew the reason for that. Jim was
+moving into his great new place in Iddesleigh Gate. That would take a
+little time. Well, there was no hurry. When she did come Louie would
+be ready for her.
+
+Did she still hope, if those waters could be sufficiently troubled,
+for a catch? Was she in her heart now as resolved to wreck the peace
+of Jim's household as formerly she had been to preserve it? She could
+hardly have answered the questions herself. It was Evie, not she (she
+told herself), who was going the right way to make a mess of things;
+nevertheless, she had only to remember Jim's smile to feel the tigress
+stretch itself within her. The loved fool! Could he go all lengths for
+love without thinking that a woman might do the same? Louie could not
+kill, as he could, smoothly burying the consequences afterwards, but
+she could do other things; and she was not sure that she couldn't kill
+too. Ten words, it appeared, would do it. Jim, who did not fear
+murder, feared those ten words; well, men feared one thing, women
+another, that was all. She had only to open her mouth where Jim kept
+his shut.
+
+The only thing was that it did not seem a very sporting thing to do.
+Jim had taken his risks; she would be taking none. It was not much,
+perhaps, but it was enough to give her pause.
+
+In the meantime she continued to ring Jim up frequently on the private
+telephone.
+
+It was on the second Saturday afternoon in April that Evie at last
+paid her visit. Louie had sent out Rhoda, Jimmy's nurse, for the
+afternoon, and was herself setting out with the boy for one of their
+precious jaunts. They were half-way down the four flights of stairs
+when she heard somebody ascending. She and Evie Jeffries met on the
+second landing, where the charwoman ceased to whiten the edges of the
+stairs.
+
+It seemed to Louie that Evie Jeffries must have a sort of lucky-bag of
+greetings into which to dip. She could hardly have been surprised to
+meet Louie on Louie's staircase, but she drew a wrong one for all
+that.
+
+"Well, this is a sur--a pleasure!" she cried. "You see, I promised to
+come, and here I am! Don't tell me you're just going out!"
+
+"No; we were only going to the South Kensington Museum, and I was in
+two minds about it. Come up, won't you?" Louie replied.
+
+At first Evie wouldn't hear of it, but even as she spoke she had
+ascended another step. They went upstairs again, and Louie put her key
+into the lock. "You'll excuse me a moment, won't you?" she said, as
+Evie entered. "In there's my sitting-room."
+
+And she herself, turning along the passage, entered her bedroom and
+took that old study of Billy Izzard's from its paper wrappings. She
+hung it up on its old nail. If Evie Jeffries wished to see her flat
+she should see her flat. Then she returned to the front room that
+looked away over the trees and houses to Earls Court.
+
+"So this," said Evie, as she entered, "is your little boy!"
+
+"Yes, that's Jim. Won't you sit down? I'll put the kettle on and we'll
+have tea."
+
+She went into the kitchen, filled the tin kettle, and set it on the
+gas-ring.
+
+Evie was dressed in an exquisite coat and skirt and an expensive and
+wrong hat; silk linings made whispers whenever she moved; but Louie,
+who kept her good clothes for the Consolidation, wore the battered old
+grey felt hat and long grey coat in which she had passed from studio
+to studio. But she knew that Evie envied her her distinction of
+motion. Evie's figure was pretty and "stock," charming but with no
+surprise--that of a demonstrable beauty. And the acquired tones had
+come into her voice again.
+
+"How ripping up here!" she approved. "Such a splendid--view! I wish we
+had a view like it in Iddesleigh Gate; but as I told my husband, even
+money can't buy a view in London. Delightful! Have you the morning
+sun?"
+
+"That's in my bedroom," said Louie. "How did you come--by car?"
+
+"No; I felt that I needed the walk. Really people will be forgetting
+how to walk soon. Well, at all events, he's a beautiful boy!"
+
+Louie saw no reason why she should not say, in the simple French which
+may more or less be assumed to go with large houses and cars, that she
+preferred that the boy himself should not be told so; and then she
+went into the kitchen again to smile. She remembered Burnett Minor:
+"Voo affectay feele!" she murmured softly. Then she made tea.
+
+"I suppose you're not quite settled yet?" she said, returning with the
+tray.
+
+"Settled! Why, it will take us months!" Evie purred.
+
+"Of course. It seems very odd to talk over the telephone, though, to a
+place you've never seen. Sugar? Is this place at all like what you
+imagined?"
+
+Again came the ready-made answer: "Oh, it's really quite too
+delightful!" It was a pity, Louie thought, that Mrs. Jeffries had not
+had the advantage of a few minutes' talk with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+before coming to see her. The Lady-in-Charge at Rainham Parva might
+have warned her.
+
+But Louie knew that already her very chairs and mats and brown-papered
+walls were silently whispering to Evie Jeffries. She might talk of
+Iddesleigh Gate, but she was thinking of nothing less than of
+Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she had been reassured in the matter of
+Jimmy's eyes, which were as blue as Roy's, but her own eyes were
+taking in everything for all that. Let them. Louie wondered whether,
+did she turn her back for a few minutes, her visitor would question
+the child.
+
+"The Amaranth Room?" she presently interrupted Evie's flow to say.
+"Have you really a room called that? How lovely it sounds!"
+
+"Nearly fifty feet long, my husband says; why, it has to have three
+large fireplaces, as well as the radiators, but of course there's
+steam-heat all through the house. It's delicious, not to walk into
+cold patches all of a sudden. And all the windows on one side are
+double, so that the place is perfectly quiet. You must come some time.
+Of course," she took herself up, "our other house was quite a poky
+place; my husband never really settled there; but at Iddesleigh Gate,
+he says, he can really stretch himself."
+
+Louie meditated for a moment. Then: "What's really been the matter
+with him?" she asked. She knew that Evie would probably not believe
+she didn't know; for that reason it was better to ask.
+
+But she got no information. It was overstrain, Evie replied lightly,
+and then on the top of that he'd slipped one night and caught his head
+on the corner of a fender. He'd slipped because he'd been really
+fagged out, what with starting the Consolidation and one thing and
+another. "But he looks all right now, don't you think?" Evie asked.
+
+"Perfectly, I should say, from the little I see of him."
+
+"Of course you mostly do Sir Julius's work, don't you?"
+
+"Mostly."
+
+"It must be great fun for you, being taken out by Sir Julius
+sometimes. My husband told me that."
+
+"Quite amusing."
+
+"Miss Levey was never taken out like that!"
+
+"No? Have you seen her lately?"
+
+But again Louie got little information. Included in what she did get,
+however, was a lie. Evie reported that Miss Levey, now at some Women's
+Emancipation League or other with Kitty Windus, had actually been
+going to write to Louie to suggest that she, Louie, should apply for
+her old place. Louie gave a little nod. Of course Miriam Levey, rather
+than own to defeat, would pretend that she had left the Consolidation
+of her own accord. Louie rose.
+
+"But perhaps you'd like to see my place?" she said. "Not that I think
+you'll find it very amusing. But you can see it if you like."
+
+"I should love it! Is Jimmy coming? Do you know, Jimmy, I've got a
+little boy like you, but not nearly as big?"
+
+"Has he got a helmet like mine?" Jimmy demanded.
+
+"No; but I think I shall have to get him one."
+
+"You stay here, Jimmy," said his mother; and she led the way to the
+kitchen.
+
+Evie praised the kitchen and its meagre appointments, and was then
+shown the bathroom. "It hasn't a crystal bath," Louie said, "but it
+does to wash in." She lingered in the bathroom a little; she was
+thinking of another bath and certain old jokes about brown-paper
+parcels. Then, first showing Evie the bedroom that had been Kitty's,
+she passed to her own room at the back.
+
+Against the wall on the left lay Jimmy's bed; her own was across the
+room, with its head under the break of the mansard roof. The little
+built-out window, from the glass sides of which rows of chimney-pots
+could be seen, faced the door, and over the fireplace on the right,
+full in the light, hung Billy's study. It was the second thing on
+which Evie's eyes rested. Louie was careful not to look at it.
+
+For in that place at any rate she was going to strike; the rest might
+fall out afterwards as it would. As she turned away to pat Jimmy's
+pillow she was suddenly fighting white; the little creature had come
+for it and should have it. And she should have it swiftly and without
+warning. Even as Louie had turned her back her heart had given a
+leap....
+
+For up to that moment it had been always possible that Jim had not
+spoken of his intrusion into Billy's studio that evening; but there
+was no doubt now! Jim--or perhaps Billy Izzard--had told her. Probably
+Billy. Probably Billy first, and then, seeing she already knew, Jim.
+All at once there rushed upon Louie, as she passed from Jimmy's bed to
+her own and smoothed the coverlet of that also, what had happened
+later that same evening, when her arms had supported a collapsing Jim
+in a Swan Walk doorway and she had passionately called him: "Come,
+come! Come, come!"
+
+She spoke quietly; quietness was so much more destructive.
+
+"This is where I get the morning sun. But it's very windy. The wind
+blew that picture you're looking at down the other day." Then, without
+either pause or change of tone: "By the way, that's what you came to
+see, isn't it--that and my boy?"
+
+Simultaneously with her blow she was commenting to herself: "That's
+good-bye to you, Sir Julius; she'll see I don't come back to the
+Consolidation after that; will you have Miss Levey back again, or will
+you try her friend Miss Windus? I don't think you'll offer Miss Windus
+an--er--increase of wages. As for me, I suppose I can sit again;
+nothing matters now. Or there's a plainer way still----"
+
+The next moment she had called sharply: "Go away, Jimmy, till I call
+for you! Go and look out of the window for Rhoda!"
+
+Then she turned and faced the woman who had taken two quick, running
+steps towards her. Insolently she smiled into her eyes.
+
+"That was it, wasn't it?" she said.
+
+Mrs. Jeffries did not fight white. The blood had thronged to her head
+until her very lips seemed swollen; Miss Levey could hardly have
+spoken more thickly. She spoke, too, in a passionate ellipsis than
+which Louie's own five words did not go more straight to the heart of
+the matter.
+
+"Oh, you would if you could--I've known that a long time!" she cried.
+"Wouldn't you just--rather! You'd do it if it was only to give _me_
+one for myself! _I_ know you."
+
+Louie thought she rather liked her for making a fight of it. She still
+smiled. "Then that was it?" she said.
+
+Evie flushed even more deeply. "You didn't suppose I didn't know all
+about that absurd meeting, did you?" she said, with a still darker
+flush.
+
+"Dear me, no. I've known for weeks that you 'knew'--if we mean the
+same thing. Perhaps we don't, though. Anyway, I can quite understand
+your wanting to see for yourself. Miss Levey can't tell you
+everything."
+
+Evie's inability to speak for mere fury was so evident that Louie,
+after watching her for a moment, continued:
+
+"As for that picture, naturally I wanted to keep it. I'm sure you'll
+see that for yourself."
+
+Here Evie flamed. "'Naturally!'" she broke out. Louie gave an almost
+humorous shrug.
+
+"Well, surely it's natural?"
+
+"Natural!... As if his coming in wasn't the merest accident!"
+
+"Oh, I know that; but what _are_ you here for then? And now that you
+_have_ been and seen, what can you possibly do about it?"
+
+Evie's lips seemed as thick as if a bee had stung them. She broke out
+again.
+
+"'It!'--I like your 'it,' Miss Causton or Mrs. Causton or whatever you
+call yourself!"
+
+Louie coolly smoothed the folds of her blouse. "By 'it,' I mean, of
+course, my loving your husband," she said. "As you guessed, I knew
+that you knew about that picture. But it's really a much older thing
+than that! I don't quite know how old; while you were still engaged to
+somebody else--as old as that anyhow. And as it's purely my affair,
+and even he can't stop it, I wonder what _you_ can possibly do!--I'm
+'Miss' Causton, by the way."
+
+Louie had almost a genius for these last words that could be taken up;
+she smiled again as Evie, taking them up, said: "Oh, _are_ you!"
+
+"Well, I don't think I need be longer than I like, but that's neither
+here nor there. The important thing at present is whether you were
+wise to come to-day or not. I wonder whether you'd let me give you a
+piece of advice?"
+
+And that, as Evie still stood speechless with rage, might be described
+as the end of the first round. There was a long pause during which the
+two women stood looking at one another. Then the second round began,
+with a rapid exchange of half sentences.
+
+"Advice! Thanking you very much for your kindness----"
+
+"Oh, please don't raise your voice; they aren't double windows here."
+
+"Advice is cheap."
+
+"Far from it, believe me."
+
+"You common----"
+
+"Sssh, ssh, ssh! Your husband wasn't above asking my advice----"
+
+"I'll take very good care----"
+
+"Please--there are other people in these flats."
+
+"Well, is noise anything new here?" said Evie grossly.
+
+"Oh, you really shouldn't say those things!"
+
+And again they fell back, as it were, for breath. It was Louie who
+presently resumed.
+
+"I don't in the least know why I should want to advise you," she went
+on. "I'd no intention of doing so when you came into this room, and to
+be frank I still half hope you won't take the advice. But you'll
+please yourself about that. It's this. Don't be a little fool. Go
+home, and don't tell your husband you've seen me at all. If you do
+you'll make a sad mistake. You say advice is cheap; well, this isn't;
+it's fearfully dear. It's not the first time I've tried to help you,
+and I really haven't strength to do it any more. No, don't try to
+think of fresh names to call me either; already you've called me
+common and told me that the tenants here are used to hearing angry
+wives, and one can have too much of that. So go home, and say nothing
+to your husband about where you've been. Believe me, it'll be quite
+the best."
+
+It did in truth cost her more, far more, than she had intended to pay.
+The greater fool she, she told herself, but--she gave a quick, defiant
+glance round the bedroom, as if her eyes sought somebody who dared to
+meddle in her affairs. She would be a fool if she wished; who should
+stop her? This jealous little scold had fair warning now; let her take
+it and go while there was yet time. Louie had all but spoken her
+former _fiancé's_ name once; with much more provocation she might
+forget herself and involve Jim too in a catastrophe of ten little
+words; and she wanted to do the sporting thing after all. Let Jim's
+wife take her fill of that canvas of Billy's, then, and go. Her eyes
+were glued to it now. As she looked Louie exulted; it _had_ been
+so--precisely so; not all Evie Jeffries's looking could alter that
+fact....
+
+But suddenly, as if even in this gratification and triumph lurked a
+peril best avoided, Louie strode to the canvas, took it from its nail,
+and set it on the floor by the little fireplace with its face to the
+wall. She had felt the tigress stretch again. To put that thing out of
+sight was the safest thing to do. She turned to Evie again.
+
+"Please go," she said. ("Yes, mother's coming in a minute, Jimmy.) You
+see, he's calling me. Forgive my turning you out like this, but do, do
+go, and don't tell your husband where you've been. Good-bye."
+
+But Evie Jeffries seemed to suspect that Louie was merely "coming it
+over her" with something indefinable, essential, not to be acquired.
+After all it was she, this shabby, grey-eyed woman, who wrote
+shorthand for a weekly wage, and herself, Mrs. James Herbert Jeffries,
+who lived in the mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she felt herself
+challenged; at any rate she plunged her hand into her lucky-bag once
+more.
+
+"Oh, there's no need for such a hurry," she said frigidly. "For one
+thing, I'm a little particular about who I take my advice from. You
+needn't think I don't see you're just shutting me up?"
+
+Louie was almost hushing, soothing. "Then let me shut you up. You've
+seen all you came to see; if there's anything else you want to know,
+ask me, quite quickly----"
+
+And Louie, in her eagerness to get rid of her and to remove herself
+from danger, almost gladly submitted to what Evie said next.
+
+"Oh, of course, if you've--an appointment," she said, with a toss.
+
+"Yes, I've an appointment--you understand," she answered, with a
+little shepherding movement of her hands.
+
+But the next moment that too had turned into something else.
+
+"Oh, you little fool!" Louie broke out, suddenly seeing. "You don't
+suppose I'm trying to get you out of the way so that I can meet _him_,
+do you? Good gracious, woman, he's never set foot in this place in his
+life, and I'll see he never does! Perhaps I wanted you to think he
+had--I don't know what I thought--with one and another of you I'm
+getting almost past thinking--but that's the truth anyway! _Now_ are
+you satisfied? Or have you got the idea so thoroughly into your stupid
+little head that nothing will shake it? If you're going to spend your
+Saturday afternoons going round to every place you think might
+possibly----"
+
+But the denial counted for nothing. Evie turned haughtily.
+
+"Who's making the noise now? And why should I believe you? I knew
+before I came you'd say that----"
+
+"Oh, how you try me!... I _do_ say that. There's nothing else to say.
+Do you think if it was any other way I shouldn't boast of it, to you
+or anybody else? Why, how _can_ you know so little of him--not to
+speak of myself----"
+
+"You needn't talk as if you hadn't already had the cheek to tell me
+you loved him!"
+
+"Did I? Upon my soul, I sometimes don't know whether I do or not! Say
+I don't--say I lied--say I sometimes almost hate him as much as I do
+you and you me."
+
+"Oh, very likely, the grapes being sour," Evie scoffed.
+
+"Then if they're sour----? What more do you want? Isn't that enough?
+And isn't it more than enough that I let you stand there and tell me
+so? Oh, I'm doing my best to warn you--you'll make a great mistake if
+you make me _try_ to get him!" She stamped. "_Won't_ you go?"
+
+Evie too stamped. "Oh yes, I'll go, and so will you, I promise
+you--from Pall Mall----"
+
+"Anything you like--only go----"
+
+But as Evie took a step towards the door a little accident turned
+Louie suddenly as white as paper. Billy's study leaned against the
+wall; Evie's skirt or foot caught it as she passed; and the canvas
+fell. Evie gave a short laugh and pushed it with her shoe.
+
+The dear symbol, nay, the very evidence of so many dreamings, that
+poor thing of wasted smiles and sighs and tears, the pearl from the
+heart of the oyster-grey----
+
+A kick of her rival's shoe was treatment good enough for it----
+
+It was as if the hives of her own breasts and the heart beneath them
+had been trodden on.
+
+Louie stepped slowly forward. "No, stop," she said.
+
+She stood for a moment looking down at the picture; then she spoke
+slowly.
+
+"You were quite right to come," she said. "You have reason to be
+jealous."
+
+Evie affected not to hear, but she heard. Louie continued:
+
+"A moment ago I told you not to tell him you'd been here. Now I want
+you to tell him. He may even be expecting it. You see we have spoken
+of it, he and I."
+
+Evie Jeffries seemed about to say something, but "Just one moment,"
+said Louie quietly----
+
+She placed the picture against the wall again, face outwards. She did
+not display it as a taunt now; it had served its turn. As if Evie's
+looks had cheapened it, she no longer wanted it. She stood looking at
+it.
+
+"It was the last time I sat," she murmured to herself.
+
+Even that pale shadow of a bridal was to be taken from her.
+
+Well, let it go.
+
+This time it was her own foot that kicked the canvas aside; then like
+a flash she turned--Louie at her deadliest.
+
+"I suppose you're aware you've lost him, whether he knows it yet or
+not?" she demanded truculently.
+
+Again she was grateful to Evie that she stiffened up against her. Evie
+smiled.
+
+"Oh, that way--'whether he knows it or not'--nobody minds _that_ kind
+of losing! _That_ wasn't what you were trying to make me believe a few
+minutes ago. Thank you very much for the tea, not forgetting the
+advice," she went on, "and if I might return the compliment, I should
+like to give you a piece of advice too. You say you could get married
+if you like; I'd jump at that if I were you! You see, there's your
+boy. Quite a well-behaved little fellow he seems--quite a superior
+child--and now that I've seen for myself, I'm perfectly satisfied,
+thank you!"
+
+"Then," said Louie, advancing, "I'm going to spoil your satisfaction.
+Listen to me." Her eyes were like saucers of ice. "You've lost your
+husband. I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll tell you how you can
+find out. You can tell him what he wouldn't believe when I told
+him--that you're jealous. You've reason; ask him what it is. If he
+doesn't tell you, he daren't; if he does--ck!--it's all up between
+you. Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that _you're_ the kind of
+woman men tell things to? You, who can neither trust him nor be
+trusted by him? You, who spy on him when his back's turned? You, who
+listen while a miserable little Jewess makes mischief for you--for I
+guess Miriam Levey sent you here? _You_ think you love him? Look at
+me, I say"--she rapped out the words like a command--"listen, and I'll
+tell you _my_ idea of loving a man! I've messed my life; if you were
+anything but what you are you'd know that if you wanted to hurt me
+your way wouldn't be to point at my little boy and look round my
+bedroom as if you expected to find pipes and overcoats there! Oh,
+that's not the way! The way would be to let me see what a perfect
+marriage could be; there might be tears in my eyes then! But what's
+this you show me instead? Oh, I know what your marriage is without
+telling. It would take you and a woman to make a wife for a man! And
+what would mine have been if I hadn't thrown my chance away? What
+should I have said if I'd seen what you think you've seen? Listen! I
+should have said: 'Go, if you like; find a woman if you can whose
+love's like mine; search the earth for her; I give you leave, and I
+shall be waiting for you, just the same, when you come back and say
+there isn't one!' But had _you_ thought of that? Not you! At a word
+you're off, asking whether this and that's true, because you don't
+trust him; and so he gives his trust to somebody else! That's what
+you've lost--and you don't even miss it, you know so little of love!"
+
+Evie had fallen back against the wall, a little intimidated by her
+vehemence. She did not understand, but she seemed to apprehend that
+there was something she did not understand. Louie broke out anew.
+
+"_You_ know love! And when and how did you learn it, pray? As you
+learned your shorthand and things (oh, you're trying hard to forget
+you ever knew them!) at that place in Holborn? Why, you failed in your
+petty little examinations there; do you think love's easier? Something
+you get out of a text-book and answer a paper on? Your husband might
+know if you don't! _He_ knew just what those other lessons were worth,
+but he doesn't seem to know that loving has a genius too--that one in
+a million has it as a gift and the others mimic it as you're mimicking
+people in your dress and talk now! And you call _me_ common--me, who
+told your husband long ago what his only, only chance was! Oh, I
+mustn't say any more or I shall say everything! And you toss your head
+and say: 'Nobody minds that kind of losing!' That's your idea; that's
+what you really think! Why, your mind wants a window as badly as that
+little dark back room at your Business College.... Oh, it maddens me,
+the sheer waste! A necklace of love--pearls--and good gracious, a bit
+of cheap glass in the middle of it! Yes, I mean you."
+
+She was walking rapidly up and down; she struck the rail of Jimmy's
+cot with her hand as she passed. Evie, cowed, watched her from the
+wall. Louie stopped before her.
+
+"What do you _do_ for him?" she said bitterly. "What do you _give_
+him? What do you _bear_ for him, suffer for him? Don't whimper--tell
+me--you've made pretty free with me--put that handkerchief away and
+tell me----"
+
+But instead of putting the handkerchief away, Evie burst into loud
+sobs. Louie watched her remorselessly. Tears, of course--no doubt that
+was the way she managed Jim----
+
+"That's no good with me," she said harshly. "I want to know what you
+do for your husband besides following him about and asking questions
+about him."
+
+Evie's hand moved as if for a chair. There was none. She lifted her
+head, walked across the room, and fell across Louie's bed. Louie still
+watched her unmoved.
+
+"Well?" she demanded again, after a quarter of a minute.
+
+Muffled in the bedclothes, Evie's voice came.
+
+"I give him all--all I--have. You talk as if--as if--I'd no right--to
+be on the earth at all."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, you do--you do! How--how can I give him more--than I've got? Oh,
+you think you know, but you don't--you don't know what I've gone
+through--you've never had that horrible morning--when I was to have
+been married--and I never expected Jeff to propose, but he did----"
+
+"Oh, for goodness' sake, get up!" Louie cried.
+
+"He did--one day--and I said No at first, but he caught hold of me....
+And even then I was jealous about Kitty--I know I'm jealous--but he
+told me afterwards that I needn't be jealous of poor Kitty because
+he'd only done it because he thought he couldn't have me--I know I'm
+jealous--it hurts sometimes so that I can only cry and cry----"
+
+Louie hadn't wanted this at all. Again she cried: "Oh, get up!" but
+Evie continued to sob.
+
+"And then when Jeff saw you--that night--at Billy's--it was worse than
+ever, but I kept it from him. I'm not like you, Louie--it's no good my
+telling myself I don't mind--even though I knew it was all an accident
+it was like a knife----"
+
+"Oh, don't lie there like that!" Louie muttered.
+
+"And then Miriam Levey reminded me of that thing Archie had said--but
+he's dead now--and I know it was absurd, but I did think he liked you.
+You've--such ways, you see--I expect you've been a governess or
+something in swell houses--I've got to learn them too, now, but Jeff
+says I'm really very quick at it----"
+
+Louie was pacing the floor now, but more slowly and with downhung
+head. This was the very last thing she had wanted. More than ever she
+hated this unresisting piece of pulp; but strike again she could not;
+no, not with Evie's soul as it were a naked picture for her to set her
+foot upon. And unless she did strike it was now quite, quite final. To
+take it lying down! Gladly she would have goaded her into a fresh show
+of resistance; contemptuously she would have told her to stand up and
+fight; but the child--Louie felt her to be a child, and herself a
+faded woman--was merely beyond all decency exposed. Louie only wanted
+to cover her up again as quickly as possible--her confessions, her
+abjectness, her appalling artlessnesses, her humiliating appeals. She
+was beginning to sob once more.
+
+"Oh, don't go on like that; do get up and pull yourself together!"
+Louie snapped.
+
+"I do love him--I haven't anything else to give him--except my
+life--he could have that--you couldn't give him more than that----"
+
+"I could stop blubbering for him," said Louie curtly, resuming her
+walk.
+
+Yes, it was final. Evie had overcome; Louie now backed out of the
+whole affair. If Jim liked to tell her of his own accord, well and
+good; it still seemed the only way out; but what was the good even
+then? Evie Jeffries would no more acquire love as Louie understood it
+than she would ever acquire the _nous_ to preside without betrayals at
+Jim's table at Iddesleigh Gate. And if Evie had lost Jim, so had
+Louie. By her silence she was relinquishing him now. She saw his image
+recede, slowly, slowly, as if it had been indeed that ship of her
+fancy, outward bound, her own vessel already condemned for breaking
+up. Yes, the ship was drawing away. The eyes of her spirit tired of
+watching it; surely now she might turn them elsewhere; but no--there
+it was still, very small, leaning, no doubt, to a brisk breeze, but
+hardly appearing to move.... No, it was not gone even yet; that sudden
+anguished searching for it was but a trick of the eyes; it was still
+there--a speck----
+
+And it had only needed six words: "James Herbert Jeffries killed
+Archie Merridew."
+
+Suddenly Louie herself sank to the floor by Jimmy's cot. Evie heard
+her sinking. She rose from the bed and ran to her. But Louie cried
+aloud and put up her hand.
+
+"For God's sake don't touch me--go now--and say nothing."
+
+The touch of Evie Jeffries would have been more than she could have
+borne.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mother, there _is_ a gentleman!"
+
+It was Jimmy's voice outside the door.
+
+Slowly Louie rose to her feet. "Very well," she called shakily; "talk
+to him till I come. Please go at once," she added to Evie.
+
+Evie began: "I'm sorry I said----"
+
+"Oh, do you want me to strike you?"
+
+"Can't I--do anything--for you?"
+
+"_Go!_"
+
+She heard the outer door close behind Evie Jeffries. By that time her
+eyes were straining at a wide and empty horizon....
+
+
+VII
+
+
+§_a_
+
+What followed when, after a few minutes during which Louie bathed her
+face in the bathroom, she entered her sitting-room again, fell
+mercifully flat. Any visit would have been an anti-climax; a visit now
+from Roy--it was Roy--was even welcome for that reason. If she must
+see him, best get it over.
+
+He was sitting on a rush-seated chair with Jimmy between his knees.
+Jimmy was playing with his watch. Save that the rims of his stolid
+porcelain-blue eyes were pinkish, as if with suppressed tears, he had
+not greatly changed. He wore a braided morning-coat; his silk hat,
+stick and gloves lay on another chair. His watch slipped from his
+boy's hand and dangled by its chain as he rose. His voice carried
+Louie instantly back to the carpenter's shed at Rainham Parva.
+
+"It's me, you see, Louie; here I am, like a bad penny, always turning
+up."
+
+Louie spoke listlessly. "How are you? I'll get you some tea."
+
+A minute later, with a "May I come in here?" he had followed her into
+the kitchen. He merely got in her way, if she could be said, in her
+complete exhaustion, to have a way at all. She was cutting bread and
+butter.
+
+"Louie, old girl," he said piteously over the bread-board, "why didn't
+you--tell a fellow?"
+
+Louie did not answer. Then Roy chirped up a little, as if something
+might now, past all discussion, be taken for granted.
+
+"Well, this settles it," he said. "Clinches it entirely. You know what
+I mean."
+
+Louie did know. "Just take the kettle off, will you?" she said.
+
+"So you see that's settled--clinched," said Roy, quite bustling.
+"Right you are. The only question now is; how soon can you pack up."
+
+"We'll talk about it presently, if there's anything to say. There
+isn't, though. Will you carry the tray in?"
+
+Jimmy ran straight to his knee again. "May I give him some jam?" said
+Roy; and then he added to the boy: "Oh, come, don't mess yourself up
+with it like that!" Louie remembered his account of the accident with
+the centre-board: "Jam and all the lot!" but she did not smile.
+
+"Rhoda will be here in a few minutes, then I'll have a short walk with
+you," she said. "I've nothing to say, though."
+
+Presently Rhoda did come in, and Louie put on her hat and old grey
+coat. They went out and walked slowly across Eelbrook Common towards
+Walham Green. There she told Roy that his return could make no
+difference whatever. "Don't talk such stuff, Louie," he said; "sit
+down." They sat down on a bench on the side of the common past which
+the District Railway runs and talked.
+
+The air rang with the shouts of poorly clad children at their Saturday
+afternoon play; the common was a-crawl with urchins. Into Roy's
+honest, statue-like eyes tears had come; none came into Louie's. She
+only shook her head.
+
+"You're only lacerating me," she said.
+
+"But, Louie----"
+
+"You want to lacerate me?"
+
+"But--the little chap----" Roy said presently, with a gulp. "Will you
+tell a fellow how you manage?"
+
+That Louie did not mind doing, more or less. "And now I must go back,"
+she said, rising.
+
+"I'll walk back a bit of the way with you. I'm not going to let you go
+like this."
+
+At the little drinking-fountain she stopped. "Don't make it harder,"
+she said. He had been indicating the rabble of children.
+
+"But look at 'em, poor little beggars!" he said. "Dash it all, I'm not
+just blowing off--I _could_ do such lots for him--he could ride--and
+shoot--and fish--and I've a corking little pony at grass now." He
+mentioned these things one after the other, slowly, as they occurred
+to him.
+
+Louie groaned inwardly, but aloud she said: "Please don't come any
+farther. Good-bye."
+
+"But I may come again? You see, I jolly well know I could persuade
+you."
+
+"N-o----"
+
+"I shall, though--you bet," Roy announced.
+
+She left him, wondering whether it would have made any difference at
+all had he, in asking her to marry him, told her once, even once, that
+he loved her.
+
+But she did not return home. Instead, she walked past the block of
+flats, crossed Putney Bridge, and sought her old Nursing Home in
+Mortlake Road. As a drunkard might pant for a drink, so now in her
+extremity she wanted to hear gaiety and laughter and talk. Though she
+paid for it in prostration afterwards, she felt that without some such
+intermission she could never get through the night. And to-morrow was
+that dead day, Sunday. Further than that she did not see; beyond the
+anodyne of an ordinary human laugh she did not inquire. It seemed to
+her a matter of the last moment to herself that Miss Dot and Miss Cora
+should be at home; if they were not, she felt that she must walk
+straight into a public-house, as a man might, and get herself
+something to drink.
+
+But Miss Cora and Miss Dot were at home; they had just come in from a
+matinée. They made an onslaught on Louie. Had she seen the piece? Oh,
+the funniest thing! They really had had some luck at the theatre at
+last! The last time it had been a slum piece, all heartstrings and
+gutter-snipes; and the time before that--would Louie believe it!--just
+when they had expected to see frocks and dancing and suchlike, the
+curtain had gone up on a dentist's parlour! Two half-crowns for seats
+in the pit for that! It was almost like paying money to go and see
+another Nursing Home!
+
+"But give the poor girl some tea--what are we thinking of!" said Miss
+Cora.
+
+"No, thanks--I've given two people tea this afternoon already," said
+Louie. "Tell me about the play."
+
+And, both speaking at once, they told her about the play--_such_ a
+frock as Ellaline Terriss had worn!--an e-_nor_-mous pink hat, pink
+like a rabbit's ear, and a frock, chiffon over pink satin.
+
+Ah! That was better!
+
+"But where's my bonnie boy?" Miss Cora demanded.
+
+"Oh, let's show her the new one, the little Crowley baby!"
+
+The little Crowley baby was brought in....
+
+"May I invite myself to supper?" Louie asked by-and-by.
+
+"Oh, do stop!"
+
+"Then give me some stout or something. I'm not sleeping very well."
+
+"Oh, we'll see that's all right----"
+
+And when, at ten o'clock, Louie left, it was with a sleeping
+preparation in her pocket. She took it in bed. It did its work. Half
+Sunday had passed when next she awoke.
+
+On the Sunday afternoon she went with Jimmy and Rhoda to Bishops Park;
+then, packing them off home, she crossed the bridge again and took the
+bus to Buck's. At Buck's she again stayed until ten, and she smiled
+as, on the way home again, she remembered the little party to which
+Chaff had once taken her, pigtail and all. If Chaff had had a little
+party that night she would have invited herself to it; it would have
+been something to do. Although it was half-past eleven when she
+reached her own door she was not in the least tired; had she not slept
+until well after midday? She walked back to Putney Bridge again. There
+a man spoke to her. She wondered what he would have said had she
+stopped; it would have been amusing to know. She felt that she had not
+had enough amusement. She wished she could have gone back to the
+Business School in Holborn again. That had been amusing. Mr. Mackie
+had been very amusing. One of his songs, he had said, that about the
+Gorgonzola Cheese, never failed to create merriment.
+
+She hummed as much as she could remember of the air of it as she
+walked, and took two more of Miss Cora's sleeping-tablets before going
+to bed.
+
+She found, too, an entirely unexpected amount of amusement at the
+Consolidation on the Monday morning. Not that everything was not much
+as usual; the routine was the same; but a quite comic spirit seemed to
+pervade the whole place. Lacking a Mr. Mackie, Sir Julius, dapper and
+perfect in his aplomb, who had thought of asking her to be his
+mistress but had found a more profitable use to put her to, seemed
+somehow as funny as needs be; she wondered she had not noticed it
+before. It happened that Mr. Stonor had to rebuke one of the telephone
+girls that morning; there was diversion in the way in which the girl
+tossed her dolly-capped head and told him that she would talk to her
+"boys" if she liked. Quite right; that was the way to take things, as
+a joke. And Mr. Whitlock was portentously funny over a nought or so
+that had strayed into a pile of figures; and the glazed screen that
+marked Louie's superiority to the other girls in the same room seemed
+inanimately funny, and Jim himself was funny, when you came to think
+of it, sitting invisible there in his room with people coming and
+going all the time, as if the earth would have ceased to revolve on
+her axis or the sun have omitted to rise if Jim had not rung bells and
+jotted his initials on his bits of paper. And funnier than everything
+else was the fact that Louie should be there at all. She laughed
+outright when, at nine o'clock that night (she had been kept on
+account of some urgent joke or other), she stepped from the
+upholstered lift and out into Pall Mall.
+
+Again she wished that Chaff had had a little party somewhere. Jim, she
+understood from Mr. Stonor, was giving a party presently, not a little
+one, but a large, probably a screamingly funny, one. But its humour
+would probably be lost on Jim. Jim did not always see jokes; that was
+where Jim had made the mistake; he needed somebody to point them out
+to him. His wife, being part of the comedy herself, naturally could
+not do so; she cried when she should have laughed; she had no "kick,"
+no "buck," in her. It was a pity, for Jim needed these things, and
+ought to have married a woman who had them. Well, it was rather late,
+but not too late for Louie to go into a shilling gallery somewhere.
+To-morrow, if she could get away early, she would go up to Camden Town
+and see Billy. Billy was a joke too, spending whole, real days in
+making artificial coloured shapes on canvases or solemnly scratching
+his copper plates. One of the best things Billy had ever done a woman
+had humorously kicked aside with her foot. That showed what these
+things were worth in the big, big world. Of course a sense of humour
+was really a sense of proportion. The dreadful lack of it showed when
+people magnified trifles so. Yes, she would go and see Billy
+to-morrow. To-night, the theatre gallery.
+
+She found Billy on the following evening, still etching, the humorous
+fellow, but amusingly grave too. Perhaps he had heard, or guessed,
+something from Roy. He was dissolving the ground from a plate; Louie
+wondered what the curiously sweet-smelling fluid he was using was;
+and then she remembered. She had smelt that same smell when Jimmy had
+been born--which event also, by the way, had been the consequence of a
+lark. She remembered, too, the wonderful, releasing sleep that
+heavy-smelling stuff had given her. It might be rather a useful thing
+to know where to find that stuff; it was necessary to Louie's
+enjoyment of the world and its humour that she should sleep at night.
+It struck her as a very happy chance that chloroform should be used in
+the practice of etching. She admitted that it was rather a shame to
+steal from Billy again, but she felt that she now needed that
+wonderful, releasing sleep even more than when Jimmy had been born.
+
+An hour later she left Billy's with the ribbed blue bottle in her
+pocket.
+
+The remainder of the week also was gay; so was the next week, though
+perhaps with a slightly diminishing gaiety. But the level was restored
+again when Roy once more turned up at her flat, again on a Saturday
+afternoon. Really she could have laughed, as they say, fit to split.
+Roy, who seemed to think that you could ask a woman to marry you
+without the--formality, call it--of telling her you loved her! It was
+not for Louie to spoil the sport by pointing out the inessential
+omission. Not that she hesitated at all now; she had only to think of
+how it might have read in the paper: "At Saint So-and-So's, on such
+and such a date, by a Reverend Statue, assisted by another Reverend
+Effigy, a Tanagra Figure, to a trodden-on Painting by Billy Izzard,"
+etc., etc. Oh no. That wasn't loving----
+
+There was no doubt that Roy loved Jimmy, however; and that was perhaps
+a little more serious. He had handed in his papers; he could provide
+for Jimmy; there was riding, and shooting, and fishing, and the
+corking little pony; but ... it was impossible, of course. Jimmy was
+Louie's and nobody else's. If Jimmy must play on Saturday afternoons
+with the rabble on Eelbrook Common, well, he must; Louie would do all
+for him that she could. It was a pity--especially about the pony. It
+disturbed Louie a little. It disturbed her, in fact, so much that that
+night she remembered something she had forgotten about for ten days
+and more--the blue ribbed bottle she had stolen from Billy. But as she
+had left it in her drawer at the Consolidation she had to sleep as
+best she could without it. Perhaps it was just as well. It was not a
+good habit. She wondered whether Billy had missed the bottle; she
+would go up again and see, taking that old painting with her. That
+would square accounts a little. Certainly it was a shame to loot Billy
+like that.
+
+She went up to Billy's with the study. Billy received it absently. And
+she was glad that Billy had a code, for he was grave again, and seemed
+all but on the point of talking seriously to her, code or none. But it
+blew over. He asked her whether she'd noticed him with a bottle of
+chloroform one night; he'd lost one; stupid thing to be careless
+about; must be somewhere; had Louie seen him with it, cleaning a
+plate?----
+
+"No," said Louie.
+
+"Well, it may turn up. Thanks for the canvas. To tell you the truth I
+rather wanted it. Merely as painting it's--_knuk_!" Billy made a
+delectable little foreign gesture.
+
+"I'm no judge of things as painting," said Louie. "And--I
+say--Billy----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't know that I haven't changed my mind about not sitting--if you
+asked me very nicely----"
+
+But Billy looked gravely at her again. "Oh, it doesn't matter. I'd
+rather you didn't. I think I can manage. You'd do far better----"
+
+He looked hard at her, but the code held.
+
+"To do what?" said Louie.
+
+"Well, not to sit," said Billy, turning away.
+
+Louie felt ridiculously touched; nevertheless, much as she liked his
+loyalty, she wasn't going to talk about Roy. "Thanks, Bill," she said
+simply. "You're a good sort." And there the matter dropped. Neither
+for Billy nor for anybody else did she ever sit again.
+
+It seemed strange that so slight a thing as an indisposition of Mr.
+Stonor should obscure the mock-sun of Louie's gaiety as if a vapour
+had crept across it; but so it was. Occasionally urgent messages were
+taken to Iddesleigh Gate at night; usually Mr. Stonor took them; but
+one day Mr. Stonor left at lunch-time and did not come back that day.
+Sir Julius himself, who had had dinner sent in that night from a
+restaurant, sent for Louie and gave her certain papers and
+instructions. As soon as she learned the errand she asked whether
+nobody else could go instead. She invented an improbable engagement.
+
+"I'm sorry," Sir Julius said, "but I want Whitlock--I shall have to
+wait here myself till you come back. If you could go, and give them to
+Mr. Jeffries himself--nobody else----" That was as near as Sir Julius
+ever came to a direct command.
+
+So, as Evie Jeffries had seen Louie's home, Louie was now to see hers.
+
+She went reluctantly, by bus, changing at the bottom of Park Lane.
+For days she had not seen Jim; she did not want to see him now.
+Therefore, though go she must, she would not sit down; she would not
+lift her veil; she would be in and out of his house again as quickly
+as ever she could. She passed the Marble Arch, and at Lancaster Gate
+got down and walked. She reached Jim's vast and tomblike house.
+
+At the word "Consolidation" the man who opened the door said: "This
+way, please," and led her along a low-lighted hall, round a staircase
+the outspread double wings of which resembled some huge alighting
+architectural bird, and along a narrower passage to the library. At
+the touch of a switch the room broke into a softly masked glow of
+light. "Please to sit down," said the servant; but Louie stood by the
+great writing-table, looking towards the door. Evie had taken stock of
+her dwelling; Louie looked only towards the door of Jim's library.
+
+Then, as the door was opened, she pushed up her veil after all. Jim
+came in.
+
+He placed a chair for her; she still refused to sit. She continued to
+stand even when it appeared that the papers she had brought would
+require some examination. As she stood, a bell, not unlike that of a
+muffled telephone, sounded for a moment and then ceased. It was
+followed by a tap on the door.
+
+"Come in," said Jim, without looking up.
+
+Evie Jeffries entered, dressed as if for a State ball.
+
+Even had Louie not seen her face, the touch of her hand would have
+told her what had happened. Evie was back again exactly where she had
+been; the only difference was that she now hated Louie the more that
+she had abased herself before her. Many times on that other Saturday
+afternoon Louie had begged Evie to go; now she longed to fly herself.
+After another minute Jim put it into her power to do so. He rose and
+returned the signed papers.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and added, turning to Evie, "I don't know
+whether Miss Causton's had supper?"
+
+Evie's face lighted up as artificially as if there too a switch had
+turned up masked lights.
+
+"Yes; won't you let me have them lay a tray for you, 'Miss' Causton?
+It won't be any trouble," she said.
+
+"No, thank you," said Louie. "Please don't come to the door, Mr.
+Jeffries."
+
+He came, however.
+
+"Good-night," he said, as the door was held open for her to pass out.
+
+"Good-night," said Louie.
+
+She remembered afterwards that she noticed, out in Oxford Street
+again, a sandwichman bearing an illuminated board with the
+announcement of some concert or entertainment upon it. Pasted across
+the device was a strip of paper with the words "To night" upon it. The
+date was the sixteenth of May. At midday on the day following, Louie,
+coming out of Mr. Whitlock's room, saw Jim advancing as if to come in.
+He saw her, stared hard at her for a moment, paused irresolutely, and
+then turned abruptly and walked away again. She watched his back,
+shaped like a church-door, but bowed as if with a load too great for
+him, disappear in the direction of his own room. He had made no
+attempt to conceal the deliberate avoidance. She half expected, though
+she knew not why, that he would send for her presently. He did not.
+She was infinitely glad. Something, she was perfectly sure, had
+happened between him and his wife. It was the first time he had not
+sought her aid. Had he, now that it was too late, told her? Had he
+realised that it was too late to tell her? Had he, realising this,
+determined to take his last risk and to tell her nevertheless? Or had
+something happened that had at last unsealed his eyes so that he now
+saw with a clearness as merciless as that of Louie herself?
+
+Louie could not tell. She only saw his face again, the face of a man
+suddenly old as he realised his defeat, and his disappearing back,
+hunched under a burden that was crushing him at the last.
+
+
+§_b_
+
+"If I were you, Miss Causton, I should leave early to-night," said Mr.
+Whitlock that afternoon.
+
+Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.
+
+"Oh, if you _want_ to make it a matter of conscience! But Mr. Jeffries
+is giving a party to-night, and both Sir Julius and I will be leaving
+early."
+
+He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left her. Louie
+resumed her work.
+
+It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been worked over
+before and needed little attention; or at all events it got little. At
+five o'clock Louie gathered the sheets together and put them into the
+drawer of her table. As she did so some object at the back of the
+drawer knocked. She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of
+chloroform.
+
+"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.
+
+"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you put me a little
+beside myself for a day or two. Much better not to have things like
+that lying about; to have 'em's sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it
+away now."
+
+But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought her a cup of
+tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer again. The girl began to
+talk. She was Ivy Warner, the operator who would talk to her "boys"
+over the telephone if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always
+admired the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a word
+would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be carrying on a
+flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under the eye of Mr. Stonor
+himself.
+
+"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her cup of tea.
+
+"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three winners to-day, one
+at thirty to one, a gift; like to see him? He's coming up this
+evening," Miss Warner replied. "I'd a chin with him a quarter of an
+hour ago; dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and
+a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's bringing a
+friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost afraid to introduce
+him; and Daisy says she really must give her steady a show to-night.
+Know anybody?"
+
+Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had never done before.
+She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again she had the hunger to go
+somewhere, to see lights, hear music, smell the cigarettes of men.
+
+"Do you care to take me?" she said.
+
+Ivy was surprised. "You?"
+
+"Oh, not if I should spoil sport----"
+
+"Rather not! Do come! What a lark! I'll get on to Harold again now.
+You really mean it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good egg!" cried Ivy, glad to make up her party and to improve her
+relations with her business superior at the same time. "I didn't
+really want Daisy, you see. Of course they do talk loud at the Troc,
+but Daisy's just a _ti_ny bit ... well, a perfect stranger had the
+cheek to come up to our table and speak to her the last time----"
+
+Ivy ran jubilantly off to ring up Harold again.
+
+Louie told herself it was a stupid thing to do; she was getting into
+the habit of loitering about late at night, heedless of Jimmy. But she
+had promised, and would go. If she didn't she would only be mopishly
+thinking, and, after all, she would be no more out of place with
+Harold's dashing friend than Evie Jeffries would be in another place
+much about the same time. Perhaps the dasher for Evie and Jim's guests
+for herself would have been more fitting, but no matter. She would be
+a dasher too. She wondered how Ivy was describing her dashing self to
+Harold over the telephone.
+
+At seven o'clock she made herself ready and left the Consolidation
+with Ivy.
+
+She retained no very clear recollection afterwards of the gaieties of
+that evening, but the little she did remember arrested her a little.
+She had a confused impression of the lights and tables and pilastered
+walls of the Trocadero as of a bright beckoning vista, stretching
+before her as the white road stretches before the knapsacked and
+stout-booted walker. She knew that many girls went that way.... The
+air was heavy with the smell of coffee, smoke, dishes, scent; Harold's
+friend was a Hebrew "killer," and reminded her of Miss Levey; noisily
+he claimed the privilege, which Harold noisily disputed, of paying for
+everything; and the waiter contemptuously accepted a tip of a
+sovereign from him. Perhaps he was the same cavalier who had resented
+Daisy's loudness; at all events he appeared to find in Louie's
+quietness another--or perhaps the same--meaning; and Louie had to move
+her chair and to change her attitude at the table. Afterwards they
+went to the Alhambra; it was Ivy who cried out at the sight of two
+cabs and refused to go unless they all went together. At the Alhambra
+Louie was afraid she was rather a wet blanket; she declined to "take a
+walk round" and remained seated in her stall; but Harold's friend was
+fickle as well as dashing, for by-and-by she had a glimpse of him with
+another lady, who had not dined with them at the Trocadero. She
+wondered how Evie Jeffries had got on--or "got off," to use an
+expression of Kitty Windus's.
+
+Suddenly--perhaps it was this thought of Evie elsewhere that did
+it--she got up, sought the cloakroom, and walked out of the place. She
+went home, once more quietly and steadily thinking of that vista of
+lights and cigar smoke and laughing mouths and gilded pilasters--the
+way so many girls went.
+
+The row she expected with Ivy in the morning was not a moment delayed.
+It began in the lift in which they both happened to ascend together.
+
+"Good-morning," said Ivy stiffly. "I hope you got home in good time
+last night."
+
+Louie waited until the liftman had clashed the doors to behind them;
+then, "I'd a headache," she said.
+
+"Well, perhaps it's better than having one in the morning," said Ivy,
+more icily still. "All the same, there is such a thing as playing the
+game when you go out with people."
+
+"I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have come," said Louie, walking with the
+angry girl to the telephone exchange, where the lights on the great
+switchboard came and went like the sparks at the back of a gate. They
+were coming and going with great rapidity that morning.
+
+"Oh, _much_ obliged for your company, I'm sure," Ivy broke out,
+"but----"
+
+"Sssh!" came from a girl who stretched the rubber worms.
+
+"Sssh yourself, Daisy Dawson--time you knew how to speak into a phone
+by this time!" snapped Ivy.
+
+But another and a louder "Sssh!" came from another girl, and suddenly
+Mr. Stonor's head appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Quiet there!" he rapped out, and withdrew his head again.
+
+"Sssh, Ivy--haven't you heard?" Daisy Dawson said softly.
+
+Ivy's own voice dropped. "What?" she asked quickly.
+
+"About Mr. Jeffries."
+
+"No--what?"
+
+Mr. Stonor came in again--but not before Louie had heard Daisy whisper
+the word "dead."
+
+Suddenly she remembered the face of the liftman. She clutched Mr.
+Stonor's arm. He looked at her. There was no need to ask.
+
+Dead!
+
+Slowly she walked to her own table behind the screen.
+
+The place was at once busier and more hushed than usual. Presently Mr.
+Whitlock passed. Mr. Whitlock was thirty-five; he looked fifty. Louie
+only asked him a single question: "Is it in the papers?" He nodded and
+passed on. She sought a messenger.
+
+It was on the right-hand middle page. It had happened at one o'clock
+in the morning; cerebral haemorrhage. That very evening he had given a
+dinner-party; followed a short interview with Sir Peregrine Campbell,
+one of the guests; but Mr. Robson, of the Board of Trade, had declined
+to be seen. There would be no inquest. Heartfelt sympathy was extended
+to his widow. Half-a-column of "career" closed the announcement. The
+early edition of the evening paper for which she sent out had it all
+over again.
+
+Dead!
+
+Another absence!
+
+Slowly she turned the paper and began at the beginning again.
+
+Jim dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Louie fetched Jimmy from his cot into her own bed. It was
+not, she felt, for comfort for herself; she had a strange feeling that
+she ought to be comforting Jimmy. Jimmy slept, but, her eyes
+alternately very widely open and very tightly closed in the dark, she
+whispered to him.
+
+"Well, we've got to look after ourselves now," she whispered to the
+sleeping child. "I don't think we care to go and see him, do we? I
+daresay she wouldn't refuse it, but we won't go. That was his wife,
+who said she'd a little boy like you, and of course we're all very
+sorry for her. She did give him all she had; she said she'd die for
+him; but of course that's only a way people have of speaking when they
+mean they love somebody very much. Nobody wants her to die for him
+really; that would only be two dead instead of one; and she won't
+actually die.... And she'd a sad thing happen once before. Nobody ever
+knew about that really except me and him; she didn't know; if she did
+she might die really then. People have to be careful, they say, when
+they've once had a terrible shock. It's rather funny though, Jimmy,
+that mother shouldn't feel very much of a shock. Of course I didn't
+expect it, but as soon as it happened it seemed as if it had been
+bound to happen. That's queer--and I don't know that I wouldn't have
+preferred the shock."
+
+She continued her curious consolation of the sleeping boy:
+
+"Poor Jimmy--poor mother! He looked beaten yesterday--done--but I
+didn't think.... One never does think till afterwards.... Ah, but
+mother did, once, a long time ago! Mother danced with him once, and
+knew then--and the next time she saw him Jimmy was quite a big boy. If
+she could only have seen him a few times in between, she doesn't know
+what she could have done, but she would have done something, and then
+by-and-by he would have blessed her for it--she's sure, quite sure he
+would.... And there she was, with some terrible people at a music
+hall----"
+
+She choked a little.
+
+Even had it been proposed to her, she did not think she would have
+gone to see Jim. That was another woman's affair; Louie's part in him
+had nothing to do with what remained now. Not that she was so absurd
+as to tell herself she had lost nothing; even when it is only yours to
+look at, or perhaps to put your arms about just once, a body counts
+for something; but the other woman had had nothing but that. "Nothing
+but" was perhaps a queer way of putting it; for that "nothing but"
+Louie might perhaps have given all the rest; but all the same it was
+not very much her business now. Her business now, like the other
+woman's, was to jog on just the same, the one in her empty mansion,
+the other one it didn't much matter where. Again she whispered to
+Jimmy.
+
+"How thankful I am that I didn't tell her--something! Oh, I don't
+think I could bear her to die for him as she said she would! And I do
+hope he's not been so foolish as to--leave anything about; anything
+that might tell her, I mean; she can't bear what I can bear. But he
+wouldn't. He wouldn't cover it all up so cleverly to go and uncover it
+himself. I always knew it would happen if that insect got in his way;
+Jim wouldn't think twice about it, except how to make himself safe....
+Was it Kitty Windus who told me that about him--about his father
+having been an English merchant captain and his mother a Corsican
+woman he found dancing in a sailors' café in Marseilles? If it wasn't
+Kitty I dreamed it; mother's done a most foolish lot of dreaming; but
+it must have been Kitty. They say they do that kind of thing in
+Corsica. I shall never know.... Well, it doesn't matter.... Poor
+little Jimmy...."
+
+She deliberately tried herself, to see whether she was capable of
+emotion about him. She seemed to be quite incapable. "I'm simply
+callous," she thought.... She tried several days later, on the day of
+his funeral; the words she repeated to herself had no meaning for her;
+"gone," was merely a thing of four letters, "never" one of five. The
+word "absence" she quite failed to understand. She heard that Mrs.
+Jeffries was prostrated, but quite as well as could be expected in the
+circumstances. Perhaps Mrs. Jeffries too was repeating the words
+"gone" and "never." Louie wondered whether she would marry again. It
+would not surprise her.
+
+Well, if Evie Jeffries could live, Louie could live.
+
+A piece of news, however, which she had from Billy Izzard one
+night--this was three weeks later, but her stony insensibility had not
+changed--filled her, she could not have told why, with a quite
+different disquietude. It appeared that Billy had felt himself
+permitted to call on Mrs. Jeffries, and had found her (so he told
+Louie) busy with her husband's private papers. Sir Julius also had
+been there, to advise if advice was necessary; and Sir Julius had been
+of opinion that the painful task would be more quickly over if Mrs.
+Jeffries would have a number of papers that were written in shorthand
+transcribed by a clerk, if a trustworthy one could be found. "In fact,
+he mentioned your name," said Billy. But it appeared that Mrs.
+Jeffries knew some shorthand, had other reasons, and so forth. She had
+refused to have the papers transcribed. Naturally they had not said
+much with Billy there, who, indeed, had not stayed many minutes; but
+he had gathered that the papers formed some sort of a journal.
+
+Louie felt her flesh grow queerly crisp. This, by the way, was in a
+little restaurant not far from the Palace Theatre. Louie had had three
+consecutive nights at home, and felt that a fourth would kill her. She
+and Billy were going to the Palace afterwards.
+
+"A journal?" she said slowly.
+
+"Well, Pepper rather thought a novel of some sort; I'd a talk with him
+afterwards; but I suppose he only knows what Mrs. Jeffries tells him.
+It wouldn't surprise me in the least that poor old Jeff dabbled a bit
+in that sort of thing. I'm quite sure he'd have made a painter. One of
+the big sort he was, the Titian, Leonardo, Cellini sort--the big men,
+who can take an art or so in their stride."
+
+"What made Sir Julius think it might be a novel?" Louie hoped that her
+new agitation did not show.
+
+"My dear girl, you know as much about it as I do."
+
+"And it was in shorthand?" she demanded.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"His own?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't say. It was in his desk though. Why?"
+
+"And you say Mrs. Jeffries is reading it herself?"
+
+"Well, when Pepper suggested you--and a Miss Levey, I remember,
+whoever she is----"
+
+"Miriam Levey? Yes?" Louie said, with a jerk.
+
+Billy looked hard at her. "What's the matter?" he said abruptly.
+"You're as queer as Mrs. Jeffries herself was about it."
+
+"She was queer? How, queer?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. How can one describe things like that--just
+impressions one gets?"
+
+"Did she strike you as queer because she'd perhaps read some of it?"
+
+"Well, I understand it was private----"
+
+"You mean she _must_ have read some of it to find that out?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Again Louie had that curious crawling of her flesh. She hesitated for
+a moment; then, slowly:
+
+"What sort of terms are you on with Mrs. Jeffries, Billy?"
+
+Billy stared. "Oh, quite all right--I don't understand----"
+
+"Have you any influence over her?"
+
+"What sort of influence?"
+
+Louie hesitated again. After all, it might be only a fear. She went
+on. "Say influence enough to advise her about reading that journal, or
+novel, or whatever it is?"
+
+"Lord, no!" said Billy. "I was his friend, hardly hers, you see."
+
+"Well, if it could be put as a matter of friendship with him?" Louie
+was speaking almost feverishly now.
+
+"I wish I knew exactly what you meant," said Billy.
+
+"Order me another cup of coffee. That's what I can't tell you, because
+I don't know myself. But let me ask another question. Do you happen to
+know whether there are any real names in this thing, whatever it is?"
+
+"Really, I----"
+
+"Just a moment. I'll tell you why I asked. If this is a journal, and
+has names of people in it, the chances are mine's there."
+
+Billy was quick enough. He nodded. "I see; at least I think I see. You
+mean about his coming in that night and Mrs. Jeffries possibly not
+liking it? Well, to tell the truth I don't think she did much. I could
+have bitten my tongue out when I'd told her; but I suppose everybody
+doesn't look on these things quite as we do. You mean in a
+word--excuse me for putting it rather stupidly--that she's jealous and
+thinks she can find out the truth? Supposing there was any 'truth' to
+find out, I mean?"
+
+"That's the idea. Of course there was no 'truth.'"
+
+"Well? Why not let her discover that and make her happy, poor thing?
+You see, he was her husband."
+
+Louie winced, but continued. "That's all right as far as it goes; but
+if there's one name there are probably others."
+
+Billy looked sharply at her. "Other women? Jeffries? Don't you believe
+it!"
+
+"I didn't say women."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"I can't tell you. And perhaps I'm altogether wrong. But if I'm not
+wrong, Billy," she said earnestly, "and you've any interest in Mrs.
+Jeffries at all--say interest enough to want to spare her a shock--she
+oughtn't to be allowed to read that journal--always supposing it is a
+journal."
+
+Billy gave a short laugh. "Really, Louie! Is this the Surrey or
+Sadlers Wells?... You're not serious, are you? Of course it's bound to
+be painful for her at the best, but she's getting on very well--better
+than we could have hoped."
+
+Louie made a little despairing gesture. "Well, I can't tell you any
+more."
+
+"Well, if it's as important as all that, why don't _you_ tell her?"
+
+"I couldn't do that either. Look here, Billy, couldn't you find out
+about this for me?"
+
+"Oh, dash it all--how can I?"
+
+The saucer of Louie's coffee cup was full of ashes; she added another
+butt and reached for Billy's case. She looked Billy full in the eyes
+as he struck a match for her.
+
+"Do you go much to Iddlesleigh Gate?"
+
+"Well, just at present, you see----"
+
+"I mean, _could_ you go? Where does all this take place? In that
+library? (Yes, I've been once.)"
+
+"Yes. At least that's where we were that night."
+
+Still Louie looked steadily into his eyes. "Now this really _is_
+Surrey and Sadlers Wells," she said. "Could you get those papers out
+of her way--anyhow--so that she doesn't read them?"
+
+Billy twinkled a little. "It takes a woman to do these things, Louie."
+
+"Suppose without asking any questions, if you did I'd--marry Roy?"
+After all, to marry Roy would be no worse than anything else now.
+
+The twinkle disappeared. Billy was grave again.
+
+"I'd like you to marry Roy, Louie."
+
+"Well ... is it a bet?"
+
+But Billy only shook his head. This was all very well at the Surrey
+and Sadlers Wells, but----
+
+"It's a physical impossibility," he said. "And if it wasn't, I
+wouldn't."
+
+"That's final?" said Louie, looking into his eyes for the last time.
+
+"My dear girl----"
+
+Louie rose. "All right. Then we may as well get across to the Palace
+and see Marie Lloyd."
+
+Could she have said more? She did not see that she could. The chance
+loomed tremendously large now that Jim _had_ been fool enough to write
+things after all, and perhaps his wife was reading that journal, if it
+was a journal, even then----
+
+Louie could not stop her--no power on earth could stop her. What Jim
+had evidently not told her during his life she would read for herself
+now that he had gone.
+
+He would have done better to tell her.
+
+But there: perhaps it was not a journal----
+
+
+
+
+ENVOI
+
+
+"Er--Miss Causton," Sir Julius called--"can you stay for an hour or
+so? No, a private affair; I hope it's not inconvenient; thanks."
+
+He was sickly white and tired-looking; Louie's feet dragged, and her
+brain was as stupid as clay. She was sorry for Sir Julius; _he_ had
+had no preparation; as for Louie, it seemed to her now that she had
+been passing from preparation to preparation for such things for the
+whole of her life. This of the morning paper was only the latest of
+her fulfilments. The prophets, she thought dully, must have been very
+weary men.... But on second thoughts perhaps Sir Julius ought to have
+been sorry for _her_. Even shock is better than foreknowledge.
+
+For of course Sir Julius wanted her to stay in connection with this of
+Mrs. Jeffries.
+
+She had put on her hat and coat for departure; as if she walked in her
+sleep, she passed out of Sir Julius's room and removed them again. She
+bathed her face, but felt little fresher; then she returned.
+
+It was about Mrs. Jeffries. It was about them both. Then Louie seemed
+to remember that Sir Julius had said something about an article on his
+deceased colleague for a Review. She supposed that was why he wanted
+her to take down his words in shorthand. Unless it was for the
+inquest. Gas-taps turned on, doors and windows sealed, and so forth
+usually meant an inquest; and they would not have far to look for her
+motive--suicide through natural grief. It was only that morning, but
+it seemed an old, old story already.
+
+"'_Tragic Death of a Lady_,'" Sir Julius read out from a newspaper....
+
+Well, he wouldn't want that part taken down; indeed, if he had only
+known what Louie knew, he would not have asked her to take anything
+down at all. But her notebook was on her knee and her pencil
+sharpened, and when Sir Julius had finished reading her hand began to
+write, purely functionally, of itself. It was no trouble to Louie
+whatever; nay, her hand was hardly called upon more than her mind; the
+pencil itself did it. After all, foreseeing minds could be put to
+better uses than the mere recording of things after the event.... "Sad
+business, sad business," Sir Julius was saying; and "Sad business, sad
+business," the obedient pencil wrote. But Louie wondered whether it
+was so sad after all. Evie Jeffries had had a sort of foreknowledge
+too; "I could die for him; you couldn't do more," Louie remembered she
+had once said; yet it was doubtful whether she had died for love of
+him after all. Call it gas-taps, or the shock of discovering that Jim
+had been her lover's executioner....
+
+Still, she had died, from whatever reason, and she had been quite
+right in saying that Louie could have done no more.
+
+It was strange the way the pencil wrote of itself. "A page of notes in
+her husband's shorthand has been found under one of the pillars of the
+writing-table," it wrote, and it omitted, as if it had been endowed
+with Louie's own intelligence, Sir Julius's interpolated remark, "I've
+got that page of notes, by the way." Mr. Whitlock had described to
+Louie one day a contrivance called a tele-writer; a pen dipped itself
+into a bottle of ink and wrote, unassisted, a telegraphed message;
+they were new, and they hadn't got them at the Consolidation yet; but
+they were putting them into some of the post offices, Mr. Whitlock had
+said. Her pencil moved like the pen of a tele-writer. She watched it,
+fascinated. It was writing as Sir Julius talked, about Jim now.
+
+"--lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there
+weren't many things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of a
+murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been
+tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him,
+but the others wouldn't have much chance----"
+
+Very little chance, Louie thought. That, in a sense, had been the
+tragedy of it all. Louie knew more about that than Sir Julius; Louie
+had once said, "Come, come!" to him, in tones that might have brought
+angels from above and devils from below running for love, but it had
+not made a ha'p'orth of difference to Jim. Sir Julius seemed to be
+praising him for it; Louie was not sure that she could exactly do
+that; she could almost as soon have mocked him for it; but you neither
+mock nor praise a blind man merely because he is blind. It was funny
+that Sir Julius, with not very much to boast about himself, should set
+up an idol of faithfulness; and not just for somebody else to worship
+either; that was the funny part; men did that kind of thing; sinned,
+and yet worshipped, and called it "the maintenance of an ideal." They
+honoured Joseph, and winked when his back was turned. Perhaps they
+made much of him because of his rarity. Well, it was all the same to
+Potiphar's wife....
+
+But all at once something seemed to have happened to the pencil. It
+was tele-writing very furiously. Sir Julius was reading from another
+piece of paper; Louie fancied, somehow, that it might be the piece
+that had got wafted under the pillar of Jim's desk.
+
+   "_--show him that red thing on the floor and that curved thing on
+   the door._"
+
+   _But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had
+   turned suddenly white. But an habitual pertness still persisted
+   in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to
+   the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in.
+   I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you
+   can," that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered
+   quickly...._
+
+   "_Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow
+   morning--or----_"
+
+   "_Shall I?" he bragged falteringly...._
+
+He seemed to have hanged him, then; "that curved thing on the door"
+evidently meant a hook. That was rather revolting; these were the
+things about murder that Louie had not wanted to know.
+
+"Sort of grim tale he would write," said Sir Julius to the pencil;
+"and of course--_de mortuis_ and so on--but he did marry the wrong
+woman. I suppose they're together again now."
+
+Suddenly Louie put down her notebook and pencil. Her voice, too, as
+she spoke, seemed to her a sort of tele-voice.
+
+"Will you excuse me just a moment?" she said. "I'm thirsty."
+
+She went out. When she returned, three or four minutes later, Sir
+Julius sniffed once or twice and asked her if she had a toothache. She
+took up the pencil and notebook again. Sir Julius resumed.
+
+"What was I saying? Oh yes, about his marrying the wrong woman.... But
+he was a mass of contradictions, and one of 'em was that he merely
+idealised her. Pretty, of course, but poor Jeffries could have done
+better for himself than that. She never could bear me...."
+
+Louie felt no difference yet; she did not know how long these things
+took. For a moment she wondered what would happen after ... and then
+it struck her as foolish to wonder about a thing she would know so
+soon. She fastened her eyes on the pencil again. It went on writing,
+and Louie was thinking of her loved little Jimmy now.... She could not
+have done very much for him; he might even have grown up to bear her
+some sort of a grudge; Roy would adopt him; he would be far, far
+better with Roy. There was a pony out at grass for him now; he would
+ride and shoot and fish, and his father would send him into the army;
+and perhaps there was already a baby girl somewhere in the world who
+would one day be his wife--the right wife. "Was die Mutter träumt, das
+vollbringt der Sohn...."
+
+It was far, far better....
+
+"Well," the pencil wrote, "there's nothing to be said now, poor
+creatures.... Funny smell in here, Miss Causton; I'll smoke if you
+don't mind."
+
+Sir Julius lighted a cigar. Its penetrating odour mingled with that of
+the sweet, releasing stuff.
+
+Ah! It was coming! The pencil wrote no less quickly, but it looked a
+little smaller and farther away.
+
+"But sometimes it made me almost angry that he hadn't married the
+woman he ought...."
+
+Louie felt her head sinking.... Yes, the woman he ought....
+
+That had been the real fatality....
+
+Her lids dropped for a moment, and then heavily lifted again; but she
+could still see the pencil--mistily--dreamily--as if endued with a
+life not her own--flying on.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Louie, by Oliver Onions
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Story of Louie, by Oliver Onions.
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Louie, by Oliver Onions
+
+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 Story of Louie
+
+Author: Oliver Onions
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2011 [EBook #37838]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF LOUIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tnbox">
+<p>Transcriber's note:</p>
+<p>Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/louie_cover.jpg" width="431" height="650" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE STORY<br />
+OF LOUIE</h1>
+
+<h2>BY<br />
+OLIVER ONIONS</h2>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><b>Author of "In Accordance With the Evidence,"<br />
+"The Debit Account," etc.</b></p>
+
+<p class="p6 center b1"><b>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</b><br />
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b><i>Publishers in America for Hodder &amp; Stoughton</i></b></p>
+
+<p class="p6 center b1">TO<br />
+GWLADYS</p>
+
+<h2 class="p6">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" summary="toc">
+<col width="170" />
+<col width="110" />
+<col width="170" />
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Prologue</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdc">PART ONE</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Rainham Parva</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdc">PART TWO</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Sutherland Place</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdc">PART THREE</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Mortlake Road</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdc">PART FOUR</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Pillar to Post</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdc">PART FIVE</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Consolidation</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td></tr>
+<tr class="p2">
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Envoi</span></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<h2 class="p6">PROLOGUE</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span></p>
+<p class="b1 center">I</p>
+
+<p>In an old number of <i>Punch</i>, under the heading "Society's
+New Pet: The Artist's Model," is to be found
+a drawing by Du Maurier, of which the descriptive text
+runs:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"And how did you and Mr. Sopley come to quarrel, dear
+Miss Dragon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, your Grace, it was like this: I was sitting to him
+in a cestus for 'The Judgment of Paris,' when someone
+called as wished to see him most particular; so he said:
+'Don't move, Miss Dragon, or you'll disturb the cestus.'
+'Very good, sir,' I said, and off he went; and when he come
+back in an hour and a 'alf or so he said: 'You've moved,
+Miss Dragon!' 'I 'aven't!' I said. 'You '<i>ave</i>!' he said.
+'I '<span class="smcap">aven't</span>!' I said&mdash;and no more I 'adn't, your Grace.
+And with that I off with his cestus an' wished him good-morning,
+an' I never been near him since!"
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Du Maurier may or may not have been wrong about the
+newness of this craze of "Society's." If he was right, the
+Honourable Emily Scarisbrick becomes at once a pioneer.
+Let there be set down, here in the beginning, the plain facts
+of how, a good ten years before the indignant Miss Dragon
+"offed with" Mr. Sopley's cestus, the Honourable Emily
+found a way to bridge the gulf that lies between Bohemia
+and Mayfair.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Except in the case of one person not yet born into these
+pages, the report that the lady had engaged herself, early
+in the year 1869, to "Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master,"
+had only a short currency. It was probably devised by the
+Honourable Emily herself in order to soften the blow for
+her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to
+whom she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton.
+Under this name he appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon
+Guards as a trooper in the years 1862-1867; and as
+"Buck" Causton he attained some celebrity when, in the
+last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in the
+prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and
+ending with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.</p>
+
+<p>For all we know, it may have been Miss Dragon's Mr.
+Sopley who, seeing the magnificent Buck in the ring, first
+put it into the ex-trooper's head to become an artists' model.
+However it was, an artists' model he did become, and, as
+such, the rage. No doubt Sopley, if it were he, would
+gladly have kept his discovery to himself; but a neck like a
+sycamore and a thorax capable of containing nine-hours-contest
+lungs cannot be hid when Academy time comes
+round. Sopley's measure was known. If Sopley painted
+an heroic picture it was certain he had had a hero as model.
+The Academy opens in May; before June was out Sopley's
+find was no longer his own. Sir Frederick Henson, the
+artist who moved so in the world that in him the tradition of
+the monarch who picked up the painter's brush for him
+might almost have been said to live again, saw Buck,
+marked Buck down as his own, and presently had sole possession
+of Buck.</p>
+
+<p>The Honourable Emily Scarisbrick already had possession
+of Sir Frederick. To be sure, it neither needed a Sir
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>
+Frederick Henson to teach her the stippling of birds' eggs
+and the copying of castles for the albums of her friends, nor
+was the great Academician accustomed to stooping to the
+office of salaried drawing-master; but&mdash;the Honourable
+Emily was a Scarisbrick, of Mallard Bois.</p>
+
+<p>In Henson's studio the Honourable Emily first saw Buck
+Causton.</p>
+
+<p>To say that she fell in love with him would demand a
+definition of the term. Certainly she fell in something
+with him. Perhaps that something was the something that
+at the last thrusts baronies and Mallard Boises aside as hindrances
+to a design even larger than that in which they play
+so important a part; but we have nothing to do with large
+designs here. Call it what you will: something proper
+enough to legend, but of little enough propriety in a modern
+lady's life; a feeble echo of Romance, perhaps, but never
+itself to become Romance unless, of it or present scandal,
+it should prove the stronger. At any rate, it was a very
+different thing from anything she felt, or ever had felt, for
+Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars, her brother's
+nominee for her hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was a word dropped by the gallant Captain, himself a
+follower of the fancy, that led her to the discovery that the
+hero of some feat or other of extraordinary skill and endurance,
+and the young Ajax, all chest and grey eyes and
+brown curls, who did odd jobs about the studio in the intervals
+of posing for Henson's demigodlike canvases, were one
+and the same person. Her already throbbing pulse
+bounded. She herself was twenty-eight, a small, dark, febrile
+woman, given over to discontents based on nothing
+save on an irremediably spoiled childhood, and perhaps
+hankering after an indiscretion in the conviction that indiscretions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+were of two kinds&mdash;indiscretions, and the indiscretions
+of the Scarisbricks. Naturally she became conscious
+of a quickened interest in her art.</p>
+
+<p>The first indication that this interest passed beyond birds
+eggs and castles was that she began "Lessons in Drapery."
+If here for a few moments her story becomes a little technical,
+it may be none the less interesting on that account.</p>
+
+<p>The study of Drapery <i>as</i> Drapery has not much interest
+for anybody unless perhaps for a student of mechanics.
+For all that, it is, or then was, regarded by drawing-masters
+as a self-contained subject, to be tackled, ticked off, and
+thenceforward possessed. To the study of Drapery in this
+unrelated sense the Honourable Emily apparently inclined.
+Seeing her therefore, in this fundamental error, Sir Frederick,
+a master of Drapery, took from her the "copies"
+which had already supplanted the "copies" of castles in
+her portfolio, and good-humouredly began to tell her what
+she really wanted. What she really wanted, he said, was to
+rid her mind of the idea that folds existed for their own
+sake, and to endeavour to realise that their real significance
+lay in the thing enfolded. Miss Scarisbrick thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>So, at first from the lay figure, and then from Henson's
+model, she began to draw Drapery with special reference to
+the thing draped.</p>
+
+<p>About this time she gave Captain Chaffinger for an answer
+a "No" which he refused to take. His devotion, he
+said, forbade him. If by his devotion he meant his devotion
+to his creditors, his constancy remained at their service.
+In the meantime he was still able to pay his old debts by
+contracting new ones.</p>
+
+<p>The Honourable Emily's studies became diligent.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is little to be said about these things except that
+they do happen. A word now about Buck's attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Had the Honourable Emily's maid thrown herself at his
+head he would have known what to do. His sense of the
+holiness of social degrees would have received no shock.
+But the Honourable Emily, who could command her maid,
+could not command what in all probability her maid would
+not have had to ask twice for. The most she got (when
+after much that is omitted here, it did at last dawn on the
+bashful Buck that she had any will in the matter at all) was
+a blush so sudden and violent that it compelled an embarrassed
+reddening of her own cheeks also. Buck was not
+personally outraged. It was his sense of Order that was
+outraged. He remembered the lady's station for her, and,
+stammeringly but reverentially, put her back into it.</p>
+
+<p>Now to be merely reverential to a woman who is in love
+with you is to provoke impatience, anger and tears. On
+the other hand, to see a woman in tears because you will
+not permit her to humiliate herself is to have the other half
+of an impossible situation. It was one luncheon-time (the
+Honourable Emily now lunched frequently at the studio)
+that the tears came.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't care for me&mdash;you don't care for me!"
+she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>Buck could not truthfully have said that he did care
+for her; but there she was before him, in tears.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were that Dragon girl, now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Buck, while not failing to see the force of this, could
+only make imploring movements for the Honourable Emily
+to calm herself. Presently she did calm herself, sufficiently
+to change her tone to one of irony.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you read your Bible?" she shot over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss," said Buck&mdash;"that is&mdash;I mean&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The reason for Buck's hesitation was that he had suddenly
+doubted whether the Honourable Emily would know
+a Racing Calendar by the name she had just used.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean <i>The</i> Bible, miss?" he said, fidgeting.</p>
+
+<p>She snapped: "Yes&mdash;the one with the story of Joseph
+in it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She burst into tears anew.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me! I
+hate myself&mdash;I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>Her hatred, however, did not prevent repetitions of the
+scene. At the last repetition that need trouble us here her
+tears conquered. The helpless Buck comforted her after
+the only fashion he knew anything about&mdash;the fashion he
+would have used towards her maid&mdash;on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>He still, however, called her "Miss."</p>
+
+<p>They were privately married in the June of 1869.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">"<i>Don't</i> call me 'Miss'!" she broke out petulantly one
+day in the middle of the honeymoon. "And you are <i>not</i>
+to have your meals with the servants! I shall lunch in
+my room to-day, and you are to be ready to take me out at
+three o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, m'm," said Buck.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Probably Lord Moone had less to do than he supposed
+with the separation that took place in the September of the
+same year. We may assume that a much more potent
+factor was the Honourable Mrs. Causton's remembrance of
+her own words, "That I should have to beg a man to marry
+me! I hate myself&mdash;I hate you!" She did very soon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+hate both herself and him. Poor Buck merely hated the
+whole subversive anomaly.</p>
+
+<p>He accepted the proposal that they should separate with
+perfect docility. It seemed to him entirely right. Indeed
+the only thing he had not accepted with docility had been
+his introduction to Lord Moone, on the only occasion on
+which the two men ever met, as "Mr. Buckley, the drawing-master."
+Buck hadn't liked that much. He had
+made himself Buck Causton in nine hours of terrific combat,
+and as Buck Causton he preferred to be known. But
+all else he suffered with touching obedience, and at the
+proposal that they should go their several ways his finger
+flew to his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss," he said; and his heart, if not his lips, murmured
+the prayer that begins: "God bless the Squire and
+his relations&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They parted.</p>
+
+<p>They only met once more. This was in the January of
+the following year, in the great antlered hall at Mallard
+Bois, that was as regularly used on all occasions as if there
+had not been salons and galleries and drawing-rooms in a
+dozen other parts of the great place. The Honourable
+Mrs. Causton lay on a couch drawn up to the fire-dogs; her
+husband looked submissively down on her, dwarfing the
+suit of armour of Big Hugo by which he stood.</p>
+
+<p>She made a new proposal. It was that he should put
+it into her hands to set herself free once for all.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss," said Buck.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">"Then," said the Honourable Mrs. Causton a quarter of
+an hour later, "there's the question of cruelty."</p>
+
+<p>Buck's thoughts wandered slowly back to the Piker.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I need hardly tell you that as far as&mdash;er&mdash;procedure&mdash;can
+be stretched it will be stretched."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."</p>
+
+<p>Then wistfully Buck's eyes wandered from Big Hugo's
+suit of armour to his wife's face again.</p>
+
+<p>"Beg your pardon, about that cruelty, miss," he said
+unhappily. "Couldn't I go down&mdash;just for once, Miss&mdash;as
+Mr. Buckley?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I can assure you that <i>I</i> don't want this talked
+about more than must be either. Perhaps I ought to tell
+you that I shall probably marry again."</p>
+
+<p>Buck's finger went to his forehead again, this time in a
+duty to his successor. Then his eyes grew grave. His
+wife had made a slight movement.</p>
+
+<p>"If I might make so bold, miss&mdash;there's another
+thing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She knew what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>"You've nothing to do with that," she said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Buck would have thought that he had, but if a lady said
+he hadn't, well, he hadn't, that was all.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss.... And asking your pardon again&mdash;about
+that cruelty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's over," said Mrs. Causton, closing her eyes.
+"Six months ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't remember," said Buck; but once more, if
+a lady said it was so, so it was. Again the grave look came
+into his eyes, and again she understood.</p>
+
+<p>"I can have it looked after better than you can," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;please&mdash;you will?" he dared to supplicate.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Still he hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's a little boy, miss&mdash;I might be opening a Sparring
+Academy&mdash;strictly for the gentry&mdash;I wouldn't charge
+him nothing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And after a little further discussion the shameful piece
+of collusion came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>They were divorced in the March of 1870. On the 15th
+of April the child was born&mdash;a girl. Fifteen months later
+the Honourable Emily married Captain Cecil Chaffinger,
+of the White Hussars.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">II</p>
+
+<p>The child never got on well with her mother. Mrs.
+Chaffinger never forgave her her paternity. The
+gallant Captain, on the other hand, treated her as he would
+have treated his own child&mdash;that is to say, he bought her
+extravagant toys if the proximity of a toyshop put it into
+his head to do so, pinched her arms and cheeks and neck
+jocularly whenever he found her head at the level of his
+waistcoat, and then departed, as likely as not to pinch
+maturer arms and necks, not Mrs. Chaffinger's, elsewhere.
+He took his wife's former <i>mésalliance</i> with perfect serenity.
+She had paid his debts and enabled him to spend a
+day or two in his father's house when he cared to do so, and
+the Captain, who was a gentleman and not very much else
+to boast of, held faithfully to his part of the bargain. He
+even dropped in once or twice at Buck Causton's new
+<i>Salle d'Armes</i> in Bruton Street. The child was called by
+his name&mdash;Louise Chaffinger; he called her Mops, because
+of her quantities of thick brown hair. The Honourable
+Emily became querulous and an invalid; took to falling
+into dozes no matter who was present, and waking up again
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+with alarming cries; and she busied herself with charitable
+works performed in an uncharitable temper.</p>
+
+<p>Louie was not pretty; but the jocular Captain pinched
+no prettier neck than hers, and he declared, as the child
+grew, that her "points" would be best displayed could she
+go about in the largest and shadiest hat and the most closely
+fitting tights possible. His house (which, by the way, he
+had begun to encumber again) was Trant, in Buckinghamshire;
+but the child was packed off occasionally, to be rid
+of her, to Mallard Bois, Lord Moone's seat, there to romp
+with her cousin, Eric Scarisbrick, already preparing for
+Eton, and such small fry as climbed trees and cheeked the
+gardeners with him. Here she revelled in the liberty that
+was denied her at home; and perhaps she already realised
+instinctively that her mother's relief at having her out of
+the way was tempered only by the invalid's resentment that
+the child could be happy out of her own not very cheerful
+company. Be that as it may, the girl was told, at twelve
+years of age, that she was getting too big to kick these
+limbs her stepfather so admired about among growing
+boys. She was given half-long skirts and French and English
+governesses: the French one, though she did not yet
+know it, as a preparation for sending her to a Paris convent.</p>
+
+<p>At fourteen years of age she had not heard of the man
+whose grey eyes and perfect shapeliness of body she inherited.
+The Scarisbricks, be sure, had allowed that episode
+to be hushed up. But the day was bound to come
+when she should hear of the Honourable Mrs. Causton and
+identify that lady with her mother. The day did come, no
+matter how; and, inwardly trembling but outwardly resolved,
+she sought her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger had just
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+come with a cry out of a doze. Her daughter demanded to
+be told who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was. She was
+told that there was no such person.</p>
+
+<p>"Then who was she?" the girl demanded. There were
+few of her questions to her mother that were not demands.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's been telling you about her?"</p>
+
+<p>That did not seem to Louie to matter. She repeated the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>"She was a very great fool," Mrs. Chaffinger snapped.
+"Why aren't you with Mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who was she besides being a very great fool?" the
+child persisted.</p>
+
+<p>It had to come out.</p>
+
+<p>"Then papa <i>isn't</i> my father?" Louie said, pale. All
+through her life she was pale in her moments of stress.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm your mother, and I tell you to go to your French
+lesson at once."</p>
+
+<p>But Louie did not move.</p>
+
+<p>"Then who was my father?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you suppose he is, when I was Mrs. Causton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is?... Then he isn't dead?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Chaffinger compressed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to tell you all about Mr. Causton all in
+good time" (her daughter looked coldly unbelieving),
+"but since you are here I'll tell you now. Sit down on
+that chair and stop fidgeting&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And she told the girl the facts, not to be denied, of the
+divorcing of Buck.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the matter was that Louie now hated, not
+only her mother, but her father also.</p>
+
+<p>Her stepfather she thenceforward addressed as "Chaff."
+He liked it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Three months later she was sent to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Eight months later still she turned up again, not at
+Trant, but at the Captain's club in London. She announced
+that she had run away from the convent and did
+not intend to return to it. Her arrival, though not unwelcome,
+was inopportune, for the Captain had a little
+party that evening and seemed disconcerted. The toyshops,
+he reflected, were closed, and then he looked at his
+stepdaughter again.... It could not, after all, have been
+one of the more characteristic of the Captain's parties, for
+he took Louie to it, pigtail and all, and for a whole evening
+pinched nobody. Then he took her to his chambers,
+winked at his man in token of something extraordinary,
+hesitated, and then, with an "Oh, be hanged to it!" expression,
+gave Louie the key of his own sleeping apartment.
+Louie examined his prints a little wonderingly, but
+approved of his ribboned haircurlers and large frilled pincushion,
+and then went to sleep. The next day the Captain
+took her down to Trant and left her there.</p>
+
+<p>The next few years were a constant succession of
+wrangles with her mother. She had flatly refused to return
+to the convent, and if the Honourable Emily was
+petulant, her daughter was merciless. She had been put
+off with the drawing-master version of her mother's marriage,
+but that was enough; she held it over her mother's
+head, and Buck, if he had desired revenge, had it. She
+knew herself to be hybrid, and treated the Scarisbricks
+and their drawing-masters with equal scorn. Worse, she
+treated them equally with a contemptuous tolerance. She
+harped with pride on the baser strain. In a word, there
+was no doing anything with her.</p>
+
+<p>She reached the age of twenty-one.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At twenty-two she expressed a wish to go on the stage.
+The Captain, who was genuinely fond of her, stopped that.
+At twenty-three she declared plainly that "a girl in her
+position" ought to have a means of earning her own living&mdash;not
+necessarily drawing. The Captain being averse
+from this also, she took the matter into her own hands by
+writing to the secretary of a Horticultural College in
+Somersetshire, paying her fees, and enrolling herself as a
+student without saying a word to anybody. She packed
+her boxes, and in the second week of January 1894 presented
+herself before her mother, dressed for travelling,
+and announced that she had very little time in which to
+catch her train.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, by the way," she said, turning at the door, "if
+you write, you might address letters to me in my own name&mdash;Causton."</p>
+
+<p>Then she left.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">"<i>Was die Mutter träumt, das vollbringt die Tochter.</i>"
+Here, with its repetitions of and its departures from that
+of the Honourable Emily, follows her story.</p>
+
+<h2 class="p6">PART I<br />
+RAINHAM PARVA</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span></p>
+<p class="center b1"><b>I</b></p>
+
+<p>The Horticultural College at Rainham Parva, now
+defunct, was hardly a college in the modern sense at
+all. Its technical books were antiquated; it had only one
+or two old microscopes; and it totally lacked the newer
+trimmings of specialisation. Its founder, a Bristol seedsman
+called Chesson, had bought the place cheaply, house
+and all, a dozen years before, and having five hardy daughters
+eating their heads off at home, had, as the saying is,
+economically emancipated them. That meant then (whatever
+it may mean now) that, realising that the wages of two
+men and a boy might be saved, he had had them down to
+Rainham Parva and had set them to work.</p>
+
+<p>The second Miss Chesson, Miss Harriet, had shown a
+real aptitude for the work. She had won, after three years,
+a Diploma, and this Diploma, together with the presence in
+the house as paying boarder of a niece of Chesson's, had
+put an idea into the seedsman's head&mdash;the premium idea.
+With the Diploma properly advertised, its grantee made
+Principal, a premium or so forgone (called a Scholarship)
+and the proper person installed over all as Lady-in-Charge,
+Chesson had foreseen a good deal of his work being done
+by young women who would pay for the privilege of being
+allowed to do it. There is no need to describe the development
+of the idea. The enterprise had prospered, and
+when Louie Causton had put her name down on the books
+and paid her fees the complement of thirty girls was full.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She did not, after all, travel down alone. Her stepfather,
+hinting that it was not necessary to say anything
+about this to her mother, made the journey with her. The
+pair of them shortened the hours by guessing which of the
+young women in the same train were to be Louie's fellow-students;
+and when they alighted at Rainham Magna station
+the Captain put Louie and her traps into one of the
+nondescript vehicles that only saw the light when the Rainham
+girls arrived or departed, and drove off with her to the
+college. There he shook hands with the Lady-in-Charge,
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, and asked her whether she was related
+to Lovenant-Smith of the 24th. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+reply did not actually affirm her regret that she
+was so related, but the Captain's affability dried up suddenly.
+He was returning to town by the four-o'clock
+train; before doing so he took a turn round the place with
+Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, as Louie took her leave of him at the
+gates, "it's a good growing country, I should say; rum
+idea of yours though.... You've heard me speak of
+Lovenant-Smith, haven't you? Adjutant eight or nine
+years ago; not a bad chap at all, <i>I</i> should have said. She'll
+be one of the Shropshire lot, I expect. I knew he had people
+down there.... Well, mind you don't run away with
+a gardener. 'Bye, Mops&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And he was off, tugging at his moustache and inwardly
+commenting that the whole escapade was "just like
+Louie."</p>
+
+<p>It was a good growing country. Chesson said that the
+mildness of the winters was due to the Gulf Stream; Miss
+Harriet Chesson attributed it to ozone&mdash;ozone having been
+a word to conjure with at the time when she had taken her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+Diploma. Ozone or Gulf Stream, it provided wild violets
+in December, lemon-verbena that grew in trees up the sides
+of the cottages and had to be cut away from the upper
+windows, and filled the deep lanes with the hart's-tongue
+fern. It also brought forth rich produce. The dairy business
+and poultry farm flourished; crates and parcels and
+returned empties kept the goods clerk at Rainham Magna
+station busy; and, when the heather bloomed on the hill
+that rose between Chesson's and the sea, the "Rainham
+Heather Honey," green as bronze and thick as glue, was at
+a premium. At the crest of the hill the seedsman's estate
+ended. Beyond that, dropping abruptly to the west, lay
+deep wooded coombes, green to the very rocks of the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Louie's age put her at once out of the class of the "new
+girl" who, in the school tales, sits pathetically on her box
+and waits for somebody to speak to her. She was twenty-four,
+and probably only one other student, the copper-haired
+girl with the long thin neck and the "salt-cellars"
+showing through her white flannel blouse, who asked her
+her number and offered to show her the way to her cubicle,
+was more than twenty-two. Her large black feathered
+hat (see the first part of the Captain's advice as to how
+she would make the most of herself), and her expensively
+simple navy blue coat and skirt down to her toes, further
+distinguished her among the tweed jackets and ankle-length
+skirts of the younger girls. No doubt she had her perfect
+management of these and her numerous other garments
+from her mother's former interest in the study of Drapery.
+If the Captain did not think her face pretty, it must be
+remembered that the Captain had standards of prettiness
+of his own. Pretty in the professional-beauty sense her
+irregular mouth and long chin perhaps were not. Her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>
+large, clear, pebble-grey eyes at any rate were arresting.</p>
+
+<p>The copper-haired girl, having shown Louie her cubicle,
+offered to show her the rest of the house also. They began
+upstairs on the first floor, where the girls slept. The
+place was an old mansion in the form of a hollow square,
+and as they came to each latticed embrasure Louie stopped
+to look at the famous Rainham yew that almost filled the
+grassgrown inner courtyard. The corridors were dark,
+and sudden steps where no steps were to have been expected
+made of the uneven floors a series of booby-traps for those
+not familiar with them. Memories of the Monmouth Rebellion
+seemed to linger round the corners and to be shut
+up in the cupboards of the place. They passed downstairs.
+Through the doorway of the handsome Restoration façade
+they saw the yew again, dark beyond the shining flags of the
+hall. Louie had already been in the reception-room and
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's private apartments on the right of
+the doorway; on the left, she was told, were the quarters of
+Miss Harriet (who alone of Chesson's daughters remained
+there) and the staff. The domestics slept at the top of the
+house; the four male gardeners (all married) occupied the
+farm a furlong away at the back.</p>
+
+<p>"But wouldn't you like some tea?" said the copper-haired
+girl. "It's in the dining-room."</p>
+
+<p>"I was told to report myself to Miss Chesson at five,"
+said Louie, looking at her watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you've just time, if you're quick&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They sought the room where the housekeeper ran cups of
+tea from the tap of a large and funereal bronze urn.</p>
+
+<p>It was ten minutes to five when Louie entered the dining-room.
+Before the clock had struck five she had taken
+a certain position in the college.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She herself hardly knew how it happened. The room
+was full of noise and chatter, and near Louie, talking
+louder and making more noise than anybody else, was a
+lanky child of sixteen, to be a tall blonde beauty in another
+three or four years' time, but so far only a mass of
+unadjusted proportions and movements that lacked co-ordination.
+She had several distinct voices, and in one of
+these she was now engaged in unabashed mimicry. Louie,
+who had got her cup of tea, heard a bell-like "<i>Os</i>-trich
+feathers!" and she was about to put a question to the
+copper-haired girl when, with a mock reverence and an explosive
+"Your <i>Ma</i>-jesty!" the child swept backwards into
+her. She barely saved her cup of tea. The girl gave a
+quick turn; her Clum&mdash;" was changed to a "Sorry!"
+as she saw a new face, and Louie smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Your feet were all wrong," Louie said.</p>
+
+<p>The blonde child turned eagerly again.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you do it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment, before Louie could get out "A drawing-room
+curtsy? Yes," the child had cried: "Girls!
+Girls! Here's somebody who knows how to do it! Do
+come and show us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" said Louie, smiling, and handing her cup of
+tea to the copper-haired girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;come here, Rhoda, and watch (that's my sister&mdash;she's
+to be presented, you know)."</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed. "Quickly then&mdash;I have to see Miss
+Chesson&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And, pushed unceremoniously forward, and still in her
+feathered hat and navy blue costume, Louie made her
+first bow to her fellow-students at Chesson's in the deep
+and swanlike genuflexion she had practised with her cousin,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>
+Cynthia Scarisbrick, a couple of years before. Then she
+ran out, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>How</i> ripping!" she heard somebody say as she did so.
+"I expect she's been presented."</p>
+
+<p>Louie sought Miss Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>The Principal, a businesslike, damson-complexioned
+woman of forty-five, with a deerstalker hat on her close-cropped
+curly hair, asked her what course of study she
+proposed to take. Louie replied (in other words) that all
+courses were the same to her. Miss Harriet had had that
+kind of student before. She asked a few further questions,
+and then put Louie down for the elementary course.
+She dismissed her with a marked syllabus and a copy of the
+Rules.</p>
+
+<p>Louie read the Rules, nodded, as much as to say, "I
+thought so!" and then laughed. There was no need to
+ask who had drawn them up; she remembered the frigid
+way in which Chaff had been put into his place that afternoon.
+There was a serenity about them that transcended
+the ordinary imperative mood. "<i>Students do not absent
+themselves from Morning Prayers or Divine Service without
+Permission.</i>" "<i>Students do not give Orders to the
+Gardeners or Domestics.</i>" "<i>Students do not pass beyond
+the Bounds of the College (Map appended).</i>" If on occasion
+students did all of these things, that did not detract
+from the <i>largior ether</i> in which the Rules were conceived.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did mere evidence to the contrary ever in the least
+degree abate Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's persuasion that the
+young ladies of Chesson's, being the daughters of gentlefolk,
+were by that very fact almost to be trusted to do without
+Rules at all.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Louie, with leggings of doe-skin
+buttoned to her knees (see the second of the Captain's
+recommendations for the attire that suited her best), and
+wearing a wide-pocketed jacket not unlike a man's, began
+the practical study of Horticulture.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">II</p>
+
+<p>She was attached to the "posse" of six girls of which
+the copper-haired student, whose name was Richenda
+Earle, was the head. This girl, as the holder of the
+scholarship mentioned a page or two back, was the single
+non-fee-paying student in the place. Her father was a
+bookseller in Westbourne Grove, and she had kept his
+books for him before coming to Chesson's. She had
+picked up her knowledge of book-keeping at an obscure and
+ill-appointed Business School in Holborn, but, her health
+being anything but robust, she had taken up gardening under
+the impression that it was an out-of-doors pursuit. It
+was only this at Chesson's to a strictly limited extent.
+Whatever students did or did not learn, the output for the
+market had to be maintained, and this necessitated, for
+days and days together, work in the twelve long glass-houses,
+from the humid heat of which the girls came out
+limp and listless and relaxed. Richenda Earle suffered
+from these depressions more than most of them, and now
+only remained at the college because Miss Harriet had held
+out hopes for her of a place on the staff. She was easily
+head of all the classes of which she was a member, but
+was hopelessly incapable of making her personality felt.
+Add to all this that she was avid of popularity, and that
+her self-consciousness took the form of making her more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+assertive (without being a bit more effective) than any
+girl in the college, and you will see why Louie felt a little
+sorry for her without taking to her very much. She for
+her part had fastened herself on Louie from the start, and
+had been the first to put the question that Louie had had
+to answer a dozen times before she had been at Chesson's
+two hours.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't been presented," Louie had said, finding
+herself waylaid almost at the door of Miss Harriet's room
+as she had come out again. "My cousin has; that's where
+I learned it. We practised it together."</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen them go in," Richenda had murmured, a
+little wistfully, a little dully; "the carriages and things,
+you know. I live in London."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon she had volunteered some of the information
+stated above, as if inviting a confidence in return.
+"I'm glad you're in my posse," she had concluded, as
+Louie had turned away without giving any information
+whatever about herself.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining members of "Earle's posse" were the
+two Burnett sisters ("B Major," the girl who was to be
+presented, and "B Minor," the sixteen-year-old beauty-to-be),
+a Scotch girl called Macfarlane, and one other girl,
+half French, Beatrice Pigou. There were four other
+posses at the college, and each was told off each day to
+put itself under the direction of one or other of the four
+gardeners, to pot, "prick out," water or whatever the task
+might be. The gardener at present in charge of Louie's
+posse was a sullen young Apollo called Priddy, whose face
+and neck and forearms ozone or the Gulf Stream had
+turned to the hue of some deep and old and mellow violin;
+and Burnett Minor and the younger girls, talking in terms
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+of the life to which their eyes were yet sealed, discussed
+Priddy with a freedom perfectly innocent and entirely appalling.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had not been at Rainham Parva two days before
+she was wondering whether after all she wanted to stay.
+She didn't know really why she had come. Not one of the
+three commonest reasons for girls being there&mdash;a stepmother,
+to be able to earn a little pocket-money, or to get
+over a youthful love-affair&mdash;quite fitted her case. And
+then there were those ridiculous Rules. She supposed that
+if she stayed she would be on the same footing as the
+juniors, and she hardly thought she could submit to that.
+Not that the Rules did not seem to justify themselves;
+on the contrary, they did. Merely because Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+affirmed that students did not do this or that, students
+as a matter of fact either did not do these things, or
+else consented to class themselves as transgressors when they
+did.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie's own attitude in the face of a prohibited
+thing, inherited from her mother and now made inveterate
+by her upbringing, was invariably that of a wonder
+what would happen were the prohibition to be disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>It was just a wonder, nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>Then, on the night of her third day at Chesson's, she
+made up her mind to forfeit her fees and leave in the morning.
+The reason for her decision was this:</p>
+
+<p>During the vacation certain digging had been allowed by
+the gardeners to fall into arrears; and Earle's posse, together
+with another set of six girls, had been set to do it.
+Now digging was the hardest work the girls were ever
+called upon to do, and at the beginning of the term at any
+rate they were spared it as much as possible. But education
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+or output required that this digging should be done,
+and accordingly the twelve girls had digged for the whole
+morning, and in the afternoon had varied the labour by
+carrying heavy pots from House No. 6 to House No. 10&mdash;a
+distance of perhaps sixty yards. The next morning
+twelve girls (or rather eleven, for Burnett Minor's unset
+muscles had suffered but little) were half incapacitated by
+stiffness, and that night there was an outcry for hot baths
+and arnica. Louie, clad in dressing-gown and slippers and
+carrying her soap and sponge and towel, hobbled to the
+bathrooms, and came, in the box-room, upon an indignation-meeting.</p>
+
+<p>This box-room was the common meeting-ground for students
+who awaited their turns at the baths. It lay over the
+back courtyard arch, and the four bathrooms adjoined it,
+two on either side. It was piled almost to the ceiling with
+trunks and boxes and dress-baskets, the white initials of
+which glimmered in the shadows cast by a couple of candles
+on the floor; but there were isolated boxes enough to make
+seats for the seven or eight girls already assembled there.
+They had slippers on their naked feet and single garments
+on their aching bodies; and on one of Louie's own boxes
+Burnett Major was peering at the little blue flame of a
+spirit-kettle and mixing in a row of cups the paste for that
+beverage of revolt&mdash;cocoa. Burnett Minor had traitorously
+turned the general righteous anger to private account,
+had "bagged" the hottest bath, and was now carolling at
+the top of her lungs in the right-hand bathroom.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash;then if Earle won't do it I vote we draw lots!"
+Macfarlane was exclaiming shrilly as Louie opened the
+door. "Those lazy louts of gardeners are supposed to
+have all the digging done before we come up&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They were not&mdash;not if Chesson knew it; but "Of course
+they are!" cried five voices at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm just not going to stand it&mdash;there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm not&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And for two pins I'd tell Priddy so!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence, but only because, all having
+spoken at once, all had to take breath at once.</p>
+
+<p>"It's abominable&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Disgusting&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Celà m'embête&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Here's Causton&mdash;what do <i>you</i> vote, Causton?" they
+cried, turning to her.</p>
+
+<p>"What about?" Louie asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, everything, of course&mdash;this beastly place&mdash;and
+setting us to dig the first week&mdash;and Priddy's beastly
+cheek&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then every tongue was unloosed.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>And</i> a row every time we want an extra blouse
+washed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>And</i> washing two guineas a term extra&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>And</i> only the vuggles for dinner that aren't good
+enough for the market&mdash;&mdash;" ("Vuggles" were vegetables.)</p>
+
+<p>Another pause for breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's what-d'-you-call-it&mdash;strike&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed as she sat stiffly down by Burnett Major.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll vote for anything you like; I don't care,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>Then they began anew.</p>
+
+<p>"Earle's head of the posse&mdash;<i>she</i> ought to do it&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Richenda Earle's voice broke in in loud complaint.</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>can</i> I? You know I would like a shot if it
+wasn't for my scholarship. But I should just be told that
+if I didn't like it I could go. Elwell's head of your lot.
+Elwell ought to go."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care who goes, but I will <i>not</i> be told to do
+things by Priddy."</p>
+
+<p>"Priddy!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>(Louie smiled again as there came from the bathroom
+the joyful voice:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Early one mo-o-orning&mdash;as the su-un was a-rising!</i>&mdash;&mdash;")</p>
+
+<p>"And those pots hadn't got to be moved&mdash;he was only
+making work&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;gros tyran!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;like they kept us three weeks grading and packing
+tomatoes last autumn, and called it 'study'&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;and the bruised ones for us&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;not even fit for ketchup&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Dothegirls Hall <i>this</i> establishment ought to be
+called!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Another momentary pause: then:</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;let's all sign a petition&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;no, a what-d'you-call-it&mdash;an ultimatum&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;just telling them straight&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Your bath, Earle&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>From the bathroom had come the gurgle of escaping
+water. Boiled pink, turbaned with her towel, smelling of
+somebody else's scented soap and radiating unrepentance
+that Earle's bath must be a tepid one, Burnett Minor
+bounced in.</p>
+
+<p>"Friends, Romans, countrymen, do lend me a dry towel,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+just to finish with. Oh, Causton, the curtsy, now that I've
+something loose on! Crocks! My cocoa, Major, and who
+said Priddy just now? 'Students do not fall in love with
+Priddy.' (I sha'n't hush.) Sugar, Mac, and, Causton, I
+wish you'd do my hair your way, just to see how it
+looks&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And, twirling twice in the midst of a corolla of pink
+cashmere dressing-gown, she sank to the floor and began to
+nurse a chilblain on her heel.</p>
+
+<p>Louie, her hands behind her head, leaned back and
+watched the scene with the greatest amusement. A master-rebel
+herself, she knew that here was no rebellion. The
+meeting, like other meetings, was merely letting off steam,
+and the girls who "wouldn't stand it" would be standing it
+exactly the same on the morrow. Well, on the morrow she
+herself would be off. Her boxes were only half unpacked;
+half-an-hour would put the other things back again. Already
+she saw that this Chesson's was an imposition. In
+the meantime, the indignation meeting was very amusing.
+She felt almost motherly towards these tractable revolutionaries.
+Her indulgence became still greater as they spoke
+out again.</p>
+
+<p>"Another thing," a girl of Elwell's posse demanded;
+"why couldn't I go to Rainham yesterday to have my
+photograph taken?"</p>
+
+<p>("Break the camera," Burnett Minor murmured to the
+chilblain.)</p>
+
+<p>"And just because somebody'd bagged my boots and I
+was five minutes late the other day&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Je m'en fiche pas mal&mdash;&mdash;" Pigou began.</p>
+
+<p>("Parly Angly, voo affectay feele," from Burnett
+Minor.)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see one of the gardeners at home looking
+at us the way Priddy does&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Or Miss Harriet either for that matter&mdash;she's only a
+sort of forewoman&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;applewoman&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;tomatoes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;that's all she is really&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;nothing else&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed outright. Another gurgle had come from
+the bathroom, and Earle reappeared. Her announcement
+that the water was now cold added to the general sense of
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even enough hot water!"</p>
+
+<p>"Scarcely a drop, ever!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Odious!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then will somebody come into my cubicle and rub me&mdash;not
+you, B Minor."</p>
+
+<p>("Just give a squint out of the window, Elwell.")</p>
+
+<p>("It's all right. Her lights are out. Lovey's too.")</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I <i>won't</i> have a cold bath, to please Lovey or anybody
+else!"</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Louie want one. She had risen. She moved to
+the window that looked out over the courtyard yew&mdash;the
+window from which watch was kept to see when Miss Harriet
+and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith retired&mdash;and yawned. In
+the middle of her yawn she suddenly laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious!" she thought. It was too amusing.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Richenda Earle, who also was standing by the
+window, spoke to her. Evidently Richenda did not think
+she had been fairly treated by the meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Do <i>you</i> think they ought to ask me to?" she complained.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louie turned.</p>
+
+<p>"To ask you to what?"</p>
+
+<p>"To complain to Miss Harriet&mdash;me, the only Scholarship girl."</p>
+
+<p>Louie shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. "Oh, they
+won't complain to Miss Harriet!"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;but one doesn't like to refuse things&mdash;&mdash;" Earle
+said in injured tones.</p>
+
+<p>Before Louie would have had time to reply to this, had
+she thought of replying to it, a diversion occurred. Nobody
+had heard steps approaching, but all at once the door
+opened, and Authority, in the person, not of Miss Harriet,
+but of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith herself, stood looking in. The
+hubbub ceased as the boiling of a kettle ceases when cold
+water is poured in. Several of the conspirators rose to
+their feet; Burnett Minor, making no bones about it, bolted
+behind a box. Great is even the look of Authority; it was
+almost a superfluity when Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked in
+measured tones from the doorway: "What is the meaning
+of this?"</p>
+
+<p>Already the tails of two dressing-gowns had vanished out
+of the other door.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+asked again.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked round to see on whom to fasten her displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>Louie saw her look, and instantly fathomed its purpose.
+She and Richenda Earle stood by the window, as it were the
+dramatic centre of some Rembrandtesque composition to
+which all else was merely contributory. The Scholarship
+girl was going to get into a row. She, Louie, had lived for
+years among rows; and was leaving anyway on the morrow.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before the "Miss Earle" had passed Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+lips Louie had stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been waiting for our baths," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps already Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would have preferred
+Richenda Earle to Louie; there is expediency even
+in Authority; but the challenge, if it was that, was a public
+one. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith turned to Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what time it is?" she asked freezingly.</p>
+
+<p>It pleased Louie to take Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's question
+<i>au pied de la lettre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid my watch is in my cubicle. I could tell
+you in a moment," she said.</p>
+
+<p>This the Lady-in-Charge saw fit to ignore. She drew
+her own watch from her belt.</p>
+
+<p>"It is ten minutes past eleven," she said. "Students
+are not out of bed at ten minutes past eleven. Neither are
+candles burning. Miss Earle&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But again Louie interposed. After all, it was rough on
+the Scholarship girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Earle came in only a moment ago to send us to
+bed," she affirmed, without a tremor.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, turning to Louie,
+and perhaps feeling herself once more headed off, "you,
+Miss Causton, as a new student, are perhaps not yet familiar
+with the Rules. Be so good as to come to me at ten
+o'clock to-morrow morning and I will explain them to you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lovenant-Smith did not make the discomfited rebels
+file out past her. She herself retired with dignity. Students
+do not linger in the box-room when it is made known
+that they are expected to go to bed at once.</p>
+
+<p>But no sooner had the door closed on Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+back than the pent-up general breath escaped again
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+in a fluttering exhalation. In it were awe, delight, homage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Causton!" somebody breathed. "You <i>are</i> a
+brick!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Isn't</i> she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't it stunning of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have caught it, Earle!"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw it in her eye!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I say, Causton, you'll get a wigging!"</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't speak to you, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>"You cut in&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt quite confused, so much did they make of so
+little.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious," she said, "what are you all talking
+about? That's nothing, especially as I was thinking of
+leaving in any case to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>There was consternation in the box-room. Had Rebellion
+found its leader only to lose her again immediately?</p>
+
+<p>"Leaving!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I sha'n't leave till after ten o'clock now, you may
+be sure," Louie laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;oh, I <i>say</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The dismayed voices dropped. There was a blank silence.
+It was only after half-a-minute that Burnett Minor,
+who had issued from cover again, begged: "Don't leave,
+Causton."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shouldn't leave because of anything like this,"
+said Louie, enormously amused at the thought. "The
+place is a fraud&mdash;that's why I should leave."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't leave," another girl begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll see what she says to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't be <i>too</i> down on you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the first time&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Something that can only be described as a pleasant
+hardening came into Louie's grey eyes. Her laugh
+dropped a note. She looked at the adoring faces.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I mean," she said. "If she <i>is</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay."</p>
+
+<p>And that also her stepfather would have described as
+"just like Louie."</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">III</p>
+
+<p>Punctually at ten o'clock on the morrow Louie
+knocked at the door of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's office
+or drawing-room&mdash;it was both&mdash;and entered. Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith was writing at an escritoire that was not
+big enough to accommodate her elbows, and so supported
+her braceleted wrists only. There was something contradictory
+about her attitude. Its rectitude as she sat at the
+inconvenient little desk suggested that she expected Louie,
+her turn, pause and inquiring "Well?" that she did not.
+Louie's observant eyes had already noticed a curious inconsistency
+about the Lady-in-Charge. A great number of
+things seemed to lie on the tip of her tongue, ready, apparently
+against her own better judgment, to be detached from
+it by a perfectly-timed fillip of opposition.</p>
+
+<p>And Louie had only to remember the word or two with
+which she had dashed Chaff's affability to be fairly sure
+that though cocoa and candles in the box-room at eleven
+o'clock at night might seem a good enough reason for the
+present interview, as like as not another lay behind it. She
+stood just within the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Causton?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think you told me to come here at ten o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes. Please to wait a moment."</p>
+
+<p>Louie listened to the squeaking of her quill and the faint
+jingling at her wrists as she continued to write.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Lovenant-Smith turned again it was almost
+as if she had thought better of something or other&mdash;say of
+an encounter with this long-chinned, grey-eyed girl who
+stood, not dressed for gardening, but in a long grey morning
+frock, looking at her from the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I merely wished to impress on you, Miss Causton, that
+the Rules must be observed," she said. "I believe there
+is a copy of them on the smaller bureau by your right hand
+there. Take it and be so good as to study it. That is all
+I wished to say."</p>
+
+<p>Louie did not believe the last sentence, but no disbelief
+showed in her eyes. She inclined her head, but watched
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, waiting for more. She thought that
+if she waited more would come. It did. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+having just dismissed Louie, rescinded the decision
+by speaking again.</p>
+
+<p>"You are older than the others," she said, "and it ought
+not to be too much to expect of you that you will set a
+good example."</p>
+
+<p>Louie, perhaps gratuitously, read a meaning into the
+words. Perhaps you guess what it was. Many of the
+older people of her world still remembered her mother's
+first marriage, and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, though Louie did
+not like the look of her, was still undeniably of her world.
+With Louie herself the drawing-master theory of her paternity
+had long since gone by the board; the girl had not
+rested until she had discovered that her father was Buck
+Causton, pugilist and artists' model, none other; and if Mrs.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+Lovenant-Smith had ever chanced to hear of her as Louise
+Chaffinger, and identified that person under the name which
+(whether from pride, spleen, sensitiveness or what not) she
+had since reassumed, there would probably be something
+very near the tip of her tongue indeed. And just as Buck
+had always been a pale fighter, so Louie's own mixed blood,
+though it might surge at her heart, left her cheeks untinged
+in moments of stress. She still stood, making no motion
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I quite follow you," she said slowly.
+"Why do you say that something 'ought not to be too much
+to expect'?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stiffened and drew in again.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not necessary to follow me," she said. "You
+will find all that is necessary in the Rules. You may keep
+that copy; Rule 6 is the one I wish especially to call your
+attention to. Would you be so good as to pass me that bell
+as you go out&mdash;the small brass one on the cabinet there?"</p>
+
+<p>She half turned to her writing again.</p>
+
+<p>("Good gracious, what next!" thought Louie.)</p>
+
+<p>The bell was a small Dutch figure in a metal farthingale,
+and Louie passed it. As she did so she glanced at the hand
+that took it. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's face was wrinkled like
+a dried apple, and the hand, though beautifully kept, was
+wrinkled too, and had, moreover, rather stumpy nails.
+Louie's own hands were exquisite. The bell passed from
+hand to hand.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not it was the glance at the hands, suddenly
+the word too much dropped from the tip of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+tongue. She put the bell down with a little clap.</p>
+
+<p>"The Rules of the college are not called into question,"
+she said. "So far they have proved quite sufficient for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>
+the kind of student the college was founded for. By the
+way, why are you not dressed for the gardens?"</p>
+
+<p>("'Kind of student'&mdash;good&mdash;gracious!" Louie cried
+in astonishment to herself. "Very well, madam&mdash;&mdash;")</p>
+
+<p>She spoke calmly, looking modestly down at her long
+cashmere skirt, but taking in her lovely hands (which toyed
+with the copy of the Rules) on the way.</p>
+
+<p>"My dress?" she said. "Oh, I wasn't sure whether I
+should be staying or not."</p>
+
+<p>Louie knew perfectly well that her leaving would make,
+at any rate until her cubicle should be filled again, a difference
+of something like sixty pounds a year, with extras, to
+Chesson's. That is rather a lot of money to hang upon a
+mere breach of Rule 6. Perhaps Mrs. Lovenant-Smith betrayed
+herself in the quickness with which she took her up.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you're thinking of leaving?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped
+them demurely again.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," she replied, "that I didn't know whether <i>you</i>
+were going to dismiss <i>me</i> or not. You see, you may not
+want my&mdash;kind of student. I'd rather not be in any way
+considered as an exception," she added.</p>
+
+<p>Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would
+have known that she had now no intention whatever of
+leaving. As it was, there probably came into her head the
+thought that after all Louie was a Scarisbrick and a niece
+of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of horticultural colleges
+do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and Lord Moone.
+All at once her severity relaxed&mdash;but she hated Louie
+thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but
+the smile had a twitch in it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss
+Causton," she said. "All the same, I'm afraid the Rules
+are necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"And so long as that is understood, that is the chief
+thing. In regard to candles in particular, in an old place
+like this there is always the danger of fire. In fact, I'm
+not at all sure that a fire drill ought not to be instituted.
+May I add that I quite appreciated the chivalrous way in
+which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night? Indeed,
+I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think
+that is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out.</p>
+
+<p>As she crossed the Restoration hall, "'Kind of student'&mdash;good
+gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me
+as if I were Burnett Minor! 'Kind of student!'&mdash;I wonder
+it doesn't occur to her that somebody might have told
+me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener four years
+ago!&mdash;'Kind of student,' indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past
+the orchards, up the hill, and sat looking down over the
+coombes to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Leave Chesson's, now? Oh no, nothing was farther
+from her thoughts! She would stay, and why? Not because
+she had been treated as a junior, but because she had
+been taken, as it were, at her own word. She herself might
+be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her mixed
+birth, but she did not intend to allow anybody else&mdash;Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith or anybody&mdash;to show as much as a flicker
+of consciousness of it. "Kind of student"!&mdash;Oh no, that
+amusement was going to be Louie's own private preserve.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For it had been her cynical amusement. Approximately,
+the mood took her once in five or six months, with or without
+occasion. Her mother knew its times and seasons, and
+its passings into abeyance, not into extinction. She did not
+call her sensitiveness morbid; quite on the contrary, she
+saw to it that it took the form of a pose of gaiety; she could
+be pitilessly gay with herself. Meek, harmless Cynthia
+Scarisbrick, for example, could have told tales about her
+gaiety when, not knowing whether she herself was eligible
+for presentation or not (but gathering from the tense silence
+on the subject that had reigned at Trant that she was
+not, or at any rate that her mother did not wish it), she had
+practised the ceremonial curtsy with her cousin. It had
+been Cynthia, not Louie, who had shed the tears.</p>
+
+<p>But to be agreed with by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that her
+origin was open to question (for the Lady-in-Charge had
+all but said that)&mdash;oh no, that was really too much!&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, who took a seedsman's salary!</p>
+
+<p>She might have known that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would
+know all, all about her&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then, as she sat, she began to wonder where she had
+heard the name of Lovenant-Smith before. She had wondered
+it when first she had received her prospectus at Trant.
+Of course her stepfather knew these other Lovenant-Smiths,
+the adjutant's lot, and had probably spoken of them, but
+she did not think it was that. For a minute or two she
+sought in her memory....</p>
+
+<p>She was ceasing to think when the recollection came of
+itself. It was only a trifling one after all. One of the
+boys with whom she had romped at Mallard Bois&mdash;Roy she
+had called him then&mdash;had been, she now remembered, a
+Lovenant-Smith. He would be a connection of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+adjutant's. Of course, she had heard the name at Mallard
+Bois....</p>
+
+<p>Then Louie bit her lip. If there had been any doubt at
+all that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith knew the story of Buck there
+was none now. The association with Mallard Bois was
+quite enough....</p>
+
+<p>Louie was glad she had looked insolently at those stumpy
+hands....</p>
+
+<p>Beast!</p>
+
+<p>The trees below her tossed restlessly, and far out the grey
+sea was whitecapped as if it had been rasped with a file.
+No boat had put out for the pollock-fishing or to lift a
+spiller that morning; only a pilot, a couple of miles out in
+the Channel, slowly lifted her nose for a moment and then
+hid it again. Louie felt a little cold, and rose. She made
+an attractive picture as she did so. Her brown hair was
+tossed by the wind, and her long grey skirt cracked behind
+her and clipped her limbs almost as if she had worn the
+garments of a man.</p>
+
+<p>"Beast!" she muttered again.</p>
+
+<p>Then she thought of another beast&mdash;this father of hers
+whose name she had not needed to take but had taken out
+of rancour against her mother and despite against herself.
+(But not for Mrs. Lovenant-Smith to turn up her nose at!)
+He now (she had this from Chaff) kept a public-house
+somewhere up the Thames&mdash;Lord Moone's cast-off brother-in-law
+in a public-house!&mdash;and any fitful romantic light
+that might ever have shone about him was now extinguished.
+Of course the Captain had uttered his usual wistful
+formula: "Not a bad fellow at all, I should have
+said"; but that was rather a criticism on the Captain than
+on Buck. Yes. Buck was simply another beast. But
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+though he were a potman, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith should give
+him every bit as much deference as if he had been a brewing
+peer....</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't care&mdash;if it <i>is</i> the pride of the cobbler's
+dog, I'm going to keep his name," Louie muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she turned and climbed the stile that led back
+to Chesson's land. As she did so she realised that she had
+been out of bounds. She laughed curtly. Rule 3! Much
+she cared for their Rules! What about the Rule: "Miss
+Hastings does not elope with What's-his-Name the gardener"?&mdash;but
+that would keep. In the meantime she
+would change into her gardening clothes before lunch. She
+had shown Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that she had garments of
+freedom. The next time Louie threatened to leave she
+might be able to add to the force of the threat that she
+would take half-a-dozen girls with her.</p>
+
+<p>Well, lunch was in half-an-hour; she had just time to
+change.</p>
+
+<p>But as she descended through the orchards again she
+came upon Richenda Earle. The copper-haired girl was
+washing an espaliered plum-tree, and as she turned her
+head Louie saw that she had been crying. She asked Louie
+if she was going.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaving here, do you mean? No. What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned her eyes away.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks awfully for last night," she grunted. "It
+was ripping of you. But you see it hasn't made much
+difference."</p>
+
+<p>"How, not made much difference?"</p>
+
+<p>Richenda glanced at the tree, and from the tree to the
+syringe in her hand and the pail of disinfectant at her feet.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+"This," she said. "Anybody can do this job, and I've
+been sorting out pots over there all the morning," she indicated
+the yard behind the trees where the flower-pots and
+debris were kept. "And <i>I</i> can't threaten to leave."</p>
+
+<p>"Your scholarship, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And I'm supposed to be working for the
+medal."</p>
+
+<p>Chesson's wanted a Horticultural Society's medal badly.
+They had never had one, nor were likely to get one unless
+Richenda Earle got it for them. Louie, who was quickly
+fathoming the real economy of the place, looked again at
+Richenda's red eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they won't send you away till you've failed," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>But Earle made an impatient gesture, and her eyes
+began to stream again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what's a girl like you know about it!" she broke
+out. "Yes, I know they'll keep me till then, but you don't
+know anything at all about it! You would if you'd had my
+upbringing! You don't know what the struggle is. You
+think digging and carrying pots is hard work; you wouldn't
+if you'd seen what I've seen! When you go to London it's
+just shopping and theatres and suppers and things; but
+just you try to keep a small bookseller's accounts for him,
+when they're hardly worth keeping, I mean, and collecting
+his debts when all his money's tied up in stock and your
+father's nearly bankrupt&mdash;not that he's ever solvent&mdash;you'd
+know what I meant then!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the unexpected outbreak stopped suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Louie stood silently staring. She disliked seeing anybody
+cry. Richenda's words had little meaning for her;
+she supposed they contained a hidden meaning somewhere.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>
+Then the copper-haired girl went on, more quietly but no
+less bitterly:</p>
+
+<p>"I should get a hundred pounds a year on the staff here,"
+she said, "that is, if they won't waste me half-days just out
+of spite, like they're doing this morning. That's nothing to
+you. You others are here just for pocket-money, but we
+live on your pocket-money. I suppose I oughtn't to have
+come here at all. Not among all you. But I begged father
+to let me. Father once apologised to me&mdash;that was when
+there was a distraint out against him, if you know what
+that is&mdash;because he wasn't rich. Fathers ought all to be
+rich, he said. There are seven of us girls at home, and only
+one married. Oh, I tell you, you don't know!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie wondered why she preferred Richenda Earle loud
+and striving for the popularity she never got to Richenda
+Earle unburdening herself thus. She herself went brightly
+masked, and disliked to see another's mind naked. Richenda's
+mind was stripped now. It was distasteful. Somehow
+or other Richenda contrived to miss both the balm of
+popularity and the solace of private sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&mdash;I'm awfully sorry," Louie said awkwardly and
+a little stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>At the tone Richenda drew in instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter," she said, compressing her lips and
+beginning to straighten her hair. "I shall just have to
+buck up, that's all. But girls of your class don't know anything
+about it, so you needn't think you do. There's the
+first gong. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>As they passed the dairies a rabble of students raced past
+the end of the house on their way to the boot-lockers.
+Louie and Richenda entered by the side door. Richenda
+plunged at once into the scramble for house-slippers, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>
+Louie, not having put on her garden boots that day, did not
+need to change. It was too late now to put on another
+dress. She waited by the inner door.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she was spied by Burnett Minor. The child
+rushed towards her, a book in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going, Causton?" she shouted.</p>
+
+<p>There was a loud "Ssssh!" They could be heard from
+the dining-room. The girls flocked round Louie, and
+hoarse, excited whispers broke out:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's dressed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does Causton say she's going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ssssh&mdash;not all at once!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not going," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Mouths gaped their very widest to make up for the inaudibility
+of the cheers.</p>
+
+<p>"Hooray!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is she going?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, she's not going&mdash;hooray!"</p>
+
+<p>Burnett Minor threw her book joyfully into the book-locker.
+Ordinarily her reading varied between an adoration
+of Tennyson and mocking and dramatic declamations
+either from the "Pansy Library," or from its brother-classics,
+of which the typical burlesque is "The Blood-stained
+Putty-knife, or The Plumber's Revenge." But
+this book was her album.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you come down dressed, and I did want you to
+put something in it if you were going," she whispered gleefully;
+"but you're not going! Hoo&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her voiceless mouth gaped wider than them all.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That midday Louie walked demurely up to Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+at the head of the table and apologised for not
+yet having changed. From her tone Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+may or may not have inferred that she had spent the hours
+since their interview in contrite meditation. She inclined
+her head graciously. But Louie, taking her place for grace
+between Burnett Minor and Richenda Earle, was murmuring
+to herself once more:</p>
+
+<p>"'Class of student,' indeed!... Good gracious
+me!..."</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">IV</p>
+
+<p>Louie quickly became the most popular girl in the
+college.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Her studies she pursued very much as who should say:
+"I am Louie Causton&mdash;take it or leave it." Neither Miss
+Harriet nor the gardeners could ever tell when she was
+interested in a lesson; if she learned, she concealed her
+processes. Before April was out&mdash;(the intervening time
+may be slipped over; the daily work in the gardens and
+houses went on as usual, the usual number of crates and
+parcels was despatched from Rainham Magna station, and
+already the girls were looking forward to June, which was
+always a slack month)&mdash;before April was out she could
+"slip" and "bud" as deftly as any when she chose; but
+few made more mistakes than she, and none accepted
+correction with her remarkable nonchalance. Afternoon
+"theory" she had begun to cut almost entirely. A slate
+hung in the hall, on which students were supposed to write
+down where they might be found when they left the immediate
+precincts of the college. One day towards the end
+of April there appeared on this slate: "Gone to Rainham;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+L. Causton." Then she awaited events with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.</p>
+
+<p>There were no events.</p>
+
+<p>She sent to Trant for a bicycle.</p>
+
+<p>Truth to tell, as the spring advanced she needed the air.
+The glass-houses, with their smell of musk and mould and
+heated pipes and cherry-pie all mingled, oppressed her;
+the long forcing-house, where for the time being most of
+the work for the markets went on, completely took the
+starch out of her. She felt as if she was being forced herself.
+She hated the sight of the twelve houses; they merely
+meant so much ventilation, so much shutting-down for the
+evenings, so much watering, so much lassitude for the girls,
+so much money in Chesson's pocket. She was glad she had
+sent for the bicycle. Somebody else might read thermometers
+and close down and sprinkle floors and ply the hissing
+hoses. Louie wanted air.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even the outer air was not sharp enough. It is not
+an invigorating air in which the lemon-verbena grows in
+trees up the cottage walls and scented geranium flourishes
+out-of-doors like a common hedge plant. In the sunken
+lanes through which she idled on her bicycle the primroses,
+twice as big as she had ever seen them, and the cowslips,
+great sub-tropical clusters, were already past; and she expected
+to see the roses out presently, big as sunflowers.
+There was something almost rank in the sweet bursting out
+of the land. She thanked goodness that a daisy was a daisy
+still, modest and unmagnified. She was not used to hedges
+of fuchsia. Nature might have been a little more sparing
+of her myrtle too. Louie always dropped from her bicycle
+when, coming out of one of the canals of still and scented
+air, she saw, across a burnt heath-patch or a clump of hardy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+gorse, a glimpse of the sea. For the sake of a look at the
+sea she often walked up the hill behind Chesson's and sat on
+the stile she had crossed on the morning after her interview
+with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Except by her example, however, she incited nobody else
+to break the Rules.</p>
+
+<p>It was curious that she should know herself to be popular,
+and yet at the same time should also be secretly aware that
+she was a little out of things. All went well enough for the
+present, but only for the present. She knew quite well
+what would happen did she, a year or two hence, chance to
+meet any of her present fellow-pupils. She would not,
+then, be older than they in quite the same sense that she
+was now. They would meet; there would be eager recollections
+of the old days at Chesson's; oh, for that matter she
+could make it all up now!... "Come where we can have
+a really good talk! Where's Burnett Major now, and her
+sister? And have you heard from Elwell lately? And I
+wonder what's become of that red-haired girl&mdash;what was
+her name&mdash;Earle&mdash;yes, Earle? And of course you know
+Macfarlane's going to be married.... Now tell me all
+about what you're doing!"... Oh yes, Louie could make
+all this up&mdash;the bursts, the pauses, the dead stops, and then
+the falsely bright, perfunctory talk about Chesson's again.
+For she and her fellow-students would not be doing the same
+things. They would have taken recognised places, and
+Louie was not sure that she herself had a place to take.
+Her father and mother had seen to that. She remained a
+spectator. If she was liked now, it was not because she
+went one inch out of her way to be so. She was just as
+ready to go out of her way to be disliked if she must go
+out of it at all.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, however, here she was at Chesson's, to
+all intents and purposes her own mistress, and made so
+much of that she had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith largely at her
+mercy&mdash;for, had she been requested to leave, the two Burnetts,
+Elwell and others would now have left with her. So,
+doing exactly as she liked, and adored on every hand, Louie
+even wondered sometimes whether she had not been wrong
+in supposing that restlessness and discontent were bred in
+the very bones of her.</p>
+
+<p>She was at the very top of her popularity about the time
+Burnett Major gave the birthday "cocoa" in her cubicle.
+(That is to say, Burnett Major gave the nucleus of the
+"cocoa"; the rest of the party happened by a natural
+process of accretion.) This time the junketing was held
+by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission; it had been acceded
+readily. "Lovey's not such a bad old sort when you get
+used to her," B. Major said. It was in mid-May, on a hot
+evening, and, though Burnett's window was flung wide
+open, showing the dark yew outside, not a breath stirred,
+and the flames of the candles were four inches long in the
+air. Besides cocoa, Burnett had provided cake and biscuits
+and candied fruits and an enormous box of "assorted"
+chocolates; and Burnett's bed was like to break down with
+the weight of girls upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had had Burnett Major especially in her mind
+when she had painted her fancy picture of a possible meeting
+with her fellow-students a year or two hence. The two
+sisters were the daughters of a Gloucestershire M.F.H., and
+Louie could forgive B. Major for being a little dazzled by
+her approaching presentation. There was nothing unfamiliar
+to Louie, either, in the rest of the things she felt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+herself, at one and the same time, both "in at" and "out
+of," for probably Mewley Hall, the Burnetts' home, was
+not very different from Trant or Mallard Bois. But Burnett
+Major's position a few years hence was a forgone conclusion;
+she filled it already in anticipation; and the noisy
+talk that was in progress as Louie joined the party threw
+bright lights on it.</p>
+
+<p>They were discussing the coming vacations. These were
+Chesson's yearly dread. They interrupted his supply of
+free labour, and there were always fewest girls when he most
+wanted them. As the vacation arrangements rested after
+all chiefly with the parents, he could do little except express
+his preference that as many of the girls as possible should
+take their holidays in the empty month of June, and his
+hope that those who did not do so would defer them until
+as late as they could. Otherwise he was, to that extent, no
+better off than his trade competitors.</p>
+
+<p>"Here she comes," Burnett Minor was crying as Louie
+entered the crowded cubicle. "I want to be here when
+Causton is. It's all right for Major&mdash;oh, you needn't
+think we don't know, Major&mdash;if you aren't actually engaged
+he's always about the place when you're at home&mdash;and I'm
+going to stalk you both with a camera and then what-d'you-call-it&mdash;blackmail
+him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Minor, or I shall send you out," B. Major
+ordered.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall tell everybody who he is and shout his
+name through the keyhole. It's&mdash;&mdash;" She moved her
+lips, threatening to pronounce the name there and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Sneak!" said her sister.</p>
+
+<p>B. Minor bridled.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I <i>will</i> tell them if you call me that again! Causton,
+have you a young man? (That means, Avez-voo un jeune
+homme, Pig?)"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for you to shout his name through keyholes," Louie
+replied, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but do tell us&mdash;have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"At my age?" said Louie mockingly, sitting down on
+the edge of the bed and reaching for candied fruits.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on&mdash;you're trying to wriggle out of it&mdash;<i>have</i> you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, little girl&mdash;open your mouth&mdash;&mdash;" She popped
+a fruit into the mouth that itself resembled an untouched
+fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Pigou, from the lower deck of the washstand, interposed
+loudly:</p>
+
+<p>"Elle a vingt-quatr'ans&mdash;elle est perdue!"</p>
+
+<p>"Uppé petite chose, avec voter Françay," commented
+Burnett Minor.</p>
+
+<p>"Cau-ston coiffe déjà Sainte Catherine," said the ruthless
+Pigou: "à vingt-quatr'ans on est déjà&mdash;pff!"</p>
+
+<p>"Non elle isn't pff&mdash;rude chose! But she'll tell me
+when we sleep out, because I'm going to have my mattress
+next to hers, sha'n't I, Causton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mais elle vient d'promettre&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;and we shall talk about all those things you always
+say 'Hush' when I come in&mdash;sha'n't we, Causton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prrridd-ee!" taunted the French child: and B. Major
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"But I say, Causton, when do you take your vac.&mdash;June
+or September?"</p>
+
+<p>"And where shall you go?" somebody else demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to Ireland&mdash;father's taken a house," cried a
+third.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nobody cares where you're going! Causton, will you
+come home with us?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; come to Ireland with us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, can I come home with you? I loved that man
+who brought you here!" (Burnett Minor was the young
+woman who had loved Chaff.)</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't Lord Moone, was it?" Macfarlane asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Or was it your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your cocoa, Causton," said B. Major.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had never been so run after before. She curled up
+among the slippered feet at the foot of the bed (there were
+four girls stretched upon it), and alternately stroked the
+hair and tweaked the ears of Burnett Minor, who had defeated
+Pigou in the scramble to put her head into Louie's
+lap. "I <i>can</i> have the pitch next to yours, can't I?" the
+child demanded, her eyes turned up and her face (to Louie)
+upside down. "There, you see, Pig, she says I can&mdash;so
+voo juste pouvez sechey-up, là."</p>
+
+<p>This sleeping out was a summer custom at Chesson's. It
+began with the warm weather, sometimes in June, sometimes
+in July. On account of the morning and evening
+carrying of bedding and mattresses, the "pitches" nearest
+the house were deemed the most desirable, and weeks
+ahead there was bickering about the "bagging" of them.
+They bickered now, and then turned to the vacations again.</p>
+
+<p>Louie listened, saying little. For her, vacations in this
+sense hardly existed. Vacations lose their value when you
+study as slackly as Louie did. It might be amusing to go
+home with one or other of the girls for a week or two, but on
+the other hand she hardly thought she would. These were
+the things she was both "in at" and "out of." B. Major
+was talking about them now. Soon she would be taking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+her presentation lessons; she was coming out; she had an
+unofficial admirer; yes, Louie saw quite plainly what B.
+Major's future would be. What was her own going to be?
+She had not the least idea.... No, she did not really want
+a vacation. More or fewer, there would be girls at Chesson's
+throughout the summer. Chesson's still amused her;
+she could leave once for all when it ceased to amuse her.
+She was learning nothing. She neither wished to start a
+lavender farm, as Elwell, the daughter of Sir James Elwell
+of the Treasury, did, nor to grow peaches, as did Macfarlane,
+nor to add to her pocket-money by selling pot-pourri at
+extravagant prices to her friends, which was Burnett Major's
+idea&mdash;until she should marry. She could hardly sell
+pot-pourri to her prize-fighting father. She might (she
+smiled) sell him hops&mdash;she seemed to remember that beer
+was made of hops....</p>
+
+<p>And she certainly did not intend to mug at theory for the
+sake of a medal, as Earle was doing at this very moment....</p>
+
+<p>The party was still discussing this life which was hers
+and yet not hers when Miss Harriet, going her rounds,
+tapped at the door and entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Bedtime, young ladies, please," she said. "Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith's compliments, and she hopes you have enjoyed
+yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was that of one who might say: "You see,
+young ladies, what liberty you have <i>within</i> the Rules; isn't
+it much pleasanter all round?"</p>
+
+<p>The party broke up.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks passed. In June a number of the girls went
+home, Earle among them. Permission to sleep out was
+given, a little earlier than usual on account of the heavy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+mildness of the nights; and Louie lay in the orchard, between
+Burnett Minor and little Pigou. The convolvulus
+came out, great white trumpets in the hedges; the sea over
+the hill became of a milky blue; and there floated out to it
+dense tracts of odours, lilies, and syringa, jasmine and roses
+and hay. You wearied of the smell of meadow-sweet; in
+the houses you could hardly take breath. The sun was reflected
+piercingly from their glass roofs, and the girls spent
+the afternoons in deck-chairs under the shadow of the courtyard
+yew.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The thing that (Louie sometimes told herself afterwards)
+made all the difference and yet (as she also sometimes
+told herself) made no difference at all, began very
+trivially. It was just such another accident as that which,
+nine or ten years before, had sent her to her mother with
+a demand to be told "who the Honourable Mrs. Causton
+was."</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily, the girls at Chesson's were a little careless
+about the dressing of their hair. You cannot move constantly
+among banks of plants, and pick fruit, and net
+cherry-trees, and be for ever stooping over beds and frames,
+and keep your hair fit to be seen. Therefore, once a month
+or so, the girls might, if they wished, go in parties of four
+or five to a hairdresser's at Rainham, there to be professionally&mdash;whatever
+the word may be. These parties were made
+up more with a view to the enjoyment of the half-holiday
+than to the business strictly in hand; and Louie, had she
+cared, might have been a member of each detachment that
+went. On this particular day Louie had had much ado to
+free herself from Burnett Minor's affectionate clutch.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do come with our lot, Causton!" B. Minor had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+begged. "Oh, you are rotten! You know you went with
+Elwell before, and with Major before that, and I do want
+mine properly done like yours, not just punched up the
+way we do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"What, like Saint Catherine?" Louie laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do come."</p>
+
+<p>But Louie had shaken her off.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll remember how mine's done; I was there a week
+ago. No, I won't come. I'm going to do some theory this
+afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a fib! You never do theory!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I ought to. No, I won't come."</p>
+
+<p>"Then will you lend me your bicycle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if you like; but the others are walking, aren't
+they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll wobble with them."</p>
+
+<p>And Louie had watched the party set out, Burnett Minor
+on the bicycle, "wobbling" and leaving behind her a complicated
+track in the dust of the drive.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know why she had said she would do theory
+that afternoon. She supposed it was because she felt slack
+and bored. Nor did she do very much theory. She went
+into the classroom, languidly turned over the pages of an
+old "Balfour," wondered what it mattered to anybody at
+Chesson's (except perhaps to Earle) that "movements had
+been observed in the pollen-grains of Cereus Speciosissimus,"
+or that "changes took place in the stamens by suppression
+and degenerations of various kinds." Then she
+glanced at a preparation on the stage of the microscope opposite
+Richenda Earle's empty chair, and yawned. She
+looked out into the courtyard. Three or four girls dozed
+in deck-chairs under the dark yew. There was an empty
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+chair&mdash;but no; a clatter of washing up was going on in
+the kitchen under the box-room; she would go up to her
+cubicle.</p>
+
+<p>She did so, and, pushing off her slippers, lay down on
+her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Her window was open as far as it would go, but the
+yew seemed to shut out even what little air there was. All
+that entered was the faint acrid smell of consuming rubbish;
+they were slow-burning somewhere at the back. The
+sounds of the washing up were fainter now; a pigeon
+alighted on her sill. She had been an idiot, she told herself,
+to fag herself that morning listening to Hall's demonstration
+in the forcing-house. She wished there was a
+pond about the place, with a boat or a punt. She would
+have bagged the boat to sleep in. It would be jolly to be
+rocked to sleep in a boat or a punt.</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes. The last thing she saw before she
+did so was the little black-framed miniature of the fourth
+Lord Moone, the last but three, in his tied wig and ensign's
+uniform. Louie had tacked it up by her mirror
+merely because it had been in her room at Trant as long
+as she could remember and, if one might judge from the
+youthful face, he was less of an opinionated fool than the
+other Moones&mdash;much less so than Uncle Augustus....</p>
+
+<p>She turned over. Then she slept.</p>
+
+<p>Sleep also was deep, too deep, at Rainham Parva. It
+weighed on the girl like a mulch. At five o'clock Louie
+could hardly drag herself out of it. She fumbled at her
+loosened belt and pulled out her watch. Five! The tea-gong
+must have gone.</p>
+
+<p>Well, perhaps tea would rouse her.</p>
+
+<p>She felt by the side of the bed for her slippers, rose,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+touched her hair as she passed the glass, and went drowsily
+downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Lovenant-Smith and Miss Harriet always took
+tea in their own or one another's rooms&mdash;which, for that
+matter, the students also were permitted to do if they chose&mdash;the
+meal was a noisier one than either lunch or supper.
+Louie heard one of Burnett Minor's several voices as she
+pushed at the door. The child saw Louie's face in the
+opening and sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>"Here she is&mdash;give it to me&mdash;I'm going to read it myself&mdash;&mdash;"
+she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Burnett Minor always wanted to read it herself&mdash;"it"
+usually being one of the sublimer passages from the current
+number of the "Pansy Library" or an especially
+choice one from an office-boys' periodical. Louie smiled
+languidly now as the girl snatched a booklet from Elwell's
+hand and gave tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"I've punctured your back tyre, Causton, but Mac has
+some solution and we'll mend it after tea&mdash;and I'm always
+to do my hair like this, Harris says&mdash;do look at it, isn't it
+stunning?&mdash;and now&mdash;aha!" (somebody had made a grab
+for her book). "Thought you'd got it, didn't you, Elwell?
+Now I'll read it first and then show her the picture, and
+that reminds me, Mac, you've never given me my 'Jack
+Sheppard' back that I lent you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie reached for a chair. She yawned again.</p>
+
+<p>"Do give me a cup of tea, somebody. I hope the watering's
+all done, for I'm not going to do any. What's the
+child got now? If it's 'Maria Martin' or 'Irene Iddesleigh,'
+I think I know them by heart."</p>
+
+<p>The child herself answered her question. She jumped
+on a chair and extended an arm for silence.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ready?" she cried. "Now!"</p>
+
+<p>"'THE LIFE AND BATTLES OF BUCK CAUSTON,'"</p>
+
+<p>she declaimed in her most ringing voice,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"'<i>Being the Full Story and Only Authorised
+Life of this Famous Pugilist</i>'&mdash;
+</p></div>
+
+<p>("Causton's uncle, don't forget, girls)&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"'<i>Revised by Himself and now Published for the
+First Time&mdash;including his Historic Encounter
+with the Great Piker Betteridge</i>'&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>("Piker Betteridge&mdash;'Piker'&mdash;isn't it lovely?)</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"'<i>Entered at Stationers' Hall and All Rights Reserved</i><br />
+<span class="smcap i6">"'Price One Penny</span>'"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>B. Minor drew out every syllable of the linked sweetness,
+and concluded;</p>
+
+<p>"And lo and behold&mdash;on the cover&mdash;Buck himself&mdash;Uncle
+Buck, Causton&mdash;you needn't say he isn't&mdash;as large as
+life and twice as beautiful&mdash;there!"</p>
+
+<p>She held up the booklet in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>But she drew it back again, bubbling with enjoyment.
+"Wait till I find <i>the</i> gem&mdash;the one about Piker," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers fluttered rapidly through the precious pennyworth
+in search of the "gem."</p>
+
+<p>Louie's cup of tea had been at her lips, but not a drop
+spilt as she put it down again. If her colour changed at all
+it was only as that other pale fighter's had done whose
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+story, Price One Penny, the unconscious Burnett Minor
+was rapturously searching.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is!" cried B. Minor, peremptorily extending
+her hand again. "Listen, everybody!&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"'<i>But the redoubtable Buck refused to allow the wiper
+to be skied. He recked nothing of his bunged optic
+and the claret that flowed from his beezer. Game
+as a buck-ant he advanced for the twenty-eighth
+round. The Piker, whose bellows were touched</i>&mdash;&mdash;'"
+</p></div>
+
+<p>But Louie had risen and walked to the child. She held
+out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me look," she said.</p>
+
+<p>B. Minor gave her a suspicious look, as if she feared she
+might be reft of her treasure. "You will give it me
+back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes."</p>
+
+<p>Louie took the book.</p>
+
+<p>She supposed she was awake now, but somehow a curious
+air of unreality enveiled whatever it was that was happening.
+She looked at the cover of the "Life" in her hand.
+The most execrable of woodcuts could hardly disguise what
+she saw. Traditionally posed, nude above the waist, and
+clad below only in tights and fighting-shoes&mdash;formidably
+watchful, lightly poised for the blow&mdash;in appearance at
+any rate he was a man and superb. But really he had been
+cruel, faithless, divorced.</p>
+
+<p>As if she had passed merely from one state of half-wakefulness
+to another, she did not think of the bomb she was
+about to drop among the girls. She only wanted to look,
+and to look, and to look again at this man, who was her
+father.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it just Causton's mouth and chin?" she barely
+heard Burnett Minor bubbling. "But I can't say she has
+Uncle Buck's beezer&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Louie handed the "Life and Battles" back. At
+any rate she had now seen him, if only in a wretched woodcut.
+She looked quietly about her.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my father," she said, perhaps a shade distinctly
+and loudly.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked about her again.</p>
+
+<p>Burnett Minor jumped down from her chair. Her eyes
+shone flattery on Louie. The very audacity of such a lie
+compelled her admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"O-o-oh&mdash;<i>what</i> a whopper!" she cried. Louie turned
+her eyes to Burnett Minor.</p>
+
+<p>"You said uncle. You weren't quite right. That's my
+father," she said again.</p>
+
+<p>Burnett Minor's life was full of miracles. A miracle
+more or less made no difference. Her eyes sparkled. She
+alone of the girls believed.</p>
+
+<p>"Not really?" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Louie nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Qu'est c'qu'elle dit?" Pigou cried excitedly, somewhere
+at the back.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, she didn't&mdash;she only nodded&mdash;nodding isn't a
+lie," a casuist scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Stupid, don't you see she's joking?"</p>
+
+<p>But Burnett Minor was watching Louie&mdash;only to be
+quite sure.</p>
+
+<p>"Honour?" she cried. "Spit your death?"</p>
+
+<p>"Honour."</p>
+
+<p>"How splen-<i>diferous</i>! And you never told us!"</p>
+
+<p>But Burnett Major had already looked at her sister.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+She was shocked into using her Christian name. "<i>Genista!</i>"
+she reproved her.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me look again," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>She looked again at the man who had been cruel, faithless,
+divorced. Again she handed the "Life" back.</p>
+
+<p>"He keeps a public-house up the river," she said.</p>
+
+<p>At that the tension was suddenly relieved. That, of
+course, was too much. They breathed freely again. The
+derisive clamour broke out.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you see? They've made it up between them&mdash;frauds!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they have! Come and finish tea."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll be saying that was the man who brought her
+down next!"</p>
+
+<p>"Causton, I'll never, never believe another word you
+say!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come on&mdash;the housekeeper will be here in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Pig, you've stolen my piece of cake that I was saving!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hurl the bread and butter, Mac."</p>
+
+<p>And the crowd which had gathered about Louie dispersed
+to the tables again.</p>
+
+<p>Not until ten minutes later, when she had gone up to her
+own room again, did Louie begin to wonder what had impelled
+her to make her surprising declaration. But in an
+instant her ten-years'-old habit of thought asserted itself
+again. Why have made it? Rather, why not have made
+it? She would have made it sooner had occasion offered.
+Elwell and the Burnetts did not drag their fathers in; she
+had not dragged her father in either. She had not told
+them that her mother was Lord Moone's sister&mdash;it was
+known, but she had not told them; why should she have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>
+paraded the fact that her father was this redoubtable Buck,
+from whose beezer the claret had flowed as he had advanced
+for the twenty-eighth round? They could have known it
+any time they had wanted! Conceal it? Why, had she
+not all her life been glorying in that very pride of the
+cobbler's dog?</p>
+
+<p>And still, deep down in her, she wondered whether it
+had been even that sort of pride, and not rather that secret
+hunger of the heart that, while she was "in at" everything,
+she was also "out of" everything. Had it been that
+that had caused her to say quietly: "That's my father"?</p>
+
+<p>Or perhaps it was even something deeper still. Perhaps,
+in a word, it had been her blind groping towards that
+crude and strong and cruel and joyous life Richenda Earle
+had said she knew nothing about.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered whether the girls downstairs were talking
+about her now.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes fell on the black-framed miniature of the fourth
+Lord Moone. Then, as if her brain had received a number
+of disordered impressions all heaped one on the top of
+the other, she sat down on the edge of her bed, not so
+much to think as to remember again exactly what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the disorder cleared. Phrases and the tones
+in which they had been uttered began to stand forth more
+distinctly. Presently she was able to allocate each to its
+speaker. It was her first attempt to estimate differences
+in the future her declaration might have made.</p>
+
+<p>Burnett Minor, of course, she could dismiss summarily.
+To her it had been a high lark, that but endeared Louie to
+her the more. But Burnett Major? What about her?
+"<i>Genista!</i>" she had exclaimed, shocked at her young
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>
+sister's apparent belief in the socially impossible. Yes, it
+would be interesting to see what difference, if any, was to
+be seen in Burnett Major's attitude now. And Elwell's
+"<i>Oh!</i>" What about that? And Macfarlane's blank
+look? And what did Richenda Earle think?</p>
+
+<p>Louie did not know yet.</p>
+
+<p>And what about Mrs. Lovenant-Smith? Undoubtedly
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, knowing about it herself, would have
+preferred Louie to keep silence.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, however, always
+braced Louie. That curious pleased coldness came into
+her eyes again. She would see about Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+by-and-by. In the meantime, the last thing she intended
+to do was to absent herself from them all. She would go
+down to supper.</p>
+
+<p>She took a clean blouse from a drawer, laid it out on her
+bed, and then, reaching for a towel, started for the bathroom.</p>
+
+<p>Before she reached the bathroom, however, one of her
+conjectures was already answered. Richenda Earle's cubicle
+was on the same corridor as hers, four doors lower
+down, and she met Richenda herself, who had come back
+from her vacation a week before, by the embrasure of one
+of the latticed courtyard windows. It was almost dark;
+in the recess the little reflectored oil lamp had been lighted,
+and it shone on the Scholarship girl's copper hair and angular
+shoulders. Louie stopped. She did so deliberately.
+Let Earle allude if she dared.</p>
+
+<p>"You washed?" she said, on a rising note.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not yet. I&mdash;I came up for a book," said Richenda.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not studying to-night, are you?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ye-es&mdash;oh yes, I must."</p>
+
+<p>"Classification?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-es&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How far have you got now?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie's mood was on her. It was overdue, but it had
+come now, and she was challenging Earle. Nevertheless,
+she was ignorant of what she really challenged when she
+challenged Earle. Hard knowledge of the true weight of
+Life will tell, and Earle's knowledge of that weight told
+now. The girl's head was downhung, so that the nodule
+of bone at the back of her neck caught the light sharply.
+Suddenly she looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are Lord Moone's niece, aren't you?" she
+said, without preface.</p>
+
+<p>Since her vacation, this daughter of a struggling Westbourne
+Grove bookseller had seemed less assertive than
+before, and was, somehow, none the worse for it. Louie
+didn't know what had made the difference, but she momentarily
+dropped her point.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;&mdash;?" Richenda halted.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what? The other that I told them downstairs is
+just as true, if that's what you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what?"</p>
+
+<p>Earle evidently mitigated what she had been about to
+say.</p>
+
+<p>"I only mean that&mdash;that you must have thought it queer,
+my talking as I did&mdash;that morning, you know?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie saw the approach of the first attitude for her garner.</p>
+
+<p>"What morning?" she demanded.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When they punished me&mdash;when I was washing the
+fruit trees."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember. Well, why should I think anything
+queer?"</p>
+
+<p>Earle's head dropped again. Again the sharp nodule
+of bone showed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean," Louie said, "that if my father's what
+I said, no doubt I know as much about what you were saying
+as you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no!" Earle said, the more quickly that that probably
+had been what she had meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that it's&mdash;so odd&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly Louie gave her towel a twitch and turned
+away. She spoke with her chin over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't love my mother," she said, "but for all that
+she is Lord Moone's sister&mdash;Augustus Evelyn Francis
+Scarisbrick, Lord Moone. And the other's my father. I
+wouldn't study too hard about it if I were you. You have
+your medal to get."</p>
+
+<p>She walked abruptly to the bathroom.</p>
+
+<p>That night, as usual, she sat at supper between Burnett
+Minor and Richenda Earle. The ordinarily irrepressible
+child on her left was silent; but others, two or three places
+removed from Louie, leaned back or forward from time to
+time to speak to her. She fancied Burnett Minor had been
+crying; she was sure of this when, giving the child's hand
+a pat under the table, she felt her own hand impulsively
+caught and squeezed. Then, in proportion as Burnett
+Minor cheered up (which she usually did very quickly), the
+others ceased to talk across to Louie. It was as if, whoever
+did it, some normal level of chatter must be maintained.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+Soon supper was as desultorily talkative as it always was.
+Louie, glancing at the top table, saw that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+knew nothing of what had happened at tea-time.
+She was, however, quite ready for her the moment she
+should find out something.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">V</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon about three weeks later Louie Causton
+had occasion to go into the carpenter's shed. This
+shed lay between the dairies and the boiler-house that was
+the centre of the hot-water-pipe system, and Priddy had a
+frame making there. Half this frame, protected by a
+board with "Wet Paint" chalked upon it, leaned against
+the outside wall, and, with his back to the sunlit doorway,
+a young man, whom at first Louie took to be Priddy, was
+doing something at a bench. Hearing her, he turned. It
+was not Priddy. Louie did not know him.</p>
+
+<p>There is in the British Museum a small helmeted head
+very like the young man Louie saw. It is on the upper
+floor, among the Tanagras, in a case on the left as you
+walk from the stairs. This young man, of course, was not
+helmeted. His face was handsome and slightly vacuous;
+his eyes in particular had something of the blankness of the
+little terra-cotta head; and his mouth was full and classically
+curved, and had the slightest of smudges of dark moustache
+along the deeply indented upper lip. A pair of rolling
+muscular shoulders showed through his white sweater;
+his old trousers were tucked into a pair of wooden-looking
+boots; and he was filing something. Louie wondered what
+business he had there.</p>
+
+<p>He told her. He spoke in a slow voice, as if he had got
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>
+his explanation by rote. He was there by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+permission, he said.</p>
+
+<p>"We had a smash with the centre-board, you see," he
+explained. "Crash&mdash;just at tea-time. Izzard wanted to
+send it to Mazzicombe, but I told him they'd charge nearly
+as much as we gave for the beastly boat. So I'm doing it
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if his presence within the precincts of a horticultural
+college for young women was quite explained, he
+bent over his filing again. Louie, who had come for a
+couple of boards that had been put aside for her, took them
+and went out. She was twenty yards away when she
+heard the young man call slowly after her: "I say&mdash;I
+ought to carry those for you, you know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The boards were for her bed. This she had removed
+from the orchard. The new place lay quite beyond the
+orchard, at the foot of the hill between Chesson's and the
+sea. There, for the first time on the previous night, she
+had had the best of what breeze there was.</p>
+
+<p>It had been the attitude of her fellow-students during the
+past month&mdash;or, more fairly, what she had conceived to be
+their attitude&mdash;that had caused her thus to remove herself.</p>
+
+<p>It might be too much to say that she was still not as
+popular as ever. These things are not demonstrable.
+Popular she had been; now&mdash;well, it depended a little more
+than it had done. Burnett Minor, of course, would have
+eaten from the same plate with her by day and shared her
+bed at night had she been permitted&mdash;also had she not left
+for her vacation a fortnight before; but Burnett Major&mdash;Louie
+was not so sure about Burnett Major. Her attitude
+had been more than correct; it had been so correct that
+Louie had been put altogether in the wrong. The words,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+of course, had never been said, but Louie had imagined
+Burnett Major's private opinion to be as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But why didn't she tell us sooner? What earthly difference
+does she suppose it would have made? Who cares
+about things like that? I dare say her father's just as
+good as anybody else's father; for that matter, mother's
+grandfather was only a farmer&mdash;mother told us so herself;
+but nobody likes being treated as if they were snobs. It
+showed a lack of confidence, that's what it showed; and
+I don't know&mdash;now&mdash;I mean no girl, unless she <i>wasn't</i>
+quite a lady, would&mdash;&mdash;" Louie could supply that part
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care&mdash;I <i>love</i> Causton!" she had also imagined
+B. Minor as having sobbed, bold and unconvinced. "He
+didn't sky the wiper when his beezer was bleeding, anyway!"</p>
+
+<p>Yes: for Burnett Major, presentation and all the rest of
+it lay ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Matters would probably have stopped at that had Louie
+herself allowed them to do so; but that would not have been
+like Louie. Allow them to stop there? Good gracious,
+no! Her cynicism had become bright indeed. <i>She</i> was
+not the girl to contaminate the innocent Burnett Minor;
+neither&mdash;for she was a Scarisbrick when all was said and
+done&mdash;was she going to be driven willy-nilly into the society
+of Richenda Earle as company good enough for her.
+She could look after herself, thank you. Coventry is no
+unpleasant place provided you have the putting of yourself
+there, and at any rate her Coventry at the foot of the
+hill was cooler at night than the other one. It meant carrying
+her mattress and bedding a little farther, but she had
+a prizefighter's physique to carry them with, which was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+more than her nearest neighbour, Elwell, the daughter of
+the Treasury mandarin, could say.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that she did sometimes wonder (with Burnett
+Major, perhaps) whether she had not inherited also from
+the prizefighter something less desirable than his physique&mdash;a
+discontented and ill-conditioned nature. But that did
+not mend matters. It merely made her, if it did anything
+at all, distrustful of herself. And as this is the story of
+Louie, virtues and vices and all, her moods must go down
+with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, rolled in her blanket at the foot of the hill,
+she could feel the night wind on her face, and see the stars,
+and in her fancy deride or boast of her parentage to her
+heart's content.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon following that on which she had fetched
+the boards from the carpenter's shed she went to the shed
+again, this time for a couple of tent-pegs and a piece of cord
+for the better securing of her blankets. The vacant young
+Tanagra was still there. But this time he was not quite so
+vacant. He had had leisure to think of quite a number of
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," he said, lifting slow and bashful eyes of the
+colour of blue porcelain to Louie, "I've been thinking.
+Haven't I seen you before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Yesterday," said Louie shortly. He had had
+the bad luck to catch her at her brooding. But he did not
+seem to notice her curtness.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I mean&mdash;before&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't&mdash;isn't your name Chaffinger?" He almost
+blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"No."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she relented a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I was called Chaffinger for a time. My name's Causton.
+I suppose yours is Chesson, or you'd hardly be
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Chesson? Why Chesson? No. Mine's Lovenant-Smith&mdash;Roy
+Lovenant-Smith."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Louie. "Then you're right. We have
+met before, at Mallard Bois."</p>
+
+<p>Roy Lovenant-Smith appeared to be so relieved at being
+rid of a perplexity that he didn't much care if they never
+met again.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we had," he said mildly. "You were Louie
+Chaffinger then. I knew you were."</p>
+
+<p>"But what," Louie asked, "are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>He radiated simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"That centre-board, didn't I tell you? Izzard would
+make me go halves in the rotten old thing; just look at
+her; hardly a shroud on the port side, and the centre-board
+was hitched up with a piece of old rope instead of a chain
+and down it came the other tea-time. It's the cabin table
+as well as the centre-board, you see, and the whole thing
+shut up-just like that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He set the inner edges of his hands together and then
+closed his palms with a slap.</p>
+
+<p>"All the tea&mdash;jam and all the lot," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He amused Louie. "That was a pity," she said demurely.</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't it? But I say, I shall be catching it. I
+might use the shed, aunt said, but she told me it was a
+fixed Rule about men, unless you're a gardener, of
+course&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span></p>
+
+<p>("An obedient nephew," Louie thought.) "Then I
+must go at once," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shouldn't like to get you into a row too," said
+Roy Lovenant-Smith ingenuously.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Louie agreed, more demurely still. "They have
+to be strict, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather!" said Roy Lovenant-Smith heartily.</p>
+
+<p>And Louie left him.</p>
+
+<p>She was hardly out of sight before her laughter broke
+forth. "'All the tea&mdash;jam and all the lot!'" she repeated
+softly, and laughed again. She scarcely remembered this
+delightful young man. When, as a child of eleven, she
+had played leapfrog, he could hardly have been more than
+seven, and she felt herself to be far more than four years
+his senior now. He was the adjutant's son, she supposed.
+Well, he would hardly need Chaff's usual extenuation about
+his being a bad fellow at all: Louie would be very much
+surprised if he had wit enough to be very bad, or, for the
+matter of that, very anything else either. Once more she
+laughed. At any rate she had to thank him for dispelling
+her megrims for the time being. Still laughing softly, she
+passed through the orchards, ascended the hill, and sought
+her favourite place by the stile at the top.</p>
+
+<p>She had not thought very much about young men. She
+had observed them as so many phenomena, obviously superior
+to the animals, yet not quite identifiable as beings
+with inner experiences akin to her own. They looked at
+her irregular mouth and elongated chin, said the things
+young men did say, and departed again, taking their various
+moustaches and their unvarying smell of tobacco to some
+girl of the kind she knew they accounted "pretty." They
+were quite different beings from the fairy prince of her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>
+childhood; and since her childhood's days she had grown
+gradually, she did not know how, to a fairly accurate estimate
+in retrospect of the "little party" to which Chaff had
+once taken her, pigtails and all. Her views of marriage too
+were coloured by that mixed parentage that made her, she
+supposed, not "common" and not "a lady." She would
+not marry unless this was clearly understood. What else
+there might be in marriage was shadowy, to be considered
+after this redoubtable magnanimity was safely out of the
+way.</p>
+
+<p>With no young man had she ever had "a lark."</p>
+
+<p>She was, however, more in the mood for a lark now&mdash;not
+necessarily with a young man&mdash;than she had ever been
+in her life before. "Cau-ston a vingt-quatr'ans&mdash;elle
+coiffe déjà Sainte Catherine," the remorseless Pigou had
+said: oh, had she? Did she? Moreover, you cannot put
+yourself gloomily into Coventry; others must be made to
+see that you consider your sequestration the most desirable
+of conditions. Indeed, she had said as much to Richenda
+Earle only the night before.</p>
+
+<p>Richenda was the only one of the girls who slept indoors,
+and Louie, carrying her bed-trappings out from the house,
+had come upon Richenda by the little green door of the
+espaliered wall that led to the orchards. Richenda had
+made an advance, willing, apparently, to forget the snub
+Louie had administered after the "Life and Battles" revelation,
+and had offered to carry her pillow for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you go so far?" she had asked, as they had
+left the orchard behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hate being disturbed," Louie had replied. "I'd
+go right down to the shore if it wasn't for the climb up
+again."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But suppose you wanted anything during the night?"</p>
+
+<p>"What should I want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I forgot. You don't have headaches. I
+have&mdash;frightful ones."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why don't you come out too? There's quite a
+jolly place here. I'd help you to carry your things."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've got to read," Richenda had shaken her head.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be heaps better for it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie had not much in common with Richenda&mdash;save
+perhaps (she loved little cuts like this at herself) that both
+of their fathers were literary. But she had had that rather
+brutal snub on her conscience. That had come out
+next.</p>
+
+<p>"You do study too hard," she had said, "and&mdash;I say,
+Earle&mdash;I'm sorry for what I said that night&mdash;you know&mdash;when
+I snapped at you and said you'd your medal to get.
+Will you forget that?"</p>
+
+<p>The next moment she had almost wished she hadn't said
+it, Earle's hungry gratitude had shown so.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't your fault a bit," the red-haired girl had
+broken out impulsively. "It was all mine. I ought to
+have minded my own business. But I was so&mdash;so&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, try sleeping up here," Louie had cut her short.
+"It's jolly."</p>
+
+<p>But Richenda had gone on. "I was stupid," she had
+murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that you were. You see how it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was, I was&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as I tell you, I don't think much of my mother's
+lot."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>you</i> can say so," Richenda had replied, shaking her
+head. Then, as Louie had thrown down her mattress,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+"You don't mean to say you undress here?" she had asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't sleep in my clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't your things get wet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wrap 'em in my waterproof.... You won't come
+up, then, and run down to the shore for a bathe before
+breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p>"Causton, they'll be dropping on you yet!" Earle had
+said, almost frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, without the bathe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I should die!"</p>
+
+<p>And Richenda had gone back to sleep where she might
+find remedies for her headaches within reach of her hand
+during the night.</p>
+
+<p>Louie sat on the stile. The sea had a soft bloom, and
+the sky was of the colour of the whites of a baby's eyes.
+Bees hummed among the scabious, and blue and sulphur
+butterflies hovered over the patches of wild thyme. A
+tramp, sullying the air behind her, crept slowly up to Bristol;
+a single nodding grass-head near at hand shut her out
+almost completely. Mazzicombe, down under the hill, was
+hidden. Louie watched it all, thinking of nothing, or, if
+of anything, of how sweet it was to relax all her muscles to
+the point of not stumbling off the stile, and all her mind
+save that she might still be just conscious that she existed
+and was Louie Causton....</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo," said a slow, imperturbable voice behind her;
+"here we are again."</p>
+
+<p>She started a little. Roy Lovenant-Smith was returning
+with a baulk of old wood over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you," she said. She did not know whether
+she was glad or annoyed to be interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's me," he replied placidly.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment; then: "I thought you
+hadn't to hang about here?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he put it to her candidly, "how can I get over
+the stile when you're sitting on it? How can I, now?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. "Well, I must get off on my proper side."
+She did so. "There," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed over with great deliberateness, walked a few
+yards with his piece of timber, and then turned again.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you can't see her from here," he said. "She's
+down under the hill there. I don't think she's worth bothering
+about, but Izzard says she'll be quite all right with a
+new stay or two. I suppose I shall have to get 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt a return of her amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Izzard?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Izzard?" He looked at her as if she ought to know
+that. "Izzard's the other chap. Always painting, you
+know. Painting and mooning about and leaving me to do
+all the work. He's away there somewhere now." He
+pointed vaguely across the Channel. "I suppose he'll
+come back when he's ready. She <i>is</i> an old egg-box!&mdash;I
+say, how's your cousin Eric? And that girl&mdash;what's her
+name&mdash;Cynthia, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>She didn't know, and told him so; she did not tell him
+that she didn't care either. He cogitated for a moment,
+and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"But I say&mdash;what do you <i>do</i> at this place? Seems
+funny to me.... Mind yourself&mdash;somebody wants to get
+over&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She had not heard anybody approach. It was Priddy,
+going down to Mazzicombe. Louie stood aside from the
+stile. Priddy climbed over it and began to descend the
+hill. Lovenant-Smith looked at Louie in surprise.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I say," he said, "that's cool! Don't those fellows take
+their hats off to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Louie. Then she turned her clear grey eyes
+on him. She had been fairly caught.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they? By Jove!... What are you looking at
+me like that for?"</p>
+
+<p>The rippling laugh with which Louie replied dropped a
+note. "Guess!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I guess?" he asked, with his innocent and
+statue-like stare.</p>
+
+<p>For answer, Louie glanced to where Priddy's brown
+bowler hat was disappearing over the edge of the hill. Roy
+Lovenant-Smith saw&mdash;he really saw&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What?" he exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that
+that chap will&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. He stared.</p>
+
+<p>"What, get you into a row for talking to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"He may not."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but really, joking apart?" he said incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he won't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come, I say!... Look here, shall I go back with
+you and explain?"</p>
+
+<p>The innocent! "I don't think I would," said Louie,
+smothering her laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;hang it all! I say, I <i>am</i> sorry!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean sorry I've got you into a row, of course," he
+amended.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I thought you meant sorry you stopped and talked
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. That is, if it doesn't get you into a
+row."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And if it did&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a chap doesn't like getting people into rows.
+Look here&mdash;that beggar wants talking to!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie dropped her eyes. "I've been in rows before,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he cheered up. "Oh, I see! You mean it
+wouldn't be much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, your aunt can't exactly skin me." At the recollection
+of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith she glanced with satisfaction
+at her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll make that all right with her," said Roy Lovenant-Smith
+hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him. He <i>was</i> an innocent! "You know
+what that would mean?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, merely that you wouldn't see me again."</p>
+
+<p>His look too rested on her hands. "Why?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She straightened herself. "Oh, never mind about it.
+I'm going now."</p>
+
+<p>He coloured a little. "But I say&mdash;Louie&mdash;you don't
+mind my calling you Louie, do you? I used to, you know.&mdash;I
+should like to see you again."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'd better not," she said, with great demureness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, rot!" he expostulated. "A fellow can't get a girl
+into a mess and then leave her in the lurch!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd like to see me just once again, to see whether
+I'd got into a row or not?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't what Louie had meant him to mean, but
+"Well, once, if you like," she conceded.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. What about here, at this time to-morrow?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll see if I can get away from my studies."</p>
+
+<p>"Right. And if I see that chap in Mazzicombe, may
+I say anything to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Not about not taking his hat off?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they don't trouble about that sort of thing
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they jolly well ought. All right, I won't.
+Good-bye&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>He took his board and followed Priddy; she turned back
+to the college. She laughed again. At any rate, a lark
+with a pleasant image was better than a hole-in-corner, Miss
+Hastings affair with a gardener. She would <i>not</i> "coiffe
+Sainte Catherine."</p>
+
+<p>She duly got her wigging. She was put "on her honour"
+by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith not to see the young man
+again who had betrayed the confidence put in him. This
+struck her as quite richly arrogant. To be put "on your
+honour" by somebody before whom you stand mute as a
+fish, and to have it assumed that you accept the bond, was
+the <i>largior ether</i> indeed. Louie did not even feel called
+upon to say that she declined to consider herself bound.
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith might take her "off her honour"
+again. She met Roy scarcely three hours later. The interview
+he himself had had with his aunt in the meantime
+affected the situation but little; his centre-board was now
+patched up, and the withdrawing of the privilege of the
+carpenter's shed made no difference.</p>
+
+<p>They met again on the afternoon following that, and
+again on the one after that. Louie found herself hoping
+that Izzard, whoever he was, would not return from "over
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+there" just yet. Let somebody else attend to the hair-combing
+of the Saint.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">A score of different things contributed to her enjoyment
+of that affair of atmosphere&mdash;her "lark." First, the
+initiative was hers&mdash;for her empty-eyed statue accepted
+everything with as much candour as if he had been born
+into a virgin world on the eighth day of its creation.
+Next, the mere disregarding of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was
+a pleasure she felt it incumbent upon herself not to forgo.
+Next, there was the instinctive courage with which she
+translated her sulks into carelessness and gaiety. Next&mdash;but
+allow what you will for the rest: pique, vanity, her
+derivation, her upbringing. When, the third time she met
+Roy by the stile, the half-French girl, Pigou, came upon
+them, and instantly flew to spread the news among such
+girls as still remained at Chesson's, Louie's Coventry was
+the coveted thing she had all along intended it should be.</p>
+
+<p>For she was more than merely popular now; she was
+romantic, apart, a being to be looked up to with something
+like awe. Meet a young man! She felt herself to be the
+channel by which every girl in the place might have access
+to her own dreams. They gave her longing glances, that
+mutely implored her to tell them all, all about it; she talked
+about everything else, but not about that, and hearts and
+mouths watered. They offered to do things for her&mdash;to
+carry her mattress, to do her Sunday watering, even to
+clean her bicycle; and Louie let them&mdash;but told them nothing.
+Nay, she even drew Richenda Earle to herself.
+Richenda actually carried her mattress to the foot of the
+hill one night and slept out. The two mattresses were
+placed not six feet apart, and, as the birds settled on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+boughs and the stars came out, Richenda set herself wistfully
+to pump Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Then it appeared why Richenda had seemed changed
+since her vacation. Speaking in a low voice, she too admitted
+that there was now&mdash;Somebody. Weston, his
+name was, Louie learned, and he was some sort of a commercial
+schoolmaster at the same place in Holborn where
+Richenda herself had studied. So instead of Richenda
+pumping Louie, Louie pumped Richenda. What was her
+Mr. Weston like? Well (Richenda said), some might
+think him an oddity&mdash;the Secretary Bird, his nickname
+was&mdash;but he was, oh, a soul so sensitive, so gentle! Was
+there any prospect of their marrying soon? Richenda
+sighed; it would be a long time; if she got her post at Chesson's
+he might apply for a country schoolmastership somewhere
+near, and then she would get a bicycle; or if he got
+a "rise" in London she might relinquish her appointment&mdash;when
+she got it. But in any case it could hardly be for
+years. Louie asked flatly what Weston got, and was told
+one hundred pounds a year. She looked up in surprise.
+Her own dress allowance was treble that amount.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'd get a hundred here too?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If I get the place&mdash;which means if I get my medal,"
+said Richenda.</p>
+
+<p>Then, Louie thought, that would be two hundred between
+them&mdash;two-thirds of her dress allowance.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;," she said, "I thought people got paid
+more than that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you you didn't know," said Richenda softly.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;why, my aunt paid Miss Skrine one hundred
+and fifty pounds, just to go through her engagements,
+opening bazaars and charities and so on&mdash;just to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+write down on a slate what she had to do each day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your aunt's Lady Moone," came from Richenda's
+couch.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>know</i> she got one hundred and fifty pounds, <i>and</i>
+lived with them. One hundred pounds seems absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what father said when he apologised to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely, all&mdash;all the people one sees aren't paid at
+that rate! Why, some cooks get a thousand&mdash;I've heard
+that for a fact&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Some don't," came from the other pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, some do, and if you strike an average, or whatever
+it's called&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Richenda interrupted, softly and wearily:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't, don't, don't know."</p>
+
+<p>Louie asked further questions. She frowned, puzzled,
+at the answers. Of course Richenda herself wasn't a very
+effective sort of girl; if anybody had to be downtrodden it
+would very likely be she; but the things she was telling her
+now (Richenda had begun to talk again, resignedly rather
+than bitterly) were preposterous. There must be something
+wrong with Richenda, probably with her Weston too;
+she did not look quite right; she was very different from the
+rosy housemaids at Trant, for example. One hundred
+pounds a year!... She had forgotten all about Roy.
+When, presently, Richenda came as near to putting a question
+about him as she dared, she forgot about him again.
+One hundred pounds a year!... She lay on her back,
+her knees up, her hands behind her head, her sleeves fallen
+from her wonderful arms, the brows above the grey eyes
+knitted. She was sure that <i>she</i> could do better than that!
+She even went so far as to say so. Richenda showed no
+resentment.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've got Lord Moone behind you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a prizefighter and a public-house behind me,"
+Louie replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I know you think you know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie lay awake, still pondering it all, long after Richenda
+had fallen into an uneasy sleep.</p>
+
+<p>On the following afternoon she met Roy by the stile
+again. She was restless, unsettled, she knew not what.
+She spoke almost sharply to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to stand here with you," she said;
+"that's twice I've been seen. Come down the hill."</p>
+
+<p>Roy no longer urged the Rules. They walked together
+a hundred yards down the hill, and sat down under a gorse-bush.
+He made her move quite behind it, and even then
+tucked her skirt a little farther out of the gaze of a possible
+passer-by.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we're all right," he said. "How's Lovey this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I haven't seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't bite a fellow's head off, Louie."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't bother me to-day.&mdash;No, I don't want my
+hand held."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't leave me alone I shall go. I didn't sleep
+till nearly daylight."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't sleep for quite an hour, either," he said sympathetically.
+"I say, isn't it funny, Louie, when you
+come to think of it, that till a week ago I hadn't thought of
+you for years?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wasn't lying awake thinking of you," she said
+bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was of you." He put out his hand again.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His approach only made her impatient. "Oh, don't!"
+she snapped. "Really I shall get up and go if you worry
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He was, as he would have put it, "keen": keen enough
+to begin to sulk. She let him sulk, and watched the sea,
+always of a milky bloom, and the sky, still of the hue of an
+infant's eyeball. After some minutes she turned to him
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>do</i> people get paid?" she asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"What people?" He spoke over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, people&mdash;you know what I mean!"</p>
+
+<p>"We get dashed little, I know that." (He was going
+into the army.) "What sort of people? Servants and
+those?"</p>
+
+<p>"And those&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>Roy expounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Jolly good pay, <i>I</i> call it; lot of lazy beggars! Why,
+the fellow down there wanted to charge me two pounds
+for patching up that centre-board, that I did in about
+a day. I shouldn't mind getting two pounds a day!...
+Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of your gardeners been grizzling to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"A wonder&mdash;rotten grousing lot! They ought to have
+uniforms to buy, and mess-bills and clubs and things;
+they'd know all about it then! Two pounds for filing a
+piece of iron and putting a patch on a piece of wood!&mdash;I
+think it will hold all right," he continued naïvely; "we
+shall make a deuce of a lot of leeway if it doesn't. We're
+flat-bottomed, you see, with only bilge-keels, and that reminds
+me; Izzard's coming back on Wednesday; I'd a note
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+from him this morning. But he won't be in the way, dear,
+if you'll only be friends&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She could not help laughing. After all, Richenda's
+"grousing" was a little spoiling her fun. She turned to
+him again.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't seen her yet," she said. "Let's go down to
+her now."</p>
+
+<p>He chuckled mildly. "You do play the dickens with
+the Rules, Louie."</p>
+
+<p>"Bother the Rules!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you don't want to go just this minute; it's jolly
+here&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>This time she did not withdraw her hand.</p>
+
+<p>But he was very slow, she thought, in kissing her. He
+had never kissed her yet. What was the good of being
+caught at&mdash;nothing?</p>
+
+<p>Well, statues (she reflected), especially young ones, are
+slow&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Even as she was thinking it he did that very thing.
+Perhaps it was to summon up resolution to do so that he
+had lain awake the previous night. He kissed her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The result was curious. It was the law of her physique
+that most moments of perturbation only turned her paler;
+but at this particular form of perturbation she turned suddenly
+pink.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments she was as before. The first sign that
+she was Louie again was that she forbade him to repeat the
+offence. He sulked again.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said resentfully; "then we may as well
+go and see the yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to see the yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't be stuffy about it&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Statues <i>were</i> distractingly slow!</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at him with a faintly mocking smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to say you're sorry?" she challenged
+him (but she had for a moment a faint return of the unhabitual
+colour for all that).</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to suspect that he was being mocked; nevertheless
+it was with a rather tremulous boldness that he answered
+"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he explained, "you did let me hold your
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath. Good gracious! Why, he
+would be saying presently that she had asked him to kiss
+her! "You see, you did let me hold your hand!" What
+next?</p>
+
+<p>"You know you did," he argued simply.</p>
+
+<p>Even so it is written, "Out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she laughed. O admirable innocence, that
+alone can defeat guile! After all, it was too unpardonable
+not to be pardoned. She turned her face away again.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i> stupid!" she murmured, her face, even her
+neck, pink once more.</p>
+
+<p>At that quite a new gleam seemed to irradiate his good-looking
+clay.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," he said slowly, as he struggled with the newness
+of the idea, "you mean&mdash;do you mean?&mdash;about my not
+kissing you&mdash;properly?"</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the heaviness! But he should kiss her "properly,"
+as he called it, now!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said briskly, "it's too late now. You can't
+very well after that, can you?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But he beamed. "Of course I can!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Roy!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>This was outrageous. She made as if to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Roy&mdash;no&mdash;you know very well you don't think
+I'm pretty&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you aren't ugly," said he.</p>
+
+<p>(Great heavens! She "wasn't ugly"!)</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Mr. Statue," she thought, compressing those
+irregular lips whose degree of prettiness he estimated so
+nicely. "I'm going to be pretty in a very few minutes,
+and you're going to tell me so."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Roy," she said aloud; "just let's sit and talk&mdash;sensibly&mdash;I
+don't know what made you behave like this all
+of a sudden&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And there was none to say "Provoking hussy!"</p>
+
+<p class="p2">An hour later they rose. It was too late to go to the
+yacht now. They walked together back to the stile.
+Their shoulders overlapped. The kisses came easily now.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll go aboard her to-morrow?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>"'Once aboard the lugger'&mdash;ha, ha&mdash;but of course she's
+a cutter, not a lugger. That's just a saying, 'Once aboard
+the lugger.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, hadn't you heard it? 'Once aboard the lugger
+and the girl is mine,' it is. And I say, you'd better put
+some old clothes on if I'm to show you how the centre-board
+works."</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>"What about Lovey?" he asked once more.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we write down on a slate where we're going."</p>
+
+<p>He held her a little away. "I&mdash;<i>say</i>!... You
+wouldn't tell her where, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;cheek!"</p>
+
+<p>"She put me 'on my honour'&mdash;impudence!" quoth
+Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"But I say&mdash;what frightful cheek!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then, "'Bye&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He called her name after her. "Louie!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, boy&mdash;&mdash;" She waved her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, she thought with satisfaction, she had made
+him say&mdash;swear&mdash;that she was pretty.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The next afternoon, as good as her word, Louie wrote
+on the hall-slate: "Gone to Mazzicombe: L. Causton."
+Then she walked, whistling, out of the house and up the
+hill.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">VI</p>
+
+<p>This time she fully expected to catch it, and did catch
+it. No time was lost. A note from Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+just before supper ordered her to report herself immediately
+after that meal. At a quarter past nine she
+presented herself.</p>
+
+<p>The French window stood wide open, but night was fast
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+falling over the front lawn, and a clipped peacock of box
+showed against a brownish-green sky. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+stood by the window. It moved as she turned, and
+there swung slowly across the pane the reflection of the tall,
+yellow-shaded standard-lamp in one corner. Miss Harriet
+Chesson had followed Louie in. In her hand was a piece
+of paper&mdash;Louie's "conduct-report."</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of the encounter was no skirmish; its end
+was positive slaughter. This is no place for a report of it,
+round by round; it must be summarised, even as the "Life
+and Battles" summarises the combat between Buck and
+the terrible Piker. Louie "led," so to speak, by asking
+whether she might sit down, giving as her reason that she
+had had a long walk that afternoon; permission was only
+refused her after she had put her hand on the back of a
+wheatear chair and said again: "I think you said Yes?"
+She then placed the chair for Miss Harriet to sit on, as
+near as possible to that of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith. She
+herself stood in the middle of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harriet, evidently wishing she was somewhere else,
+read aloud the conduct-report. It was longish and detailed.
+It also, as Louie well knew, did not contain one of the real
+points at issue. She looked from one to the other of the
+two women. The Lady-in-Charge wore a discreetly-necked
+evening frock, with a fichu secured by a mourning brooch;
+and her fingers kept touching this brooch, and also kept
+leaving it again, as if Louie's eyes had been capable of a
+physical plucking of them away. She had had Miss Harriet
+in, Louie knew, for moral support. The principal's
+dress, too, was a give-and-take between her gardening costume
+and conventional evening attire. Her indictment
+read, she seemed more than ever anxious to depart. Louie,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+for her part, was rather glad that she had been called in.
+Buck had always fought better for the eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lovenant-Smith began correctly; her first trace of
+acerbity showed only when Louie, having listened to her
+arraignment with downcast eyes, lifted them for a moment
+to make a modest and quite immaterial correction.</p>
+
+<p>"Have the goodness to cease this exaggerated deference,
+Miss Causton. It doesn't deceive me. It's only a form of
+veiled insolence."</p>
+
+<p>Louie heard her indictment out in silence.</p>
+
+<p>First blood was drawn when Louie mentioned the name
+of Roy Lovenant-Smith. She called him, with aggravating
+naturalness, "Roy." Mrs. Lovenant-Smith rose nearly
+an inch in height.</p>
+
+<p>"'Roy!'" she echoed. "'Roy,' indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"I quite expected Priddy would tell you that first time.
+Of course he would. The gardeners here don't like outsiders
+intruding," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>The point told. There was no need to mention the name
+of Miss Hastings. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's face deepened
+its ochre.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Miss Causton," she said; while Miss Harriet
+timidly interposed: "I think that's all you wanted me
+for?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie went on. "And anyway, you gave your nephew
+permission to come on the premises, which seems to me
+quite as much against the Rules as anything there." She
+pointed to the charge-sheet.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray go on, Miss Causton," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+swallowing her wrath. Piker Betteridge, counting the
+moral advantage to be more than the pain endured, had
+formerly been wont to thrust out his undefended jaw in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
+order to prove its invulnerability to attack; Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+was doing something of the same kind now.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray go on&mdash;&mdash;" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course that's all bunkum," said Louie, warming,
+and pointing once more to the paper in Miss Harriet's
+hand. "That isn't in the least what you mean. What you
+really hate is my having told the girls what you've had
+in your mind ever since I came&mdash;I mean about my
+father."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray go on!" The jaw was thrust out once more.</p>
+
+<p>("Perhaps I'd better go?" Miss Harriet still fidgeted.
+Seedsmen's daughters are not at their ease at these Olympian
+conflicts.)</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I will go on," said Louie, warming still
+more. "You would have preferred me to hold my tongue
+about it, and if you're thinking of asking me to resign I
+should like to say now that probably at least half-a-dozen
+others will go with me."</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith scored a point.</p>
+
+<p>"That may have been true a little while ago," she said,
+"but&mdash;go on." And Louie remembered certain little incidents
+and unbendings that had caused it to be indulgently
+rumoured that "Lovey wasn't such a bad old sort once you
+got to know her." Louie conceded the point.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, that's what she does mean," she said, turning
+to Miss Harriet&mdash;"that she didn't want me to tell them
+that my father was a prizefighter and kept a public-house!"</p>
+
+<p>"Address yourself to me, if you please," ordered Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! You've been set against me from the first,
+for that very reason; and as for your nephew, I've known
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+him for years and years, and you've no business at all to
+have him here, and it would sound rather well, wouldn't
+it, if the tale got about that you allowed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But at this Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's hardly held composure
+gave way with a snap. Well-born but necessitous
+Ladies-in-Charge of horticultural colleges do not submit
+to being told their duty by the daughters of pugilists. She
+stamped on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" she cried, shaking. "I was a fool ever to
+have had you here! You make discipline impossible.
+You corrupt your fellow-students&mdash;you make a boast of
+your unfortunate parentage&mdash;you show no respect for the
+Rules&mdash;you think yourself at liberty to come and go as you
+please&mdash;you carry on a vulgar intrigue&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;not with a gardener&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>("Oh, I <i>really</i> must go my rounds!" murmured Miss
+Harriet; but she lingered; the spectacle of Olympians forgetting
+themselves does not occur every day.)</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;disgracing yourself among younger and more innocent
+girls&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;with a Lovenant-Smith, anyway&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Again the stamp. "I forbid you to mention his name!"</p>
+
+<p>"Roy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the room!"</p>
+
+<p>("Please, please!" besought Miss Harriet.)</p>
+
+<p>"You will pack your boxes at once!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall consult Lord Moone's lawyer first. You accepted
+my fees&mdash;your college is an imposition from beginning
+to end, and I'll see that's known. That will be
+another scandal&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" choked Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, perhaps with
+some hazy recollection of the law of slander in her head.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+"You hear that, Miss Chesson? You hear that? You
+heard those words?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't quite catch&mdash;ladies&mdash;please!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you didn't catch it, I said the whole place was a
+shameless fraud," said Louie calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good. Ring the bell, Miss Chesson!"</p>
+
+<p>But the servant appeared only in time to see Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+complete collapse. She sank, shaking, into
+a chair, and gazed unseeingly into a pigeon-hole of her
+desk, as if she might find some help against this devilish
+girl there. As she clung (as it were) to the ropes, Louie
+let her have it (so to speak) on the beezer.</p>
+
+<p>"You oughtn't to be here at all, really, you know," she
+said. "You ought to be in one of those places&mdash;you know&mdash;in
+the Queen's gift, at Kensington or Hampton Court,
+with the dowagers and maids-of-honour. If you like I'll
+ask my uncle whether he can't do anything."</p>
+
+<p>And without waiting for an answer she swept out, not by
+the door, but by the French window. The reflection of the
+yellow-shaded standard-lamp swung again as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>She entered the courtyard by the side door, passed under
+the dark yew and the arch beneath the box-room, and made
+her way through the orchard. She had reached her pitch
+at the foot of the hill before she remembered that she had
+forgotten her mattress and blankets. She returned in
+search of them. Twenty minutes later she was in bed, her
+knees up, her hands clasped behind her head.</p>
+
+<p>She was white with triumph. That woman! Well,
+Louie thought she had held her own. She had had the last
+word, at all events, and an optic-bunging one too. Now
+should she leave, or stay? It was entirely a question of
+balance between her desire to see the last of the place and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>
+her resolve to go at nobody's pleasure but her own. It
+might be that she would have to stay another week in order
+to avoid the suspicion that she was turning tail. The
+fraud of a place!</p>
+
+<p>She lay, pale and victorious, thinking the matter over.</p>
+
+<p>One thing was certain; she would not return to Trant.
+She supposed she was vindictive by nature, but that would
+merely mean at the most a week's gradually increasing
+strain on her temper and then another series of embroilings
+with her mother. A philosophic elf somewhere deep within
+her&mdash;it was hardly affection&mdash;bade her spare her mother
+what she had not spared Mrs. Lovenant-Smith. Why seek
+a known trouble at Trant? If she must take trouble with
+her wherever she went, she might as well take it to a fresh
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Before she was aware they had done so, her thoughts had
+flown to the vouched-for but incredible things Richenda
+Earle had said about life and London.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Moone had a house, and Captain Chaffinger chambers,
+in London, and she knew both. For the rest, her
+knowledge of the place was pretty much what Richenda
+had guessed it to be&mdash;shops, restaurants, theatres. Of her
+five visits two had been spent at Lord Moone's, two at
+Cynthia's friends, the Kayes, and one at an hotel&mdash;this not
+counting the night on which, having run away from the
+convent, she had occupied Chaff's room and had wondered
+at his large pincushion, his pictures, and ribboned haircurlers
+that he doubtless kept in memory of his departed
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, too, lived in London, or thereby&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She fell to wondering about her father.</p>
+
+<p>There was a full but late-rising moon that night; it had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+not yet cleared the tree-tops of the eastern end of the orchard
+below. She watched its silver through the topmost
+boughs. Already it filled the heavens with a mist of light,
+dimming the stars; the glister on near leaves was brighter
+than the Plough over her head. Scents of the distant
+gardens stole undispersed through the night; that of the
+night-flowering tobacco-plant was for some minutes almost
+sicklily oppressive; and behind her she heard the scurrying
+of the rabbits at play.</p>
+
+<p>It was odd that she thought of her father rather than
+of Roy. Somehow only Roy's actual presence had the
+power to colour those now pale cheeks of hers. Certainly
+it had done so that afternoon. For an hour, aboard the
+yacht, the rose-peonies in the garden had been paler than
+she. But her father had her thoughts now, and the sum of
+them was that she would have given much to be able to
+think of him as not cruel, not faithless, not a man who had
+had to be thrust back into the ditch whence he had come.
+She might have sought him out then.</p>
+
+<p>For she was going to London; that was settled. She
+had her allowance, more by a half than the income Richenda
+and her Mr. Weston would gladly have married on,
+and not one penny more of it would she waste at Chesson's.
+The next day or two would almost certainly provide her
+with a "good exit." Then nobody would be able to say
+she had slunk out.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if her father had but not been a brute!</p>
+
+<p>The moon cleared the trees, and another too-sweet tract
+of the night-flowering tobacco enveloped her. A bird or
+two stirred. Some time before she had thought she had
+heard the sound of a curlew's whistle, low and not very
+near, but she had disregarded it. Now it came again. All
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+the effect it had was to turn her thoughts, tardily and
+almost unnoticed by herself, to Roy.</p>
+
+<p>She knew little about yachts; yachting was no pastime of
+Lord Moone's; but even her vaunting mood relaxed to a
+momentary smile as she remembered the yacht down under
+the hill there. Those two boys must be crazy to risk their
+lives like that. They had rounded Land's End in her, and
+in quite good faith evidently expected the miracle to be
+repeated. The only wonder was that the centre-board had
+gone before the rest of the crazy fabric. "I told you to
+put some old clothes on," Roy had apologised for his vessel,
+"&mdash;and I say&mdash;I don't think I'd sit on the table if I were
+you&mdash;I'm not <i>quite</i> sure about it, you see&mdash;may have to
+send it to Mazzicombe after all&mdash;come on the locker." So
+they had sat on the locker&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She had felt safer when, half-an-hour later, she had
+clambered down into the little dinghy again. It would be
+Davy Jones's locker for Master Roy and his friend Mr.
+Izzard unless some fatherly fisherman took them and their
+boat in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the thoughts of her unknown father again.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">"<i>Ee-oooo-eee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She sat up. The whistle came from the stile up the hill.
+And suddenly she knew it was no curlew. It was Roy.</p>
+
+<p>She listened.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ee-oooo-eee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It was Roy.</p>
+
+<p>She knew he would not seek her farther than the stile.
+Had there not been other sleepers just below the orchard, it
+would still have been the extreme of his boldness that he
+had got so far. But&mdash;she remembered how from the first
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+she had been the prime mover in their entirely wanton
+flirtation&mdash;was it necessarily the extreme of hers?</p>
+
+<p>Then, as the devil would have it, something brought Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith into her head again.</p>
+
+<p>That woman!</p>
+
+<p>All the blood left her cheeks and thronged to her heart
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Roy would certainly not pass the stile&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for a moment longer, and then suddenly
+got up from her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Her clothes were wrapped in her waterproof; she took
+the waterproof and put it on. She thrust her feet into a
+pair of slippers. The waterproof was not so long as the
+garment beneath it; the moon was now well above the
+trees; it showed the hurrying white about her heels as she
+walked quickly up the hill. She drew the under-garment
+up a little. The waterproof was almost the colour of the
+scorched grass. The small shadow that preceded her was
+now the thing most plainly to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Over the stile she saw the shoulder of his white sweater.
+Again her caution awoke.</p>
+
+<p>"You might have put a coat on," she said, a little out
+of breath. "You can be seen half-a-mile away on a night
+like this."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were never going to hear me!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! You seem to have been sure I'd come if I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you have come, haven't you?" he answered. "I
+say, isn't your hair different?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it isn't done for a call, if that's what you mean;
+I always do it like that at night, stupid. But I'm not
+going to stand here with you as white as a cottage
+wall."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thereupon he paid her the only compliment he ever did
+pay her&mdash;and that was unintentional.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't any whiter than your feet, anyway," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not going to stop a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dash it all!" he protested. She did think him
+cool!</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, how long do you think I <i>am</i> going to
+stay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly worth coming for, I call it," he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thank</i> you!"</p>
+
+<p>"For you, I mean, of course&mdash;as if you didn't know I'd
+walk miles&mdash;how you take a fellow up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, two minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Two minutes can be a very short time; five minutes had
+passed when, making a movement to free herself, she said:
+"Let me go now, Roy&mdash;I think we're both as mad as we
+can be."</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't anybody about," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>More minutes passed; then:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really think my feet are white?" she whispered.
+A slipper had come off.</p>
+
+<p>Then, close against his breast, she made an inconsequential,
+halting little appeal. "Oh, Roy&mdash;don't go in that
+dreadful boat again! You'll be drowned&mdash;I know you
+will&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Should you care?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Silly boy!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but should you care?"...</p>
+
+<p>"Roy, let me go!" she ordered suddenly. The minutes
+were passing fatally quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;yes&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I won't let you go."</p>
+
+<p>"Roy, let me go, I say!"</p>
+
+<p>But it was not a command now. It was a supplication&mdash;perhaps
+not even that.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">She did not love him; in her heart she knew she did not
+love him. He loved her&mdash;years afterwards; only years
+afterwards. The thought of her left him&mdash;but it returned
+to him, never to leave him again. The moon made the
+crest of the hill like day, but the shadows of the gorse-bushes
+lay dark on the short grass and stunted bents and
+the patches of wild thyme. The moon southed, then rode
+less high. In the short night a lamb called; and then the
+birds, reaching the shallows of their sleep, gave a drowsy
+twittering and went to sleep again. It was the false dawn.
+The stars grew a little brighter as a deeper darkness possessed
+the earth; then in the darkness a cock crowed.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">They met again on the next night. On the night after
+that they met once more.</p>
+
+<p>Only after that did she sit down, alone in the box-room,
+in the twilight, to think.</p>
+
+<p>Her boxes were packed and strapped, and the cart was
+coming for them from Rainham Magna in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>She wished Burnett Minor had been there. She would
+have liked to say good-bye to the child. There was nobody
+else it would break her heart to leave.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Roy was still down there under the hill. The
+centre-board had gone wrong again. She was to see him at
+the stile, in the morning, before leaving. It seemed, somehow,
+superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>But she did meet him. His face was set, and he had
+forgotten to shave.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't look like that; it wasn't your fault," she said
+composedly.</p>
+
+<p>"It was&mdash;it was&mdash;&mdash;" he muttered, hands clenched.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" She gave a short laugh. "You've nothing
+at all to blame yourself for."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have&mdash;I have."</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to her. "Louie, you've got to promise
+me one thing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But she stopped him. She knew what he was going to
+say.</p>
+
+<p>"That's quite out of the question," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But look here!" He used the words he had used the
+second time they had met. "A fellow can't get a girl into
+a mess and then leave her in the lurch. You must marry
+me, Louie, if&mdash;if&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that she had found a touch of her old irony.</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>But she turned away. "No. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you even kiss me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>But there was a gentleness in her refusal such as he had
+never had from her before. Kisses came hardly now.</p>
+
+<h2 class="p6">PART II<br />
+SUTHERLAND PLACE</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span></p>
+<p class="center b1 p2">I</p>
+
+<p>Richenda Earle could have told Louie Causton
+that an allowance of three hundred pounds a year,
+paid in quarterly instalments, only permits of a sunny
+little bedroom and a charming sitting-room in Lancaster
+Gate on certain terms, of which terms a dipping sooner or
+later into reserves of capital is certainly one. It is true
+that Louie still had capital of which she knew nothing.
+She did not yet, for example, count her wardrobe as capital,
+nor reflect that if its present standard was to be maintained
+money must be set apart for the purpose of maintaining it.
+She did not yet count her time as capital, nor write off the
+days she classed as days of "looking about her" as so
+many obligations against the time when looking about her
+would no longer serve her turn. She did not count her
+health as capital, nor her wild, resilient spirits, nor her
+"placeableness" at a glance among those whose possession
+of some capital may be assumed. All she reckoned as
+capital was the hundred odd pounds she had placed in a
+small but sound bank of her stepfather's recommendation,
+and (she had vaguely heard of such things) such additional
+credit as the Captain's name might command. But
+perhaps it is enough to say that she had this conception of
+the potency of the Captain's name.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, her second week's bill at Lancaster Gate
+was enough to cause her to send for her landlady, and to
+ask that person whether she had not a single room anywhere
+empty that might combine the prettiness of her present
+quarters with the convenience of having all her belongings
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+within a single door. She was conscious of reasonableness,
+almost of magnanimity, when she remarked that she didn't
+mind going up another flight of stairs. The landlady had
+such a room, but pointed out its lack of cupboard-space
+and the number of Louie's dresses. That, Louie replied,
+did not matter; she intended to sell a number of the older
+dresses; and her things were carried upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Her idea in selling the older dresses was that thereby she
+might add another thirty pounds or so to her balance; the
+half-dozen she thought she could spare had cost thrice that
+amount. The wardrobe dealer who waited upon her offered
+her five pounds for them. Louie thanked her, told
+her that she had thoughts of going into a business so lucrative
+herself, and bade her good-afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>She had come to London at the beginning of September;
+before that month was out she had decided to leave Lancaster
+Gate. For some reason or other her quarter's allowance
+had not arrived, and she wrote to Chaff about it.
+Chaff promised to look to the matter. She wrote also to
+Richenda Earle, stating the kind of lodging she required,
+and asking whether Richenda knew of such an one. To
+this last letter she had a reply by return of post. Richenda
+proposed the house of her married sister, which was in
+Sutherland Place, Bayswater. Without prejudice to her
+choice, Louie took a walk along Sutherland Place, and
+received an impression of a quiet street with milk-carts
+drawn up by the kerb and virginia creeper covering the
+houses with crimson. As she passed the door Richenda
+had specified, the door opened, and a squarer and older
+Richenda came out with a string bag in her hand. That,
+Louie thought, would be Mrs. Leggat, the wife of the
+estate-agent's clerk.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A week later Louie moved into Mrs. Leggat's first floor-front-bed-sitting-room.
+That night she counted her money.
+The result of her calculations caused her to jump up, as if
+she had thoughts of seeking some occupation or other that
+very night. Her quarter's allowance had still not come.
+Then Mr. Leggat, a lumpy-headed man with rabbit teeth
+and a Duke of Wellington nose, came in to fix a gas-burner
+for her, and she fell into talk with him. He wiped his
+hands ceaselessly on an old rag as he talked. He told her
+it was a pity that Rich had not stuck to her book-keeping;
+he himself would have been head clerk by this time had he
+had her thorough practical grounding instead of having had
+to knock about the world and fend for himself; and he
+asked her what sort of a villa-building-site Rainham Parva
+would, in her opinion, make. He added that it was nice to
+have "the rooms" (he used the plural) let to somebody
+they knew something about, and then, having omitted to
+shake hands with her on coming in, did so before going out,
+and evidently accounted their introduction complete. He
+came back presently for a pair of pincers he had forgotten,
+left her a Carter Paterson card for her window in case she
+should have need of one, said that one of these Sundays
+they must all go round to the Earles in Westbourne Grove
+to tea, made a pun on the words Earle and Lord, and went
+out again. An hour later Louie heard him tiptoeing discreetly
+past her door on his way upstairs to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Louie was resolved, however, to put a stop to the "Earle
+and Lord" business once for all. She was a Causton, not a
+Scarisbrick, in Sutherland Place.</p>
+
+<p>She felt herself to be already on the verge of a new life
+that was&mdash;let us say amusing&mdash;precisely in proportion as
+it was different from any life she had ever known. She
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+must be&mdash;if the word may pass&mdash;amused; she told herself
+so, clinching the argument by adding that it was far better
+to laugh than to cry. She had promised Richenda that
+she would call and see her Mr. Weston at his Business
+School in Holborn; and this might be&mdash;well, amusing.
+She went without loss of time. She took the Oxford
+Street bus one morning and alighted at the door of the
+School.</p>
+
+<p>She mounted three floors of narrow, old-fashioned stairs,
+asked a fair, perky boy, who somehow managed to make a
+good suit of clothes look cheap, where she should find Mr.
+Weston, and presently found herself introducing herself to
+a thin and melancholy-looking man with a sparse and colourless
+beard, a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, and a
+gentle and hopeless voice. This was "the Secretary
+Bird," then. He shook hands slackly with her, placed a
+chair for her in one of the bays of a sort of <span class="blocke">E</span> that was
+lined with books of reference, and she listened to his soft,
+dispirited voice and to the clicking of typewriters in an
+adjoining room. He thanked her for "all her kindnesses"
+to Richenda, whatever these might have been, and presently
+a skimpy little woman in green plaid, with eyes that
+peered quizzically behind spectacles and "destined spinster"
+written all over her, tiptoed for a moment at the
+end of the bay of books, uncertain whether to approach.
+Then the fair, perky boy who made good clothes look cheap
+also came up. Mr. Weston said: "Excuse me&mdash;yes, Miss
+Windus?" Louie saw that she was interrupting the
+morning's work. She rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay we shall see one another again," she said.
+"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>And, outside on the Holborn pavement again, she said to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+herself with decision: "Thanks&mdash;but no Business Schools
+for me!&mdash;Poor Richenda!"</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks later she became a student at that very
+school.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">There is no puzzle about it. Some things come no less
+unexpectedly that they are more than reasonably to be expected.
+To put this as briefly as it can be put, she had
+merely discovered that an affair of atmosphere had become
+an affair of fact. That was all&mdash;nothing more, nothing
+less. But that was no reason why she should not be
+amused.</p>
+
+<p>The natural thing for young women in such circumstances
+to do is to seek their mothers. If Louie did this
+natural thing a little unnaturally&mdash;well, she did it unnaturally,
+that was all. The row, scene, or whatever it
+was going to be, had better be got over; then she could
+proceed to amuse herself. She had wired that she was
+coming; the Captain had met her at Trant station; but she
+had had nothing to say to the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain, however, had had something to say to her.
+At first his mumbling into his moustache had not penetrated
+to her intelligence; she had only heard broken
+repetitions of "Dear old Mops&mdash;only for a week or two&mdash;knew
+you weren't without&mdash;meant to write, but dashed
+awkward thing to explain by letter, and was coming up in
+a week in any case&mdash;if she stuck fast he'd see what could
+be done&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" Louie had said at last. "What's that, Chaff?"</p>
+
+<p>Chaff had repeated his mumblings. At the end of them
+she had gathered that the needy Captain had borrowed the
+quarter's allowance that had been entrusted to him for despatch.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+Louie had merely given a little preoccupied laugh
+and patted his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, old boy; don't worry," she had said.</p>
+
+<p>A sample or two of her conversation with her mother
+must answer for the rest. For quite twenty minutes the
+Honourable Emily's head had been buried in the sofa-cushions,
+and the Trant coal-and-blanket charitable account had
+lain where it had fallen from her hand&mdash;across her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all," Louie had ended with hard composure.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh&mdash;&mdash;" the mother had moaned.</p>
+
+<p>"And as I say, I won't marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;you must&mdash;you must!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Because Uncle Augustus will say I must?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;you must!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go and see Uncle Augustus."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you mustn't&mdash;you mustn't!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, in an interlude, the reasons why everything must
+at all costs be kept from Lord Moone had been brokenly
+explained. In another interlude a few minutes later Louie
+had invented a fictitious name.</p>
+
+<p>"That conveys nothing to me," Mrs. Chaffinger had
+moaned. "What is he?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie had invented a station in life to fit the name. Her
+mother's face had disappeared behind the coal-and-blanket
+account again.</p>
+
+<p>"And this&mdash;this!&mdash;is your study of horticulture!" she
+had half faintingly wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Yours was art, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Chaffinger's querulous despair had shown a
+weak, vindictive gleam. Both pronouns had been a little
+emphasised as she had retorted:</p>
+
+<p>"I married your father!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was only a flicker. Her head had gone into the cushions
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"That didn't last very long," the devilish girl had commented.</p>
+
+<p>"I married your father, I say&mdash;for your sake," had
+come from the cushions.</p>
+
+<p>"That's one of the differences. There are others. If
+you're thinking of wiring to Uncle Augustus I'll wait; if
+you're not, I'll go."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Moone had been wired for. He had wired back:
+"Impossible"; but a second wire had brought him over
+post-haste the next morning. The situation had been explained
+to him; the peer had walked away for a few moments;
+Louie had thought she had heard something about
+"our damnable women"; then, coming back, Lord Moone
+had abruptly convened a Committee of Ways and Means.
+Words like "Impossible ... once in a lifetime quite
+enough ... secrecy ... the Continent for a few
+months ... institution," had been used; and at one other
+alternative Louie's eyes had become hard and chill as ice.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she had come harshly in. "As you say,
+all these things may be possible. I decline them all."</p>
+
+<p>Then Lord Moone, whose habit of ordering masses of
+men probably misled him into thinking that the ordering of
+one young woman who says "I won't" was a comparatively
+simple matter, had made his pronouncement.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he had said. "Then as head of the family
+I order that your allowance shall be stopped till you
+come to your senses. You hear that, Emily?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you'll starve me out?" Louie had said, with
+dancing eyes. Like her father, she came up to time as long
+as she could stand.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I mean what I've said."</p>
+
+<p>"Then ring the bell, please&mdash;and don't light that cigar
+till I've gone. I shall be ill if you do."</p>
+
+<p>And Lord Moone himself had ordered the carriage in
+which she had turned her back on Trant.</p>
+
+<p>Burnett Minor, when Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had surprised
+the rebellion in the box-room, had not made herself
+more inconspicuous than had Captain Chaffinger during
+this scene. Indeed, probably considering that Lord Moone,
+his sister and Louie herself formed a quorum, he had presently
+been discovered to be not there. But it seemed to be
+the Captain's lot to receive and despatch Louie in her comings
+and goings, and before the carriage had reached the
+lodge he had stopped it and climbed in. Ordinarily, the
+whites of the Captain's eyes had yellowish marblings; the
+yellow had now deepened to the hue of cayenne. He had
+blown his nose repeatedly and violently, and Louie, glancing
+covertly at him, had suddenly had a pang. All at once
+he had shown his age. Somehow Louie resented his doing
+so. People and things you have never taken quite seriously
+have no right to come near the tragic. It was as if some
+puppet strutting within a proscenium should suddenly
+bleed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mops," he had said by-and-by, blowing his nose again,
+"that was a lie you told them, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie had tried to shut her eyes to Chaff's bleeding.
+Her hand had sought his.</p>
+
+<p>"The name I told them? Of course it was, you clever
+old Chaff, to see that."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't tell me that, do you, Mops?"</p>
+
+<p>"You?! No, poor old boy, it isn't worth while telling
+lies to you."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that, Mops&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>So, for his private comfort, she had invented for Chaff
+quite a new lie, name, station in life and all.</p>
+
+<p>Then: "Oh, Mops, Mops, Mops!&mdash;&mdash;" he had murmured
+sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>Little parties were one thing, but his Mops quite another.</p>
+
+<p>But her anger had stirred again. She had remembered
+her uncle's proposals.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear what he said&mdash;Moone? No; you'd gone
+out. Listen&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He had tugged unhappily at his moustache as she had
+told him, bringing out the words with vehemence and
+hate.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but, Mops&mdash;&mdash;" he had demurred wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"What, are you going to tell me <i>you</i> think so
+too?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Mops, all right, all right, old girl&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Much I care for him and his family name! He could
+bully mother into marrying people, but he can't bully
+me.... Sorry, Chaff, that was clumsy; we're pals at
+any rate. Uncle Gus and his Scarisbricks!"</p>
+
+<p>Her exclamations of contempt had occupied the rest of
+the time to the station. Chaff had put her into her carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll let me know where you are and what you're
+doing, won't you, dear?" he had pleaded. "I can't let
+you go like this!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know where I shall be myself yet. Very
+likely I shall go to a Business School; I shall have to do
+something, and that's all I know anything about. Anyway,
+the bank will find me&mdash;no, you poor old thing, of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+course I don't mean the money! Of course I'll ask you for
+that when I want it. I've quite a lot yet. Good-bye, old
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, dear."</p>
+
+<p>And this time he had not warned her not to run away
+with a student of book-keeping.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">She went to the Business School partly (<i>bien entendu</i>)
+for amusement, and partly because there would be very
+little sense in sitting all day long in Mrs. Leggat's first-floor
+bed-sitter in Sutherland Place, Bayswater. Perhaps, too,
+Lord Moone helped to drive her there. Her very skin crept
+when she remembered the lengths to which he would have
+gone&mdash;he, the corner-stone of orthodoxy when such subjects
+came up for (very) full-dress debate&mdash;to save that precious
+thing, the family name of the Scarisbricks. Louie had
+had vanities of person, scores of them; but she had also
+the sense of the holiness of the body, and she had had
+enough of Trants and Mallard Boises and their masters for
+a time. The Business School would be as amusing as
+anywhere else; indeed, she knew of nowhere else. Here
+she was at last in a London that was not the London of
+shops and dinners and theatres and drives in the Park.
+She would have the fun&mdash;always the fun&mdash;of it. She
+would go with the Leggats to see Richenda's sisters and
+that father of hers who had apologised to her for having
+brought her into the world. She would learn these unfamiliar
+accents that met her ear, breathe this invigorating if
+dusty air. She would know what life meant to that skimpy
+woman in the green plaid, would inspect that new specimen,
+the jaunty boy who made his good clothes look like
+an ordinary "reach-me-down." And she knew, without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+knowing how she knew, that before long she would be
+seeing her father. Sit in Sutherland Place? Oh no, that
+wasn't amusing. Besides, she would presently have her
+living to earn. She had thought, when Richenda had told
+her those dismal tales, that there must be something wrong
+with Richenda and that she herself would be able to do
+better. Well, she would very soon know.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">II</p>
+
+<p>At Chesson's she had taken her proper place among
+her fellow-students at once; it was not her fault if
+here, at the Business School, she did not at first so much
+make friends as watch a number of amusing phenomena.
+She watched them with wonder; all was so very, very different.
+The building itself seemed once to have been some
+sort of a dwelling-house, for there were cabbagey wall-papers
+of a bygone fashion on the walls, broken ends of
+bell-wire stuck out from the mantel-sides and the cornices,
+and the gas-brackets were old and ornate and grimy.
+Louie was conscious of something like a shock the first time
+she approached one of the third-floor bay windows and,
+looking across the street, saw in the windows opposite men
+packing things in brown paper, waitresses carrying trays,
+and gas-jets burning in the dark interiors beyond. They
+seemed so near. The width of Holborn lay between, but
+they seemed to crowd on her much more closely than the
+yew at Rainham Parva had ever crowded on the inner windows
+of the courtyard. The yew, moreover, was thinned
+at intervals, but there was no cutting and lopping the forward-thrusting,
+amusing humanity across the way. They
+seemed to be caged there expressly for her observation.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>
+Well, she was there to observe&mdash;to observe, and, of course,
+to be amused.</p>
+
+<p>Her new companions, too, were unlike anybody she had
+ever known; they no more resembled them than the sweet
+heavy airs of Chesson's resembled these diverting smells
+of dust and damp and bad ventilation and the whiff of the
+Holborn pavement below. Their accents (amusing, however)
+struck her sharply; their faces&mdash;alert, sophisticated,
+highly entertaining but without candour&mdash;no less sharply.
+They too, like the buildings across the way, seemed to ignore
+intervening space and to press intrusively forward to
+look at her. She was glad that the first thing she had done
+had been to stop Mr. Weston's mouth on the subject of the
+Scarisbricks and Lord Moone; half the drollery of her experience
+would have gone had these people known who she
+really was. And the things these slovenly voices said had
+no candour. They struck her as a series of (merry) "scorings-off,"
+a succession of (cheery) "chippings" of one another.
+If their reticences seemed all in the wrong places,
+and hand in hand with their defensiveness went an eager
+volubility about the things Louie would have kept to herself,
+why, so much the more laughable the whole joke.</p>
+
+<p>She had been only just in time in extorting her promise
+from Mr. Weston. She was sure of this from his manner
+of speaking to herself. It was extremely, syllabically distinct.
+To words that he had been pronouncing correctly
+and without thought all his life he gave (as if he must find
+something superior for her, and knowing better all the
+time) pronunciations marvellously new. He found new
+words, too; must look 'em up, Louie thought, in the dictionary.
+Richenda, who had begun by being his sweetheart,
+became his "intended," and once even his "inamorata."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+But he was to be trusted. Louie saw that. If he gave
+away her identity at all it would be only by the portentousness
+of his secrecy. As a matter of fact he never did so.</p>
+
+<p>It was the skimpy woman in the green plaid, Miss
+Windus, who answered most of Louie's questions about her
+new companions. She too was a delightful novelty to
+Louie. As if to make her own position quite clear at the
+outset, she had confided to Louie at once that she herself
+was "partly independent." Seeing Louie's slightly
+puzzled look, she had gone on to explain that by this she
+meant that she enjoyed an income of perhaps a pound a
+week "on her own." With this title to consideration thoroughly
+understood, she went ahead. When Louie asked a
+question about the high-heeled little Cockney Jewess, Miss
+Levey, Miss Windus answered it in terms of her own pound
+a week. "Miss Levey?" she said. Oh, she'd nothing;
+she lived at home and had her fees paid for her, of course,
+and wouldn't stick fast, being a Jewess, not she; but Kitty
+didn't suppose Miriam Levey had one shilling to rub
+against another; not, that was, "on her own." Louie,
+finding other questions answered from this same standpoint,
+took her cue and framed her questions accordingly. Had
+the other female student (there were only four women),
+Miss Soames, anything? Well, Kitty didn't know; she
+fancied her aunt must have a tidy bit coming in; they
+lived together in a boarding-house in Woburn Place, and
+as the aunt did nothing all day perhaps she too was partly
+independent, or even wholly so. Had Mr. Merridew, the
+swaggering boy who cheapened his clothes so curiously, a
+tidy bit coming in? Here Kitty evidently had a tale to
+tell. Had Archie Merridew a bit coming in, indeed!
+Why, his father was Mr. Merridew of Merridew and Fry's,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+the fancy stationers with branches everywhere, so Louie
+could judge for herself whether that meant a bit or not!
+Archie a bit? Why, Mr. Merridew Senior had retired, and
+lived at a big place near Guildford, with a tennis-lawn, if
+you please. Archie Merridew a bit!&mdash;Then what about
+Mr. Mackie? (Louie might have been estimating people
+by what money they had all her life.)&mdash;Mr. Mackie? No,
+Kitty shouldn't think Mr. Mackie had very much, but he
+had a splendid "permanency" offered him when he had
+passed his examinations, as an auctioneer's clerk, four
+pounds a week to start with&mdash;to start with, mind you&mdash;and
+a "rise" every year. Yes; Mr. Mackie was all right,
+and, oh dear! <i>wasn't</i> Mr. Mackie funny?</p>
+
+<p>Louie thought this Mr. Mackie more than funny; in her
+inexperience of the type she could never believe he was
+quite true. For Mr. Mackie sang songs, imitated music-hall
+artistes, could "gag" for a whole day on end, and
+never forget for a moment the immense success he was.
+He fascinated Louie. "Ladies and bipeds in trousers!"
+he would begin, with rapid gestures and still more rapid
+speech, "before the applause I am waiting for has had time
+to subside&mdash;good word, subside&mdash;(thank you, Cuthbert,
+you can take the bouquet round to the stage-door)&mdash;as I
+was saying when Fitzclarence interrupted me, ladies and
+tripeheads in blouses, whoa, backpedal, never mind&mdash;as
+I was saying, I will now endeavour to give you my celebrated
+imitation of Roderigo the gasfitter at one o'clock
+on a Saturday with the thirty bob in his pocket and Hildegarde
+Ann his wife licking the paint of the lamp-post at the
+corner to squench her thirst&mdash;<i>heu</i>, her thirst!... Chord
+on, please, titillate the catgut, Professor, and take firm hold
+of his hand, girls&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, while the eyes of Lord Moone's niece would grow
+bigger and bigger, would follow the performance.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Isn't</i> he funny!" Kitty would giggle, faint with laughing;
+"oh, give us some more, Mr. Mackie!"</p>
+
+<p>And Kitty, like Saint Paul, died daily at yet another
+trick of Mr. Mackie's&mdash;the putting of his handkerchief to
+his nose, and the drawing of it slowly downwards to the
+accompaniment of a piercing whistle.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie was only moderately amused by young Merridew.
+Mr. Mackie had his own perfection; but vulgarity
+<i>with</i> a tennis-lawn! "Good gracious, no," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>She had entered the School as a day student; but within
+a week she had put her name down for the evening classes
+also. Even then she had the evenings of Tuesdays, Thursdays,
+Saturdays and the whole of Sunday quite unamusingly
+on her hands. She did not want time on her hands.
+As much Mr. Mackie as you pleased, but no time on her
+hands. So she joined the classes that met on the evenings
+of Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.</p>
+
+<p>On her very first evening she saw a student whom she
+had not seen before.</p>
+
+<p>She had taken a text-book on Elementary Book-keeping
+from one of the shelves of the <span class="blocke">E</span> of books in which she had
+had her first talk with Mr. Weston (who, by the way, had
+said that he would like to see her for a few minutes before
+she left that evening), and finding a chair within the recess,
+had sat down where she was to read it. She had not looked
+up when somebody had passed the mouth of her little compartment
+and entered the next one. She had heard a book
+taken down from a shelf behind her, and, after some minutes,
+put back again; and had she not chanced to straighten
+her back at that moment she would probably not have seen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+the man repass. She had no time to notice more than that
+he was very big and not very well dressed. She went on
+with her reading, wondering, in the intervals of her slack
+attention to her book, what Mr. Weston wanted with her.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the big man again at the close of the class.
+This time he was standing at the head of the stairs, waiting
+for young Merridew. He really was immensely big, so big
+that a too prolonged first look at him seemed unpleasantly
+like impertinent curiosity. Indeed, he seemed already to
+feel her eyes upon him, for he moved as if to look back at
+her in turn; but young Merridew came up at that moment
+and they went out together. The big man's head and shoulders
+were to be seen beyond the handrail for quite an appreciable
+moment of time after young Merridew's had disappeared.
+But she had been wrong in thinking that he
+wore a shabby suit. His suit might be shabby also, but
+it could not be seen. He wore, and had apparently worn
+in class also, a tawny old ulster of yellow and black check.
+In spite of its age it seemed somehow a better garment than
+did the more expensive clothes of his companion. He did
+not, however, strike her as very amusing.</p>
+
+<p>She turned away to seek the Secretary Bird&mdash;Mr. Weston.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment Mr. Weston was engaged. He was
+standing near the lecture-room blackboard, talking to the
+girl who lived with her partly independent aunt at the
+boarding-house in Woburn Place. Louie had already remarked
+the likeness of this girl, who might have been
+twenty but looked younger, to Polly Ross, the pretty
+daughter of the tipsy veterinary surgeon at Trant. Polly
+too had sported that running of pale blue ribbon beneath the
+openwork of what Kitty Windus called her "pneumonia
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+blouse," and the clumps of dark hair on her nape too was
+like Polly's, and she had Polly's dark and sidelong glance,
+and highly conscious air of unconsciousness when that
+glance had attracted what it had probably been meant to
+attract, attention to herself. She had a copy of the Pansy
+Library in her hand, and Louie smiled as she remembered
+Burnett Minor and her spoutings. She waited until Weston
+should be at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>As she waited, Kitty Windus, wearing an Inverness cape
+and a boat-shaped hat, came up. Miss Windus lived in a
+street off Tottenham Court Road, and already once or twice
+Louie had walked with her as far as the Oxford corner.
+She was waiting for the Polly Ross girl now, whose direction
+was the same. She asked Louie whether she intended
+to walk or to "hop on a bus." She always spoke in these
+rather sprightly terms, just as she always stiffened the line
+of her back a little the moment a man, any man, entered
+the room; and she referred, brightly and hopefully, to proposals
+of marriage as "chances." Louie was already
+learning when she might expect any given one of Kitty's
+innumerable <i>clichés</i>, and had several times (humorously)
+given them back to Kitty again with complete success.
+As they waited for the Polly Ross girl (whose name was
+Evie Soames) Louie asked Kitty who the big man who had
+gone out with Mr. Merridew was.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the Mandrill!" said Kitty, laughing even before
+Louie had got out the word "big." "That's Mr. Jeffries.
+Isn't he a caution? But he only comes in the evenings."</p>
+
+<p>She meant that Mr. Jeffries had not a pound a week on
+his own. Students who only came in the evenings were
+of a slightly inferior order to those who came during the
+day.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he had his brown paper parcel with him?"
+Kitty said, with more mirth in her peering little
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Louie remembered that Mr. Jeffries had carried a brown
+paper parcel. Kitty twittered.</p>
+
+<p>"Bet you can't guess what was in it&mdash;that is, if you
+haven't heard it?"</p>
+
+<p>She said "it" as if it had been a riddle or some sort of
+a joke. Louie admitted that she could not guess what had
+been in Mr. Jeffries' parcel.</p>
+
+<p>"Good old brown paper parcel!" Kitty chuckled.
+"You'll get to know it by-and-by! You see," she explained,
+"he goes to Archie's for a bath. Isn't it killing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't quite see what you mean," said Louie. She
+honestly did not.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, for a bath&mdash;you know, a common or garden bath,
+with hot water. I peeped into it once (the parcel, I mean;
+for shame, you dreadful girl!) and it had a clean shirt and
+a pair of socks in it. I suppose he wraps those he takes
+off up when he's done."</p>
+
+<p>Louie's eyes had opened very wide indeed. A man to
+have to ask another man for a bath! Well, that was something
+learned about London! A bath&mdash;a thing so necessary
+that its existence was assumed&mdash;how extremely amusing!
+She knew that entertaining word, "poor," but what
+was this other, this new and side-splitting word that meant
+that a man had to ask another man for a bath? She had
+never heard of anything so&mdash;so&mdash;there was no adjective
+that quite fitted the humour of it.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment she had wasted an irony on Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't he&mdash;a tidy bit?" she asked.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it took far more than this to get through Kitty's
+hide. She gave another little laugh and drew her gloves
+more smoothly over her thin hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Him? The Mandrill? (I always call him the Mandrill,
+my dear.) Not a penny to bless himself with; look
+at him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor a permanency?" Louie asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What, with those clothes? I ask you, now: it isn't a
+cold night to-night, is it? Well, why does he keep that
+heavy old coat on all the evening? Enough said, my dear.
+He works somewhere in the City, I believe&mdash;'something
+in the City'&mdash;sounds most prosperous, doesn't it? And
+Archie's awful kind to him, I think, but of course he is
+frightfully clever, and does help Archie with his work
+sometimes, so Archie gives him a bath (I don't mean what
+you mean, I mean lets him have one). Here's Evie. Are
+you coming along?"</p>
+
+<p>But Louie, besides being tickled, smarted a little too.
+To have to beg for a bath&mdash;and then to have the gift made
+a matter of common knowledge and a joke!&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Well, if these people were different, differences, after all,
+were what she was here to see.</p>
+
+<p>She turned to Mr. Weston.</p>
+
+<p>What Mr. Weston wanted to say to her she could not
+guess; but he had hardly spoken twenty words before she
+was smiling at herself for not guessing. The examinations
+were to be held just before Christmas, and unless Louie
+could be ready for her Elementary by that time she would
+have a good many months to wait before she could enter for
+the examination again. What Mr. Weston had to propose
+was, in a word, that he should coach her privately.</p>
+
+<p>She knew what that meant. It meant that he would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+come to Sutherland Place on Sundays and talk about Richenda.</p>
+
+<p>Well, even talk about Richenda would make shorter that
+<i>dies non</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"It really would be a great furtherance of your aims,
+Miss Causton," Weston said wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>Louie smiled at the periphrasis, and then considered.</p>
+
+<p>"It might be the best thing to do," she said; "but of
+course I should accept it only on one condition."</p>
+
+<p>"May I venture to inquire what that condition is?"
+Weston inquired deferentially.</p>
+
+<p>"That you let me pay you for it," said Louie promptly.</p>
+
+<p>But Weston put up a peremptory hand. "Oh no&mdash;no,
+no, no&mdash;I should be ashamed after all your kindnesses&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed again. "Good gracious, what kindnesses?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you once shielded an individual very dear to me
+and took the blame upon yourself, Miss Causton&mdash;&mdash;"
+His tone was reverential, his eyes did her homage. Louie
+had forgotten all about the box-room rebellion and Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith. She laughed once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, just as you like. But no pay, no coaching, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>Weston sighed. No doubt his acquiescence cost him a
+pang. If he took money for giving lessons, lessons he must
+give, and the talk about Richenda must go.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you dwell on the point with insistence?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much."</p>
+
+<p>"I am far from denying that it would be of some assistance
+in the furnishing of our future nest, if I may use the
+expression&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it would. So that's agreed?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So be it," said Weston.</p>
+
+<p>Louie half expected him to add: "Amen."</p>
+
+<p>She was in the habit of dispensing money a little largely,
+and for the present she could quite well afford to do this.
+For Chaff had done more than pay his debt. That very
+day she had had a letter from him, forwarded by the bank.
+He had paid one hundred pounds into her account, asking
+her to regard the extra twenty-five pounds as interest on his
+unceremonious borrowing. But she did not for a moment
+believe his cheerful tale that "things were all right again
+now"; poor old boy, ten to one he had borrowed pretty
+ruinously elsewhere in order to pay her. At all events,
+Weston should not give up his Sundays for nothing, and she
+might, after all, allow him an outpouring about Richenda
+and the future nest once in a while. It was only half-a-crown
+a week.</p>
+
+<p>But as she left Weston she was thinking of something
+else that half-a-crown a week had power to buy. Half-a-crown
+a week would have bought this big shabby student a
+bath almost every day.</p>
+
+<p>To have to carry a change of underclothing in a brown
+paper parcel to another man's place&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And to have that parcel peeped into&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>How damnable&mdash;no, how funny, she meant!</p>
+
+<p>In the light of her knowledge of this extraordinary economy
+Mr. Jeffries had to practise she felt&mdash;she didn't know
+why&mdash;almost shy in his presence the next time she saw him.
+She felt that she possessed something of his&mdash;namely, this
+knowledge&mdash;which she ought not to have possessed. She
+wondered whether he knew how he had been given
+away. Something about him almost suggested that he
+might.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was his mouth. It looked, except when he
+deliberately opened it, as if it might very well not have
+opened during the whole of the twenty-eight or twenty-nine
+years Louie guessed him to have had a mouth at all. The
+rest of his face, which would have been too large for any
+man less huge, was an unrelenting slab. It was in the
+mouth if anywhere that sensitiveness must be looked for.
+Certainly there was none in the eyes. These Louie found
+(it was on a Wednesday night that she noticed these things;
+she had seen him first on a Monday) remarkable. They
+were the eyes of a lion&mdash;clear amber, sherry-coloured.
+They were made more than ever to resemble the eyes of a
+lion by that tawny ulster he never removed, and she remembered
+Kitty's sinister and mirthful suggestion. Did
+his keeping on of that ulster mean something hardly less
+stark and laughable than the circumstance of the bath itself?
+(Louie felt that she was learning.) Then she
+noticed his hands. She always noticed hands. He
+stopped in passing to pick up a pen for her. The hand
+that returned it was not only a magnificent engine of sinew
+and bone and muscle, powerful and heroic; it was also
+(this was not so funny) exquisitely kept. Her own hand,
+pale and slender as the leaf of a willow by contrast with
+his, was not in its different way more perfect. He might
+cadge for a bath, but his hands he could look after himself
+for nothing. And that was true of his hair also. It was
+tawny, close-cut, and took the light as cleanly as a new silk-hat;
+hair-brushing was evidently cheap also. The man did
+what he could. She would have liked to hear his voice,
+but he handed her the pen in silence and passed on.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he looks forbidding," was her comment on him
+as the great church-door of his back disappeared into the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+typewriting-room, "and he has got too big a face and a
+rather frightening jaw; but he does shave it properly, and
+I don't see where the 'Mandrill' comes in&mdash;wretched little
+creature with her pound a week! And he is like a lion,
+with those eyes and that ulster&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And merely because he seemed to be a person to be scored
+off and given meanly away, she was already prepared, had
+she been challenged, to vow that he was handsome&mdash;in his
+heavy and unhumorous way. As a matter of fact, if Roy
+Lovenant-Smith resembled the little terra-cotta head in the
+Tanagra Gallery of the Museum, this Mr. Jeffries suggested
+something from the Assyrian Gallery downstairs&mdash;something
+in black basalt, that might carry the doorway of
+a temple on its head. In any case, with the ulster, the
+eyes, and the silky tawny hair, he was as like a lion as
+needs be.</p>
+
+<p>When she had seen him twice only she took it upon herself
+to snub young Merridew on his behalf.</p>
+
+<p>She and Kitty were leaving the School at four o'clock on
+the Thursday afternoon when the son of the fancy stationer
+joined them, and, taking it quite for granted that his tidy
+bit and his tennis-lawn made him as desirable to Louie as
+they evidently exalted him in Kitty's eyes, walked westwards
+along Holborn with them. He wore a new red
+waistcoat with brass buttons, and perhaps it was in order
+to live up to his splendour that he made Louie an offer
+which she curtly declined. They were passing a confectioner's
+shop; perhaps he noticed&mdash;for he seemed a sharp
+enough little bounder&mdash;Louie's glance at the window; he
+turned to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Like some chocs?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Had Louie not already detested him, this would have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+been quite enough. Priddy would have had less appalling
+manners. As it happened, she would have liked some
+chocolates; lately she had craved for chocolates as much as
+she had hated the smell of tobacco; but she wanted no chocolates
+of this young man's buying.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," she replied; and presently she contrived
+to put Kitty (the straight-backed Kitty whom a man
+accompanied) between Mr. Merridew and herself.</p>
+
+<p>She had the outside berth of the pavement, and she was
+wondering whether she would not cross the road and hop on
+a bus, leaving Kitty and the heir to the tennis-lawn together,
+when something Kitty said detained her. It was
+something about Mr. Jeffries. Hitherto Louie had hardly
+been listening.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;oh, Jeff!" Merridew was saying. "He'll have to
+go till we come back. Anyway I shall save half-a-cake of
+soap."</p>
+
+<p>"There's such a lot <i>of</i> him," Kitty giggled. "How
+big's your bath?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's an awfully useful coach for the Method
+exam., I will say that for him; so we'll call it a fair swap.
+You know Evie's aunt, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Thought you did. Good old Aunt Angela! (She always
+gets ratty when I call her that.) I didn't know she
+was an old friend of the pater's till we saw 'em at the Zoo
+that Sunday. So that's why they're coming."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, perhaps, perhaps not," said Kitty archly. "Perhaps
+it isn't the aunt they want to see&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A passer-by elbowed Louie off the pavement; all she
+caught of what followed was Kitty's laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"So that accounts for the new blouse! You never think
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>
+of asking <i>me</i> down to Guildford, Archie!" she said reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"You must get a chaperon," Archie replied gallantly;
+"can't be did without, Kitt-oh. The mater don't allow
+running after yours truly."</p>
+
+<p>Then of another light passage Louie heard only the concluding
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it?" Archie was saying knowingly; and
+Louie heard something else about apron-strings. "Pale
+blue baby ribbon ones, eh what?" Archie added, with a
+grin.</p>
+
+<p>"Archie!" Kitty reproved him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come off it!" replied the fancy stationer's son.
+"As if a fellow hadn't eyes! If you girls <i>will</i> wear pneumonia
+blouses&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Archie, you're dreadful!" said Kitty, deliciously
+shocked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's a tannersworth at the Holborn Public Baths
+for Jeff next week-end&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Here Louie interposed. Even amusement can be too
+rich. "Good-bye," she said, "there's my bus."</p>
+
+<p>She heard Kitty call after her something about the penny
+stage, but by that time she was half-way across the road.</p>
+
+<p>Brass-buttoned little beast!</p>
+
+<p>She got on her bus.</p>
+
+<p>But a quarter of a mile farther on she descended from it
+again. She wanted to buy chocolates for herself. She
+bought them, walked to the Marble Arch, and there turned
+into the Park. She ate the chocolates as she walked.</p>
+
+<p>Little animal! He appeared to keep the whole School
+posted about Mr. Jeffries' personal habits. He could not
+go down to his home for the week-end, taking the Polly Ross
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+girl and her aunt with him apparently, but Mr. Jeffries
+and half-a-cake of soap must be dragged in. And that
+pathetic, pathetic care the man took of his hair and hands!
+For all that, as she strode along, crunching her chocolates,
+she became almost angry with him too. Was soap so
+frightfully dear, and was there no water anywhere but at
+Mr. Merridew's rooms? She could not understand a man
+who had any sensitiveness at all suffering his mind to be
+turned over and inspected and thumb-marked by these people
+in this way.</p>
+
+<p>Still, she must not forget that these things were diverting.</p>
+
+<p>There was no class that night: Louie forced herself to
+apply herself to her book-keeping until half-past nine, and
+then went to bed. That, as has been said, was on a Thursday.
+On the following evening, feeling indisposed to
+work, she moved about the School, amusing herself to her
+heart's content. She was getting adept in the sport of it.
+She bandied back to Kitty Windus, with whom she found
+herself in talk, half-a-score of her own expressions: "Beg
+yours," "Granted," "As the poet says," and the like; and
+she all but openly stalked Mr. Mackie for the sake of the
+pearls that rippled from his lips. If Mr. Mackie had
+offered to take her for a walk or to a shilling hop at the Holborn
+Town Hall on the next blank evening, Lord Moone's
+niece, who must allow no chance of amusement to slip her,
+would have let him. Indeed, she was in two minds
+whether or not to go to this last place of entertainment
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was not for another week that her amusement at the
+School in general and at Mr. Jeffries in particular became
+almost painfully ecstatic.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">III</p>
+
+<p>On that Friday afternoon she did not go home as usual
+to Sutherland Place to tea. She went instead to the
+tea-shop across the street the waitresses of which seemed to
+crowd upon her as if the width of Holborn did not exist.
+As she sat down at her little marble table she glanced involuntarily
+across to the windows of the Business School
+and for a moment dropped the mask to herself. "Dingy
+place!" she thought; "well, we're a dingy crew inside it."
+Then, after a long, long walk down Chancery Lane and
+along the Embankment almost as far as the ship-breakers'
+yard at Millbank, she returned to evening class.</p>
+
+<p>It was the evening before the day when Polly Ross&mdash;she
+begged her pardon, Miss Evie Soames&mdash;was to go with her
+aunt to the house with the tennis-lawn at Guildford.
+Young Merridew was not at the School that evening; indeed,
+he had only been once in the evening all the week, and
+then, Louie had thought (dropping the mask for another
+moment) he had better have stopped away. In a word, she
+had not been sure that he had been entirely sober. But
+perhaps in that she had been wrong. It didn't matter.
+She set a wide difference between the gaieties of the sons
+of fancy stationers with a tidy bit coming in and such diversions
+as that to which her stepfather had once taken her,
+pigtail and all. Besides, if people didn't drink liquor she
+supposed her father would not be able to sell it.</p>
+
+<p>On two occasions already during the past week that mask
+of her amusement had not so much fallen off as been
+twitched off before she herself had been aware. Very remarkably,
+both times the big leonine student, Mr. Jeffries,
+had been the twitcher. In both cases the actual incident
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+had been the same&mdash;a glance, nothing more. But those
+two glances had set Louie very curiously indeed waiting to
+see whether a third surprise of the same funny kind would
+follow them.</p>
+
+<p>The glances had been given by Mr. Jeffries, and they had
+been directed towards the Soames girl. There had seemed
+to Louie to be an extraordinary unfitness about them.
+Had the red-waistcoated boy stolen those glances Louie
+would have thought no more about it; he and Polly Ross
+were pretty much a pair; but they had surprised her coming
+from the other. Louie had been sure that on the first
+occasion Mr. Jeffries had fancied himself to be unobserved,
+for he had looked stealthily round about him, had waited
+for a moment, and then, moving his eyes only, had given
+that long, slow, daring, masterful look. This had been
+on the previous Monday evening, in the general room. A
+few minutes later Mr. Jeffries had gathered up his papers
+and had stridden past Evie Soames as if he had been unaware
+of her existence.</p>
+
+<p>Even had something very similar not occurred again on
+the Wednesday evening, Louie would hardly have forgotten
+that look; but it had been repeated. But this time,
+finding Louie's eyes on him, he had seemed to guard himself,
+to busy himself quite fussily with his papers, and a
+little to overdo his sudden affectation of indifference.
+Louie admitted that it would be at her own risk that she
+put any interpretation that was not amusing on these
+trifles; but about the glances, their surreptitiousness and
+the man's deliberate attempt at concealment, there had been
+no doubt whatever. Polly herself, Louie had to admit, had
+been quite unconscious of either look. To all appearances,
+she had been thinking of nothing but of the new novelette
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>
+in the Pansy Library, or else wondering whether the new
+pair of shoes she was to go down to Guildford in would
+come home in time.</p>
+
+<p>On that Friday evening Louie again found herself a
+little less inclined for amusement than she knew to be good
+for her. She supposed she ought to work, for if book-keeping
+and typewriting and so forth were to be her living
+they might just as well be taken seriously; but she preferred
+to work where gossip was going on. So she began
+the evening in one of the days in the <span class="blocke">E</span> of reference books,
+where Miss Windus and the thick-lipped Miss Levey were
+sitting on the short library-ladder, whispering and tittering.
+Louie opened one of the windows, for she found the
+place airless, and then idled towards her two fellow-students.</p>
+
+<p>She had gathered that Miss Levey did not like her.
+Miriam Levey was far less stupid than Kitty Windus, and
+it was not safe to hand her <i>clichés</i> back to her. Indeed,
+she had given Louie a far too intelligent look when Louie
+had gratified this hunger for humour of hers at the unconscious
+Kitty's expense; and Louie had told herself that
+it might be as well to be a little more careful. They looked
+up as Louie joined them, but did not exclude her from their
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>vill</i> find out who she is!" Miss Levey was saying&mdash;her
+W's did sometimes become V's. "I shall plague him
+till I do!"</p>
+
+<p>"He won't tell you, my dear&mdash;not if he wouldn't tell
+Archie."</p>
+
+<p>"But did Archie actually say 'engaged'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a person's either engaged or not, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, my dear, not by long chalks! Vy, you might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+as well say that Archie and Evie are either engaged or
+not!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they aren't&mdash;yet."</p>
+
+<p>"'Yet'&mdash;there you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll bet they aren't, even after this week-end.
+Why, they're no age! <i>I</i> don't believe in getting yourself
+engaged and done for before you've had a good look
+round!" Kitty tossed her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Vill you bet they aren't engaged in three months?"
+said Miriam Levey.</p>
+
+<p>No, Kitty wouldn't bet that. She returned to the original
+subject, whatever that had been.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very well to say you'll find out, Miriam, but&mdash;how?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Levey tittered, and then suddenly said: "Ssss&mdash;I'll
+show you now! Just you watch me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She slipped noiselessly round to the cords of the window
+Louie had opened a few moments before.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt her sharp eyes had seen Mr. Jeffries approach.
+She gave him a helpless look, and he took the cords from her
+fumbling hands and closed the window for her. It was the
+more cleverly done that she detained Mr. Jeffries and managed
+to get closed the window which Louie wanted open at
+one and the same time. She turned her prominent brown
+eyes in gratitude to Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you so much! You see, I've got rather a
+cold, and I'm going to a dance and don't vant to make it
+any vorse," she explained. "You don't dance, do you, Mr.
+Jeffries?"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Jeffries merely replied "No," and turned away
+at once. Miss Levey turned to Kitty again.</p>
+
+<p>"He needn't think he's put me off!" she said. "I <i>vill</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+find out! I shall offer him some tickets now, for self and
+lady. And I bet if she dances I'll make him buy them!"</p>
+
+<p>Kitty tossed her head. "<i>I</i> should expect the gentleman
+<i>I</i> was engaged to to take <i>me</i> to dances," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But Archie didn't say 'engaged.' Just after somebody,
+I should say&mdash;and don't I just vish her joy!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's evidently nobody at the School," mused Kitty
+Windus. "Archie was almost certain about that."</p>
+
+<p>"Vell, it isn't <i>me</i>, if you're thinking of suspecting me!"
+said Miss Levey merrily. "<i>I</i> vouldn't touch him with the
+end of a long pole."</p>
+
+<p>"Chance is a fine thing, my dear," remarked Miss Windus.</p>
+
+<p>"Opportunity's another." (This reply, Louie had
+noted, was <i>de rigueur</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>"I expect she types or something at his place in the
+City."</p>
+
+<p>"She might be in an A.B.C. shop&mdash;no, a Lockhart's."</p>
+
+<p>"Or a barmaid," Kitty hinted.</p>
+
+<p>"Or his vashervoman."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I expect he washes his own shirts."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he'll vash her blouses, too, whoever she is."</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Louie, her mask once more a little out of place, turned
+suddenly away.</p>
+
+<p>Little as she had been inclined to work, she was now,
+somehow or other, not much more inclined for amusement.
+She wandered into the shorthand dictation class, but in a
+few minutes came out again. Then she walked into the
+lecture-room, where some example or other had been left
+chalked up on the big blackboard from the last lesson.
+Thence she went into the typewriting-room, and back to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+the lecture-room again. Finally she got from the "library"&mdash;the
+little back room where the files and presses
+and gelatine copiers and a few books were kept&mdash;a number
+of old examination papers, and, finding a chair near the
+folding door that divided the lecture-room from the general-room,
+sat down and began to turn them over.</p>
+
+<p>But she thought more of the conversation she had just
+overheard than she did of the examination papers. It had
+meant, as far as she had been able to make it out, that Mr.
+Jeffries had told young Merridew that he was engaged,
+or hoped to be engaged, to somebody outside the school
+altogether. That sounded&mdash;odd. Of course if Mr. Jeffries
+said so, Mr. Jeffries ought to know; but it is a difficult
+matter to disbelieve your own eyes. She supposed
+she had no choice but to disbelieve them, but&mdash;but&mdash;there
+<i>were</i> those two glances he had given at the Polly Ross girl&mdash;whom,
+by the way, she must learn to call by her proper
+name, Miss Evie Soames.</p>
+
+<p>Louie was perfectly certain that she had not been mistaken
+in the nature of those two glances. Her reason for
+certitude was quite unassailable. She had known what
+they meant for the simple reason that she had never received
+such looks from a man herself.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she dropped this mask of fevered amusement
+entirely. As she had once sat on the stile between Rainham
+Parva and the sea, so Louie now sat by the folding
+door&mdash;relaxed, thinking of nothing, or, if of anything,
+certainly neither of her late resolute pose nor yet of study.
+Her mind was what she had determined it should not be if
+she could help it&mdash;an empty chamber for unknown devils
+to enter.</p>
+
+<p>Students passed and repassed. Weston had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+through several times, and twice Evie Soames had come
+and gone again. This so-much-talked-of Mr. Jeffries went
+into the library for a book and walked past with it again.
+He still wore that concealing ulster; the Soames girl had
+on a brown tailor-made and a cap of knitted white wool.
+Louie was hardly conscious that she noticed these things.
+She still sat, all slack and unbraced, with the examination
+papers on her knee.</p>
+
+<p>All at once she came to herself. Why she should do so
+at that particular moment she did not know, but, doing so,
+she found herself completely awake again. To all intents
+and purposes she had come out of one of those naps which,
+lasting perhaps only a minute, have all the effect of a
+refreshing sleep. She could reassume her mask now.
+Evie Soames was talking to Weston by the blackboard; opposite
+her, a pale student called Richardson was copying
+down an exercise from a sheet on the wall; and she supposed
+Mr. Jeffries would be bringing his book back presently.
+Louie was as alive to her surroundings now as
+she had been oblivious to them a few moments before.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later Mr. Jeffries, returning with his book,
+passed into the library. A few seconds later still Evie
+Soames had left Mr. Weston and had followed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," thought Louie, "for a little more amusement."</p>
+
+<p>The library had only one communicating door; its other
+door led only to a small room called the old ledger-room, a
+dusty cubby-hole, seldom entered, that had no outlet save
+the small pivoted window, high up, that gave on the head
+of the stairs. Mr. Jeffries and Miss Soames would have
+to come out by the same way they had entered, and Louie
+rather wanted to see them come out. It was no business
+of hers, but she had remembered those two glances and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+conversation between Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey,
+and she had a perfect right to sit by the folding door and to
+use her eyes if she wished. She was now almost preternaturally
+awake. No jot of the jest, whatever it was,
+should escape her.</p>
+
+<p>Evie came out first, after four or five minutes; but
+Louie was not interested in Evie. She was merely a dull
+tale: Louie wanted to see him.</p>
+
+<p>Then, a moment later, he came.</p>
+
+<p>But no amusement came with him. Instead, Louie
+knew not what sudden private ache stirred deep at her own
+heart. It was not a question of those two furtive, possessive
+glances now. Unmistakable enough those had been;
+you do not mistake the kind of glance for which you yourself
+have hungered when you see it given to another; but
+not only had Louie never seen&mdash;she had never, not even in
+her own rapt dreamings as a half-grown girl in her teens,
+thought it possible that a man's look at a woman could
+change his face as this man's face was changed now. It
+was irradiated, transfigured. He took no pains now to
+hide it. He could see clear down the room before him&mdash;could
+see (or so he evidently thought) any who saw
+him&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And since he did not see Louie by the folding door,
+Louie knew that in his former passings and repassings he
+could not have seen her either.</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared. The Soames girl was waiting by the
+door, evidently for him. No doubt he was going to see her
+home. Probably she would have preferred the other, the
+little cad with the red waistcoat, but she had the lion&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He returned, with his hat on, and they left together.</p>
+
+<p>But what had brought that sudden ache into Louie's
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+breast? Mr. Jeffries was nothing to her. If his face
+shone, Louie's heart need not therefore ache. What ailed
+her?</p>
+
+<p>Unmasked, as alive to things within herself now as she
+had just been to things outside herself, she sat, deeply
+wondering.</p>
+
+<p>Against the wall at her left hand there stood a tall stationery
+cupboard. It had glazed doors, and the pale student
+called Richardson, coming up a moment ago to put his
+exercise-book back into its place, had left one of the doors
+open. The door moved on its hinges back into its place.
+With its motion there swung slowly into Louie's view the
+reflection of the grimy chandelier with its three naked gas-jets.</p>
+
+<p>Was it this that reminded her of the night when
+she had swept out of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's French window
+with the yellow-shaded standard lamp mirrored in its
+pane?</p>
+
+<p>It had been on that night&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her eyes closed, as if closed eyes could have
+shut out a mental picture. Her lips trembled&mdash;voicelessly
+they shaped a name.</p>
+
+<p>It was the name of Roy.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Hitherto she had hardly known what her feelings towards
+Roy really were. It had been in order to avoid asking
+herself that question, among others, that she had
+amused herself with Kitty Windus and welcomed the buffooneries
+of Mr. Mackie. But it presented itself to her
+startlingly now. Her own complete ignorance had just revealed
+a shining thing to her, the beautiful thing that
+had transformed Mr. Jeffries' face; now&mdash;handy-dandy&mdash;that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+very transformation threw her brutally back on her
+ignorance again.</p>
+
+<p>She had thought she had sounded a mystery; had she,
+after all, <i>not</i> sounded any mystery, and was she to pay in
+labour and pain for nothing?</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts had flown back; they remained where they
+had flown. Good gracious! What an escapade! Without
+mercy for herself she examined it. What had really
+happened? Anything worth what it was about to
+cost?</p>
+
+<p>The radiant look of another man at another woman answered
+her: No.</p>
+
+<p>She had courted him&mdash;what a conquest! She had made
+him say she was pretty&mdash;what a victory! She had
+schemed, planned, ensured her kisses&mdash;what a triumph!...
+Why, she now asked herself for the first time, had
+she wanted to triumph? Why had she not seen sooner that
+what she had really wanted had been to be triumphed over?
+Triumph?&mdash;It came to her with a strange newness that
+women didn't triumph by triumphing. That man with
+the back like the church door, for example, who had just
+gone out with that pretty snippet&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, and with extraordinary resilience, her mind
+established a contrast.</p>
+
+<p>No woman would have to cajole this shabby, lion-eyed
+man into admiration of her beauty. Rather she would
+have to save herself from his onslaught&mdash;and then, in her
+very flying, she would triumph. Louie had found a fool
+invincible; but this other, when he loved, would go down
+with the vehemence of his own assault. When Louie had
+refused to kiss Roy at their parting she had not known
+exactly why she had done so: she had obeyed an instinct;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+a chapter had been closed, and had had to be marked as
+definitely closed; her heart had known no rancour against
+him. But now!&mdash;she might just as well have kissed him.
+Now, in this strange place, two strange people&mdash;or rather
+one, for the girl mattered nothing&mdash;had in a moment, and
+infinitely, enlarged her sense of what, at any rate to a man,
+love might mean. In the light of that enlargement any
+kiss she could have given to Roy would have meant nothing&mdash;nothing,
+nothing. Poor Roy, whom she had had to woo!
+This other would do his own wooing. Why, he was doing
+it now&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then a startling recollection caused Louie to sit suddenly
+upright. This lion, who had given those looks at
+that girl&mdash;this shabby giant, whose face she had just seen
+enheavened out of all knowledge&mdash;had told young Merridew,
+who had told Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey, that
+his heart was set on somebody outside this poky little Business
+School altogether!</p>
+
+<p>Involuntarily Louie drew a long breath of amazement.</p>
+
+<p>He had told them that!</p>
+
+<p>Then Louie became matter-of-fact. There was one thing
+and one thing only to be said. If Mr. Jeffries had told
+him that, Mr. Jeffries had&mdash;lied.</p>
+
+<p>She turned it over again&mdash;she found no flaw in it.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, if he had said that, he had lied.</p>
+
+<p>Louie pondered. The result of her pondering was that
+she said slowly to herself: "Ah&mdash;this is going to be more
+than amusing&mdash;unless I'm mistaken it might even become
+dramatic."</p>
+
+<p>Up to the moment of this astonishing discovery&mdash;for
+Louie knew that she had made a discovery&mdash;Mr. Jeffries
+had been to her a phenomenon, different from Mr. Mackie
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+and Kitty Windus, but not to be observed very differently;
+now in a twink she placed him in quite another category.
+Or, if she still lacked a category in which to place him,
+she certainly removed him for ever from the other. He
+had called suddenly on her profounder attention, and, as
+if he had struck upon a rock, the waters of it gushed forth.
+Apparently to others he was a butt, a jest, a pathetic figure;
+he was not that to Louie Causton now. They had said,
+Kitty and the Jewess, that Evie Soames and the red-waistcoated
+boy, off to Guildford together to-morrow, would
+before long be engaged to be married; but Mr. Jeffries, the
+third person in the commonest of dramas, and Mr. Jeffries,
+the introducer into that drama of a preposterous, impossible
+fourth actor, whose name Miriam Levey was resolved
+to know, were not one and the same man. Louie sat astounded
+again at his lie. It struck her as really in its
+way stupendous. Others thought he was below his fellows
+in this shabby little hutch of a Business School; not
+so Louie now! She saw those clear yellow eyes again.
+Ruses and machinations lived in them. A butt, with his
+brown-paper parcel? A pathetic figure, with his cadged
+baths? No&mdash;good gracious, no! The faces of butts and
+pathetic figures were rather less capable of irradiation.
+This man's kind made great somethings&mdash;great men, great
+saints, great lovers&mdash;if it came to the worst great criminals.
+Had she, Louie, been that jaunty young man in the red
+waistcoat, she would have chosen for a rival and enemy
+anybody she had ever seen rather than this needy, gigantic
+Mr. Jeffries, who made this barefaced attempt to throw
+dust into people's eyes by means of apocryphal women he
+was "after" elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>And he helped this youngster he must hate with his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+studies&mdash;cadged on his probably-to-be-successful rival for
+a bath.</p>
+
+<p>He was masked too, then.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, at this dingy School in Holborn Louie had found
+something even more interesting than amusement.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center b1">§<i>a</i></p>
+
+<p>Louie had not yet allowed herself much time for fear
+of what was to happen to herself physically; she had
+amused herself too heartily. She bought chocolates and
+hated the smell of tobacco; and so far that was all. What
+hung over her was as inevitable as Death, and for that reason
+was, like Death, to be kept at arm's-length as long as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>But she had already seen enough of Richenda's sister
+to be aware that in all probability her stay in Sutherland
+Place would not be a long one. Mrs. Leggat was formally
+kind, to Lord Moone's niece rather than to herself; but for
+the rest an armed neutrality seemed to exist between the
+two women. The Leggats were childless, and for that
+reason the less likely to be charitable. Louie had, in fact,
+found the social layer that is bounded on the one hand by
+the wickedness of pugilists and on the other by the scapes
+of young gentlemen about to enter the army. Within
+these limits Virtue reigned&mdash;not always harshly, always
+consciously. Not the wives of the Cæsars (it seemed to
+Louie) were above suspicion, but the Mrs. Leggats; not
+the saints, who confessed that they were tempted, but the
+Westons, who did not know of temptation's existence. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+was as if some unseen, august Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had
+decreed that landladies and teachers in business schools
+did not do these things. And they did not.</p>
+
+<p>Louie went to the house of Richenda's father, the bookseller&mdash;once.
+She had no wish to go again. As Richenda
+had described him there had been something tragic about
+him; to Louie he had appeared merely as a grey-bearded,
+rheumatic, complaining old man, a picture of pathos without
+dignity. And those six other Richendas, of various
+ages, struck her as horribly superfluous. She wanted
+Life's colour, not its greyness; she greatly preferred the
+garnish, incredible Mackie.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks passed. Weston came regularly on Sunday
+mornings, and on Sunday afternoons she took long walks.
+On the nights when there was no class she rode on buses,
+along Oxford Street, down Regent Street to the Circus,
+and back by Park Lane to the Marble Arch and Notting
+Hill Gate again; or sometimes she went Paddington way,
+up the Harrow Road and out and back through Kilburn.
+She began to know something of the streets of London.
+Her health was far better in London than it had been at
+Rainham Parva. It was perfect. She still feared nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The Christmas Examinations drew within sight, and
+hand in hand with the preparation for them another and a
+more lightsome preoccupation engaged the School. This
+was the Christmas Social with which the last term of the
+year always closed. An Executive had been formed; on it
+Louie's name appeared; and it met frequently at the close
+of afternoon school. One of the younger students was sent
+across to the teashop over the way for scones and cake; a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+kettle was set on the general-room fire; and the social was
+discussed over tea.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackie was the life and soul of these meetings. He
+was especially strong on the subject of whether evening-dress
+was to be obligatory, permissible or debarred. He
+declared himself at one of the earlier meetings as out and
+out for fancy dress, but was outvoted.</p>
+
+<p>"See me as a Woodbine, girls, beg pardon, miss-cue, a
+Columbine, I mean, nearly cold with the kilt, kilt with the
+cold, I should say, sixpence in the box for the opera-glasses,
+Gerald, but don't ogle me while mother's in the wings,
+wishing she was twenty-one again&mdash;good old mother&mdash;</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+"'Here's to the happiest hours of my life,<br />
+Spent in the arms of another man's wife&mdash;<br />
+<span class="i10">My Mo-the-rr!'"</span>
+</p></div>
+
+<p>(The shake on the long note produced by a rapid play of
+Mr. Mackie's fingers on Mr. Mackie's Adam's apple.)
+"Thought I'd have to backpedal, didn't you, Miss Causton?
+Nay, fear not, fair damsel, the intentions of Ferdinando
+are honourable, as long as you watch him, pip-pip,
+phee-ooo!" (The shrill whistle behind the handkerchief
+closed the strophe.)</p>
+
+<p>But this was rushing matters. Kitty Windus spoke,
+no doubt on behalf of the students who hadn't a pound a
+week on their own.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy dress would keep a good many away," she said.
+"I should love it, but it really is an expense, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Weston can buy a penny bottle of gum and come as a
+foreign stamp."</p>
+
+<p>"Do be serious, Mr. Mackie, now! We want the social
+to be for everybody here&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>And</i> their friends," Miss Levey interpolated, with a
+look of private understanding at Kitty Windus. There
+was a short interlude between the two women.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>won't</i> find out, Miriam!"</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>vill</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you offer him tickets for the Holborn?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but he vouldn't buy them."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't Mrs. J. as-is-to-be dance?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. He vouldn't buy the tickets."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you another half-crown you don't get him there,
+let alone her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Done vith you, Kitty Vindus!" cried Miss Levey excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Mackie interposed. "Who's that? Jeffries?
+He can come in his ulster as Boaz&mdash;<i>heu</i>, how Ruthless!
+(Beshrew me, but have I not a pretty wit?)"</p>
+
+<p>"He's got that new brown suit to come in&mdash;or did he get
+it second-hand, Archie?" asked Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>"New," quoth Archie authoritatively. "Allworthy's,
+in Cheapside. Two ten."</p>
+
+<p>"I nearly died when he turned up without that old
+ulster!"</p>
+
+<p>"Vasn't it screaming?" simpered Miss Levey. "No,
+don't, Archie!" (Young Merridew was pulling out the
+frill of her jabot.)</p>
+
+<p>"Do tell us exactly what he said when you congratulated
+him on his engagement, Evie!" said Kitty Windus,
+turning to Evie Soames.</p>
+
+<p>The girl coloured a little. In common fairness Louie
+had to acquit her of full participation in the joke of Mr.
+Jeffries and his unknown <i>fiancée</i>. Louie had learned that
+it had been in order to congratulate Mr. Jeffries on this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>
+supposed engagement that she had followed Mr. Jeffries
+into the library on that Friday evening before her departure
+for the week-end to Guildford. She thought little
+more of her on that account. In being too ready with
+apologies and congratulations Evie Soames merely showed
+the vulgarity of the rest of the place.</p>
+
+<p>"No, do let's get on with business," Kitty Windus broke
+in. "I vote for ordinary dress."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ordinary dress," came the chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Vith vite gloves, of course," said Miss Levey.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Vot do you say, Miss Causton?"</p>
+
+<p>"White gloves, of course," said Louie, with her demurest
+look. "And flowers in their buttonholes."</p>
+
+<p>"Some gentlemen don't like to vear flowers," said
+Miriam Levey suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha, doesn't he?" from Mr. Mackie. "<i>I</i> saw you
+at the Holborn, Miss Levey&mdash;naughty, naughty&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't mean very big ones," said Louie, sipping
+her tea.</p>
+
+<p>And the discussion went on, and meeting followed meeting;
+but the examination was to take place before the social.</p>
+
+<p>The only fear Louie had for her Elementary was whether
+it would be worth very much when she had got it. She
+supposed that as an earnest preparation for the struggle
+of life this place was not quite such a fraud as Chesson's,
+but that struggle could hardly be as fierce as Richenda
+Earle had said if this Elementary took her very far. Indeed
+she had wondered more than once lately, especially
+since she had ceased to amuse herself quite so desperately,
+whether it was likely that typewriting and book-keeping
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>
+were to be her destiny after all. She supposed they were,
+but she couldn't quite realise it. But she was fully prepared,
+and hoped Mr. Jeffries was as sure of his Honours
+paper as she was of her simple Pass.</p>
+
+<p>For she had gathered that success in the coming examination
+was of importance to Mr. Jeffries. She did not
+know the nature of his studies; later she surmised that
+those had been only loosely linked to the ordinary school
+curriculum, and that while for his Certificate's sake he
+must acquire all that text-books could tell him, his real
+broodings had been over matters that are antecedent to
+text-books. That was probably the difference between him
+and Mr. Weston. Mr. Weston was said to be clever, but
+his cleverness ended at the point where real inquiry began.
+More than this Louie did not know. You cannot, after
+all, ask the pioneer what he goes forth for to see. He
+goes forth to see whatever there may be to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks that had intervened since that evening when
+Louie had seen that wonderful radiance of his face had
+done nothing to alter her conviction that if there was a
+dark horse in that Holborn stable at all the name of that
+horse was Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, Mr. Jeffries was almost the first person
+she encountered when, on the Friday morning of the examination,
+she entered the School at half-past ten. He
+wore the new brown suit that had been remarked on at the
+meetings of the Executive of the social, and he was looking
+with curiosity about him. They had made quite extensive
+preparations for the examination. The whole place had
+been divided into compartments with hired yellow-painted
+screens, and screens also barricaded the <span class="blocke">E</span> of reference-books
+near the bay window of the general-room. New
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+pens and new blotting-paper lay on the desks, and the
+little porcelain inkwells had been newly filled. Then it
+occurred to Louie that it was more than likely that Mr.
+Jeffries had never been in the place in the daytime before.
+He must have got the day off from that "somewhere in
+the City" that Kitty Windus had said sounded so prosperous.
+His tawny hair was as flat and silky as ever, and his
+chin as cleanly shaved. He passed her with a curt bow and
+continued his inspection of the place. The candidates
+stood talking in groups, waiting for eleven o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you discovered your&mdash;er&mdash;appointed place, Miss
+Causton?" said Weston, coming up to Louie. "Good,
+good! I must now take my departure. Members of the
+Staff are not permitted to remain on the premises during
+the hours devoted to the examination. I wish you&mdash;er&mdash;good
+luck."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to change his mind about saying "a happy
+issue from all your afflictions."</p>
+
+<p>By eleven o'clock Louie was seated in her little screen-enclosed
+compartment. A sort of hired mourner read a
+formal caution to the candidates. She noticed that it
+lacked the <i>largior ether</i> of the third person indicative, being,
+indeed, in the second person imperative; and then she
+drew her paper to her.</p>
+
+<p>Quiet fell on the examination-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>She found her papers no more difficult than she had
+anticipated. On one point only, a matter of indenting in
+actual practice, was she a little in doubt, and a minute in
+the old ledger-room at lunch-time would tell her whether
+her answer had been right or wrong. She read over again
+what she had written; it seemed, with the possible exception
+of that single point, all right; and she tilted her chair,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+put her hands behind her head, and leaned back. The
+candidates had been warned that they must bring lunch
+with them. It was half-an-hour from lunch-time yet.</p>
+
+<p>Her place was by the folding door of the general-room.
+From it she could see nothing save the stationery cupboard
+on her left, and, beyond it, the next screen-enclosed compartment.
+She was wondering who was in it when a foot
+moved beneath the yellow screen. It was the foot of Mr.
+Jeffries. Louie hoped that he was getting on well, and
+then dismissed him from her thoughts. She began to wonder
+about the practical usefulness of the examination
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless it was well enough in its way, but less than
+ever could she persuade herself that this kind of thing was
+to be her destiny. There were too many other likelihoods&mdash;not
+to speak of the one certainly so huge that she had
+sometimes been actually in danger of leaving it out of
+the account altogether. Idly she counted them. First,
+there was the certainty.... Next, she would probably be
+leaving Sutherland Place soon, to go&mdash;where? She did
+not know. At the price of submission to Uncle Augustus
+she could go back home; or Chaff would have her looked
+after; but both these courses were rather out of the question.
+They were out of the question because lately something
+else had been more and more in her thoughts&mdash;her
+unknown father. That father might, for all she knew,
+be the bugbear her mother had always made him out to
+be; but on the other hand he might not. She knew her
+mother, and the more she thought of it the more she gave
+her father the benefit of an increasing number of doubts.
+Until she should have seen him it was now no more than
+fair that she should do so. Moreover, she could see him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+at any time without his being any the wiser of the&mdash;inspection.
+Chaff knew where he was; Chaff, who was
+always fetching or taking her somewhere, would take her
+there also. She was resolved to go sooner or later, and
+later might be&mdash;who knew?&mdash;too late.</p>
+
+<p>For at last she had admitted a dread.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, her destiny was quite as likely to be determined
+by a visit to that public-house up the Thames as
+by writing, in this stuffy Holborn third floor, answers to
+ridiculous questions about <i>pro forma</i> invoices and bills of
+lading.</p>
+
+<p>She was still turning these things over in her mind when
+the bell rang for the close of the first part of the examination.</p>
+
+<p>She ate her lunch in the company of Kitty Windus and
+Miss Levey, and then the three women passed out on to the
+staircase and sat down half-way down the stairs. But the
+men had flocked to the staircase for their noxious smoking,
+and Louie re-entered the general-room again. Then
+she remembered the doubtful point in her paper and walked
+to the library. She passed through it into the old ledger-room.
+Any old ledger would settle the point on which
+she was not quite sure.</p>
+
+<p>The room was almost dark, but Louie knew where the
+musty old books were. She put out her hand to the nearest
+of them. But suddenly she withdrew her hand. The
+high window that gave on the head of the stairs afforded
+no more than a glimmer of light, but Louie thought she
+had seen something move. She peered into the twilight,
+"Is anybody there?" she said, but she had no answer.</p>
+
+<p>But the room was occupied. The next moment she had
+seen and fled.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her irregular lips were pursed as she came out into the
+light again. There was a confusion, too, in her eyes,
+probably as much as there had been in the eyes of the two
+she had come upon in there. They must have seen her
+come in, and have realised that their only chance of escaping
+detection lay in keeping perfectly still.</p>
+
+<p>Polly Ross, cheek to cheek with that horrid little bounder!</p>
+
+<p>There was no question now of whom the girl preferred.</p>
+
+<p>Louie, wondering what right she had to do so, felt
+nevertheless a little sick.</p>
+
+<p>But the next moment her fastidiousness had vanished.
+The door that led to the stairs had opened; Mr. Mackie's
+voice sounded loud for a moment on the landing; and then
+Mr. Jeffries lurched in, stumbled, and almost ran to his
+compartment between the yellow screens.</p>
+
+<p>How he too knew what was going on in the old ledger-room,
+Louie could not guess; but she knew that he did
+know.</p>
+
+<p>She walked slowly to her own place and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later the bell for the second half of the
+examination rang, and a new paper was put before Louie.
+But she neither glanced at it nor yet heard the voice of the
+hired mourner repeating his caution. She sat with her
+chin in her hands, looking straight before her. She was
+wondering what was taking place behind the yellow screen
+beyond the stationery cupboard. Amusement was hardly
+the word for that.</p>
+
+<p>For she had seen Mr. Jeffries' face as he had stumbled
+in. She sought words for the expression that had been
+upon it. Lost&mdash;despairing&mdash;devilish&mdash;&mdash;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was not much doubt about who <i>he</i> was in love
+with either.</p>
+
+<p>Devilish, despairing, lost&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Poor&mdash;soul!" she thought compassionately....</p>
+
+<p>She wondered why she should be so unaccountably nervous.
+She was nervous. She even jumped a little when
+somebody on the other side of the folding door allowed
+a pen to fall to the floor. She could see the feet beneath
+the lower edge of the screen in front of her; they did not
+move; the examination quietness had fallen on the place
+again, and the very quietness grew on her. Strong drama,
+if not tragedy outright, was being enacted behind those
+half-inch yellow boards beyond the stationery cupboard,
+but the quietness continued. It was such a quietness as
+she had read of in tales when, somebody's ears being sharpened
+for an expected scream, their eyes had not at first
+noticed the little dark rivulet of blood trickling slowly
+across the floor. Involuntarily her eyes went to the yellow
+screen.</p>
+
+<p>But rubbish; this was morbid.</p>
+
+<p>Morbid or not, however, her lips almost shaped the
+words, slowly and deliberately: that boy with the red waistcoat
+would do well to be careful. He would do especially
+well to be careful if, after this, after the glare on the
+other's face, he should still have help offered him with his
+studies or be asked for a bath. For something would happen
+then. Eggshells such as he did not come into collision
+with bronze without something happening. And if anything
+not easily to be accounted for did happen to that
+odious little whippersnapper, nothing would ever persuade
+Louie that she did not know a likely quarter in which to
+look for the reason.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Blind, devilish despair!</p>
+
+<p>And all for an empty-headed little thing who could have
+been found in her dozens behind twenty shop counters not
+a quarter of a mile away! What on earth, what on, or
+under, or above the earth, could this brooding, clever,
+gigantic, laughed-at creature want with such a doll? Why
+could he not leave her in her proper place&mdash;cheek by cheek
+with the little bounder of her choice in that smelly, unlighted
+old ledger-room? The man must be blind, or a
+fool.</p>
+
+<p>Then a sort of lethargy took Louie. Suddenly she cared
+for nothing. Let the fancy-stationer's cub take his risks;
+let the other eat his heart out if he would; it was no business
+of hers. Nor was that absurd table of questions before
+her any business of hers. Kitty Windus might answer
+that sort of thing; Mackie might answer it; but the
+Scarisbricks were not Kittys, with her "part-independency,"
+not Mackies, to stuff their heads and ink their fingers
+like this for their "permanencies." She did not know
+now why she had ever come to the place, and she wanted
+no more of it. What she was going to do she did not
+know. She did know, however, that she was not going to
+answer that silly paper.</p>
+
+<p>So, by-and-by, she allowed the paper to be collected
+again, as blank as when it had been placed before
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She came upon the perverse Mr. Jeffries once more
+before she left. He almost ran her down bodily as they
+met in the doorway of the typewriting-room. But this
+time she did not look at his face. With a swift intaking
+of her breath she fell back to save herself. She did not
+hear whether he apologised or not; in one moment, without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>
+premeditation, her whole being had become constrained
+to a new, protective, instinctive attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly and thoughtfully she left the School.</p>
+
+<p>She alone of the students was unsurprised to hear, four
+or five days later, that Mr. Jeffries, who had passed with
+distinction in the first part of his paper, had, like herself,
+failed in the second part.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">§<i>b</i></p>
+
+<p>For the examination the rooms had been cut up with
+screens; for the breaking-up social they were cleared of
+everything that could be stowed away into dark corners.
+Never was such a hoisting and calling as those with which
+the hired piano was got up the three flights of stairs.
+Most of it came from Mr. Mackie, turned for the nonce into
+a shabash-wallah.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind her funnybone&mdash;all together&mdash;up with her! Oh,
+pursue me, wenches, I've got my muscle up, first time
+since the second housemaid ran away with the dustman!
+Don't tickle her parson's nose, Archi-bald, or she'll sneeze
+when I sing, key in the usual place&mdash;and mind the stair
+above the top, it isn't there. This way&mdash;excuse my shirt-sleeves,
+Miss Windus, I'm in mourning."</p>
+
+<p>And so the piano was trundled to its place in the corner
+by the big blackboard.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackie was of service, too, in the French-chalking
+of the floor, for the men hauled him about by the arms and
+legs on a piece of sacking in order to give it its final polish
+for dancing. Half the students, male and female, helped
+to wind the blackened old brackets and chandeliers with
+red and green tissue paper, to set evergreens on the tops
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+of the cupboards, and to affix the trophies of little Christmas
+tree flags on the cabbagey old walls; and Louie helped
+with the refreshments. Three women had been got in,
+one to make coffee and the others to preside in the cloakrooms,
+and Miss Levey had won half-a-crown from Kitty
+Windus.</p>
+
+<p>For Mr. Jeffries was coming to the party after all.
+More, it had been Louie herself who had asked him, though
+it had been Miss Levey's cunning that had made her do so.
+On no grounds at all save that it appeared to annoy, the
+Jewess had once or twice twitted Louie that Mr. Jeffries
+favoured <i>her</i> and, when Mr. Jeffries had declined her own
+invitation, had nudged Louie. "<i>You</i> ask him, and see
+whether he doesn't come!" the nudge had meant. Louie
+entered into no contest with Miss Levey. She had turned
+at once to Mr. Jeffries and repeated the invitation. He
+had accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>Louie doubted her own wisdom in going to that social
+at all. Even when she had reached Sutherland Place and
+spread out her frocks on her bed she still doubted. But
+suddenly she gave a short laugh. Of course she was
+going! It was her first "social," and it might be her last;
+she was going, and she was going to wear the oyster-grey
+satin that, ever since she had had it, had always seemed to
+"live" so on her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>She declined Mrs. Leggat's help in getting into it; if
+Mrs. Leggat would be so good as to get her a hansom instead&mdash;&mdash;Mrs.
+Leggat went out. The oyster-grey was
+one of the oldest of her frocks; Louie knew every stitch of
+it; and she smiled as she thought that for that very reason
+she would have chosen it had she deliberately intended
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+to make a conquest. She surveyed herself in it in the
+tilted glass. Yes, she thought she would do.</p>
+
+<p>"It's your last time on, poor old rag," she muttered.</p>
+
+<p>She heard the pulling up of the hansom; she put on a
+light shawl and descended; and Mrs. Leggat lingered in
+the doorway as she drove off.</p>
+
+<p>They had set candles on the floors of the landings of
+the Holborn stairs, but they guttered in the draughts, and
+showed little but the feet of those who ascended. Louie
+followed a pair of orange silk-stockinged ankles and a
+trammel of orange petticoats (she didn't know whose) up
+the stairs, and entered the general-room. The library
+had been converted into a ladies' cloakroom, with the old
+ledger-room as an annexe; and in this last room Evie
+Soames, with an elaborate running of pink ribbons beneath
+the openwork of her cream net blouse, was putting on her
+slippers. She only showed Louie the top of her dark head;
+in this and other ways she had displayed reserve since the
+lunch interval of the examination day. A woman with a
+pair of very chapped hands and a very clean apron took
+Louie's shawl; and Louie, first glancing at her hair over
+the powdered shoulders of the person in orange, went
+into the double room that had been prepared for dancing.</p>
+
+<p>Students and their friends had turned up in their best
+bibs and tuckers. Most of the men wore swallow-tailed
+coats; one of the exceptions was Mr. Jeffries in his brown
+jacket-suit. He was talking to Miss Levey, or rather Miss
+Levey was gasping to him; she had just given him, or
+rather hung upon his wrist, one of the violet-written cards,
+printed from the gelatine-copier, which served as programmes.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+Weston wore a tightly fitting old frock-coat,
+which Mr. Mackie humorously likened to the overcoat of
+sausage that had spent the night in the coal-hole. Archie
+Merridew had a white waistcoat. All the men stroked the
+wrinkles out of their white gloves without ceasing. The
+women, to the reflective eye, had lost little by the foregoing
+of out-and-out evening-dress. There was an "I could an'
+if I would" about their long sleeves and high necks. Kitty
+Windus, in her blue foulard, with a cutlet-frill about her
+thin neck, graciously consented to the level of those who
+had not a pound a week on their own; Miriam Levey,
+in a maroon pinafore-frock with broad braces over her
+shoulders, instantly put every simple blouse in the room
+at its ease. One frock only flouted the modest agreement
+to which the executive had come; this was the orange
+satin one which Louie had followed upstairs. It partially
+clothed a friend of Mr. Mackie's. Louie heard the words
+in which Mr. Mackie introduced young Merridew to its
+wearer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Merridew, Miss Dulcie Levine, Miss Levine, Mr.
+Merridew, two of the best, seasonable weather for the time
+of the year, ain't it, what? Permit me, Dulcibella, a bit
+of fluff" (here Mr. Mackie cast aside the bit of fluff, if
+there was one, which he had taken from Miss Dulcie's
+shoulder, and represented the noise of its falling by a loud
+stamp on the floor). "Ought to be dancing soon; what
+time is it by your clocks, Dulcie? <i>I</i> saw them as you got
+out of the Black Maria, the cab, I mean&mdash;<i>heu</i>, desist, Mr.
+Mackie, you wag!" (Mr. Mackie smacked his own wrist
+in reproof of himself.) "Why am I not in me usual
+spirits, gin cold, to-night, Dulcinea? 'Tis thy fatal beauty
+has undone me; what ho, a needle and threat, O fairest of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+thy socks, sex I should say.... Ay, she dances, Archibald,
+but not with thee, base varlet; she dances at the
+Theatre hight Alcazar, nigh unto ye Square called Leicester."</p>
+
+<p>Louie heard Kitty Windus whisper to Evie Soames that
+Mr. Mackie was going to be splendid to-night; but her
+approval did not extend to Mr. Mackie's friend, who was
+already too splendid. Kitty's head was held so high when
+Miss Levine passed that she appeared to be looking at her
+with her nostrils. With her eyes she saw only the orange
+creature's back. This was a rather handsome <span class="blocke">V</span>, and that
+did not improve matters. Kitty whispered behind her
+fan about "some people." Miss Dulcie used Kitty as a
+quizzing-glass for the inspection of whoever happened to
+be behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jeffries stood with his back against the thrown-back
+folding door. He did not dance, but he had not at all the
+air of a wet blanket; on the contrary, his face wore a quite
+lively smile. He was smiling at the red and green tissue
+paper that enswathed the central chandelier. Louie saw
+Evie Soames pass him; his eyes rested on her for a moment,
+but only as they rested on everybody else, and then
+went back to the red and green tissue paper of the chandelier
+again. He had accepted the inevitable, then. Indeed,
+had he not done so, Louie could hardly imagine that
+he would have been there. Well, it was the most sensible
+thing he could do. Louie would go and speak to him presently.</p>
+
+<p>Louie made a tour of the rooms. The <span class="blocke">E</span> of reference-books
+had been turned into a place for sitting out, and in
+the typewriting-room the lids of two or three desks had
+been wedged up to form card-tables. Into the room beyond,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+which was the smoking-room, she did not penetrate.
+Already a fiddle was tuning up, but Louie had told
+young Merridew, who had magnanimously asked her for
+her card, that she did not intend to dance. None the less
+he had taken her card and scrawled something on it. She
+had tossed the piece of violet-written pasteboard into a
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock there was a tapping on the top of the
+piano, and the music began. Mr. Mackie and the lady in
+orange glided out over the French-chalked floor. Two
+minutes later the room was full of waltzing couples.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had sat down on the opposite side of the room to
+Mr. Jeffries. Through momentarily clear spaces she saw
+him from time to time. He did not move from his station
+by the folding door, where, among the hoppers and
+caperers who sped past him, he seemed to have something
+of the stability of a monument in some centre of apparently
+aimless traffic. Still, he seemed to be enjoying
+himself, and Louie intended to go across to him when the
+waltz was over.</p>
+
+<p>A word she overheard, however, caused her to change
+her mind and to rise to her feet at once. Mr. Mackie,
+passing with his orange partner, had repeated his jape
+about the Ruthless Boaz.</p>
+
+<p>Without more ado Louie threaded her way through the
+dancers and stood before Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you try to dance?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>As he turned the amber eyes on her she had the feeling
+that she slid all at once into the field of some piece of apparatus
+with an object-glass. She was the object. For
+a moment he forgot his smile; he looked attentively at her;
+and then the smile returned. He answered in an easy,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>
+deep voice, the accent of which was neither Cockney nor
+yet quite of the mode of the men Louie knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I&mdash;I don't dance," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you let me teach you?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were still on hers. He seemed to give the
+simple question weighty consideration. Then his eyes
+dropped to his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo," he said, as if to himself. His programme was
+where Miss Levey had put it, dangling from his wrist as if
+from a hook. Apparently he had not noticed it before.
+Then, looking at Louie again, he said: "I mean, my
+gloves&mdash;I've no gloves."</p>
+
+<p>"Gloves!" she said quietly. "Come."</p>
+
+<p>She took the absurd programme from his wrist, threw
+it away, and put her gloved hand into his naked one.</p>
+
+<p>She drew Mr. Jeffries into the current.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had danced with ignoramuses before, but never
+with a man quite so awkward as this. She did her best to
+steer him, but before they had gone half-way round the
+room they had collided with Evie Soames, leaning back in
+the crook of young Merridew's arm&mdash;with Kitty Windus,
+tiptoe and leaning forward over her partner&mdash;with Mr.
+Mackie, who had lighted a cigarette and was singing the
+refrain of the dance as he passed. Then Mr. Jeffries
+begged her, out of consideration for herself, to stop. But
+she had no desire to stop. She wondered why, bumped
+and trampled so, she should want to go on, but she gave that
+riddle up. He did not cease to apologise for his ungainliness.</p>
+
+<p>But the riddle of why she did not wish to stop refused
+to be given up. It renewed itself with each of his
+apologies. Stumbling ludicrously, she knew that she still
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>
+wished to go on. What she did not know at that time of
+her life was that she had secrets that hitherto she had
+kept even from herself.</p>
+
+<p>Then, all in a moment, the strange thing happened.
+She felt that colour, that stress and anger never brought
+there, rise slow and warm into her cheeks. Her glance had
+merely rested for a moment on that hand of hers that lay
+slender as a willow leaf in his, but the riddle was a
+puzzle no longer. Abashed, she <i>had</i> surprised a secret.</p>
+
+<p>She had caught herself wishing&mdash;half wishing&mdash;she
+did not quite know what&mdash;that she too had taken off her
+glove.</p>
+
+<p>Her colour lasted for half-a-minute; then, perhaps because
+of the colour, her voice became matter-of-fact. She
+glanced up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry you failed in your examination," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Louie was tall, but his head was clear and away above
+hers. He looked down, earnest, anxious, smiling, all
+three.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter," he said. "Why should it?" he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had thought that it had mattered a great deal, but
+she was still a little bewildered. Even out of the answer
+to the riddle another seemed to have sprung already. She
+laughed a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;only that one doesn't like to be beaten," she said.</p>
+
+<p>This too he seemed to give profound yet (if such a thing
+may be) absentminded attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Is anybody ever beaten?" he asked slowly. "I mean,
+unless they deserve to be?"</p>
+
+<p>Archie and Evie Soames had just overtaken them again,
+laughing together, as, hand in hand, they took a running
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+glide towards the door. His remark came oddly from
+a doubly beaten man. What then did he call a beating?...
+She looked covertly at the two hands again.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;mayn't circumstances be too strong for you?"</p>
+
+<p>This again he considered. "Circumstances are strong,"
+he admitted. "But then, if one's a fool, so are a good
+many other people. There's always that chance, you
+see."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke as gently as if he had been speaking to a child,
+but Louie suddenly found herself wondering whether he
+had accepted the inevitable after all. This hardly sounded
+like it. She spoke quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody thinks you're a fool just because you failed&mdash;at
+least I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Failed?" he repeated, as if puzzled.... "Oh, you
+mean the examination! Of course I ought never to have
+gone in for it. (Oh dear, another bump&mdash;I'm afraid you
+find me hopeless.)"</p>
+
+<p>"Not have gone in for it? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>The lion's eyes looked at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why, because I failed." He seemed to consider
+it an entirely conclusive answer.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll surely try again?" said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? 'Try,' did you say?... Oh, the men who
+have to try are no good. For that matter it's always the
+duffers who try the hardest. I admit they pull it off, but
+then things are arranged so that the duffers can pull them
+off&mdash;have to be, I suppose. But the men who aren't
+duffers&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>But once more she had the feeling that she had only
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+just swum into the field of his vision. It was singularly
+disconcerting. His smile, which had disappeared, appeared
+again. He seemed to remember that he was at a
+dance.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you're coming back after Christmas?" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>It was not very likely, but she said: "Very likely.
+You were saying, about the men who aren't duffers&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Again he got her focus. "Was I? Well, there aren't
+so many of them that we need bother about them. So you
+are coming back?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie found him extraordinary, unclassifiable. She
+could not say that his answers were not ready; they were
+instant to the point; but somehow they weren't answers.
+Of course, they <i>were</i> answers if you liked, but they seemed
+in some way to be private communings as well. She wondered
+whether he was in the habit of talking much to
+himself; he spoke rather as if he was&mdash;as if, his consciousness
+of her presence notwithstanding, he considered himself
+to be as good as alone now.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had heard the expression "second self"&mdash;well,
+this, "second self" or not, was certainly a curious accord.
+And then he allowed that deliberate, altogether discordant
+smile (that might just as well have been hooked round his
+ears like a false beard) to come between, and asked her if
+she was coming back after Christmas!</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;this came suddenly&mdash;she knew for a certainty
+what hitherto had hung in doubt&mdash;that she would not be
+coming back after Christmas. She must sit down. Of
+course, it was to have been expected. She had been unwise
+to dance.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke faintly. "Please take me to a seat."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Quite automatically he did so. He led her to the <span class="blocke">E</span> of
+reference-books. The waltz closed. So did Louie's
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Please leave me alone for a few minutes," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed, and retired as automatically as he had come.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes she felt better, but she still sat in the
+little book-lined recess. Her eyes remained closed, but
+not now altogether from faintness. She heard Mr.
+Mackie's voice, apparently a long way off, shouting,
+"Come on&mdash;let's get the ice broken!" and partners were
+being chosen for the Shop-Girl Lancers. More minutes
+passed. Louie, her eyes still closed, had begun once more
+to think of that secret she had surprised within herself.</p>
+
+<p>She doubted herself profoundly now. For all she now
+knew her nature might contain other such secrets as this
+that had sent the warm blood into her cheeks at a touch&mdash;nay,
+at the thought of a touch. She might have, so to
+speak, a basic, unsuspected layer of them, needing only to
+be stirred to provide surprise after surprise. Those surprises
+might make all she had hitherto known&mdash;all&mdash;seem
+stupid and flat and commonplace. If so, why must the
+discovery come now? Secrets from herself&mdash;now? Impossible!</p>
+
+<p>But, as if limned on her closed lids, she saw the two
+hands again, her own like a lanceolate leaf, lying within
+that great masculine engine of his.</p>
+
+<p>And all at once she felt unutterably lonely.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before she opened her eyes again. By
+that time Mr. Mackie had succeeded in breaking the ice.
+The floor shook to the fourth figure of the Shop-Girl
+Lancers, and Louie saw, beyond the reference-books, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+Alcazar beauty swung clear off the ground, a goldfish whirling
+almost horizontally past. Miss Levey's skirts followed,
+their owner crying, "Help, help!"... "<i>For
+it ain't the proper way to treat a la-ady!</i>" Mr. Mackie's
+jubilant voice sang&mdash;and when the figure ended there were
+shouts and clapping of hands and uproarious cries of
+"Again, again!"</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by Louie rose. She walked up the room again.
+At the piano Mr. Mackie, who was to sing, was now confidentially
+humming the air of his song into the hired
+pianist's ear. Mr. Jeffries, once more looking as if he
+needed a niche and a plinth, was standing in his original
+place, by the folding door. Miss Levine and Archie Merridew
+were half hidden behind the piano; and Kitty
+Windus, radiant, was openly flirting with the pale student
+called Richardson. Evie Soames had just spoken to Mr.
+Jeffries; she was sulking at Archie's desertion of her.
+Then Mr. Weston announced, solemnly and distinctly, that
+Mr. Mackie was about to add to the enjoyment of all present
+by singing a song entitled "That Gorgonzola Cheese."
+Applause greeted the announcement, and Mr. Mackie, who
+had slipped behind the piano for a moment and returned
+with his coat on the wrong side out, began.</p>
+
+<p>Louie found herself once more by the side of Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like some coffee," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The coffee was in an adjoining room. For the first
+time since she had been at the School Louie did not want
+to hear Mr. Mackie.</p>
+
+<p>But the hint was lost on Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? Certainly," he said, and went away in search of
+the coffee.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>"'Oh&mdash;that&mdash;Gorgonzola Cheese!'"
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackie sang,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>
+"'It must have been unhealthy, I suppose,<br />
+For the old Tom Cat fell dead upon the mat<br />
+When the niff got up his nose!'"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Kitty was laughing almost hysterically.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>
+"'Talk about the flavour of the crackling of the pork!<br />
+I guess it wasn't half so strong<br />
+As the delicate effluvia that filled our house<br />
+When the Gorgonzola Cheese went wrong!'"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Jeffries had returned with Louie's coffee, but
+Louie barely touched it. Great stupid fellow!</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to her with some merely banal remark,
+and Louie, giving it all the answer it deserved, turned and
+left him.</p>
+
+<p>That unspeakable loneliness had come upon her again.</p>
+
+<p>Louie made no further attempt to talk to Mr. Jeffries.
+She watched another dance, heard Mr. Weston recite "The
+Raven," and then went to the cloakroom for her shawl.
+There she came upon Kitty Windus, who had found it
+necessary to do up her hair again.</p>
+
+<p>"You surely aren't going?" Kitty exclaimed. She
+herself was a-tremble with flirtation and happiness.
+"Why, you're as bad as Mr. Jeffries! Though I will
+admit that even <i>he</i> came out of his shell for once. I shall
+begin to think Miriam's right soon!" She gave Louie an
+arch look.</p>
+
+<p>Louie's opinion was that Mr. Jeffries had never been
+more completely concealed in his shell than he had been
+that even, but "Oh, has he gone?" she said indifferently.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a few minutes ago. Isn't everything going splendidly!
+Why, Mr. Mackie's a host in himself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," said Louie, passing her shawl over her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we shall see you in the morning?" said
+Kitty. "Everybody's coming to help to clear away."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>And as the piano broke into the prelude to the waltz
+cotillion she left.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not leave that dingy Holborn third floor,
+never to enter it again, without a grateful word to Mr.
+Mackie. She came upon him on a landing. His trousers
+were French-chalked almost to the knees with the vigour
+of his dancing, and for his next song he had put on a false
+nose with blue whiskers attached to it. He was making
+sure that the adornment did not interfere with his whistle.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Mr. Mackie," said Louie, holding out her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackie stopped the whistle. "What, you toddling,
+Miss Causton?" he said. "Why, we ain't properly
+warmed up yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must go. And"&mdash;she smiled almost fondly at
+him&mdash;"I should like to thank you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackie was quite conscious of desert. "Not at
+all," he said. "You mean the 'Gorgonzola Cheese,' I
+suppose? Went all right, didn't it? Never known that
+song fail yet: it always gets 'em&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, for more than that. If you're ever thinking of
+setting up a cure I daresay I could find you a few patients.
+You're wonderful. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Say olive oil, but not good-bye&mdash;and Merry Christmas,"
+said Mr. Mackie.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie knew that it was good-bye.</p>
+
+<h2 class="p6">PART III<br />
+MORTLAKE ROAD</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">I</p>
+
+<p>On a sunny morning in mid-January Louie Causton
+went to see, but not necessarily to be seen by, her
+father. Captain Cecil Chaffinger accompanied her. As
+they walked across Richmond Park they talked.</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure the walk isn't too much for you, Mops?"
+said the Captain solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed his arm. "No, I'm ever so much better for
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"We could get a cart or something at the Star and
+Garter, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd much rather walk, Chaff. We can take the train
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, little Mops."</p>
+
+<p>They walked for a few minutes in silence; then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That woman wasn't&mdash;wasn't a beast, was she?" Chaff
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Leggat?"</p>
+
+<p>"If that's her name. I mean, there was no row?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the least in the world."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain tugged at his moustache. "H'm! Not
+like you. Ever leave anywhere without a row before,
+Mops?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed a little. "Now you mention it, I don't
+think I ever did," she admitted. "But there wasn't a
+word said. She knew, and I knew she knew. So I
+cleared out. That was all. She made me some beef-tea
+before I left."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again they walked in silence.</p>
+
+<p>The daintiest of hoar-frosts lay over the Park; on Putney
+Heath they had passed skaters. The keen wind had
+reddened the Captain's nose, and Louie could not help
+smiling as he took out his handkerchief for the twentieth
+time. She had remembered Mr. Mackie.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought to have a silk one a day like this," Chaff
+grunted, blowing hard. "Makes you perfectly raw....
+I say, dear old Mops&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What, old boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything <i>I</i> could have done, you know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She squeezed his arm again. "I shall be giving you
+plenty to do presently. And you say he's not a bad sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;&mdash;" said the Captain doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll take me in, and then wait outside till I've
+seen for myself."</p>
+
+<p>But at that Chaff rebelled. "Hanged if I do&mdash;dash it
+all, it's a public-house! You'll find me in the parlour or
+whatever it is."</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see: he'll be fifty. Yes, he'll be fifty. Your
+mother's fifty-four."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll remember your promise, Chaff?"</p>
+
+<p>"About where you are? Oh, I'll be mum as the grave.
+Don't you forget yours."</p>
+
+<p>"No. You shall come and see me."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain sighed. His Mops was a strange being.
+That fool Moone had taken the wrong way with her, but
+a better way might have been found than this. Well,
+Chaff would have a word or two with Mr. Buck Causton
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>They continued their walk.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Louie had first resolved that she would seek her
+father, nothing had seemed more natural. In prospect,
+the thing had been simplicity itself. But it was, somehow,
+less simple now. Indeed, its difficulties had increased
+with every step she took. What about Buck? Must he
+necessarily make her so very welcome? Suppose, when
+she made her announcement, he should shake hands, ask
+how her mother was, offer her tea (or whatever publicans
+did offer ladies), say he had been very glad to see her, and
+let her go again? How, in the face of that, could she say:
+"I am your daughter; I really don't know why I have
+come; I have stayed away a good long time, but here I am,
+needing friends; why I need friends I will explain to your
+wife." Was it not likely that Buck had had more than
+enough of her family?</p>
+
+<p>Had Chaff, as they descended to Kingston, once more
+urged that she was on a wild-goose chase, as likely as not
+she would have turned back at the first word.</p>
+
+<p>They reached Buck's public-house&mdash;The Molyneux
+Arms, near the corner of Kingston Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Chaff, stopping, "what do we do now,
+Mops?"</p>
+
+<p>"We go in, I suppose," said Louie. Without pausing,
+she moved towards the largest door (there was "Public
+Bar" written upon it) of an establishment that, if it lacked
+the garishness of a modern drinking-palace, was yet not
+quite the red-curtained, lattice-windowed, Christmas-number
+hostelry of Louie's imaginings. But Chaff, with a
+"No, not there," drew her round the corner to a quieter
+door, where small bay-trees stood in green tubs. The step
+had a brightly polished brass sill and a thick rubber
+mat perforated with the name "Molyneux Arms." Beyond
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span>
+the little vestibule were double doors with cut-glass
+panels and a diagonal brass bar on each and a piston for
+automatic closing at the top.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'd better wait here," said Chaff.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Louie, now heartily wishing she had
+not left her new abode in Mortlake Road, Putney.</p>
+
+<p>With a soft sigh of the piston, the brass-barred doors
+closed behind Chaff.</p>
+
+<p>This entrance lay in a short blind alley off the main
+street, the end of which seemed to be closed by a stableyard.
+Somebody over a brick wall was walking a horse over cobbles,
+and a man's voice muttered, "Come up." There
+was a light clashing of harness, and the same voice began
+a soft but strong singing, hoisting itself to the higher notes
+as if the interpolated aspirates had been so many stirrups:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>
+"No re-(<i>h</i>)est&mdash;but the gra-(<i>h</i>)ave<br />
+For the pi-(<i>h</i>)ilgrim of Love!&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then a back door opened, and a woman's voice was heard.</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman to see you, James."</p>
+
+<p>The song ceased. "A what, Susan?" said the man's
+voice. "Remember&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman&mdash;in a top hat," said the second voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that travellers sometimes have top hats,
+Susan," cautioned the first voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it's a gentleman, James&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, let us hope you're not mistaken and that
+you were hooked up behind. Ask the gentleman to wait
+a minute."</p>
+
+<p>The voices ceased.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Louie had walked to a half-open coach
+door and had looked through. She saw a bright little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+picture. A horse was being put into a gay yellow trap,
+and the man who was buckling the harness had begun to
+sing again:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>
+"Oryn&mdash;thia, my Belovèd!&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>All that Louie could see of him was a pair of glossy black
+boots and a pair of grey check trousers cut close about the
+knee. The harness twinkled; the horse's coat shone in the
+sun like Mr. Jeffries' hair; and somebody within the stable
+was running water into a bucket. Then the man came
+round the horse, and she saw him&mdash;cropped silver hair,
+long dewlapped chin, and a back and shoulders that might
+have served Henson's turn yet. And as Louie watched,
+with no more emotion than if the scene had been one on a
+coloured bioscope, he sang again:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>"Oryn&mdash;thia, my Belovèd!&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then, as she watched, it came over her for the first time
+that she had planned and was performing a suspect thing.
+She had no right to inspect this man and then to know
+him or not to know him, as she chose. He had no less
+right to inspect her. She, not he, stood to gain; cards on
+the table, then; either she must go away at once, taking
+Chaff with her, or else take her courage in both hands
+without further spying.</p>
+
+<p>Which was, perhaps, as much as to say that she had
+already seen and was willing to risk it.</p>
+
+<p>She passed through the half-open door into the yard.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even as she advanced she had a final cowardice.
+By a man at any rate, anything would be forgiven her, and
+she really had had a long walk.... There was a bench
+by the stable door.... But she pulled herself together.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>
+No, not that. She was not faint, only very, very pale.
+She continued to advance.</p>
+
+<p>Then Buck looked up, and their eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>They say of a newly born infant that your first impression
+of facial resemblance is that to which the child,
+grown a man, will return. So perhaps it was for one moment
+with father and daughter. But, if so, it passed instantly.
+Buck made an upward, deferential gesture of
+his fore-finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Sha'n't be three minutes, m'm," he said. "Now,
+Judson, the lady's here! He's just ready, m'm. A beautiful
+day!"</p>
+
+<p>Then something in Louie's look seemed to strike him.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> for Mrs. Allonby's, m'm, isn't it? For one-fifteen;
+one-fifteen Allonby, Richards, seven to-night.
+You needn't have come; he'll be there sharp."</p>
+
+<p>Louie was looking steadily at her father. "You've
+made a mistake," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"What? Hi, Judson! What's this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came&mdash;I came&mdash;with the gentleman who's just
+asked for you. Don't you&mdash;don't you&mdash;&mdash;" she faltered
+and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't you from Mrs. Allonby's?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie was conscious that she was becoming pitifully
+flurried. She could not believe now that she had ever
+thought this would be an easy thing to do. And she
+would have to do it all herself; he had a handsome,
+slightly pompous face, but it was not the face of a
+man who apprehends things by intuition. She tried
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Mr. Causton, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, m'm? You see, one ear&mdash;&mdash;" The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+Piker had burst the drum of one of Buck's ears. He inclined
+his head. "What did you say, m'm?"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Louie put one hand on the shaft of the trap
+and sank half sitting on the step. The trap dipped. Her
+pallor was now extreme.</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman who wishes to see you&mdash;&mdash;" she began
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, m'm?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I came with him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, m'm&mdash;aren't you well, m'm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it isn't Mrs. Allonby's, one-fifteen&mdash;&mdash;" said Buck.</p>
+
+<p>"His name&mdash;the gentleman's name&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then, as the horse lifted a foot, she slipped a little on
+the step. She might not have fallen, but his old and
+instinctive muscular discipline counted for something.
+Buck had made a remarkably swift movement, and his arm
+now supported her. Suddenly she surrendered her
+weight to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, m'm," said the astonished Buck, "come and set
+down on the bench."</p>
+
+<p>Louie turned up entreating eyes. "You can't guess?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it's Richards, seven&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman's name&mdash;I came with&mdash;is Chaffinger&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You said&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Chaffinger."</p>
+
+<p>She was too close to him to notice that he too had
+suddenly become white. He still held her, but slowly
+half a cubic foot of air came from his chest. Probably
+with a purely mechanical movement he set her on her feet.
+His hand was at his sound ear.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Will you say it again, m'm?" he said huskily.</p>
+
+<p>Louie did so.</p>
+
+<p>"Cap-Captain Chaffinger, m'm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Louie choked, "don't call me 'm'm'!"</p>
+
+<p>"You did say Captain Chaffinger?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, leaning limply against the shaft, Louie began
+to speak low and rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Send me away if you like&mdash;perhaps I was stupid to
+come&mdash;but I wanted&mdash;I wanted&mdash;I couldn't bear it any
+longer&mdash;I'm all alone&mdash;father! I'm Louie&mdash;Louie&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Only Buck's Maker knows whether even then he fully
+understood. His grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes.
+Her voice, as she continued to mutter broken phrases,
+possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but some other sense
+informed him that she was telling him that she was his
+daughter&mdash;his daughter&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come
+sluggishly to life. He repeated the phrase after her.</p>
+
+<p>"Putney, m'm? Did you say Putney?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I live there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mortlake Road."</p>
+
+<p>Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a
+century and more before he had said to the Honourable
+Emily: "<i>The</i> Bible, Miss?" Now he said to his daughter:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The</i> Mortlake Road?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"You live there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically
+remote from Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+of the Scarisbricks. But Putney was near. To
+keep himself in spring and condition, he frequently
+walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could
+walk to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings'
+bus. And they rowed the boat race there. Therefore,
+while it outraged all Order that a Scarisbrick should live
+there, that fact nevertheless brought his daughter into the
+same world with himself. For the first time he looked
+seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more
+quickly than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her
+had beguiled his fancy through the years.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with
+head back, lips parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her
+whole pose an appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through
+those rare things, her tears&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Judson came out of the stable. Buck gave him a curt
+order, and the trap moved away. Its departure left Louie
+standing by the little bench outside the stable door. Buck
+had taken a step towards her. He was murmuring something
+quite ridiculous&mdash;something about "strictly for the
+gentry." Perhaps he remembered that had his little girl
+been a little boy he would have given her instruction for
+nothing at the Sparring Academy in Bruton Street.</p>
+
+<p>All in a moment he passed his arm about Louie. Scarisbrick
+or not, she was going to be a Causton and his for
+once&mdash;just for once. In an hour he might be calling her
+"m'm" again, but just for once&mdash;his face was beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"That little girl," he said foolishly, holding her
+with as gentle a fear as if she had been still in her cradle.</p>
+
+<p>Louie's answer was to faint suddenly on his breast.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">But of the Molyneux Arms in a moment. A word
+about Mortlake Road first.</p>
+
+<p>Two houses had been thrown into one to form the
+establishment at which Louie had now resided for a week.
+Officially it was a nursing home; actually it accepted declared
+invalids and quite well but unrobust lodgers alike.
+Miss Cora Mayville "ran" it; her cousin, Miss Dot Mayville,
+was "sister," and from four to eight uniformed
+nurses came and went continually. None of them had
+theories, moral, social, or of any other description; to
+them things were as they were. Nurse Meekins made
+Louie's bed as who should say, "Helpers of people in
+trouble do not go beyond their proper business"; Nurse
+Chalmers brought her letters or called her to dinner in
+the narrowminded spirit of one who leaves the systematics
+of charity to others. All were reprehensibly incurious and
+shockingly affectionate, and so far was Louie's case from
+being peculiar that, in the eyes of the law at any rate, Miss
+Dot Mayville was herself twice a parent. Twice (when,
+from reasons Lord Moone could have explained, the real
+parents had refused to do so) she had signed the birth-certificates
+of undesired infants. This irregularity the
+registrar for the district held perpetually over her head.
+She laughed, and held other things over his head in return.
+They were engaged to be married.</p>
+
+<p>It was to this retreat that Buck drove Louie back that
+January evening, cutting "Richards, seven" without compunction.
+Poor Chaff had been sent off soon after lunch;
+there was somebody else to fetch and despatch his Mops
+now. Buck lifted Louie from the trap and rang the bell
+of one of the two brass-plated doors. A German youth
+dressed as a waiter appeared, and Buck bade him hold the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+horse. Then he went with Louie up to her room. He
+took off her hat and coat for her; he seemed unable to leave
+her. He had learned how it was with her.</p>
+
+<p>He had hardly turned a hair at the news. He accepted
+it as part of the Scheme of Things. To him also indiscretions
+were of two kinds&mdash;indiscretions, and the indiscretions
+of the Scarisbricks. Only a wistful look had
+crossed his face; he had hoped Louie's somebody was a
+gentleman otherwise than in the top-hat sense of the word;
+and Louie had reassured him about that. For the rest, it
+was not for Buck to inquire into the private affairs of
+these great ones. He would as soon have allowed the
+young German who held the horse to inquire into his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"That little girl," he said once more, holding her away
+from him at the side of her bed.</p>
+
+<p>"And you won't call me 'm'm,' daddy?" Louie
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Buck gave it thought; it was not so simple as it looked.
+"And you really took daddy's name?" he asked. He
+had asked it twenty times already.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And told all those young ladies?" (Louie had related
+the incident of Burnett Minor and the "Life and
+Battles.") "All about daddy and the Piker?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!"</p>
+
+<p>Buck found it too wonderful. He enfolded his little
+girl again.</p>
+
+<p>"But you must go now," Louie said by-an-by.</p>
+
+<p>"But I can come in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And, daddy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Little girl?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You'll be good to poor old Chaff? He's fond of me
+too."</p>
+
+<p>Buck promised that he would. Had there been none
+other, the tantrums of the Honourable Emily were no
+doubt bond enough between them.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Buck had to be told that eight o'clock
+was too early for a visit, and so, on the next morning again,
+he did not turn up until eleven. After that eleven became
+his accustomed hour. Wet or fine was the same to him,
+and he cancelled all afternoon orders for the trap; his little
+girl must have the trap at her disposal for a daily drive.
+And because his fidelity to the Social Order and their own
+professional tolerances amounted in Louie's case to pretty
+much the same thing, the nurses one and all fell in love
+with Buck.</p>
+
+<p>And here, once for all, or at any rate for a long time, a
+cogent matter may be dismissed, even as those pagan nurses
+dismissed it. It is Louie's conviction of moral guilt as
+apart from her persuasion of the practical inconveniences
+of it. Louie Causton would have been poor stuff for the
+hot gospeller to practise upon. There were things she
+would have had undone, and that not merely because the
+consequences pressed upon her; as they could not be undone,
+she had begun the tune and intended to fiddle it out.
+What she saw fit to hide her historian hides also. Louie
+seized what happiness she could, and it served. She was
+sorrier for Chaff than she was for herself. She would
+have been less happy had she taken Uncle Augustus's way
+out.</p>
+
+<p>And whether the days were happy or not, at any rate
+they were peacefully alike. Breakfast with the nurses,
+a morning or afternoon drive with Buck or a walk along
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+the river bank or on Putney Heath, tea (if they drove)
+perhaps at Kingston, supper with the nurses again, and
+bed&mdash;that was the tale of them. She kept her promise
+to Chaff; several times he came to see her. Twice he met
+Buck. At these meetings the shade of the Honourable
+Emily almost visibly presided.... Chaff tried to talk
+of "Lives and Battles," Buck of the same&mdash;it was not for
+him to choose topics before his betters. And once, but
+once only, Buck brought Mrs. Buck, formerly Susan Emmidge,
+the chemist's servant at Mallard Bois. He hooked
+her up behind himself before they left Kingston, and Louie
+did her the same service at the end of the visit. For the
+rest, if Louie wanted to see her father's second wife she
+had to go to the Molyneux Arms to do so.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">II</p>
+
+<p>As the singer of "The Pilgrim of Love" Buck was
+known far and abroad up the Thames. It will be
+believed that he contrived to get an infinite personal pathos
+into the song; he also made of it, by means of those gratuitous
+aspirates, an affective athletic exercise in breathing.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p>"No re-(<i>h</i>)est&mdash;but the gra-(<i>h</i>)ave<br />
+For the Pi-(<i>h</i>)ilgrim of Love!&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As he closed his eyes at each soaring, the effect was as if
+he inwardly looked back on that remarkable pilgrimage
+of his own. Bidden to marry, he had married; bidden
+to unmarry and to marry again, he had done so; and at a
+word from Louie he would have taken up the pilgrimage
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>But while Buck exalted the Scarisbricks high above himself,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+so also he exalted himself high above all beneath him.
+He ruled the Molyneux Arms with a rod of iron. Only
+mediately and through him would the two barmaids have
+dared to address Louie; and his wife's position was altogether
+anomalous. It was only because Louie would
+have it so that she sat down to tea with them; and, what
+with her hooks and eyes and Buck's perpetual admonitions,
+there was little rest but the grave for her either. Buck
+subscribed to the <i>Almanack de Gotha</i> and <i>Modern Society</i>;
+these were always to hand; but <i>The Licensed Victuallers'
+Gazette</i>, which he took in the way of business, was kept
+out of Louie's way. Mr. Mackie he would have torn from
+limb to limb. Far more royalist than the king was Buck;
+Radicalism was chaos, which word he pronounced "tchayoss."
+Of pugilism, save to Chaff, he never spoke. "God
+bless the Squire and his relations."</p>
+
+<p>And (Louie thought) God bless this simple-hearted
+father of hers also. Buck in the ring had been a better
+man than Uncle Augustus in the House of Lords, and
+Henson would not have looked twice at Chaff. Granted
+he was pompous; with a little more pompousness her
+mother would have come more creditably out of that old
+affair. So much for the Scarisbricks. Already, in January,
+Louie loved her father; by March his daily visit
+was a necessity of her life. She had been right; her
+destiny was quite as likely to be bound up with Buck and
+his beer-pumps as with anything in that dingy old Business
+School.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Business School she still thought a good deal,
+however. She could not forget the interesting little drama
+of which she had seen, as it were, the first act. Somehow,
+time and distance had simplified some of its details
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>
+without diminishing her interest in it, and, as she walked
+along the Putney towpath by day, or lay awake in her
+white-painted room at night, she wondered that this should
+be so. By the brutal logic of events, Rainham Parva
+should have been nearer to her than Holborn; but Rainham
+Parva seemed now disproportionately remote. Why?</p>
+
+<p>Had the conclusion which persisted in presenting itself
+not been impossible, perhaps she would not have faced it
+so frankly. It was impossible&mdash;manifestly absurd&mdash;that
+Mr. Jeffries should have any hold on her imagination.
+Therefore she allowed herself to consider it. No doubt the
+fancies which filled her head would pass and be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Give them a month, then&mdash;two months.</p>
+
+<p>She gave them that, and more. They did not pass.
+But that, no doubt, was due to the curious interrupted
+story. She felt as if she was reading an interesting serial
+tale, for the next instalment of which she was suddenly
+required to wait another month. She wanted to know
+what was going to happen among the fair, perky boy, the
+girl who resembled Polly Ross, the lionlike Mr. Jeffries,
+and that apocryphal fourth actor in the piece. When she
+had learned that she would close the book. In the meantime
+she occupied herself, as serial readers do, with guessing.</p>
+
+<p>The spring was advancing towards May when there
+happened something that suddenly precipitated her guessings.
+Buck still came daily, but she walked more in the
+back garden of the nursing home now and less on the
+heath and on the towpath, and drove, when she did drive,
+more slowly. Sometimes on her drives a nurse accompanied
+her. Her doctor found her health excellent.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that happened began with Richenda Earle.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>
+Some weeks before, Louie had had a letter from Richenda
+forwarded from Sutherland Place, which she had neglected
+to answer; and Richenda had apparently written again,
+this time to her sister. Louie now gathered that Mrs.
+Leggat had kept the reason for her disappearance from
+Mr. Weston, but not from Richenda. By way of Richenda
+and Mr. Weston it had now reached the Business School.
+A hastily scrawled letter from Kitty Windus informed
+Louie of this. Kitty wanted to come and see her.</p>
+
+<p>Well, there was no reason why Kitty should not come.
+Louie wrote and told her so.</p>
+
+<p>She came on a Saturday afternoon. It was not urgently
+necessary that Louie should have received her in
+bed, but the recollection of the spinster's peering eyes held
+some obscure prompting. Moreover, to receive Kitty in
+bed would be an intimation that the call must not be a
+long one, and she had arranged its duration with Miss Dot
+Mayville.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Windus," Miss Dot announced, and Kitty entered.</p>
+
+<p>She had brought Louie a bunch of violets; that was the
+first of several new amenities Louie noticed in her manner.
+Louie discouraged the second amenity, which was a
+shy motion as if to embrace her. And the third showed
+when, after a few minutes in which Kitty's fluttered spirits
+had become a little calmer (<i>she</i> was not the one to turn her
+back on people in trouble, she had said, let others hold
+up their heads as they pleased), she wistfully took Louie's
+hand on the coverlet. She had cried over Louie a little.
+Her eyes were still wet.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;but I don't know whether you've heard&mdash;I
+might have been just like everybody else, only something
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+else has made an awful difference too," she said, her eyes
+downcast.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh? What else?" Louie asked a little offhandedly.
+She had not wanted to be wept over.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then you haven't heard.... I'm engaged. I've
+been engaged nearly two months."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Then I must congratulate you. Is it a
+secret who to?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Kitty. "It's to Mr. Jeffries."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Louie sat up. She turned, as if, like Buck, she
+had been deaf on one side. "<i>Who?</i>" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. To Mr. Jeffries. Since early in March. You
+remember he told Archie there was somebody?&mdash;and,"
+Kitty became suddenly voluble, "I couldn't believe my
+ears at first. I'd never dreamed&mdash;never dreamed. And
+after I'd been such a beast&mdash;I don't mean a beast exactly,
+but getting at him, you know. I was just as bad as the
+others&mdash;about his baths and all that. Oh, I did feel
+ashamed&mdash;as mean as mean&mdash;oh!" She choked a little.
+"I don't mind saying it now, but I'd&mdash;I'd begun to be
+afraid I should <i>never</i> get off!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;no, I mean," Louie murmured, dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Just fancy, it's being me! That night, when he
+asked me, I thought I should have gone clean off it. Sometimes
+I can hardly believe it yet. I hadn't a notion&mdash;not
+a notion! And it makes everything perfectly wonderful,
+knowing a man's so struck on you, though he <i>is</i> quiet and
+don't say much about it. Of course they mean all the
+more, that sort. We walk along the streets, but he won't
+let me stop out late for fear of tiring me, and he always
+takes me right to the door, and I'm trying hard not to be
+selfish, but it makes me so sorry for other girls who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+haven't got off&mdash;and perhaps if I sell some of my shares to
+start us with we can get married next year&mdash;if he gets a
+permanency, that is."</p>
+
+<p>Louie was still thunderstruck. Mr. Jeffries engaged
+to&mdash;Kitty Windus! That unnamed personage was&mdash;Kitty
+Windus! She, Louie, was asked to believe <i>that</i>, in
+the face of all she had seen!</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad," she found herself murmuring again.</p>
+
+<p>"Did <i>you</i> guess?" Kitty asked eagerly. She would
+have given her ears to be told that somebody else had
+guessed.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Louie replied, and added, seeing Kitty's fallen
+face: "I should have thought Mr. Merridew. You
+seemed such great friends."</p>
+
+<p>At that Kitty broke in: "Poor Archie! I said it
+made one selfish.... His father's very ill. We were
+going on Putney Heath to-day, all four of us, Archie and
+Evie and Jeff and me; but Archie had a wire to go home
+this morning, poor Archie, and so I'm going to meet the
+others by-and-by. But anyway, if anything does happen,
+he'll be able to get married as soon as he likes&mdash;he's an
+only son."</p>
+
+<p>At this Louie was even more startled. Mr. Jeffries and
+the Soames girl together at that moment! She remembered
+those irrevocable looks.</p>
+
+<p>"So Mr. Merridew and Miss Soames are engaged,
+then?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Kitty admitted, "it comes to the same thing.
+They're as good as. I wish Jeff was coming into a bit,
+like Archie."</p>
+
+<p>"You say they're here, at Putney, this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jeff and Evie? Yes. I'm meeting them at five."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even as Louie was inwardly predicting that Kitty would
+not see her Mr. Jeffries at five, Miss Dot Mayville entered.
+But Louie did not want Kitty to go just yet. She wanted
+to know more of this extraordinary development of her
+drama. "May we have some tea?" she asked, and Miss
+Dot went out again. Louie lay back on her pillow and
+frowned at the foot of her white-painted bed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very kind of you to give up your afternoon to
+me," she said by-and-by.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear, as if I wouldn't!" Kitty broke out almost
+reproachfully. "I keep telling myself I mustn't be
+selfish, when Jeff and I have years before us&mdash;I'm just
+beginning to realise it&mdash;years&mdash;and, oh dear, here I am,
+selfish again, talking all about myself and never a word
+about you."</p>
+
+<p>But Louie did not want words about herself. She
+wanted to hear all, all, about Kitty and Mr. Jeffries. The
+thing became more incredible moment by moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry about Mr. Merridew's father," she said
+presently. "I suppose Miss Soames is very much upset?"</p>
+
+<p>"Frightfully," said Kitty. "But Jeff's looking after
+her. It was he who persuaded her to go out this afternoon.
+It's better for her than moping indoors."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Mr. Merridew asked him to."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no. He only got the wire this morning. But it
+isn't a surprise. Jeff saw him last night&mdash;&mdash;" She
+checked herself. She had no gibes about brown-paper
+parcels now.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll be quite a courting quartet," said Louie
+presently, with a brightness she did not feel.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; jolly, isn't it? But there, I'm simply <i>not</i> going
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+to talk about myself one moment longer. I feel a regular
+beast. But it's only because I'm so happy. Now let's
+talk about you. How long are you going to be here?
+What sort of people are they? Isn't it fearfully expensive?
+Are you frightened?"</p>
+
+<p>The suppressed inquisitive questions and Louie's preoccupied
+parries lasted through tea. At a quarter to five
+Kitty rose. Again Louie found herself wondering whether
+Kitty would see her Mr. Jeffries that day. Kitty bent
+over her.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to kiss you, dear, if you'd let me," she
+said timidly. "You wouldn't believe what a difference
+it makes. And I'd love to come again; I love little babies.
+Now I must run. I won't say a word to Miriam Levey;
+you know what she is&mdash;but I simply must learn not to say
+those things. Good-bye, dear."</p>
+
+<p>And she was off, waving her skimpy hand from the door.</p>
+
+<p>Louie did not know why her heart should ache already,
+as at a premonition&mdash;for she had no certitude. Indeed,
+in all that portion of her relation to Mr. Jeffries she had no
+certitude; but she was only a little less certain on that
+account. Already she entirely rejected the figment in
+which Kitty so pathetically believed. Months before she
+had snapped her fingers at his impudent tale of a shadowy
+<i>fiancée</i>; now she wondered whether he had not been caught
+in his own trap and found himself compelled, by mere
+daily exigencies, to give that shadow substance&mdash;the substance
+of Kitty. Impossible&mdash;and yet the conceivable alternatives
+were equally impossible! Incredible that he
+should have chosen Kitty for his stalking-horse&mdash;yet whom
+else had there been to choose? If this really was a putting-upon
+the Business School, Mr. Jeffries would see to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+it that his dupe was as known as his purpose was secret.
+That left him three candidates from whom to choose indifferently&mdash;Kitty,
+Miriam Levey, and herself.</p>
+
+<p>In her indignation she was unconscious of the pink that
+crept like a danger signal into her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>That poor, unconscious, betrayed woman!</p>
+
+<p>Good gracious! It was blackguardly and monstrous!
+Kitty of all women! To have "predestined spinster"
+written large all over you was bad enough, without being
+played upon thus and then cast back into spinsterhood
+after all! And this new softness of Kitty's, this timid
+opening of the heart, this new, awkward unselfishness,
+these pathetic little maxims of conduct! The man must
+be a cur. Deliberately to waken a heart that was sealed,
+asleep and not unhappy, and then to leave it to a pain it
+must keep for ever&mdash;good gracious!</p>
+
+<p>Still ignorant of the tell-tale red in her own cheeks, she
+found Mr. Jeffries vile.</p>
+
+<p>But she must be just to Mr. Jeffries. Perhaps she was
+wrong. Perhaps there was&mdash;nay, there must be&mdash;something
+she didn't know. Why, even if Mr. Jeffries could be
+so cruel, Kitty herself could hardly be so blind. Struggle
+with new magnanimities as she would, jealousy was native
+to Kitty, and jealousy has sharp eyes. No, she, Louie
+herself, was building a fantastic fabric. It was mere
+common-sense that Kitty must be supposed to be capable
+of looking after herself.</p>
+
+<p>But it was one thing to tell herself that she must
+suspend her judgment and another to do it. That theory
+of hers seemed to unroll itself brightly and convincingly
+before her again. She would discard it when she found
+one that better explained the known facts. Mr. Jeffries
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+was with Evie Soames at that moment. Louie's thoughts
+flew to Evie Soames.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that she became conscious that her cheeks
+were hot. It was then also that she told herself angrily
+that they were not, and found them grow hotter still. The
+hotter they grew the more she denied their heat. Why
+should they grow hot? And even granting that they were
+hot, wasn't this imposture that was being practised on
+Kitty enough to make anybody's cheek hot? That was it.
+That discovery made, she admitted the heat&mdash;for Kitty's
+sake. That that great, taciturn, clever man should be
+infatuated by that pretty fool she resented&mdash;for Kitty's
+sake. That his sleek head, bright as the coat of Buck's
+horse, should stoop over that empty dark one she found
+ironically unfit&mdash;for Kitty's sake. She told herself all
+this, forgetting that she had just set Kitty's engagement
+down also as an absurdity. Her indignation would have
+been neither more nor less honest had Mr. Jeffries engaged
+himself (as according to her theory he might quite well
+have done) to Miriam Levey.</p>
+
+<p>Or to herself.</p>
+
+<p>She lay, the colour coming and going.</p>
+
+<p>At last she roused herself and sat up. "Pretty
+thoughts for an expectant mother!" she muttered. "I'll
+go downstairs and talk to Dot."</p>
+
+<p>She dressed, and descended to the nurses' sitting-room
+in the basement.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dot and her Registrar were there; they had just
+come in from a walk. They were telling of a nightingale
+they had heard sing near Queens Mere. "Oh, and we
+saw your friend again, the one who came to tea," said Miss
+Dot, turning to Louie.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louie pricked up her ears. "Oh? Alone?" she said
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Coming down Putney Hill."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she said she was going to take a walk," Louie remarked.</p>
+
+<p>But to herself she cried with conviction: "I knew it&mdash;I
+knew it&mdash;I knew it!"</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the evening she was lost in her own
+thoughts. Miss Cora Mayville worked a hand sewing
+machine; Miss Dot and her Registrar played bézique at a
+separate table; other nurses, in print aprons or cloaked
+and bonneted, came and went; but Louie sat and gazed
+into the fire. When spoken to she smiled mechanically
+and then resumed her gazing. There was no more continuity
+in her thoughts than there was in the shape of the
+flames that illumined her grey eyes. Roy appeared in
+them for a moment or two&mdash;she had seen Roy's name in
+<i>The Gazette</i> a week before&mdash;and then Roy was supplanted
+by Burnett Minor. Her old French governess at Trant
+popped up for no particular reason, and then she too gave
+place to Mr. Mackie. She heard Buck saying again,
+"That little girl"&mdash;and then came a wrangle between Dot
+and her Registrar. In the adjoining kitchen she heard
+sounds of frying, and then somebody came in to lay the
+table for supper. The gas rose and whistled as the stove
+in the next room was turned off. The three night nurses
+came down. Louie had her gruel where she sat, and at
+half-past nine went upstairs again. She got into bed, and
+dreamed that night that she was dancing with Mr. Jeffries
+again at the breaking-up party. Her hand lay like a willow
+leaf in his. "<i>You</i> understand," he was saying to her;
+"it's no good hiding things from <i>you</i>; <i>you've</i> got the key
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+of it all. It had to be somebody, and you'd left. There
+was only Kitty for it. You see what an ignominious
+thing you escape. Don't tell me how degrading it is; I
+know it; but I'd do it a thousand times for the woman I
+loved and meant to marry."</p>
+
+<p>Louie knew, in her dream, who that was.</p>
+
+<p>Then she awoke with a start. The street lamp outside,
+shining through the venetian blinds, made long bars of
+light on the walls and ceiling. The hot-water bottle at
+her feet was cold. She heard the creaking of Dot's bed in
+the little dressing-room adjoining, and the minute ticking
+of her watch on the table by her bed-head. But what had
+woke her had been the sound of her own reply, in her
+dream, to Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll shuffle Kitty off," she had replied, still dancing
+with him, "but <i>I</i> should have found a way to keep
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a deep sigh, she turned and went to sleep
+again.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">III</p>
+
+<p>Her boy was born towards the end of June. Her
+mother did not visit her; instead, she sent a letter
+the chief characteristic of which was fright that she had
+dared even so far to disobey her brother. Louie understood,
+and in her dictated reply made allowances. She
+wondered whether she should write to Roy also, but in the
+end did not. The child was born at three o'clock in the
+morning; he was hardly six hours old when Buck arrived.
+The old champion stood looking down on his little girl's
+little boy. It was long before he spoke.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't let see you," he said, two big tears rolling
+down his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall teach him to box, daddy," said Louie, smiling
+up at him.</p>
+
+<p>But Buck shook his head. "No, no," he said gently&mdash;"except
+just to take care of himself&mdash;when he's fourteen,
+perhaps&mdash;if I'm here. Swimming, not sparring. They're
+a queer lot, them in the ring."</p>
+
+<p>"You must go now, Mr. Causton," said Miss Dot.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was thirty hours old when there arrived for him
+a great case of toys suitable for a child of four. Buck and
+Chaff had been round the toyshops together. Mrs. Buck,
+disobeying her husband for the only time in her life, came
+by stealth with a flannel binder that might have enwrapped
+a six-pounds' child; Jim (as Louie had decided to call
+him), weighed ten pounds, beef to the heel.</p>
+
+<p>He throve at once, and continued to thrive.</p>
+
+<p>The pair of them were the pride of that pagan Putney
+Nursing Home.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the two incidents that may be allowed to
+close this portion of Louie's story was a second visit by
+Kitty Windus to Louie.</p>
+
+<p>She came at ten o'clock at night, and only with difficulty
+obtained admission. She was allowed ten minutes, on the
+condition that Louie was awake. Louie was awake.
+Kitty neither lifted her veil nor asked to see the child.
+There was no trace now of her little maxims of conduct;
+she spoke agitatedly, and out of a stinging, jealous
+pain.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to ask you something, Miss Causton, and
+you've got to tell me," she announced, without preface.
+"I've a right to know."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Speak a little lower," said Louie, glancing at the babe.
+"Sit down and tell me what it is."</p>
+
+<p>But Kitty would not sit. Incapable of grandeurs of
+style, she nevertheless attempted them.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether you happen to be aware what
+people are saying about you," she said. Her boat-shaped
+hat and Inverness cape gave her a little the appearance
+of a scanty tree with which some topiary artist had done
+his best.</p>
+
+<p>Louie could not help smiling a little; she could have that
+kind of thing out with herself without calling in Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear! Of course I know they might be saying
+anything!" She drew her child a little closer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we keep the my dears till we've finished talking,"
+said Kitty coldly. "I mean what they're saying at
+the Business School."</p>
+
+<p>Louie spoke quietly. "I suppose you mean about me
+and my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do mean that, and I've come to ask you to your
+face; <i>I'm</i> not the one to beat about the bush! I want to
+know who&mdash;&mdash;" There was no need for Kitty to complete
+the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't know that," said Louie, more quietly still.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! perhaps you won't tell me because you daren't?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've not told anybody, and I'm not going to tell you.
+I'd die first. Perhaps before we go any further you'll tell
+me why you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't suppose I'd ask you if it wasn't my business,
+do you?"</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Louie turned her eyes on her. She spoke slowly
+too. "We should get on more quickly if you didn't jump
+so to conclusions," she said. "I don't know what your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+conclusions are, but you seem to have made your mind up
+about something. If you'll change your tone I'll talk to
+you; if you won't, I won't."</p>
+
+<p>At that Kitty began to sob. She had to lift her veil in
+order to put a wisp of wet handkerchief to her eyes. But
+she changed her tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I only want to know," she said. "And I don't want
+to know if it isn't my business. But I <i>have</i> seen him look
+at you, and he <i>did</i> dance with you, and when they
+said&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Who said?" Louie interrupted; but she had already
+made a guess. "And said what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jeff, of course," Kitty replied. "Miriam Levey
+noticed him looking at you first, but after that I saw for
+myself. And you did dance with him. I might forgive
+him, but I'd never, never forgive <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Louie suddenly put a question. Apparently it was for
+nothing less preposterous than that question that Kitty
+was here.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment," she said. "Do you mean there's
+something about Mr. Jeffries and myself you want to
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and I mean to know," Kitty snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough, <i>I</i> should say!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please hear me out. In fact"&mdash;Louie paused for a
+moment and then rapped out sharply&mdash;"you want to know
+whether my lover was Mr. Jeffries?"</p>
+
+<p>"That'll do to be going on with," said Kitty sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll tell you if you'll tell me who said he was."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what that's got to do with it, but I'll tell
+you if you like. Archie Merridew said so. There!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Archie Merridew!&mdash;But Louie restrained her gasp.
+"Thank you," she said. "May I ask whether you've
+asked Mr. Jeffries? <i>He</i> might be in a position to know,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"But evidently you've seen something in his manner
+that would make it not quite impossible?"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, you've danced with him, and he's looked at
+you in a sort of way&mdash;more than once, Miriam says&mdash;and
+you're trying to shuffle out of the question," said Kitty,
+her suspicions aflame again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll answer the question! If it had been he"&mdash;she
+glanced at the little head under her breast&mdash;"I'd tell
+you in a minute&mdash;for my baby's sake, you see. But it was
+not; and you might have saved yourself a journey if you'd
+gone to him first. And now please tell me a little more."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty still looked at her suspiciously. "You said you'd
+die sooner than tell," she cried quaveringly.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you don't believe me? Well, I can't make
+you. If I told you the truth you'd just think I'd made up
+a name."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>was</i> somebody else?" cried Kitty eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>If it wasn't Mr. Jeffries, naturally&mdash;there was the
+child&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I <i>want</i> to believe you!" Kitty suddenly broke
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed desperately. "Well, my dear, you may.
+If it was so, I suppose you'd get it out of me. It isn't,
+that's all. And now I think I've a right to know exactly
+what this Mr. Merridew has been saying."</p>
+
+<p>Kitty looked hard at her for one moment longer, and
+then sank on her knees by the side of the bed. She had no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+choice but to believe. She broke into a torrent of words,
+low-spoken, not to rouse the child. Louie heard them,
+amazed. Slowly her incredulity turned into contempt.</p>
+
+<p>The horrid little beast! But, after all, she was not surprised.
+It was all in his character. Perhaps he had been
+drunk; perhaps it was merely a fancy-stationery idea of
+humour. Not that she minded a straw; she laughed; she
+supposed she was there to have stones thrown at her; it
+was merely a little annoying that they were not thrown
+straighter. She could picture the over-pocket-monied little
+bounder, measuring all pecks out of his own bushel,
+leaning up against a bar somewhere, probably too fuddled
+to distinguish his own humorous fancy from a story of
+life with names given, and believing it himself by the time
+he had repeated it once or twice.</p>
+
+<p>The little worm!</p>
+
+<p>"But," she said presently, disgustedly smiling, "<i>you</i>
+remember when I came to the School, and that I asked <i>you</i>
+who Mr. Jeffries was&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" said Kitty, suddenly entirely believing.
+"How absurd! But oh, I do love him so."</p>
+
+<p>Louie mused.</p>
+
+<p>"And he&mdash;Mr. Jeffries&mdash;knows nothing about this, you
+say?" she asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>"No. He thinks something's wrong. He's been teaching
+at the School, you know, and of course he must have
+wondered what was the matter all this last week."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a week since Mr. Merridew&mdash;did me this favour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But perhaps Jeff thought&mdash;&mdash;" She checked
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"What? I think I ought to know what Mr. Jeffries
+may have thought."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Kitty hesitated, and then, with a little burst, told her.
+It was curious. It appeared that Mr. Jeffries had been
+very hard up indeed, so hard up that, quite recently, he
+had actually had to take a position as a commissionaire.
+It was known, and possibly he had set any oddities of behaviour
+towards himself down to that.</p>
+
+<p>A commissionaire! Louie was astounded.</p>
+
+<p>"And aren't you going to tell him?" she managed to
+get out.</p>
+
+<p>"I must, the very next time I see him."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. You see"&mdash;Kitty hesitated again&mdash;"he's
+left the School. Practically been dismissed. He's
+got some work at Bedford now."</p>
+
+<p>"Dismissed on account of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect so."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, of course, you've got to tell him that you
+believed this?"</p>
+
+<p>Kitty dropped her head on the bed. She gave a little
+moan. "I don't know how I shall ever do it!" she
+groaned in the bedclothes.</p>
+
+<p>Louie considered herself entitled to agree that it
+wouldn't be easy.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Kitty rose. She crossed to Louie's mirror
+and adjusted the boat-shaped hat. Then she came back to
+the bedside again and craned her head forward.</p>
+
+<p>"May I see the baby?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Another time, I think," said Louie, her lips compressed.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty left.</p>
+
+<p>Louie's mind was in a whirl. At her request, Kitty had
+turned out the gas before leaving, and only a nightlight
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+glimmered on the little invalid's table. She gazed at it.
+So she too had been haled into the drama!</p>
+
+<p>On the young fancy stationer she wasted never a thought,
+either of indignation or of anything else; but Kitty&mdash;Evie
+Soames&mdash;Mr. Jeffries&mdash;Roy&mdash;herself!&mdash;What a nightmare&mdash;what
+a pantomime! What an incredible genius
+this Mr. Jeffries seemed to have for getting himself into
+complications and dragging other people after him! It
+might well have puzzled anybody&mdash;anybody who had not
+the key of the puzzle&mdash;to know which among them all he
+really had honoured with his choice! Only Miss Levey
+seemed to be immune. Surely, for the sake of completeness,
+he could have found a way of dragging her in too!</p>
+
+<p>Louie had to hold her key exceedingly firmly in order
+to retain even that lunatic theory that seemed to be the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>By dint of holding fast, however, the theory still stood
+the strain. Evie Soames and Mr. Jeffries were still the
+central figures of the piece. Kitty was still the stalking-horse
+behind which, for whatever reasons, he machinated.
+She herself was still merely dragged in at the whim of a
+vicious little scoundrel over whose tongue whisky and
+calumnies ran indifferently, and this little beast was still
+engaged, or all but engaged, to Evie Soames. Yes, the
+triangle re-established itself. Kitty and herself were no
+more than imported complications. The big man and
+the red-waistcoated youth were still the protagonists, and
+they faced one another over the stupid little head of Evie
+Soames.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Louie, lying with her boy at her breast and blinking
+at the nightlight, refused to class herself with the superfluous
+Kitty. She did not see herself in a "walking on"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+part. Though she made her entry late, something told
+her that she would have a word to say&mdash;or else it was a
+botched and mangled piece indeed. Of life itself as a
+botched and mangled piece she had no conception; though
+she kept her thoughts of Him locked within her own breast,
+it was still the bed of them that there <i>was</i> an Artist over
+all. But for a false start she would have been on the
+stage now, and she would have given a voice to that pitiful
+part of poor Kitty's. Say she had not left that Holborn
+School when she did&mdash;she remembered that breaking-up
+dance&mdash;had one more opportunity like that been given to
+her&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then in the darkness she coloured violently. She had
+realised her own thoughts. This was as much as to say
+that she would have accepted Kitty's rôle&mdash;would have consented
+to be an understudy&mdash;would, like other understudies,
+have ousted the principal in time&mdash;would have topped
+the bill with a man the latest of whose mysterious activities
+was that he had been a commissionaire&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She loved, or was on the point of loving, Mr. Jeffries&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" she ridiculed herself.</p>
+
+<p>But nonsense or not, it was stronger than all her efforts
+to think about something else. Perhaps it was her own
+false start that set her wondering, and ever returning to
+her wonder, whether he had not made one too. He seemed
+to have set up the figure of Evie Soames in his own imagination,
+and probably had not looked at Evie Soames as
+she actually was since. He seemed to have his full share
+of that masculine vanity which will have nothing to do
+with the compromise by which the world jogs on; his rapt,
+lion's eyes might see visions afar off, and he would not as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+much as know that his shins were black and raw with the
+bruises of the hard facts among which he stumbled. Little
+as Louie knew of him, she thought she knew that. Lucky
+Evie Soames, who might be as stupid as the mud beneath
+her feet, yet in one man's blind, far-seeing eyes could do
+no wrong!</p>
+
+<p>But of course it was nonsense that Louie should have to
+recognise Evie Soames for her rival.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, on one other point, as she lay with the babe at her
+breast and her eyes fixed on the little flame of the nightlight,
+she was already prepared to make a wager with herself.
+Her theory was still only a theory; she could not
+prove it; but it could prove itself. It would work out or it
+would not work out; if it worked out&mdash;well, Louie was a
+woman, and no woman hesitates for a single moment to put
+on the mantle of the prophet. Indeed, she had prophesied
+long before. "Circumstances are strong," this Mr. Jeffries
+who had since been a commissionaire had admitted
+when she had danced with him, "but is anybody ever
+beaten unless they deserve to be?" And he had taken his
+failure in the examination as a sign that he ought not to
+have gone in for it, and had refused to enter again. Yes,
+the earthenware vessel was on the point of collision with
+the one of bronze, and which would break the months or
+the weeks or the days would show. Kitty must not think
+that it availed a predestined spinster anything that she got
+engaged; Mr. Jeffries would never marry Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>And if Louie herself had returned to the Business
+School after Christmas&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Her dream of how she had danced with him, and he had
+said "<i>You</i> understand," and she had replied, "<i>I</i> should
+have found a way to keep you," returned vividly to her&mdash;&mdash;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She would have found a way.</p>
+
+<p>Then she remembered that which even then had stood
+between.</p>
+
+<p>Excitedly she clutched her boy to her&mdash;he woke with the
+pressure, and gave a little croaking cry.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the first of the two things that remained
+to be told about this part of Louie's story.</p>
+
+<p>For the second of them she had neither years nor months
+to wait, but a bare fortnight. A very few words will tell
+it.</p>
+
+<p>One evening after the boy had been put to bed she went
+down into the nurses' parlour and helped Dot and Nurse
+Chalmers to overhaul the blouses in which the doctors operated.
+Besides themselves, only Miss Cora was present;
+she was reading an evening paper. Louie saw her purse
+her lips and then throw the paper away. Presently Louie,
+tossing a patched blouse aside, reached for the paper.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later Miss Cora, with a "Why, what's
+the matter?" started forward and bent over her. Louie
+had gone deathly white.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing&mdash;I shall be all right presently," she muttered,
+her eyes closed.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Cora took the paper. The page at which she herself
+had last looked was still uppermost. It contained an
+account of a suicide.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dear?" Miss Cora asked again. "Not
+that?" She pointed to the paragraph. Indeed, there was
+little else of interest on the page.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be all right in a minute," Louie murmured
+again.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing remarkable about the suicide. A
+young man had hanged himself behind his bedroom door,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+and a verdict in accordance with the evidence (which, it
+was suggested, was largely medical) had been returned.
+He had left a letter for his mother, precisely like almost
+every other such letter, and parts of it were quoted. The
+young man's name was Archie Merridew. He was to have
+been married on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that it?" Miss Cora asked again.</p>
+
+<p>Louie nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>They are experienced women at nursing homes; especially
+about suppressed medical evidence they are able to
+draw conclusions. The next morning a few rapid guarded
+words passed between Louie and Miss Cora. The effect of
+them was to give Louie a sudden feeling of nausea. Miss
+Cora's whispered explanation seemed only too probable.
+That also was all in his character.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, you may be sure," said Miss Cora. "They
+ought to be lethal-chambered, nasty little sewer-rats; one
+of 'em's saved them the trouble at any rate. Did you know
+the girl he was going to marry too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she's had an escape. But don't think about it.
+You have your own little boy. Come into the garden till
+your father comes and then have a nice long drive. Shall
+we wrap Jimmy up and let him go with you?"</p>
+
+<p>That, then, was the second thing; but already Louie had
+heard a prophetical whisper in her soul.</p>
+
+<h2 class="p6">PART IV<br />
+PILLAR TO POST</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">I</p>
+
+<p>When, in the October of 1896, Louie Causton left
+Mortlake Road, with half the nurses of the home
+waving their handkerchiefs after her, she went to a house
+near the Parson's Green end of Wandsworth Bridge Road.
+As she left that house before Christmas, going to another
+one near the Walham Green Town Hall, there is no need
+to describe it. Neither need the Walham Green house be
+described, since from there she went, in February 1897,
+to yet another house, in a street off the Bishops Road, Fulham.
+These and other removals did not necessitate the
+use of a pantechnicon; a four-wheeler sufficed on each occasion.
+Louie, the boy and the nurse went inside; the top
+was quite big enough for her belongings. She stuck to the
+south-western district; at no time did she move farther
+east than when she took two rooms in Cheyne Walk, over a
+bicycle shop near the Chelsea suspension bridge&mdash;which
+rooms, by the way, she was forced to leave at an hour's
+notice, her landlord, a man of straw, being himself ejected
+and involving his sub-tenant in his own catastrophe. She
+kept to this district because of its nearness to Kingston and
+the Molyneux Arms. By the time the boy was nine
+months old she was living in Tadema Road, not far from
+where the Chelsea power-station now stands.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse whom she had engaged was a link&mdash;save for
+Chaff the only one&mdash;with Trant. She was, indeed, her
+own old French governess, once Céleste Martin, now
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>
+Céleste Farnier and a widow. She was a Provençale,
+from Arles. On the death of her husband, which had
+taken place while Louie had been still at the home in Mortlake
+Road, she had sought out Chaff with a sheaf of testimonials,
+and by-and-by Louie had engaged her. She paid
+her ten shillings a week, on the distinct understanding that
+she must not hesitate to accept the first decent post that
+offered. It was already plain that, even if Céleste could
+have brought herself to leave the little girl to whom she
+had taught the order of the personal pronouns in French,
+her affection for Master Jim would have haled her back
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Louie changed her abode so frequently for one reason
+and another. In perhaps a third of the cases the landladies
+to whom she offered herself as a lodger found reasons
+for asking her to leave when they saw that her letters
+were addressed to "Miss Causton." Then, to save cab
+fares, Louie began to make her position plain at the outset.
+Sometimes this made a difference, sometimes none.
+On the whole, London S.W. showed itself charitable or
+merely indifferent. By May 1897 she was at another
+house in Wandsworth Bridge Road.</p>
+
+<p>She had not refused to accept, easily and as a loan, a
+sum of money from Buck; but thrice she had well-nigh
+quarrelled with Buck because she would accept it only as a
+loan. Twice, for the same reason, she had had tussles with
+Chaff. But money, until she should find something settled
+to do, she must have. No doubt Richenda Earle would
+have shaken her head and have pointed out that now Louie
+not only had the Scarisbricks behind her, but a prosperous
+publican also; but Louie, though she lived as frugally as
+if she had to earn every penny, did not see why her boy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>
+should go short while there was money to be had. She
+took the sensible view of the matter, and borrowed, while
+walking her shoes out and answering advertisements for
+this, that and the other.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the summer of '97 her occupations had been almost
+as various as her addresses. She very soon discovered
+that her Holborn training was of little use to her, and
+she could not (as also she discovered) play the piano well
+enough to give lessons. What she dreamed of, of course,
+was a comfortable private secretaryship; no young woman
+is so ill-trained or so incompetent but she fancies herself
+good enough for a private secretaryship. Perhaps Uncle
+Augustus might have helped her to one, but she would
+have nothing to do with Uncle Augustus; and Chaff was
+unable to beat up anything of the kind. Buck's proposal,
+that she should keep his books, had been the cause of their
+second altercation. Common-sense in the matter of borrowing
+she was prepared to be; beyond that point she remembered
+her pride and Richenda's words. So for the
+present she was spared the worst of the pinch.</p>
+
+<p>So, in the early part of that year, she was in an A.B.C.
+cash-desk, traveller for a History, and saleswoman at an
+Earls Court chocolate-stall. Then, in June, she obtained,
+actually in the face of considerable competition, a place in
+the showrooms of a Bond Street photographer. Perhaps
+her dresses, of which several still remained, helped her
+to this place. She wrote letters, arranged appointments,
+answered press and other calls on the telephone, and received
+sitters. No doubt some of these knew Uncle Augustus.
+Robson, of the Board of Trade (who came one
+day), would probably know him; so would George Hastie,
+Robson's friend and colleague, and perhaps Sir Peregrine
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+Campbell and others. Some of them, the more sporting
+sort, might even know Buck too, for Buck was still a
+tradition; in short, Louie's own position amused her immensely.
+By taking her letters home with her and leaving
+a younger assistant in charge, she was frequently able
+to leave the showrooms by half-past four and to spend the
+evenings with Céleste and her boy. Incidentally, Louie
+improved her French a good deal, for Céleste crooned over
+the boy in French and English indifferently.... "The
+darleeng&mdash;the lo-ove&mdash;the précieux&mdash;oh, oh, oh, mais il
+existe&mdash;il manifeste, le petiot&mdash;&mdash;"; and she would break
+off to sing, in a cracked voice, "Le Pont d'Avignon," or
+some lullaby of Frédéric Mistral. She idolised the infant;
+when he was put to bed she did not delay long to follow
+him, for Louie, who had her work to do during the day,
+must not be roused at night; and so Louie frequently sat
+alone, writing her letters or wrapped in her own musings.
+She received thirty-five shillings a week. Her job had
+the appearance of a "permanency." In July she got a
+"rise" of three shillings a week. She also got ten days'
+holiday, the greater part of which she spent in the company
+of her father. She was beginning to know what holidays
+meant now.</p>
+
+<p>On one of those days she had an unexpected little meeting
+in Richmond Park. Céleste and the boy had gone on
+by train, and she was walking. The meeting was with a
+girl called Myrtle Morris, who, when Louie had kept the
+confectionery stall at Earls Court, had sold cigarettes at
+the stall adjoining. Miss Morris was accompanied by a
+tall young man; she stopped to greet Louie, and the young
+man walked slowly on. Myrtle asked Louie what she was
+doing now. Louie told her. "And you?" she said.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've gone back to my old trade," the girl said,
+nodding towards her retreating companion. "Artists'
+model. That's my present employer&mdash;Izzard."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" said Louie. The name seemed familiar.</p>
+
+<p>"Billy Izzard. Know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Louie. But she remembered now where
+she had heard the name.</p>
+
+<p>"Jolly clever painter," said the model authoritatively.
+"Nice fellow too. Shall I call him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, but I must be getting on," said Louie.
+"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"So long. Come and look me up some time, won't
+you? 25 Edith Grove."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>So that was Roy's friend! They had not gone down
+with the yacht that had lain under the hill at Rainham
+Parva. But she had only seen Mr. Izzard's back. For a
+moment, but only for a moment, she thought of Roy; then
+the sum-total of a long sequence of reveries returned to her
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Or rather, the factors that made that total returned. In
+spite of her broodings late at night, when her letters were
+written and Jimmy's food prepared for the night, she was
+still unable to cast them up. Had she been asked to state
+her relation now to Mr. Jeffries her attempt would have
+been something like this:</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly absurd, of course. There is no relation&mdash;nothing
+that can properly be called a relation. How
+can there be, with a man I don't see&mdash;haven't seen since
+that queer party? I don't even know where he is or
+what he's doing; he may be a commissionaire again for
+all I know."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but," she now answered herself, as if it had been
+some form of a dialogue, "don't forget that other night, at
+Mortlake Road, after Kitty'd gone."</p>
+
+<p>She did not forget that night. She had told herself
+that night that it was nonsense that she should love Mr.
+Jeffries. Again she answered that critical objector within
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"But it <i>is</i> nonsense after all! How <i>can</i> I? I suppose
+I mean that if things had been different I might have
+loved him. Moping about a man you never see is all very
+well for a schoolgirl for a week or two, but not for grown
+women, and mothers at that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you mean he's just the same to you as Buck
+and Chaff?" the dialogue continued, as she walked.</p>
+
+<p>"All I mean is that he might have been more."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, suppose you were to hear now that he'd broken
+off with Kitty, and&mdash;you know&mdash;that other were to happen?"</p>
+
+<p>She did know what she meant by "that other." It was
+the most familiar of her thoughts. It was what in her
+heart she was stilly waiting for&mdash;to learn one day that Mr.
+Jeffries had broken off with Kitty and had become engaged
+to Evie Soames. And at that point she always tried
+to stop the dialogue. Beyond that point lay something
+that she vaguely apprehended might be horrible.</p>
+
+<p>She had no definite reason for supposing this horrible
+thing to exist. The horror, indeed, was that it might
+exist, and to entertain morbid thoughts about something
+that merely might exist was neither pleasant nor wise.
+But at times she could not forget the promise she had once
+made to herself&mdash;that if anything unaccountable ever happened
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+to a certain young man she would know in what
+quarter to look for the likely cause of it. And something
+had happened. Part of what had happened she had had
+from Miss Cora; "A lethal chamber&mdash;the nasty little
+sewer-rat!" Miss Cora had said; and it had happened on
+the eve of his wedding to Evie Soames. To commit
+suicide had been the only thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>And of course he had committed suicide....</p>
+
+<p>Then that second voice within her tried to speak again.
+"Remember," it said, "that this Mr. Jeffries, of whom
+you can't help thinking when all's said and done, had suffered
+innumerable insults from him&mdash;you yourself were
+dragged into one of them&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet!" the other self commanded peremptorily.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;and as far as that girl you hate's concerned&mdash;Evie
+Soames&mdash;if the reason was good enough for suicide it was
+good enough for the other thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What other thing?" Louie, in spite of herself, could
+not help asking.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;<i>you</i> know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what you're saying?" This was an
+attempt to browbeat the other Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, perfectly well! <i>I</i> know myself&mdash;you&mdash;us&mdash;Louie
+Causton&mdash;better than you do! And I know that
+lion better! Have you forgotten? Don't you remember
+what you thought of him, that if he set his mind on a
+thing he'd get it sooner or later, one way or another?
+Don't you remember what he said&mdash;'I wonder if anybody's
+ever beaten who doesn't deserve to be?' They are
+dangerous men who believe that! And the way's clear
+for him now, isn't it? Of course it is! Why, suppose
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+you hear, first, that he's thrown Kitty Windus over; suppose
+you hear, next, that he's forging ahead in his business,
+whatever it is&mdash;you know he's as ambitious as Satan;
+then suppose you hear that he's engaged to Evie Soames&mdash;married
+to her. Suppose you hear all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, anybody can make up an <i>a priori</i> tale like that!"
+the other scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps they can; but what <i>is</i> a murder anyway?
+Whoever sees one committed? Don't they hang men on
+just such <i>a priori</i> tales, as you call it? Suppose that,
+rather than let him marry that girl&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stop, stop!" Louie positively shrieked within
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>She was white. This scene always turned her white.
+She quickened her pace, but her ghastly pallor remained
+unchanged. A hundred times she had argued it all before,
+and she knew the conclusion that would presently
+come.</p>
+
+<p>It came, the conclusion. That portion of herself that
+always seemed resolved to convict Mr. Jeffries of a hideous
+thing spoke, as it were, softly, seductively.</p>
+
+<p>"And what then, Louie? What then? Come, don't
+be afraid of yourself! You know it in your heart all the
+time! Roy&mdash;you remember&mdash;<i>you</i> had to make the love
+there; and you want to be <i>made</i> love to, not to make love.
+<i>You</i> didn't find Mr. Jeffries a butt and a laughing-stock,
+you know. You envied that little chit of a milliner's
+hand&mdash;envied her and hated her. And she hates you, and
+always will, because you caught her in the dark with that
+other creature. Yes, yes, I know you were overstrung at
+that time, and didn't see yourself very clearly, but look
+at the thing now&mdash;you're calm now. When you saw his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>
+eyes, all full of perils and stratagems and deceits, all for
+her sake, you know you longed to have a man do all that
+for <i>you</i>! And when he did that mad thing with Kitty
+Windus, you know you wanted a man who would go even
+to those lengths for <i>you</i>! And you know that when he
+throws her over&mdash;brutally, heartlessly, without conscience&mdash;you'll
+want a man who'll be just as brutal and heartless
+and conscienceless for <i>you</i>! You all want it! You
+all love a ruthless man! You know it's the men who are
+the merciful sex when sex comes into the question; you're
+only merciful when it doesn't&mdash;just as those stupid men
+are merciless about the abstractions you don't care a
+straw about!... So suppose&mdash;suppose&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stop!" Louie besought herself faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;suppose it turns out as I say! Won't you immediately
+love him a little more when poor Kitty's sent about
+her business? And won't you love him a little more still
+when you hear he's engaged to Evie Soames? And won't
+you, when you learn that he's been willing to go all lengths&mdash;all
+lengths&mdash;for love, love him past all mending? You
+will, you will, you know you will!" The cry rang out
+almost exultantly.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;those people&mdash;coroners' juries&mdash;are supposed
+to know all about these things."</p>
+
+<p>"Coroners' juries!... Do you remember his eyes?..."</p>
+
+<p>Beyond that point Louie never got. She usually rose
+quickly and went out to post the photographer's letters.
+There, then, were the elements of her sum. Sometimes
+some of them presented themselves, sometimes others;
+more and more she shrank from casting the total. And
+often, to shake off the hideous, fascinating obsession, she
+did the most trivial thing she could think of&mdash;went to a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+drawer and overhauled her dresses, selecting the one she
+would wear at the photographer's showroom on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>It was in her to turn from the thought of a possible
+murder to the shaking out of a crumpled dress.</p>
+
+<p>But she never wore the oyster-grey at the showrooms in
+Bond Street. Nevertheless she shook it out frequently,
+putting it back into the drawer again.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">That day, at the Molyneux Arms, Buck was alternately
+at his fondest and at his most tyrannical. The fondness
+was for Louie and the boy, the tyranny for everybody else.
+As Louie entered the little private parlour (she was not
+allowed to set foot in the rest of the premises) she heard
+loud crowings; they came from Jimmy, and were for the
+Pilgrim of Love who held him up at arm's-length in the
+air; but the next moment Buck was scolding a barmaid who
+had had the temerity to borrow the current number of
+<i>Modern Society</i> before Louie had seen it. "Not that I
+don't make 'em all read it," he said, "but at times and
+seasons, and in their proper places; what with all these
+Radicals and what not we don't want chayoss coming
+again! You bring it back this minute, miss!&mdash;'Oryn&mdash;thia
+my Belovèd!"</p>
+
+<p>Buck kept his divided humour through tea; then there
+was another outburst. This time it was about a letter
+that had not been given to Louie immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"And how do <i>you</i> know that it isn't important?" he
+broke out on his wife. "Not a word&mdash;not a word! I
+<i>know</i> it is important&mdash;all letters addressed so are important,
+mind, for the future! Those letters aren't about the
+butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, I'll have you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+know! Give it to her at once, and let Madermoselle
+hook up the back, or your next dress shall fasten down
+the front, I promise you!... What, little man! A
+granddad, eh? 'No re-(<i>h</i>)-est&mdash;but the gra-(<i>h</i>)-ave&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>For all Louie was able to guess from the signature, her
+letter might have been from butcher, baker and candlestick-maker,
+all three; the name&mdash;"hers to serve, Frank
+Hickley"&mdash;was unknown to her. But the single other
+name that the letter contained was known. It was that of
+Kitty Windus. She was laid up somewhere in Vauxhall,
+and wanted to see her.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, in a shabby respectable street off the
+Vauxhall Bridge Road, Louie rang a bell beneath which,
+punched in a strip of aluminium, was the sign, "F. Hickley,
+Agent." F. Hickley himself opened the door. Later
+Louie learned that he was an agent for his wife's shopping,
+boot-cleaning and potato-peeling. Mrs. Hickley was
+Kitty's cousin, but the bit she had coming in was not
+enough to relieve her of the necessity of keeping a lodging-house.
+That it was a lodging-house Louie guessed from
+the number and variety of hats and coats that hung in the
+narrow yellow-painted hall. Mrs. Hickley appeared from
+somewhere below; Mr. Hickley, descending again, passed
+her on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Miss Causton?" Mrs. Hickley asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've had a letter saying Miss Windus was
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come up? Don't take too much notice of
+her, what she says, especially about tracts; Uncle Arthur's
+side's liable to it. This way."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she ill?" Louie asked.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not to call ill. She'll go to Margate in a week or
+two, for the air, though Margate's too strong for me;
+Littlehampton's my favourite. And Bognor. Mind the
+stair-rod&mdash;I must tell Frank to fasten it down."</p>
+
+<p>As Kitty had formerly found Louie, so Louie now
+found Kitty&mdash;in bed. Her muteness as long as Mrs.
+Hickley remained in the room seemed obstinate, <i>voulu</i>;
+the rapid speech into which she broke without preface
+when her cousin's step had ceased to sound on the stairs
+confirmed some vague impression of secretiveness. Louie
+was uneasy at the change in her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not to talk about it," Kitty said, the words
+falling one over the other; "that's what the doctor meant,
+though of course he didn't know what it was. And Mr.
+Folliott too&mdash;the Reverend Mr. Folliott of St. Peters.
+He gave me the address in Cliftonville, quite the best end
+of the town; there's such a lot in a good address, don't you
+think? You know Margate?"</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, dear?" said Louie gently. "Yes, your
+cousin told me you were going away for a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Right away," said Kitty. "I can, you see; I haven't
+got to work if I don't want to; though I'm not rich, of
+course. Neither is Annie, but I don't like to see men doing
+the housework like Cousin Frank for all that. I've
+told Frank so again and again. '<i>Be</i> an agent,' I've said
+time after time; 'for typewriters, or mangles, or tea, or
+anything you like, but get out of the house; it isn't a
+man's place.' And it isn't.... You've heard?" she
+broke off suddenly to say.</p>
+
+<p>She blinked at Louie. Her neck above her nightgown
+was hardly more substantial than that of a chicken; her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+hands seemed to have become as veined as a skeleton leaf.
+Louie took one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Always running errands and setting the table&mdash;it
+isn't a man's life," Kitty continued. "'What does agent
+<i>mean</i>?' I said to him. 'Pull yourself together and <i>make</i>
+it mean something, Frank!' I said. 'You're not very
+big, but you're strong, and you've got your wits about
+you,' I said.... You've heard?" she demanded once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, tell me how you are," said Louie, patting the
+thin hand soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"But have you heard the news? Glad tidings for all.
+'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest'&mdash;that's what we
+all want&mdash;rest; though why they should print 'Come' in
+red and 'unto' in green and 'Me' in purple, and all the
+letters like twigs, I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear. And
+always Oxford frames. I must ask Mr. Folliott.
+'Though your sins be as crimson&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't asked how my little boy is, Kitty," said
+Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"'Suffer the little children, and forbid them not'&mdash;how
+is he?"</p>
+
+<p>But she did not wait for an answer. She was off
+again&mdash;the doctor, the Reverend Mr. Folliott, her approaching
+visit to Margate. And always she returned to
+the indignity of a man's doing women's work about the
+house. It was in this connection that she suddenly mentioned,
+in a way that gave Louie a slight start, the name
+of Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>"I will at least say that for him," she prattled; "I
+shouldn't have got sick of the sight of him; out of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+house at half-past nine he'd have been, and that would
+have been the end of him till six o'clock; not always bumping
+into you like Frank. I suppose you know Miss
+Levey's there too, at his Company? He's getting on there
+like anything. So's Mr. Mackie; you remember Mr.
+Mackie? He takes the auction himself now on Mondays
+and Thursdays; in Oxford Street; everybody stops as
+they walk past; he's a caution, is Mr. Mackie, I can tell
+you! But of course Jeff"&mdash;here she became mysterious,
+and nodded once or twice&mdash;"Jeff's on the way up&mdash;up.
+It's a different class of work from Mr. Mackie's; better, as
+you might say; he's in the Confidential Exchange Department,
+Miriam says&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How is Miss Levey?" Louie asked, at a loss what
+else to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in the pink&mdash;but the soul's the chief thing; what
+shall it profit a man; and I don't know whether her soul's
+in the pink. Do you always <i>hold</i> with the Church of
+England, Louie?" she asked earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to be made of her. She ran on
+weakly, irresponsibly, from trifle to trifle, and it was at
+Louie's own risk that she gave her talk any significance at
+all.... Suddenly she insisted that she herself had broken
+the engagement, not he. She spoke of his place in the
+Company&mdash;it was the Freight and Ballast Company; it
+appeared to be a "permanency." He was getting on&mdash;on;
+<i>he</i> wouldn't polish brasses and take the lodgers' boots to be
+mended!... As she talked, Louie looked round the poor,
+neat little bedroom. It had framed texts and a picture
+of a lady shipwrecked in a nightgown; this was entitled
+"Simply to Thy Cross I cling." There was a good deal
+of muslin about, tied back with flyblown bows.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But suddenly Kitty seemed to remember something.
+Louie was once more gently patting the hand on the
+counterpane when she gave a quick little clutch and sat
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"They wrote to you to come, didn't they?" she asked,
+looking hard at Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear. I'd have come sooner if I'd known. The
+letter was sent on from Mortlake Road. I came as soon
+as I got it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said Kitty, nodding mysteriously
+again. "I want to talk to you. Is the door shut?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but don't talk. Let me talk to you instead."</p>
+
+<p>"No; there's something I want to say, and I shall forget
+it if I don't say it now.... You heard about it,
+didn't you? I don't mean the glad tidings for all&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Lie down, dear." (Kitty was squatting up in bed.)
+"Tell me the next time I come. I'll come again."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I must tell you now. Though Jeff's sins be as
+scarlet. Of course you heard about Archie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you'd be down on him; quite right; so was
+Jeff. Jeff didn't half give him a talking to, I can tell
+you! 'Oh, I'll give him a dressing down,' he said; he
+was pretending it wasn't much, so as not to alarm me; but
+<i>I</i> know him! 'Miss Causton and me?' he said. 'What
+a ridiculous idea!' And he made Archie apologise before
+the whole school. And now Archie's gone, and they
+said it was suicide; but what I can't understand is about
+Jeff's having that black eye, that very day. He'd fallen
+when he was drunk, he said, but Jeff never got drunk.
+He said he tripped on the step; but he never <i>got</i> drunk,
+if you understand what I mean. Wine is a mocker, isn't
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>
+it, Louie? But I'm sure Jeff wasn't drunk. He isn't
+that kind of man."</p>
+
+<p>Louie herself wondered why she should interpose as
+quickly and peremptorily as she did. She wondered, too,
+why she should do so in the words she used and in a voice
+so thin and harsh.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;of <i>course</i> he was drunk! My father keeps a
+public-house, so I ought to know. And they often get
+black eyes when they're drunk. Let's talk about something
+else."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Kitty, with her head on one side, "a
+public-house is as paying a business as there is, especially
+in a poor neighbourhood. But I'd rather have my little
+bit in tramways. People ought to be careful how they
+invest their money; dividends aren't everything; what
+shall it profit a man? So you think I needn't worry about
+Jeff's black eye?"</p>
+
+<p>All at once Louie felt an almost hysterical need to turn
+Kitty's weak wanderings into another direction&mdash;any other
+direction. Glibly she began to improvise.</p>
+
+<p>"It's horrid," she said, her voice a little raised. "I've
+seen them at my father's. They get drunk, and fall, and
+then they get black eyes quite easily. And," she ran on
+regardlessly, "they knock themselves about fearfully!
+I saw a man in the Harrow Road one night&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Feverishly she extemporised. To something she had
+once seen from the top of a bus she gave colour and circumstance.
+Kitty was impressed. "Dear me!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the danger, whatever it was, seemed to be
+averted, Louie turned, though not much more calmly, to
+Margate. Kitty was perfectly docile; Margate or that
+dangerous other were all the same to her. Louie had never
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+been to Margate, but she compared Margate with other
+places&mdash;Bournemouth, Ilfracombe, Scarboro.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to go to Scarboro," Kitty mused&mdash;"Harrogate
+too&mdash;Harrogate's tremendously toney, isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very; all hotels and kursaals and pump rooms and
+things," averred Louie, who had never been to Harrogate
+either.</p>
+
+<p>Then, ten minutes later, she rose. She said good-bye.
+But even as she did so she received another start. Kitty
+had suddenly called in a sharp, loud voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that Annie at the door?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Louie, her nerves all on edge. "There's
+nobody."</p>
+
+<p>"Open the door and look!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie did so. There was nobody. She returned to
+the bed again. Kitty was once more squatting up. She
+still spoke sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very well to be so cocksure," she said, "but if
+Annie was to guess, or Miriam Levey or any of them, it
+would be all U P, I can tell you! Or Evie Soames either!
+I only told you because you're different and can hold your
+tongue! The tongue is a little member, so the best thing
+people can do is to shut up, you take my tip! And <i>I</i>
+broke it off, mind you! There's as good fish in the sea
+as ever came out of it, without girls making themselves
+cheap, and if he ever wants to know I'll tell him straight&mdash;no
+drunks and black eyes for me! Not that I don't forgive
+my enemies; I'm as good at that as the next one;
+but when I'm engaged again it'll be to somebody who's
+TT absolutely, though he does clean the knives!" Then,
+dropping her voice again, she said equably: "Good-bye,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+dear&mdash;you will come again, won't you? I sha'n't be going
+for a fortnight&mdash;the rooms aren't at liberty yet&mdash;there
+isn't a sea view, but it isn't a minute from the Ramsgate
+tram&mdash;you must come and stay with me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie left her. Downstairs in the hall she had a few
+words with Kitty's cousin. She asked when the engagement
+with Mr. Jeffries had been broken off, and was told
+a year ago. Part of the time since then Kitty had spent
+with another cousin, Alf Windus, who lived in Kilburn and
+played the first fiddle at the Metropolitan in Edgware
+Road; part she had spent at Alf's sister-in-law's at Wealdstone;
+and for the rest of the time she had been at the
+Hickleys'. She was only a little flighty at times, and Mrs.
+Hickley was too busy, what with breakfasts at different
+hours and some liking one thing and some another, to pay
+much attention to her. She would have taken her for
+nothing if she could, but life was a struggle and business
+was business, and Mrs. Hickley had been lucky enough
+to let her room for the time she would be away at Margate.
+If Kitty really had anything to keep from her
+cousin, apparently (Louie concluded) she had kept it.
+Probably Kitty's condition (Mrs. Hickley added) was a
+result of the shock of Archie Merridew's suicide, coinciding
+with her rupture with Mr. Jeffries. Beyond that
+Mrs. Hickley minded her own business&mdash;plenty, too,&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you for coming," she said, opening the door
+for Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall come again if I may," Louie replied.</p>
+
+<p>Already she knew that she would go again&mdash;must go
+again&mdash;though it was only when she had left the house
+behind her that she began to ask herself why. Then
+followed another dialogue. The critical Louie began it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, what did I tell you? His engagement's off, and
+he's getting on in his business. I'm right so far, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Too right," the other Louie muttered. "Let it rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it let you rest&mdash;that's the question! Well, what
+do you want next&mdash;his engagement to Evie Soames?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want anything. I've got my boy and my living
+to earn. That fills my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are you going to see Kitty again? Come,
+don't shirk it. You know why you're going. You're
+going to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to protect him! If that poor creature
+thinks she guesses, you're going to tell her the notion's
+perfectly absurd! You're going to lie to her! If she has
+weak fancies, you're going to see that they're just as wide
+of the truth as they can be. Do you still deny what the
+truth is? After whatever the tale is he's been telling about
+drunkenness and a black eye? <i>Is</i> he that kind of man?
+<i>Isn't</i> that just as likely as not to be one of his blinds? A
+man has to be cunning, you know, to hoodwink a coroner's
+jury, but somehow he seems to have done it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you believe he hasn't done it? Then why
+are you going to see Kitty again? Oh, don't pretend to
+me! I tell you you're going to protect him. And why
+are you going to protect him? (Ah, I didn't think of that
+before, but I see it now!) You'll love him a little more
+still just for that! You'll love him because you have his
+safety in your hands. You'll keep it in your hands.
+Even if you have to take Kitty to live with you, so that
+you can watch her every spare moment, you'll take care she
+never, never knows. You're planning it now. You're
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+going to have a right in that man no other woman on
+earth has, Evie Soames or anybody else. And you're
+going to take him from Evie Soames too, if you can!"</p>
+
+<p>The other attempted irony. "What, me? With my
+story?"</p>
+
+<p>"You only regret your story because it stands now in
+your way of getting him! Would you marry Roy now
+even if you could gain a kingdom by it? Why, you
+wouldn't before, let alone now! What are you going to
+see Kitty again for&mdash;to-morrow? We shall see! Your
+nerves are all a-jump at this moment; you don't feel it
+safe to leave here even for a few hours! And another
+thing. Miriam Levey seems to be at his place, wherever
+it is, and you're positively trembling about <i>that</i>!
+While you're trying to worm things out of Kitty on the
+one side, she'll be at the other&mdash;<i>you</i> know what she is!
+So the first thing you'll do will be to find out exactly
+what Kitty's got into her head."</p>
+
+<p>But here the normal Louie temporarily triumphed.
+"What a tale you're making up!" she laughed. "These
+things simply do not happen. Actually, you're trying to
+force it on me that I love a man simply because he's
+committed a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not simply because&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that I'm in love with a man who has committed
+one. Tell that to the world, and see how you're
+laughed at!... Oh no, it's too much. People don't do
+it, especially when it's guesswork, pure and simple&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>So she triumphed. The other Louie held her peace.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that she went to see Kitty again on the
+morrow.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">II</p>
+
+<p>It was an error of judgment that caused Louie to leave
+the photographer's in Bond Street. The money she
+owed to Buck and Chaff was on her mind; she saw that
+Richenda Earle had been right; she was not yet out in
+the open. She sought to diminish her indebtedness by
+finding a better-paid post.</p>
+
+<p>The opportunity presented itself. She obtained, at a
+salary of three pounds a week, the coveted secretaryship.
+Never mind to whom she became secretary; he is now a
+renowned author; and Louie was with him for just a
+fortnight. At the end of that time he offered to double
+her salary. Louie's answer was to walk immediately out
+of his house. She had now no job at all.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the pinch shall be passed over lightly. The
+boy did not feel it; it was she who tightened her belt.
+Promising herself that it was for the last time, she borrowed
+of Buck, and then removed to Edith Grove, taking
+two small rooms in the same house as Myrtle Morris, the
+model. But Myrtle had gone for the Christmas season
+into pantomime, and as Louie was out all day, and asleep
+when Myrtle returned at night, she saw little of her. She
+would have gone into pantomime too, but she was too late,
+and still hoped for something better. Of necessity
+Céleste remained with her; Céleste kept the place going
+with her needle. This was at the beginning of 1898.
+February found her again in a cash-desk, this time at
+Slater's. The desk had a mirrored panel in the front of
+it that extended from the narrow counter to the floor, and
+at first Louie wondered why clerks and shop-assistants put
+down their money, stood back from the desk, and grinned.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+Then one day, when somebody else was inside the box, she
+noticed the illusion. The head and shoulders of the girl
+in the cage appeared to be continued downwards by the
+trousers of a man. As she could not afford to throw up
+her job, she continued to bear the grins disdainfully.
+After her day's work she acquired from Céleste the art
+of crochet. Her mats and table-centres and borders for
+teacloths went in with Céleste's own work.</p>
+
+<p>Her improved French enabled her to pass, in April,
+from the cash-desk at Slater's to one at a foreign restaurant
+in Soho. She still lived in Edith Grove. For several
+weeks that summer she was again at Earls Court,
+but with the reopening of the theatres she obtained a
+place in the ladies' cloakroom at His Majesty's. One
+night she helped Miss Elwell, the daughter of Sir James
+Elwell of the Treasury, off with her cloak. She was unrecognised.
+She wondered how B. Minor was getting on.</p>
+
+<p>She was still at His Majesty's at Christmas 1898; but
+the New Year saw her at still another place&mdash;a Ladies'
+Turkish Baths, in St. James's. Buck, angry and disapproving
+of the whole course of her life, liked this least
+of all; massage somehow brought it home to him. But
+there was a worse shock still in store for Buck. In the
+spring of '99 Louie became an artist's model.</p>
+
+<p>Myrtle Morris introduced her to the profession and to
+Roy's friend, Billy Izzard, at the same time. This also
+was in Edith Grove. Billy Izzard, whose large, boyish
+face and loose, shambling figure somehow gave Louie the
+impression that he had either grown too quickly or else
+not yet filled out, was telling Miss Morris, with a candour
+entirely disarming, that for some purpose or other her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+own form was no good at all; and Miss Morris asked him
+why he didn't try the Models' Club. He snorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Try it? I have tried it; tried everything. Fact of
+the matter is, it's like going to a Registry Office for servants;
+you find the rich people have snapped up all the
+best before they get there. Old Henson gets 'em. He's
+got the very girl I want; Miss Gale; but I can't pay what
+Henson pays. And the rest of you are like that egg&mdash;good
+in parts."</p>
+
+<p>Louie wondered whether Billy had ever heard her name
+before; she found a way of making sure. The talk
+turned to holiday-places for the coming summer, and
+Louie contrived to mention the Somerset coast and the
+Bristol Channel. The unsuspecting Billy told her that
+he had once been yachting there with a fellow and had
+had a smash-up. It was amusing. According to Billy,
+the other fellow had rather fancied himself as a patcher-up
+of broken centre-boards and suchlike, had put in at some
+place or other, and had said he'd made the centre-board
+all right; and he'd come pretty near drowning the pair
+of them off a place called Combe Martin. Luckily they'd
+been spied by the coastguard, and a boat had been put out
+to them. "Rottenest piece of navigation in England,"
+Billy grumbled on; "there's a place called the Boiling
+Pot&mdash;&mdash;" He described it....</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt a little gush of gratitude towards Roy. He
+had not chattered. But of course he would not&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She did not offer at once to sit to Billy; it was a fortnight
+later that she screwed up her courage to do so.
+During that time she thought the matter out. Perhaps
+the stark simplicity of the thing attracted her. No acquirement
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>
+she was ever likely to possess would greatly
+improve her circumstances; it would probably be the same
+to the end of the chapter&mdash;cash-desk, waitress, Earls
+Court&mdash;Earls Court, mannequin, and a private secretaryship
+with an offer of double wages. At two colleges she
+had learned little or nothing; she lacked application; but
+here was something that quietly brushed acquirements
+aside&mdash;something that went flagrantly by favour. It was
+femininity reduced to its simplest statement. She had
+no fear of Billy Izzard. She guessed that to him she
+would be little more than a more complex whitewashed
+cube or cone or pyramid.</p>
+
+<p>She did not even colour when she made her proposal to
+him....</p>
+
+<p>"But I expect you'll go off to old Henson or some
+other swell presently," he sighed, as she stood before
+him....</p>
+
+<p>And of course Chaff, barring her face that was best
+suited with a large shady hat, had given her her testimonial
+long before.</p>
+
+<p>Buck was furious. The original, genuine Pilgrim of
+Love had reason enough to know what happened in
+studios. Young women of high birth (in Louie's case
+it would probably be a young man) began to take their
+lunches there, and one day burst into jealous unhappy
+tears, and after that the Pilgrimage began. But Louie
+only laughed at him. She reminded him that she had
+reason to regard herself as a pilgrim too. At that Buck
+looked hard at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Little woman," he said slowly, "d'you mean&mdash;that
+there is somebody?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+Louie laughed again, but more consciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Once or twice lately," Buck continued, still looking
+hard at her, "I've wondered whether there might
+be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How can there be, daddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the other isn't befitting," said Buck, shaking his
+head and returning to the original point.</p>
+
+<p>"My daddy did it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, men's different. For high ladies it&mdash;it isn't befitting."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a young girl, daddy."</p>
+
+<p>"No." Buck sighed. If he had only known her when
+she was a young girl! But the whims of the Scarisbricks
+were still the Scarisbricks' whims, and as such above his
+judgment. "But I want to see this Mr. Izzard," he
+added grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"That you certainly sha'n't," Louie replied promptly.
+"Fancy your taking me round everywhere I go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Everywhere?" Buck repeated, alarmed anew.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. If it's a business it's a business. Why,
+Mr. Izzard alone would be&mdash;dreadful! It's no good,
+daddy; you can't change my mind."</p>
+
+<p>He saw that he could not, but he still tried. It only
+delayed a little her carrying of her point. In the end&mdash;well,
+she was her mother's daughter. There was no more
+to be said.</p>
+
+<p>So she began to make the round of the Chelsea studios,
+and presently moved, with Céleste and the boy, to more
+comfortable quarters in Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction.
+This took her farther from her work in Chelsea, but
+brought her nearer to the Lambeth and Westminster
+Schools of Art, where also she obtained sittings, sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>
+during the day, sometimes in the evenings also.
+She sat for Billy when Billy could afford to pay her.
+"No, no&mdash;no tick, Billy," she told him once; "I don't
+do this for amusement." Of the boy Billy knew nothing....
+Buck, still strongly averse from the whole proceeding,
+at first refused to hear her gossip of the day's
+work; but, as his silence did not alter matters, little by
+little he began to come round. Soon they exchanged experiences
+quite freely. He told her what Sopley had
+said about his deltoid, Henson about his thigh. "You
+vain old daddy!" she said, stroking his cheek, "I believe
+for two pins you'd do it again!" She took a pleasure in
+fondly shocking him in the same sort. Sometimes he
+mused long. You will admit that it was something to
+muse over. And so&mdash;well, so Louie, throwing acquirements
+aside with her clothes, became, by virtue of her
+peculiar commodity, economically emancipated. As female
+models, women are eminently better than men.</p>
+
+<p>She did fairly well at it. So well did she do that from
+the three rooms in Lavender Hill (the third one Céleste's)
+piece by piece her landlady's furniture began to disappear.
+Her own took its place. She intended, when she had
+enough of her own, to save the difference in rent between
+furnished and unfurnished quarters by taking a small flat.
+So her two chests of drawers and her wardrobe were her
+own; so were much of her cutlery and bed and table linen;
+and so, of course, were Jimmy's various paraphernalia.
+But she was not ready to leave yet. The summer of 1900,
+she thought, would be early enough.</p>
+
+<p>And in one particular at least she was now able to hold
+up her head. She still owed money both to Buck and
+Chaff, but she knew as much about the struggle for a livelihood
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+as Richenda Earle herself. And she had not
+grizzled. Life had not knocked her out. She was her
+father's daughter after all.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, once more, she felt herself her mother's daughter
+too. The reason, which was not very far to seek, was
+this:</p>
+
+<p>The earlier stages of that furtive romance that in the
+end had left her former husband no Rest but the Grave
+were known only to Mrs. Chaffinger herself. Henson had
+not guessed them; Lord Moone had seen only the resultant
+scandal of them. But Louie understood a little now.
+She could at least guess what had happened to her mother
+between her first setting eyes on the splendid Buck and
+that final petulant, pathetic cry: "Oh, that I should have
+to beg a man to marry me!" By sympathy she was able
+now to divine the sighs, the half-acknowledged longings,
+the half-shamed daydreams, the revulsions, the sinkings
+back again. For Louie now knew something of these
+things within herself.</p>
+
+<p>Not that there was not harder stuff in Louie. There
+was. There was, for example, that sense of proportion
+which is humour. How could her thoughts of Mr. Jeffries
+not be rather preposterous? She found it difficult
+sometimes to remember even his personal appearance; she
+had well-nigh forgotten his voice; many idle repetitions
+had dulled the memory of that odd little thrill she had felt
+when her hand had lain in his. True, she remembered
+these things in a way. She remembered the tawny bulk
+of him, the lion's eyes, the gloss of his hair, the modeless
+fashion of his speech; but these were mere noted
+facts, no more hers than everybody else's. Yet what (she
+asked herself) had become of her sense of humour that she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+should want something of him that nobody else had?
+What had happened to her sense of proportion that she did
+not forget him as she had forgotten scores of people of
+whom she had seen far, far more? And how had it come
+about that, for one thought she cast on Roy, Mr. Jeffries
+had twenty? And why this new and curious understanding
+of her mother?</p>
+
+<p>She asked herself these questions behind the grilles of
+her cash-desks, behind the counters of her Earls Court
+stalls, posing or crocheting on her model thrones, riding
+backwards and forwards to her sittings or what not on
+the tops of omnibuses. Usually she answered herself
+more or less like this:</p>
+
+<p>"It looks very much as if I was making of him what
+he seems to have made of that Soames girl&mdash;a sort of <i>idée
+fixe</i>; if I were to fall really in love now, I suppose I
+shouldn't think any more about him. Luckily it doesn't
+matter; it's my own affair. Good gracious, suppose he
+knew! He'd think me as imbecile as I am!&mdash;There I go
+again!" (This probably, some minutes later.) "Suppose
+I <i>had</i> met him earlier, and things <i>had</i> been different&mdash;what
+about it? What's the good of remembering
+all that now? Well, it puts the time on down this beastly
+Kennington Lane.... Thank goodness I'm not likely
+to come across him; I can't help thinking something
+would happen if I did.... Poor mother!" she usually
+ended inconsequentially, "I suppose she'd be about my
+age. I'm turned thirty&mdash;thirty-one in fact&mdash;shall have to
+stop counting soon. Time you stopped counting when it
+occurs to you that your mother had dreams just as silly as
+yours&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And so, whether this Mr. Jeffries meant much or little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+to her, he did not mean so much but that any trivial near
+occurrence&mdash;a cold of young Jimmy's, a cold of her own
+that prevented her from sitting for a day or two, or a fall
+in the crochet-market&mdash;put Mr. Jeffries and the wild and
+tangled ideas that seemed to cloak his image temporarily
+quite out of her thoughts.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">When early in the year 1900 she got regular sittings for
+a time with an artist who lived in St. John's Wood, she
+never went up or down Tottenham Court Road in the
+Victoria bus without half expecting to run across Evie
+Soames, who lived in Woburn Place. Because she did not
+meet her, she concluded that very likely she lived there no
+longer. But, late on a windy afternoon in March, at
+about the time when the street lamps were being lighted,
+she did meet her.</p>
+
+<p>It was opposite the Adam and Eve, in Euston Road,
+and on either of the two women's parts there was a curious
+momentary hesitation. If Evie Soames still lived in
+Woburn Place and was going home, the first bus that came
+would do for her, and Louie had already seen her glance
+as it approached; but as it happened, that bus was the
+Victoria bus for which Louie herself was waiting. Louie
+spoke; it seemed to her that not to speak would be to
+apologise, by silence, for that episode in her career that
+had brought Kitty Windus in haste to the Nursing Home
+in Mortlake Road. A large parcel she was carrying gave
+her an excuse not to shake hands.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Something, she could not have told what, had instantly
+drawn her eyes to the girl's attire. Evie Soames was
+wearing a black jacket and black fur cap, but the wind,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+turning the jacket aside, showed the narrow black and
+white stripes of the blouse beneath.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;fancy meeting you!" Evie said, turning her
+dark eyes as if she had only that moment seen Louie.
+There was something in her manner that Louie interpreted
+as meaning, "Very well, if I've got to be cordial I'll <i>be</i>
+cordial!" "Are you going by this bus?" she added.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Where are you living now&mdash;Putney?"</p>
+
+<p>It may be that Louie met any slight the last word might
+have conveyed half-way and more. She replied, a little
+shortly: "No, Lavender Hill; I change at Victoria.
+After you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no&mdash;after you!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie ascended; they couldn't stand on the kerb discussing
+points of precedence. "Let's go in front," Evie
+said, "and then men won't smoke on us," and they settled
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Evie said, adjusting the apron, "and how are
+<i>you</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Louie, "perfectly well."</p>
+
+<p>"There's room for your parcel here. Such ages since
+we met! Let me see, when was it?"</p>
+
+<p>They discussed when it was, and then, "And have you
+seen Kitty Windus lately?" Evie asked.</p>
+
+<p>Since her first visit to the Hickleys' Louie had seen
+Kitty perhaps half-a-dozen times in all, not oftener.
+Kitty had been to Margate, thence to Whetstone, and
+after that to Alf Windus the violinist's. Louie had simply
+not been able to see her oftener; she had had far too
+much to do. And, after all, nothing (the nothing of
+Louie's fears and fancies) seemed to have happened. Except
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+to herself (Louie guessed) Kitty made no mysterious
+allusions to black eyes. She was merely puzzled, pathetic,
+harmless. She had not that perilous thing, a preconceived
+theory into which events had a fulfilling way of
+dropping of themselves. So Louie replied to Evie Soames
+in a tone as casual as her own:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I've seen her several times. Of course you
+heard that her engagement to Mr. Jeffries was broken
+off?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," said Evie, looking straight in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen her, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no. But of course Mr. Jeffries himself would
+know, wouldn't he?&mdash;that is, if you call it breaking off
+when a person just disappears without saying where she
+is or anything about it. Don't bother to unbutton; I have
+some pennies&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Louie also had pennies. "Any more fares?" the
+conductor called, and then went downstairs again. The
+two women fell into a silence. The early lamplight came
+and went on their faces as the bus jogged on.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the silence seemed to have taken almost the
+character of a contest as to who should speak next, with
+either resolved that it should not be herself. Louie knew
+perfectly well what was the matter. Miss Soames might
+speak glancingly of Mortlake Road and offer to pay her
+bus fares, but really she hated Louie because of Louie's
+discovery in the old ledger-room on that examination day
+that now seemed so long ago. The girl seemed to be still
+in some sort of half mourning&mdash;but Louie did not want to
+think much of that and all that it might mean. Rather
+desperately, she strove to forget that she had ever had a
+theory about what might have driven Evie Soames into
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+black and of what might happen when she went into colours
+again. She must, she told herself sharply, have a hideous
+mind ever to have thought these things. Indeed, she was
+so short with herself about it that, relinquishing the contest
+of silence, she again made the small immediate thing
+banish the large shadowy one behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever see Miriam Levey nowadays?" she asked
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Evie replied. At any rate she had not been the
+first to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh? But aren't she and Mr. Jeffries at the same
+place now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I believe they are&mdash;in fact, I know they are. I
+suppose Kitty told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Kitty! But let me see: was Miriam at the
+office when Kitty came to Mortlake Road? I thought it
+was after that she went."</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen Kitty more than once," said Louie, compressing
+her lips. The bus was slowing down opposite
+the Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, you said so. Well, remember me to her
+when you see her again, won't you? I get down here. I
+hope you'll get your parcel home all right; it's rather a
+large one, isn't it? Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>As Evie Soames's figure was lost in the crowd that
+jostled in the lights of the Horse Shoe Louie did not look
+round. She was too angry. "Good gracious!" she exclaimed,
+"the insupportable little creature! Why, I
+never looked at one of my mother's housemaids so! <i>De
+haut en bas</i>&mdash;her to me! But I did catch you that day,
+Miss Polly Ross, and you know it!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But as the bus moved southwards again, she was trying
+once more to forget that white stripe in Evie Soames's
+dress. She did not want to think that anything had suddenly
+seemed to come a stride nearer. And she would
+now rather not have been told, what apparently was the
+fact, that, whether frequently or not, Evie Soames did see
+Mr. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>The parcel she was taking home contained a dress; she
+had been sitting in it; but it was not the oyster-grey.
+The old oyster-grey, too, served to bring her nearer to her
+mother and that weak flicker of romance long ago in
+Henson's studio. Not for worlds would she have had
+Céleste see the idiotic looks she sometimes gave that dress
+in which she had danced with Mr. Jeffries. And sometimes
+she would suddenly toss it aside, roughly, anyhow.
+She was not seventeen (she would tell herself), to moon
+over a flower a man had given her or a dance programme
+on which he had scrawled his name. She was a woman
+of turned thirty-one (she rubbed it in), with her living
+to earn and an illegitimate son to provide for.... But
+sometimes she was very wistful too. She had never (she
+sighed) really been a girl of seventeen at all; looking
+back, she saw that she had missed that. She blamed nobody;
+no doubt she had been unruly, ill-conditioned, unmanageable;
+still, she had missed that. The thought always
+sent her off into her reveries again; and then, how
+differently, how much more admirably, she was able to
+plan everything to herself! Over and over again she built
+it all up, unbuilt it again, rearranged it, played with it.
+Had she, as a girl of seventeen, met Mr. Jeffries&mdash;had
+this circumstance been different, that particular not been
+the same&mdash;had she nursed no grudge against her mother&mdash;had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+it been Mr. Jeffries, not Roy, with whom she had
+kicked her long legs during the vacations at Mallard
+Bois&mdash;had she, in a word, had the arranging of the world
+herself and the choosing of the places she and he were to
+occupy in it&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Bosh!" she usually cut herself abruptly off. "I shall
+be afraid of turning a corner soon for fear of walking into
+the gentleman! What shall I take in for supper?"</p>
+
+<p class="p2">She did not know yet&mdash;indeed it was only some months
+later that she learned it, but it is set down here&mdash;that already,
+at a Langham Exhibition, Billy Izzard had one day
+seen a big stranger standing before one of his sketches, had
+gone up and spoken to him, and had liked the fellow&mdash;had
+liked his hewn slab of a face with the yellow eyes in it so
+much that presently, having an old sketch he was never
+likely to sell, he had given it to him. But Billy would
+at any time rather give away a sketch to somebody he
+liked than sell one to somebody he didn't like, and he still
+set, moreover, less than their real value on those paintings
+of flowers that he "knocked off" in a couple of keen and
+nervous hours. One of these sketches, by the way, Louie
+herself coveted&mdash;a straggle of violets, a few white ones
+among them, in a lustre bowl; and she offered a certain
+number of sittings in exchange for it&mdash;another elementary
+example of the transaction in kind. But Billy shook his
+head. He wanted that for a wedding present for a fellow,
+he said. He'd give Louie another some time&mdash;after
+he'd found another studio. He was sick of Chelsea; when
+a fellow got to know the cracks in the flagstones it was
+time he moved. He thought of going up north somewhere,
+Camden Town or Hampstead or St. John's Wood&mdash;better
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>
+air. So Louie could make up her mind to the bus-rides,
+or else move too. He wasn't going to let Henson get
+hold of her.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie still delayed to move from Lavender Hill.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">III</p>
+
+<p>Louie's adventures, as she continued to sit, would
+fill a book: but not this book. Her sittings were the
+accidents of her life; her real life she reckoned from Sunday
+to Sunday. Sundays were the blest days she devoted
+to Jimmy.</p>
+
+<p>He was now nearly four years old, and (as Céleste continued
+delightedly to exult) "existed" and "manifested"
+indeed. Louie herself gave him her bath before she set
+out of a morning; she did so in a waterproof and little
+else&mdash;why, the splashed condition of the wall-paper in the
+poky little bathroom explained. It was the same old waterproof
+she had worn at Rainham Parva. Buck's admiration
+of the boy's chest and limbs was merely fatuous; he himself
+was teaching him to swim at the Public Baths. He had
+announced to Louie, with a great show of harshness, that
+the money she was fool enough to refuse, the boy would
+have the benefit of; that at least was something she
+couldn't prevent, he informed her, and though Louie
+scolded fondly back, it was a weight off her mind. Chaff,
+the other grandfather, came occasionally on Sundays; he
+came, for example, on the Sunday after the opening of the
+Royal Academy. He brought a catalogue with him, and,
+taking Louie into a corner, desired her to mark the numbers
+for which she had sat. Whether the poor old fellow
+meditated the buying of them all up, or what else, there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+was no telling. Her sittings, too, were "just like Mops."
+Perhaps that was more than some of the pictures were.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not true, as has been reported, that for Henson's
+last picture, "Resurgam," Buck Causton and his
+daughter posed together. Buck never posed after his
+first marriage. Louie only posed for Henson once, and
+that was in wet drapery. She caught a pretty cold in consequence.
+She exulted in that cold; it gave her three
+whole days with little Jimmy. They played with tops and
+balls and soldiers on the floor. The boy wanted an ensign's
+uniform, like that of the fourth Lord Moone in the
+miniature, and Chaff bought him a dragoon's helmet and
+cuirass. Buck laughed because the cuirass was already
+too small; and then he sighed. Perhaps he remembered
+the suit of armour of Big Hugo at Mallard Bois.</p>
+
+<p>Well, if a little money was all that was necessary, the
+boy could be put into the army by-an-by.</p>
+
+<p>And so things might have gone on had they been destined
+to do so; but into Louie's life of busy sitting and foolish
+dreaming and Sunday's rompings with her boy, there
+came a disruptive force. Kitty Windus brought it on a
+Sunday morning in early June.</p>
+
+<p>Céleste was reading a story to Jimmy when she walked
+in; Louie was putting the last touches to a piece of crochet;
+and all three were awaiting Buck's arrival with the trap&mdash;he
+was going to take them to Hampton Court. She entered
+unannounced, and, to Louie's way of thinking, would
+have been better in bed. Her face seemed unusually small
+and thin; she spoke in a high, painful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Louie, I want to see you&mdash;quick&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was as if Louie too caught an instant alarm. Hurriedly
+she dropped her just-finished crochet and rose.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Come into
+my bedroom."</p>
+
+<p>In the quite prettily furnished little bedroom Kitty began
+to walk rapidly to and fro. Once or twice she turned
+her looks to the brown-papered walls, as if she expected to
+find texts there; for the rest the blinking little eyes roved
+ceaselessly at about knee-height from the floor. Then she
+stopped before Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"They're getting married in a fortnight," she cried
+harshly, accusingly.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need for Louie to ask who, nor did she know
+what instinct again, as before, bade her take up a definite
+attitude without a moment's delay. She only felt in her
+very bones that delay would be perilous, and that not the
+shade of an expression must cross her face that was not
+natural and unsurprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course; didn't you know?" she said quietly.
+"Mr. Jeffries and Evie Soames, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Kitty made that painful little sound&mdash;<i>à bouche
+fermée</i>. "You knew?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>A simple lie would not have availed; this was so obvious
+that Louie lied deliberately, circumstantially and at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course I knew. Of course I did. Do you
+mean to say you didn't? I made certain you did; I was
+going to write to you. In about a fortnight, isn't it?
+I'm&mdash;I'm giving them a wedding present; it's&mdash;it's that
+piece of crochet you saw me doing. It isn't much, but
+these things don't go by value; it's the intention. What
+are you going to give them?"</p>
+
+<p>She almost blushed for the lameness of it. As a matter
+of fact, she had intended that piece of crochet for the
+new flat, when she should take it; but to soothe Kitty
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+now was of more importance than crochet for new flats.
+She watched her covertly, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know?" Kitty flashed out, again stopping
+in her walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, dear; sit on the edge of my bed; I'm sure
+you're tired. How did I know? Why, I saw Evie herself.
+I saw her on a bus one day in Tottenham Court
+Road. It was near the Adam and Eve. And&mdash;I say,
+Kitty"&mdash;dropping her voice confidentially, she made an
+appeal to Kitty's hunger for gossip&mdash;anything for a diversion&mdash;"I
+doubt if they'll have too much to live on&mdash;it
+takes a tidy bit to get married on&mdash;and I don't suppose
+she has any shares to sell."</p>
+
+<p>But Kitty did not seem to hear. She flashed out again.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"My <i>dear</i>! I made sure you'd heard it from Miriam
+Levey. And I wasn't sure where you were; you move
+about so, you know. I wonder what Miriam will give
+them! Something far more expensive than mine, I expect.
+And you ought to give them something too, Kitty.
+What's done's done, you know, and after all, lots of engagements
+are&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But once more Kitty flashed out. "Oh, <i>I</i> shall give
+him a bottle of arnica, or whatever it is, for black eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie laughed almost hysterically at the joke. The
+tension was getting almost too much for her. "Oh, come,
+he isn't a wife-beater yet!" she protested.</p>
+
+<p>"But he will be, that man!" Kitty cried aloud with
+frightening vehemence. "He'd do anything&mdash;anything&mdash;much
+he cares! Did you know I got lost the other
+night? In Lincolns Inn Fields; policemen coming up to
+me, if you please, and asking me where I lived! Much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+he cares! I believe it was her all the time&mdash;he never
+wanted me at all, and as soon as Archie's out of the way
+he goes and marries her! Miriam Levey herself says she
+can't help thinking it's funny&mdash;and I can't think what
+<i>your</i> game is either, to be going on as if it wasn't! I'll
+tell you what <i>I</i> think, if you want to know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, hush, hush!" came from Louie. She had her
+arms about Kitty. "Perhaps you're right, dear; he was
+cruel to you! And"&mdash;she rushed into another
+extemporisation&mdash;"I don't know that I would give him a present,
+after all. If one can't forgive an injury one can't,
+and it's no good pretending. He did wrong you, and
+perhaps he oughtn't to be let off, after all. I won't send
+him one either."</p>
+
+<p>She said it because it was better to confine Kitty to her
+own wrongs than to allow her to approach a number of
+frightening unknown possibilities that began with black
+eyes. And apparently she succeeded. Kitty fell back on
+her own injury, and became a little calmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said cunningly, "but you'd have to send
+yours, and Miriam Levey'd have to send hers too&mdash;then,
+don't you see, I should be the only one who didn't, and
+he'd notice it! I just hope he does notice it. Serve him
+right. I wasn't as hard up for a fellow as all that&mdash;I carried
+on with a fellow at that breaking-up party. I did&mdash;you
+ask Mr. Mackie.... You <i>do</i> think Jeff never intended
+to marry me at all, don't you, Louie?" She peered
+curiously at Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Well, better that, Louie thought. "I don't think he
+meant to for a single moment," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the <i>rotter</i>. Come on, let's send your present
+now. We'll show him!..."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was quite eager about it; but Louie kept her in the
+bedroom a little longer. Kitty began to speak of texts
+again. Again she wondered why "Come" was written in
+green and "Unto" in red and "Me" in purple, and why
+all texts had Oxford frames. "You haven't any, I see,"
+she said, glancing again round the brown-papered walls.
+"You ought to have 'Remember thy Creator,' you know,
+Louie; it always reminds you, you see. What's this?"</p>
+
+<p>It was one of Billy Izzard's etchings. Kitty examined
+it with her head a little on one side.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very nice, whatever it is," she conceded; "but
+where's the other one? I always think pictures look
+better in pairs. But you can get odd ones cheap sometimes;
+Mr. Mackie had a great sale of Art Engravings one
+day in one of those Oxford Street places&mdash;you can hear his
+voice right across the street&mdash;and <i>he</i> said they were cheap
+because they weren't pairs, but they'd do splendidly for
+the middle of anywhere, like over a mantelpiece. And
+what a nice looking-glass! Really, you're quite comfortable
+here!"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to have forgotten all about Mr. Jeffries
+again. She walked round Louie's bedroom, bestowing
+encomiums and preening herself on her own pound a
+week.</p>
+
+<p>At midday Buck came, but Louie did not join the party;
+she sent Céleste and Jimmy, and herself stayed with Kitty.
+She hoped Kitty would not stay long; she wanted to lie
+down and think&mdash;think. Nor did Kitty stay very long;
+but before she went she returned to the subject of the
+crochet. She wanted the article&mdash;it was a teacloth&mdash;sent
+immediately; she would run out and post it herself, she
+said; and <i>then</i>, when he got presents from Miriam and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+Louie and none from herself, <i>that</i> would be rather a
+nasty one for Mr. Jeffries!</p>
+
+<p>"Do pack it up. <i>I'll</i> show him I'm not to be trampled
+on like the dirt under his feet!" she persisted vindictively;
+and another approach to the subject of black eyes
+caused Louie to yield hurriedly. She folded the cloth
+and found a piece of brown paper; Kitty did not notice
+that she enclosed no message.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly Louie had an odd little hesitation. She
+knew it to be ridiculous and a sentimentality, but while
+she did not want to send a particular message, she yet did
+not want to send the teacloth entirely without one. The
+opportunity for the little secret luxury would probably
+not occur again.... Kitty was condescendingly appraising
+her furniture again; on the mantelpiece lay a piece
+of blank card; it seemed to be there almost for a purpose,
+and furtively Louie took it. She scrawled an "L" upon
+it and slipped it into the parcel.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later Kitty left, taking the wedding
+present with her.</p>
+
+<p>Left at last alone, Louie once more went into her bedroom
+and threw herself on her bed. She lay with her
+hands clasped behind her head, her gaze now resting on
+Billy's etching, now straying idly over the brown-papered
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>So they were to be married. And after that?</p>
+
+<p>Well, she thought that on the whole she was glad. The
+curtain was about to fall on that drama that had begun
+at the Business School in Holborn, and so there would be
+an end of <i>that</i>.... What now? What about those
+fancy pictures with which she had beguiled herself as she
+had ridden on buses and trams and worked at her crochet
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>
+during the rests? What about those half-whispered, nonsensical
+conversations? What about those drowsy, secret
+quarters of an hour out of which she had come with slight
+starts to smile at herself? They were to be married.
+What next?</p>
+
+<p>The answer came as if for months it had been merely
+awaiting her pleasure. It was as plain as day that she
+could now have as much of these as ever she pleased.
+For what it was worth, the freedom of her cuckoo-cloud-land
+was about to be definitely made over to her. Because
+nothing else was hers, that was all the more hers....
+Kitty's tidings brought it so sharply home to her that she
+forgot that those sweet hours of licence were no new thing.
+She forgot that it was no new thing to walk, in fancy, the
+woods of Mallard Bois and the lanes of Rainham Parva
+with him by her side, no new thing to call his name down
+the remembered glades&mdash;"Jim!" (not, as others called
+him, "Jeff"). She forgot that it was old and outworn
+already; she saw in it only newness and liberty and delight.
+A Jim of sorts was now hers, ineluctably and for ever&mdash;a
+Jim who did not fool predestined spinsters&mdash;a Jim who
+would know better than blunder into a blind and stupid
+marriage&mdash;a Jim whose relentless hand had not&mdash;had
+not&mdash;had not&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But here, as she paused, the colour that had made her
+cheeks rosy ebbed as if a brush loaded with white had been
+passed over them. His ruthless hand had&mdash;had&mdash;almost
+certainly had&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>It was as if, in her fancy, a prison bell had tolled and a
+black flag had been run up in the morning breeze&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He was certainly a murderer; over the threshold of that
+hideous fact she must step before she could enter her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>
+palace of insubstantial delights. Stained she must take
+even the phantom of his hand, or not at all. Suppose the
+joy were to leave her, but the horror to remain?</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But she opened them again. She faced it. Say he
+was&mdash;that; what then? The joy and the horror were
+fatally one. A man capable of all&mdash;all&mdash;even of that&mdash;and
+her lover! Oh, the moment the shudder had passed
+the worst was over! He had killed; yes, but for a cause!
+He had been horribly to be feared; yes, but without the
+dread of him too she would not have had the whole of him,
+and she wanted the whole of him. <i>Not</i> kill, with such
+a reason? Withhold death, with something approaching
+that was worse than death? Oh, Louie knew all about
+that; Miss Cora had told her....</p>
+
+<p>A murder? There were things by the side of which a
+murder, once you had made up your mind to it, was a
+trifle!</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Are women so? Is it so that they will place their soft
+hands, like willow-leaves, in those other hands that may be
+black with dreadful work, red with destruction, yet, seeing
+less than man and more than man, they care not? Is it so
+that they will set their lips, as if for a kiss, against the
+mouth of war itself with its ten thousand deaths? It
+seems to be so. Their loved ones, when they die, do not
+do so of fevers and shattered tissues, but of their own clear
+and trusted heroism. "Go," they say to the next one,
+even to the little Jimmy, "go&mdash;and come back if you
+may&mdash;and, though wooden props keep you together, you
+shall be beautiful to the mother who bore you&mdash;to the wife
+whose task it must be to take you to pieces and put you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>
+together again&mdash;to the woman who, because of her own
+heavenly dreaming, cannot think of the fiend you were
+in that hour when the call sounded and you dropped the
+point of your lance to the charge."</p>
+
+<p class="p2">But one thing was clear: her dreams must remain
+dreams. If she would keep what was left her, she must
+never, never, never see him now!</p>
+
+<h2 class="p6">PART V<br />
+THE CONSOLIDATION</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">I</p>
+
+<p>The habit of sitting for artists leaves its mark on a
+woman. This mark is the lack of mystery&mdash;the
+"looked at" appearance. But it has its compensations.
+Chief of these are a physical unconsciousness, an absence
+of coquetry, and a liberation of the mind so complete that
+a sudden recall has all the effects of shock. Thus, a model
+posing for a whole class of men has been known to faint
+because she has been seen through the skylight by a
+"man" who mended the roof.</p>
+
+<p>In some such state of liberation Louie, on an afternoon
+late in the June of 1900, posed for Billy Izzard. It was
+in Billy's new studio, a large upper room in Camden
+Town, opposite the Cobden Statue. The place was so
+light that Billy had actually had to cut some of the light
+off. The upper part of the far window, that towards
+which Louie's face was turned, was darkened by a linen
+blind; the lower part of it was shrouded with tissue paper.
+The whole corner was enclosed by a screen. It was there
+that Billy did his etching. Behind another screen was
+Billy's bed. At present Louie's clothes lay on it.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past five, but the best light of a changeable
+day. They had had tea; the tray with the tea-things lay
+on the floor; and, except that he grunted occasionally,
+"Raise your hand a bit," or "Head a bit more round,"
+Billy's absorption in his work was complete. He had even
+worked through the short rests. During these intervals
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+Louie had crocheted. The crochet, only a little whiter
+than the foot near it, lay on the throne now.</p>
+
+<p>Louie was not thinking; you can hardly call it thought
+when any trifle on which your eyes rest gives your mind
+its cue. Louie's eyes, the only parts of her that moved,
+had rested on the crochet, and that had brought Céleste
+into her mind. Céleste was leaving her; it had something
+to do with phylloxera and a brother's vines; Céleste, between
+two loves, must leave the boy and return to Provence.
+Then Louie's eyes fell on the chair in which Billy etched,
+and presently Kitty occupied her&mdash;Kitty, who liked her
+etchings in pairs, but surmised that odd ones came cheaper.
+Louie had really no choice but to do what she was going to
+do about Kitty. Jimmy must have somebody during the
+day, and Louie, moreover, must have ten shillings a week
+from somewhere. As a matter of fact, Kitty had agreed
+to pay her fifteen shillings, and, in the intervals of looking
+after Jimmy, proposed to type. Then, as her eyes
+moved to the screen round the bed, she remembered that
+her boots must be resoled. They would carry another sole,
+and it had been raining off and on during the greater part
+of the day. And then something else brought little Jimmy
+into her mind again.</p>
+
+<p>For a wonder, she had not thought of a bigger Jimmy
+all the afternoon. But on other afternoons she had.
+Billy sometimes remarked on a passing tender colour; she
+always had to restrain a smile at that. Her tender colour?
+There was not a particle of that looked-at superficies of
+hers that, often and often, did not answer to a secret
+thought.... Perhaps Billy, plain common-sense man,
+could have told her what those secret thoughts really
+meant. Perhaps Billy, sensitive painter, could have told
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+her how sweet and pale and charming things must shun
+comparison with the robuster stuff. As, in some delicate
+pastoral or <i>fête galante</i>, art might turn its happy eyes
+inward on itself, so that the putting on of a slipper and
+the nymph's hand trembling in a silken fold and the
+promised favour of a smiling look hardly die because they
+hardly live, so Louie too turned her eyes inwards. What
+she found within herself still sufficed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Better rest a bit," said Billy, looking up as he began
+to scrub in a background.</p>
+
+<p>Louie stepped down from the throne, cast a wrap about
+her shoulders, and began to crochet again.</p>
+
+<p>Again she hoped she was not doing an unwise thing in
+having Kitty to come and live with her. But the flat was
+at last taken. It was a top one in the New King's Road.
+A Board School now blocks out the pretty view that Louie
+presently had at night, of the distant cupful of light that
+was Earls Court, with the illuminated advertisement of
+the Big Wheel appearing and disappearing as the structure
+slowly turned. Well, Kitty's fifteen shillings would pay
+the rent, and the experiment would be a good thing for
+Kitty also. Louie had furniture enough&mdash;in fact, it
+would be a very good thing&mdash;all round.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along&mdash;time," Billy grunted. "And I say, can
+you stop a bit later to-night? I've got to go out, but if I
+don't finish this thing to-day I never shall&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie mounted the throne again, and again the silence
+was broken only by Billy's stepping back from his canvas
+and forward again.</p>
+
+<p>The light began to fail, and Billy began to work the
+more furiously. "Give me just another ten minutes," he
+muttered, a brush between his teeth; "this'll make some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+of 'em sit up, I think; it's <i>painting</i>, this is!... But I
+don't know, perhaps I'd better let it go as it is; it's a job,
+anyway. All right, Louie, thanks.... Right-o, Jeffries;
+I didn't think it was so late."</p>
+
+<p>The last words were spoken to the man who had knocked
+at the door and, without waiting for a reply, walked in.</p>
+
+<p>Louie had heard the steps on the stairs; perhaps&mdash;she
+could not tell&mdash;she had already thought it unusual that the
+steps had not stopped at the water-tap on the landing
+below that was the supply for the two upper floors. Billy
+used that tap when he washed his brushes; he was looking
+for his palette-knife now.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie neither saw Billy nor heard his grumblings
+because the knife was not to hand. She was looking past
+Billy, past the easel with the study upon it, at the man
+who had entered. For one moment she was wondering
+that she had not always known, not only that he would
+come some day, but that he would come that day; the next
+moment she had told herself that she had always known
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Of her whole body, from the foot near the crochet to the
+last brown hair of her head, her lips were the only portion
+that did not receive him with a lightsome, quiet, fair,
+trusting smile.</p>
+
+<p>Absurd ever to have supposed that they would never
+meet! Wise to have known so perfectly what would happen
+when they did!</p>
+
+<p>What had happened? Oh, every particle of her seemed
+to sing to every other particle what had happened! Those
+pittings of her profession? Oh, there they went, washed
+out, all out, in the baptism of a look! Her fancies&mdash;those
+idle promises to pay drawn on a non-existent bank? Oh,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+they had gone, and here was payment itself, the solid,
+actual cash! She was suddenly rich. As she stood there,
+rich in seeing him, rich in being seen by him, every one
+of those worthless bills was honoured in full. She could
+have laughed at her past poverty. She could have cried
+aloud: "Jim, I'm here&mdash;look at me&mdash;no, not my eyes
+only&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And he too seemed to be as she had always known he
+would be&mdash;singled out, down to his very manner of wearing
+his clothes&mdash;among men. Stupid, that of all those
+times she had thought of him she had never once thought
+of him as in evening-dress! But that, in all this perfection,
+was only one more reciprocated perfection: she so&mdash;he
+so&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jim&mdash;<i>not</i> my eyes only!" she well-nigh cried
+again.</p>
+
+<p>But the lion's eyes never moved from her own grey
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Right, Louie, I've finished," said Billy, looking up
+from his palette-scraping.</p>
+
+<p>And within herself she wailed: "Oh, <i>so</i> soon? Must
+it be over already? Must I sit for men all these days, and
+then, when <i>my</i> man comes&mdash;&mdash;? Oh, a moment!...
+Well, he shall see me move&mdash;and I won't look at him&mdash;I'll
+tell myself&mdash;oh, just one more fancy!&mdash;that he isn't
+here."</p>
+
+<p>She descended from the throne and passed behind the
+screen.</p>
+
+<p>Was it strange that already, as she dressed in Billy's
+studio, she knew that she would never dress in an artist's
+studio again, and made of her fastening of hooks and
+strings a grave little ceremonial?&mdash;(There! With that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+fastening yet another chapter was closed; oh, trust her,
+there should be no reopening of it!)&mdash;Or that she should
+have a little shiver, at the thought that he might not have
+come? Suppose he had knocked at the door, and Billy
+had cried: "Half-a-moment&mdash;slide, Louie&mdash;come in!"
+Suppose&mdash;but the tremor passed. She had always known
+he would come; she had known it just as she had known
+everything else about him. Again every fibre of her was
+joyous. She was here on the earth&mdash;she, Louie Causton,
+daughter of a pugilist and of a Scarisbrick, gardener,
+typist, artists' model, and all else she might ever be&mdash;that
+she might know all about this man. To have ever doubted
+it would have been not to deserve him. And here he was,
+in the same room with her&mdash;he, beyond the screen, she
+behind it&mdash;only the two of them, for Billy had gone down
+to the tap to wash his brushes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Now</i> what should she do?</p>
+
+<p>No, she would not go out and join him; not as she now
+was; not a skirt and blouse, after that fairness. Nor yet
+would she speak. Surely it was for him to speak now!
+She had been speaking to him, singing to him, all music to
+his eyes; there does come a point (she told herself) when
+the woman ceases to do everything; he must speak now.
+She knew he would speak. So she stood, upright, close to
+the screen, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>He did speak, and like smoke another flock of fancies
+fled for ever. They were the fancies in which she had
+tried to remember his voice. It came, henceforth unforgettable,
+pure rest after her strivings. He too seemed
+to be near the screen; only a screen between them; but
+the phrases that were breaking their long silence were
+merely automatic. He was saying something about seeing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+her presently; she heard him pronounce the word
+"Piccadilly," and the most familiar image of Piccadilly
+sprang up in her mind. "Swan and Edgar's," she was
+whispering back over the screen.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no." This came quickly, protestingly.</p>
+
+<p>"At half-past ten," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Then the dialogue was at an end. Billy had returned.
+Some moments later she heard more words, a laugh, and
+the closing of a door. She realised that he had gone.</p>
+
+<p>Only then did she come out from behind the screen.</p>
+
+<p>Billy was wriggling into his overcoat and muttering
+something about being late. "Got to go and keep that
+chap's wife company," he said. "Regular little Philistine,
+she is; I suppose that's why I go; can't stand these
+blessed artists. I say, he'd no idea I'd a model, you know&mdash;sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Billy," said Louie demurely.... "Sorry!"
+So was not she!</p>
+
+<p>"And I say, I'm afraid I shall have to pay you next
+time. I'm cleaned out."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter. Send me a steak in as you go out;
+I'll have my dinner here."</p>
+
+<p>"Right. Odd-looking chap that, isn't he? A good
+sort though. I picked him up at the Langham one night.
+I took this place from him when he got married."</p>
+
+<p>"He lived here?" (What, another wonder?)</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Well, I'll send your steak in. Good-bye."
+Billy bolted.</p>
+
+<p>He had lived there too! How ex&mdash;how entirely to
+have been expected! Louie walked round the room, looking
+at the walls, the ceiling, out of the windows, anew.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+He had lived there: read, eaten, slept there; what a
+coinci&mdash;what a perfectly natural circumstance! Then,
+leaning against the wall, she found Billy's study. Her
+eyes devoured it. She set it against the throne, and then
+walked to where he had stood when he had entered. She
+gave a rich, low laugh; she told herself what a fool she
+was; but folly so lovely made life. Again she looked at
+the wet painting. She had looked so to him&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She put the study back against the wall, but in another
+place. "That study's mine, Billy," she muttered; "mine,
+not yours or anybody else's, do you understand? You
+gave him my violets; he's welcome to them; this belongs
+to me. Jim! Jim!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose it's crochet now," she went on by-and-by.
+"Do you realise, Louie Causton, that you've sat
+your last? And have you any idea of what you're going
+to do instead? It looks as though Kitty's fifteen shillings
+would come in useful after all."</p>
+
+<p>As if otherwise she might have forgotten it, she repeated
+to herself, over and over again, that she was to meet him
+at Swan and Edgar's at half-past ten. At one of the
+repetitions&mdash;it was as she was cooking her steak over the
+little gas-ring that, perhaps, had once been his&mdash;it occurred
+to her why he had muttered that quick "No, no," when
+she had proposed that meeting-place. She glowed, she
+laughed through a sheen of tender tears. "Dear, dear
+one! <i>You</i> don't think that corner good enough for us,
+my sweet little outcast and me. Well, we won't thank
+you; we won't belittle him by thanking him, will we,
+Jimmy?&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But she did not promise not to look her thanks when she
+met him at Swan and Edgar's at half-past ten.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Presently she pushed her plate away; she could not eat.
+She had felt her bosom rise once more. It had risen as it
+had never risen for anything or anybody save for the little
+Jimmy, and it rose, it seemed to her, for a similar reason.
+For in her hands even his physical safety lay. He was to
+be mothered too. Her unfelt arms were to be about him,
+the milk of her protection to be his life. By his strength
+he had thought to give himself to somebody else, but by
+his need he was still hers. A gladness richer than she
+had ever, ever known swelled within her. He, the
+great weakling&mdash;she, the strong one, to cherish and support&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Jim!" she murmured, smiling, uplifted, lost. It
+was as if his weary, tawny head was on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>And she was going to hear his voice again, at Swan and
+Edgar's, at half-past ten.</p>
+
+<p>She feared that her own emotion might have exhausted
+her ere ever the hour came.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">II</p>
+
+<p>"Your hat will be spoiled if you don't take your
+share of the umbrella," she said. It was a silk
+hat, and she supposed that silk hats cost money. A fine,
+persistent rain was falling.</p>
+
+<p>She thought that he answered that it didn't matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you might at least turn your trousers up."
+Her own shabby old grey coat didn't matter, but his trousers&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to be on the point of replying that they
+didn't matter either, but changed his mind. He stooped
+and turned them up. She held the umbrella while he did
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+so, and then gave it to him again, replacing her right hand
+where it had been&mdash;on his left forearm.</p>
+
+<p>It was on these mere externals of him&mdash;his hat, his
+coat, his trousers, his boots&mdash;that she had hardly for a
+moment ceased to feed her eyes. Anything else might
+wait; for the present the stuff of his sleeve was more to
+her than the stuff of his soul. She luxuriated shamelessly
+in the smallest actualities of his presence; why, even mirth
+stood but a remove away. His overcoat, for example: it
+was not that old tawny one that had made him so much
+like a lion, but it was an old one for all that; was she
+<i>never</i> to see her man in a new overcoat? Jim and his
+overcoats! But the rest of him was beyond criticism.
+Certainly he must be making money. She wished she
+could have called money to him with a wand, conjured it to
+him, as much as ever he wanted. Had it not been that she
+would have had to take her hand from his sleeve, she
+would have liked to step back to look at his great church-door
+of a back again. Of his face she could see little,
+but that did not prevent her looking until it would hardly
+have surprised her had he flushed and said, "Don't gloat
+over me like that." His hat was tilted down, the large
+peaks of his overcoat collar projected like wings.</p>
+
+<p>No, she did not want to know what he thought or felt;
+bother all that part of him! When her thirsty senses had
+drunk their full, then would be time enough for the other
+things.</p>
+
+<p>They were walking somewhere behind the Horse
+Guards. Stretching before them was the long, empty
+avenue of the Mall. She was looking at the perspective
+of lamps and trees and drizzle, when suddenly he spoke.
+Instantly all her faculties seemed to become one overgrown
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+faculty, that of hearing. Not that he was saying
+anything; he was, as a matter of fact, only asking her
+whether she was warm; and she replied, "Quite." She
+was almost amused that he should ask. His nearness
+warmed her more than did her garments. Her hand
+thrilled deliciously on his sleeve again....</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the satisfaction of that, just that, after all her past
+inquisitions into his soul!</p>
+
+<p>But come to speech they must, and that very soon; and
+perhaps that curious magnification of trifles made it
+easier. Indeed, half the formidableness of the single
+question she wanted to ask him had vanished already.
+To say to him, now or in a few moments: "Did you kill
+Archie Merridew?" seemed somehow not very much more
+unusual than asking him the time. Now that she came
+to think of it, even that question seemed less important
+than another one: "Can you kill somebody and still be
+happy?" She hoped in her heart that he could. It
+would be his justification. Had it been an unrighteous
+killing, that would have been another matter; as it was,
+she would have had him unhappy only had he not killed.
+And, as he showed no sign of breaking silence, she might
+as well ask him that now.</p>
+
+<p>So, reluctantly turning her eyes from his face and looking
+ahead into the haze of the rain, she suddenly said:
+"Are you happy?"</p>
+
+<p>She wasn't surprised that he didn't reply at once. Of
+course men didn't. They had their usual formalities to
+go through, of "Why do you ask?" and so forth&mdash;a sort
+of routine before they could answer a plain question. As
+he began to go through it now she made a little impatient
+movement. She didn't want all that. Then he deigned
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>
+to reply to her inferior intelligence. Yes, he was happy.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i>?" she said, with an exultant little leap.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he was; but again, apparently, he couldn't say a
+thing and leave it. In the middle of more stupid, logical,
+masculine things (he seemed to be qualifying his statement
+with something or other about his conduct to Kitty
+Windus) she cut him short.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she said, repeating the little impatient gesture,
+"you killed that boy, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>They had been following the railings that divided the
+Mall from St. James's Park, but she had stopped to ask
+her question. And she was looking full at him now.
+But she could not see him very well; a lamp and a plane-tree
+made all an obscurity of vague shadows and wet reflections.
+But then he stepped slowly back, taking her
+umbrella with him, and twice, as he held the umbrella unsteadily,
+the light came and went on his cheek and chin;
+and then, as he took a step farther back still, the umbrella
+bobbed on the railings, from the points of it came little
+bright slivers of drops, and she found herself searching
+under a lamplit sector of alpaca for his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The danger of asking, actually, a question you have
+asked, but not actually, a hundred times before, is that
+your own mere familiarity with it throws you out in your
+calculation. Now she found herself suddenly hoping that
+what she felt to be working beyond the umbrella edge&mdash;for
+she felt it rather than saw it&mdash;was not fear.</p>
+
+<p>For, of course, she had miscalculated a little&mdash;had been
+stupid to think that it was all as old a story to him as it
+was to her. Obviously it would not at once occur to him
+that there had been nothing to find out, but that instead
+the whole thing had been merely enacted before her eyes;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+he was sure to be thinking that on some point of evidence
+he had been betrayed. What sort of point that could be,
+unless it had something to do with the black eyes that
+seemed to haunt Kitty, he might know, but she could not
+guess; and all at once she had a purely physical shrinking.
+She would rather not know. She could string herself up
+to the thought of murder, but the bestial details&mdash;no, not
+those. Those were his affairs. They were to be taken for
+granted as things necessarily involved. And already she
+was on the point of feeling herself a little disappointed in
+him. For in the shadow of the umbrella her eyes had now
+found his; his head was a little turned, and she saw the
+whites of them.</p>
+
+<p>It <i>was</i> fear. She, it seemed, could contemplate unafraid
+a sacrifice that he quaked to have carried out.</p>
+
+<p>But as, with another little falling of drops from the
+umbrella, he steadied himself and stepped forward from
+the railings again, additional light came to her. It was
+fear, but not that fear, that haunted the amber eyes. The
+fear was of herself. He feared, not the information she
+possessed, but her whole understanding and condemnation.
+He feared lest she also should say: "It was murder;
+you are here to be judged; me too, with all the world,
+you must account against you; I set my mark too upon
+your brow."</p>
+
+<p>And as he appeared sorrowfully to acquiesce in that
+also, nothing could have seemed lonelier nor more touching
+than the quietly spoken words with which he held the
+umbrella over her again:</p>
+
+<p>"You're getting wet."</p>
+
+<p>It was as though he told her that though he went outcast
+she must not get wet.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her answer was to put her hand under his sleeve again.
+They walked on.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not answered her question. Perhaps he
+thought he had: to all intents and purposes he had; but
+she wanted, not so much the word, as that he should not
+withhold the word. He was walking slowly, heavily, like
+a tower by her side; she had the sense of his fearful overweight;
+she would give him time. They continued to
+walk, their mingled shadow on the pavement as they passed
+each lamp creeping away before them as if the beam of
+some lighthouse had had the sinister property of obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>Then, within a little distance of Buckingham Palace,
+she stopped again. Again their eyes met under the wet,
+black mushroom of the umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>"You did kill that boy, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>He had a slight start. It seemed to her that he even
+apologised for having kept her waiting for the answer.
+Formerly she had seen stratagems in his eyes; now, as
+he dipped the umbrella for a moment and stood full in the
+light of another lamp, she looked only into grave, candid
+depths.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said. "You know I killed him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>Again her hand slid, as if of itself, back into its place.
+Again they walked on. The next thing that came to her
+was another ridiculous yet oddly precious trifle. She
+wore kid gloves; before, when she had danced with him in
+an old frock of oyster-grey, she had worn white ones;
+must she (she wondered) always wear gloves with him, as
+he always wore old overcoats? She longed to take one
+glove off; yet she&mdash;she, who had met Roy by the stile at
+night&mdash;for very bashfulness dared not. The circumstance
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+struck her; how was that? Gifts of understanding for
+her he had: had he that gift too, the gift of her own bashfulness
+back again? Up went her spirit on wings....</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was that&mdash;or for a night at least she would have
+it so. As impossibilities are reconciled in a dream, so he
+seemed, by his mere towerlike presence, to resolve in one
+large atonement, her own life as it had been and the sweet
+and virginal and dear smiling thing that it might have
+been. In no less a miracle than that she seemed to herself
+to be walking. He could not only have kissed her; he
+could have had her first kiss. He could not only have
+turned, as he did turn, leaning against the pillar-box by the
+Equerries' entrance of the Palace, to look at her again, but
+he could have received in return&mdash;did receive in return&mdash;such
+a look as she knew he also could hardly have had the
+like of before. And it made no difference&mdash;as in a dream
+such a thing might make no difference&mdash;that he had a
+wife, she a son. Let him have his wife, she her son; she
+could find room for wives and sons too. To-morrow,
+perhaps, it would not be so; to-morrow might be like
+yesterday again; but to-night&mdash;to-night&mdash;oh, the first
+garden was not less trodden than these rainy streets, the
+Barracks, Gorringes', and Grosvenor Road! Her hand
+moving again on his sleeve was telling him even now, if he
+would but listen, that though man may not know that it is
+not good for him to be alone, woman knows it, and maybe
+still remembers it out of her knowledge of the place whence
+she came later than he.</p>
+
+<p>And he too understood now, for she was not so rapt but
+that she remembered that he asked her, somewhere between
+a sandbin and a street lamp, whether she was happy
+too, and that, looking up at him, she smilingly whispered:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+"Yes, now." And she was not so rapt but that she remembered
+telling him, flatly and with another happy and
+laughing and triumphant look: "You can't prevent it!"
+But she was so rapt that of much else that he and she said
+she had no very clear recollection. Words that seemed
+unforgettable when they came had eluded her almost in
+their own echo. But she knew that she gave him the
+liberty of herself with no more reserve than she had
+claimed that of him. She knew that because, later, but
+she did not know when, he muttered, in some street
+or other, she did not know where: "God bless your
+boy."</p>
+
+<p>Well, if she forgot things now, there would be many
+days to come in which she would remember them.</p>
+
+<p>Merely because it must be very late&mdash;she had no idea
+what time it was&mdash;she grudged the going of the moments
+almost angrily. Already she was becoming as hungry
+again as if she had not broken that long, long fast. But
+she admitted that it was not unnatural that he should
+think of his own concerns a little too, and want to ask her
+questions. She began to answer the questions hurriedly,
+to get them over.&mdash;Kitty Windus? Oh (she told him) he
+might leave Kitty to her; she'd answer for Kitty!&mdash;His
+wife and her complete ignorance? (His wife's ignorance
+appeared to be complete.)&mdash;Miriam Levey? (Oh, why
+would he not be quick, and she so hungry!)&mdash;And then
+back to his wife again; what about her? (he wanted to
+know). Louie wondered a little that he should consider
+her to be his wife's keeper also, but she answered his
+questions. That, she told him, was his private affair;
+but, if he really wanted to know what Louie thought
+about it, Louie could not conceive of a marriage with so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+huge a secret in it continuing undisclosed. <i>Voilà</i>; there
+he had it; and <i>now</i> might she please be permitted to enter
+into her own happiness again?</p>
+
+<p>She was back into it, bathing in it again, almost before
+she was aware. A minute before she had not known what
+street they were in; now she saw the Chelsea Hospital on
+the other side of the road. On this side was a row of
+houses; she knew one of them; a painter for whom she
+had sat lived there; his studio was in the yard at the back.
+The thought of a studio was all that was needed. She
+thrilled again.</p>
+
+<p>No more studios! So poignantly did she burn that she
+could hardly imagine that her glowing did not communicate
+itself. Studios, after that beautiful, beautiful sketch
+of Billy's? Good gracious, no! She was going to Billy's
+to fetch that sketch on the morrow; she would like to see
+Billy deny it to her! And that poor, poor old oyster-grey!
+Just because he had seen her in it once she had
+mooned over it, smiled over it, sighed over it; but it could
+go now&mdash;she had a richer memory!... Furtively during
+the last few minutes she had been working off her
+right glove; it slipped from her hand to the pavement; but
+she was afraid to stop. Let it stay; somebody would turn
+it over with the point of a walking-stick in the morning
+and perhaps wonder who had lost it.... She stole another
+look at him; her hand crept along his sleeve; the tips
+of her fingers were on his wrist; her lips shaped his name:
+"Jim!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, unexpectedly, it rushed upon her in full measure.
+She knew these streets familiarly; they were in Swan
+Walk now; and the thing happened all in a moment.
+Again, during those anxious questions of his about Kitty
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+Windus, Miriam Levey, his wife, she had that sense of
+his terrible overweight: now, passing a doorway, he suddenly
+reeled. He began to sink....</p>
+
+<p>In an instant her arms were about him. Not the unfelt,
+immaterial arms of her mothering vision in Billy's studio,
+not that other breast, offered but impressed, sustained
+him; she held him within her two arms of flesh and blood,
+upon that firm, warm bosom that changed its shape to his
+weight upon it&mdash;the bosom he had seen yesterday, white
+hives, all their honey his.... She bent and kissed the
+shoulder of his coat. Oh, if he might but faint, quite,
+that she might carry him somewhere, or, if she could not
+carry him, stay with him where he was&mdash;she cared not&mdash;rest
+by his side through an endless night! Her heart, yes,
+her lips too, called him; a whisper might not reach him;
+she called him aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come, come! Come, come!"</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Afterwards she thought of it as a hail from a ship to
+another ship across a stretch of water so narrow that it
+was all but a stepping aboard. How could such a hail be
+a farewell also? They were not passing; as they glided
+side by side together, either seemed stationary. Other
+things, the whole offing of Life, were in motion; these
+slipped past, as it were sky, shore, shipping; but for a
+space he and she spoke from bridge to bridge. And he
+heard the hail too, for he opened his eyes. Though
+they never looked on her again they did so now, relinquishing
+all to her. Was there anything she had not known?
+There was nothing she might not know&mdash;now&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by she had helped him to a seat on the Embankment
+and had made him sit down. She took off his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+tie and collar; she smiled as he thanked her. "That was
+absurd," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Then he asked her where she lived.</p>
+
+<p>It was over.</p>
+
+<p>Well, perhaps more would have been more than she
+could have borne.</p>
+
+<p>But when she sat at last alone in the hansom he had
+called, conscious that she was wet to the skin and that her
+boots needed to be resoled, she still had the image of the
+ships before her eyes, gliding together side by side, with
+all else in quiet, relentless motion behind them. She held
+fast to it. She could not have endured to think that of
+that night's long wandering all that would remain on the
+morrow would be yet another dream and a wet glove left
+behind in an empty Chelsea street.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">III</p>
+
+<p>Louie Causton would have been more than human
+had she not frequently thought, as her life became
+a moving from pillar to post again, that there was
+an exasperating proportion of absence in her heart's story.
+But at first she was not petulant. Some absences are
+brimful, as other presences are mere vacancy, and, now
+that she no longer sat, she had other things, plenty of
+them, to think of.</p>
+
+<p>There was little money in the sale of crochet; there was
+not much more in sitting in costumes hired from the
+Models' Club. From both these things she quickly turned.
+Perhaps she turned from them the more quickly because
+of Kitty Windus&mdash;for Kitty was now with her in the flat
+in the New Kings Road, and the way in which Kitty,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+without spoken words, paid over her weekly fifteen shillings,
+was in itself a spur. Not that Kitty always spared her the
+words either. Two words at least that she did not always
+spare her were "rise" and "permanency." Often Louie
+felt all the amazement, and now quite without any leaven
+of amusement, that she had felt when first she had entered
+the Business School in Holborn; but she was not keeping
+Kitty (or Kitty keeping her) either for love of Kitty or
+her own mere necessity. To keep Kitty was part and
+parcel of that absence she was already beginning to resent.
+It was merely safer to keep Kitty than to have anybody
+else keep her. Besides, as long as she kept Kitty, she had
+only to write a note, justifying it afterwards as best she
+could, and two ships (so to speak) would come together
+again. She delayed to write the note; none the less it was
+in her power to do so.</p>
+
+<p>So (to turn for a moment to that moving background of
+Life in the offing) the September of 1900 found her answering
+the advertisement of a Bayswater seedsman and
+discovering the precise market value of her old Rainham
+Parva training. But by the end of the same month she
+was temporarily installed at the clerk's table of an exhibition
+of French paintings at a Mayfair gallery, and glad of
+the job. Say (the question is hardly worth going into)
+that it was the influence of the paintings themselves that
+once more caused a manager to propose that Louie's wages
+should be substantially increased, for a consideration; it
+didn't matter; Louie, who did not now throw away jobs
+for nothing, merely told the man not to be silly&mdash;than
+which, as it happened, she could have done no better thing,
+for at the close of the exhibition the manager, now looking
+upon her almost as a dear daughter, found her another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+place, this time at a gallery academic both artistically and
+morally, warned her against dangerous young men, and
+kissed Louie on both her laughing cheeks. After that her
+French again served her turn, for she entered the office
+of an illustrated weekly; or if it was not entirely the
+French that did it, so much the luckier Louie to possess
+even yet a frock that was a rest to the proprietor's eyes
+after a succession of applicants in walking skirts and
+white muslin blouses. This job Louie actually kept till
+June 1901; then an amalgamation took place that threw
+her out of work again. Three weeks later, after a severe
+trial of her temper by Kitty, she was a "carpet designer"&mdash;that
+is to say, she coloured, in an upper room near St.
+Paul's Churchyard, pieces of paper so minutely chequered
+that sometimes for an hour or two she could not get the
+flicker out of her eyes. She made a grace of retiring
+from this occupation as soon as she saw that if she did not
+do so her employer would retire from the office of paymaster.
+After that she was reduced to sitting again, in
+costume. Nothing else offered. Jimmy must eat,
+Kitty's fifteen shillings be covered. The female figure in
+"The Two-stringed Bow," which caused such a (journalistic)
+sensation in the Academy of the following year, is
+Louie. Chaff did not recognise it. Billy Izzard, who
+had seen the costume at the Models' Club, did. He persecuted
+Louie to sit for him again as before.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Models' Club she was still a member, and she got
+on well with the girls. Once she took Kitty Windus
+there, but only once; a black-and-white man, knowing
+nothing of Kitty's pound a week, asked her to sit to him
+as Miss Tox, in "Dombey and Son"; and Kitty, presently
+reading the book, treated Louie for some days with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+marked superciliousness. That came of making yourself
+cheap, her manner seemed to say; and she reported Miriam
+Levey, whom she met near Piccadilly Circus one day, as
+having said, "Vell, vat do you expect?" Louie did not
+much like this meeting with Miriam Levey. She remembered
+the Jewess's pertinacity and curiosity for curiosity's
+sake. Many such meetings between Kitty and
+Miriam Levey might easily complicate her own life.</p>
+
+<p>There were two bedrooms in the flat in the New Kings
+Road. In the larger one, that at the back that Louie
+shared with Jimmy, there hung at first the sketch she had
+begged ("stolen" was Billy's word) after she had ceased
+to sit. When Louie took this down one day and put it
+out of sight, she told herself that she did so on Jimmy's
+account; but perhaps those absences that she had to convert
+into presences as best she could had something to do
+with it too. Perhaps, if she did not see the thing for
+a time, its first freshness would return.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she thought these absences really too bad;
+she began to think so with increasing frequency as Kitty's
+fits of patronage became no rarer. Really it didn't seem
+fair that she should be asked to bear them. The least Jim
+could have done, since she bore them for him, would have
+been to let her know that he still existed. She did not
+much mind looking after Kitty, but it was a little too
+much that on his part <i>all</i> should be absence!</p>
+
+<p>And that was why, with Kitty always at hand for her
+excuse, she did not write to him.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, the joy of bearing for him was becoming
+fainter in proportion as the burden itself increased.</p>
+
+<p>Then a piece of news with which Kitty came home one
+night added its trifle to her smart. She was alone in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span>
+flat that night; Jimmy had been in bed two hours and
+more, and Louie, after having folded his clothes, cleared
+up his litter of toys from the floor, and tried to read a
+newspaper, had turned low the gas, drawn up a chair to
+one of the three windows that looked down on the New
+Kings Road, and sat gazing out over the trees and houses
+and scattered lights that stretched away to Earls Court.
+It happened that that night the Exhibition was closing for
+the season; a firework demonstration was in progress; and
+out of the little pool of orange light rockets rose from time
+to time, falling again in slow showers of red and green and
+white. If no cart was passing she could just hear the
+muffled detonations.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that if an impossibility could have happened,
+and Jim could have walked into the room, sat down by
+her, and watched the white and green and red rockets with
+her, that slight constant smart at her heart would have
+gone; but now she told herself that it was not as if she was
+young, with unlimited time before her. She was thirty-two,
+and too much absence is not sustenance enough for
+thirty-two. But that, she supposed, meant nothing to a
+man. Men did not appear to get old in quite the same
+way. The man who had tried to make love to her at the
+French picture exhibition was sixty if he was a day;
+sixty, and still fiery; and apparently he had found her
+still desirable also. But it was not for much longer.
+Women died with their beauty. Of course she had her
+little darling asleep there; men had the comfortable theory
+that women wanted nothing more than to "live again"
+(as they called it) in their children; well, all that Louie
+could say was that she did not agree with them. She
+knew one woman who wanted more. It might be wicked
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>
+and unnatural to endow Jimmy, as she had done, with a
+sort of vicarious father, but Roy was gone out of her life&mdash;gone;
+to have married him would have made more mischief
+than it would have cured; and Louie saw no reason
+for not telling herself the truth about herself. But a vicarious
+father who stayed away was altogether too vicarious....</p>
+
+<p>Well, well, she supposed that if a woman would have a
+man at all she must put up with a selfish one.</p>
+
+<p>He, of course, knew exactly what he wanted, and had
+got it; nor could she say that he had not earned it&mdash;grimly.
+But now that he had got it, what about somebody
+else who was helping him to keep it&mdash;somebody
+called Louie Causton, who stepped in when she was wanted,
+took half the burden off his back, and was presently sent
+about her business again? (For she had remembered
+now the quite personal, preoccupied questions, about
+Kitty and Miriam and his wife, that he had put to her
+on the night of their long walk.) Oh, no doubt she would
+be there when she was next wanted, to share with him the
+thing another woman ought to have shared (but thank
+goodness the other woman had not!). It had not in the
+least surprised Louie that his wife knew nothing. It
+would have surprised her very much indeed if she had
+known anything. Jim might humbug himself as he liked,
+but at the bottom of his heart (she now saw) he knew
+better than to tell her. She was not the kind; it was
+Louie who was that kind, and he knew it too. But there:
+she was pretty, and men asked no further; give them hair
+and eyes and an unlined brow and the rest could go
+hang. Heart and vision&mdash;no; courage and devotion and
+the strength to bear&mdash;no; but twenty years, a curving eyelash,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+and a bloom more quickly gone than the falling rockets
+yonder, and ah, how they ran! But they didn't trust
+them. No, the other sort was sent for then. And it was
+the business of the other sort to be, always, as strong as
+they sometimes thought themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The last rocket fell; the lights of the big wheel began to
+make quicker revolutions; and Louie left the window and
+turned up the gas again.</p>
+
+<p>As she did so the electric bell in the kitchen rang. It
+rang again, and then Louie remembered that the street
+door four floors below would be closed for the night. She
+passed out on to the landing and descended the stairs.
+It was Kitty. She had forgotten her key. Kitty panted
+as they ascended again.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been in?" she demanded, as she
+took off her hat and coat in the little hall.</p>
+
+<p>"All the evening," said Louie. "Have you had supper?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't," said Kitty shortly, and then came her
+grumble. Why hadn't Louie had the gas lighted? Fireworks
+indeed! And there Kitty had been waiting for
+twenty minutes and more, thinking nobody was in&mdash;anybody
+might forget their key once in a while, mightn't
+they? Hadn't Louie forgotten hers not a week ago, and
+that not the only time? Kitty had a right to forget her
+key sometimes. And there had Louie been in all the
+time, watching fireworks! Well, what was there for supper?
+And the fire almost out too; really, if Kitty paid
+for the coals, Louie might at least keep the fire in!</p>
+
+<p>Louie mended the fire and got Kitty's supper. When
+Kitty had finished she cleared the little round table again,
+and by the time Kitty had put on a pair of red bedroom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>
+slippers and turned up her skirt to the blaze she deigned
+to relent a little. She admitted that it wasn't as if Louie
+had known she was waiting in the street, but all the
+same it was annoying.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I've got a piece of news for you," she said,
+warming her hands. "It's a dead secret, but I don't suppose
+Miriam would mind my telling you. She's in for no
+end of a good job in a few weeks! But she always gets
+good jobs. She has determination, Miriam has, you
+see."</p>
+
+<p>Louie was standing by the end of the mantelpiece, stirring
+a cup of cocoa. She only said "Oh?" Her own
+lack of determination was now an old reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"Ra-<i>ther</i>! Have you heard me speak of a Mr. Pepper
+ever? But no, you won't have; you're always a bit sniffy
+about Miriam, you see, and that doesn't encourage people
+to talk. Well, she's his confidential clerk at the Freight
+and Ballast Company, but he's chucking that, and who do
+you think with?&mdash;James Jeffries!"</p>
+
+<p>She paused to see the effect on Louie, and then continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, James Jeffries! What do you think of <i>that</i>?
+They're going to start on their own, in no end of a swell
+way, and Miriam's going over with them. It's Mr. Pepper's
+doing, of course, and as Mr. Pepper isn't exactly a
+nobody even where he is, you may bet your boots he won't
+change for the worse! Oh, James Jeffries knows the kind
+of person to hang on to! He's to be a partner, if you
+please, as good as Mr. Pepper himself; how's that for
+greasing in? Friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
+I <i>don't</i> think!"</p>
+
+<p>Kitty had this way now of speaking of her former <i>fiancé</i>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+Sometimes she so extended his name that it became "Mister
+James Herbert Jeffries." And however Jim now
+"got on," his advancement would still be, to Kitty, a
+magnification of her own superiority in those days when
+she had had a pound a week and he nothing. She began
+to take out hairpins and went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, I wish my brushes were here!" (Louie
+fetched them.) "What was I saying? Oh yes, about
+Miriam. She's to have an office to herself, perhaps, or at
+any rate she's not going to sit with the other girls; and
+when I tell you it's in Pall Mall, you can judge for yourself&mdash;not
+just a couple of offices rented, but a whole building&mdash;what
+ho! The stone that the builders rejected if you
+like! And she'll have her own extending-bracket telephone,
+the very latest, and arms to her chair to put her
+elbows on, not like the typists! And Mr. Pepper's most
+friendly with her&mdash;she takes down his conversations with
+no end of swells! And I say, Evie Jeffries won't be half
+set up over it all, oh no! Even <i>his</i> office&mdash;James Herbert's,
+Miriam says&mdash;is going to be perfectly scrumptious!"</p>
+
+<p>Her head was on one side; her short hair, as she brushed
+it, hardly reached farther than the sharp point of her
+shoulder; and Louie was thinking of that spurious engagement
+again. And suddenly&mdash;this had happened before,
+but never before with so keen a stab&mdash;the thought set her
+raging.... She herself had been so near!... Her elbow
+caught her cup of cocoa; it spilt, and ran in a little
+stream from the corner of the mantelpiece.... So near!
+And once again she cried to herself that <i>she</i> would have
+known how to keep him, Roy or no Roy!... Kitty?
+What could his courtship of Kitty and her bones have been?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>
+<i>She</i> would have shown him the difference! To have
+been so near and then&mdash;Mortlake Road, Putney!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there seemed to her to be a great deal to be
+said for conventional morality after all.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment her heart was full of hate&mdash;hate of Kitty,
+hate of Evie Jeffries, hate of Roy, hate of herself. To
+have been so near!</p>
+
+<p>But the sharpness of it died down to a sullen ache. In
+his affairs he seemed to be going up, up; she had always
+known he would; and less than ever might she expect to
+hear from him now. And he would take his common little
+wife up with him. He might go anywhere, meet anybody;
+but sourly she wondered what sort of a figure he
+supposed his Evie would cut up there&mdash;would have cut at
+Trant or Mallard Bois? Oh, Louie would dearly have
+liked to see her there, to have pointed to her, and to have
+told Jim to his face that whatever ability he might have
+seemed to be yoked with an unimaginable stupidity, since
+he had not known instantly the one woman for him.</p>
+
+<p>Well, there was simply no accounting for these things.</p>
+
+<p>But if he was going up, Louie did not very much like
+the channel by which she had received the information.
+She had known that Kitty saw Miriam Levey; now she
+seemed to hear her thick voice again, "I <i>vill</i> find out!"
+She was aware, too, that there was little love lost between
+Miriam Levey and herself. She herself had encouraged
+Kitty in her present attitude of "Mister Jeffries," but
+it only needed the Jewess to propose the contrary attitude
+and in all probability there would be a struggle between
+them for the possession of Kitty. She detested Kitty;
+yet in order that Evie Jeffries might make an exhibition of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+herself among the people whose equal Louie was, Louie
+had to put up with her, bones and chilblains and all!
+Much he left her, didn't he? Good gracious, yes! And
+it was about time he was told that flesh and blood women
+weren't made like that!</p>
+
+<p>Kitty, remarking that it was a shame to leave the now
+glowing fire, had passed out of the room for a minute; she
+now returned, in her slippers and nightgown. Her feet,
+she said, were still cold with waiting on the pavement;
+she would say her prayers with them turned to the fire.
+She knelt by a wicker chair, and set the red slippers on the
+low kerb, their worn soles to the fire. Louie, still from the
+end of the mantelpiece, watched her. At a slight sound
+she made Kitty turned her head for a moment; then she
+put it on the cushion of the chair again.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, certainly Louie must have a wicked heart, or she
+would not have looked on the kneeling woman as she did.
+She wondered what, texts apart, Kitty could have to say
+to God. To pray&mdash;with her feet in a warm place! Why,
+Louie mortified herself more for an absent man than Kitty
+seemed to do before her Maker!... And even when she
+had stifled the thought she still had no more than a negative
+compassion for Kitty. She was not unsorry for her
+and her weakheadedness; beyond that Kitty was not, or
+ought not to have been, her affair. What was her affair
+was herself and what little remained of her youth. Kitty
+was hardly more than a year or two older than she, but she
+looked a dozen years older; Louie wondered whether her
+shoulder blades too would soon resemble the set-squares in
+Billy's studio, whether her waist also would seem a broken
+thing within empty looking folds....
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Kitty continued to pray and to warm her feet. Louie,
+wondering what her next snappishness would be when she
+rose from her knees again, continued to watch her.</p>
+
+<p>Then Kitty rose. She turned to Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, did you brush that blue skirt of mine?"
+she said. "Oh, very well, it doesn't matter now; perhaps
+I oughtn't to have asked you; thank you; I can do
+it myself in the morning. Sorry I spoke."</p>
+
+<p>Louie turned away.</p>
+
+<p>These were the times when she could hardly tell what
+had possessed her ever to have supposed that she would be
+able to keep watch and ward over Kitty at all. Kitty was
+perfectly free to meet Miriam Levey or anybody else she
+had a mind to meet. And why, she asked herself at these
+times, should she not meet her? Where, hanging and
+such moonshine apart, was the risk to Jim? Indeed, it
+seemed to Louie that that story that seemed so to weigh on
+Jim was quickly becoming altogether beside the mark.
+The whole venue of his difficulties was rapidly shifting.
+What he had done had not been discovered and probably
+never would be discovered; what he wanted now was, not
+to be protected from remote and shadowy and nonsensical
+dangers, but to be told how he was to be happy with the
+wife whom he had seen fit, in the great heap of his wisdom,
+to keep in ignorance. Of course the remoter danger need
+not be entirely forgotten, but this, or else Louie was
+greatly mistaken, was what those scarce-heard questions
+on the night of that long walk had really meant.</p>
+
+<p>And, in that case, what the devil was she, Louie Causton,
+doing in this gallery at all, with nothing of Jim but
+silence and absence, and nothing but peevishness and
+petty tyranny from Kitty? Roy, it might be, was still
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+ready to marry her; Buck never ceased to importune, sulk
+and implore; Jimmy, one way or another, would be to
+provide for; and she knew now how little she could do
+for him alone. Even her desire to "show" Richenda
+Earle had now passed. She wanted, desperately wanted,
+all the things she persisted in rejecting. Why was she
+becoming morose, disillusioned, devil-may-care? It was
+a familiar question now, but as she undressed that night
+she asked herself again what it all meant.</p>
+
+<p>She answered herself that there was no mystery about
+it. She supposed it happened to every woman. It
+meant, of course, the passing of her youth.</p>
+
+<p>But, her head on her pillow, she had her compensating
+hour. No need to re-describe its kind; there was now
+added again that forced and desperate illusion, of the
+unity of herself, her boy, and the man she would have had
+his father. She knew she merely abused her fancy and
+must suffer for it afterwards, but no matter; if it was a
+drug it was a sweet one, and that it might stay with her
+a little longer she chose uncomfortable positions that would
+keep her awake. She could hear Jimmy's breathing
+across the dark room. Jim, Jimmy and herself&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>It was against her own will that, at two o'clock in the
+morning, she slept.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">IV</p>
+
+<p>It was his voice over the telephone of the Models' Club
+that broke the long silence. Ten chances to one but
+the bell had rung in an empty room, for, save for a woman
+who was washing the hall floor, Louie was alone in
+the place. She unhooked the receiver. "Hallo!" she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+called.... "Yes, this is the Models' Club.... This
+is Miss Causton...."</p>
+
+<p>At last!</p>
+
+<p>He did not say why he wanted to see her; he only said
+that he wanted to do so at once. His minimised voice,
+with its suggestion of distance, seemed to her curiously
+symbolic of their whole relation. A telephone was supposed
+to bring voices near, but far more than that the
+smallness and the distance struck her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm afraid not," she continued to speak into the
+instrument, "but I can give you dinner here. You know
+the address?... Yes, at seven.... All right...."</p>
+
+<p>Seek him? No, she certainly would not seek him. He
+must come to her. She could give him tea and chops.
+As she hung up the receiver again she glanced at
+the clock over the little service counter. Eleven. Eight
+hours.... She had waited for months, now she must
+wait another eight hours. She could have faced the
+months again with more composure.</p>
+
+<p>Only to look at the advertisements in the papers had she
+come to the Club that morning at all. Well, she was not
+going to answer that clairvoyant's announcement she had
+seen in <i>The Telegraph</i> now. Kitty would ask her that
+evening whether she had been looking for work, and would
+hold up Miriam Levey and her determination as an example;
+let her; Louie couldn't be bothered with clairvoyants
+and their advertisements to-day.</p>
+
+<p>And Kitty little dreamed how near Louie had more than
+once been to showing herself as determined even as
+Miriam. Miriam was not the only one who might be
+"taken on" at this new Consolidation of Mr. Pepper's
+and Jim's, whatever it was. There is such a thing, when
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>
+a man doesn't come to you, as a miserable, ignoble yielding
+to the ache to go to him. There is such a thing as the
+willingness even to keep a door all day for the sake of
+seeing him go through it just once. After a certain time
+pride becomes a poor staff, and&mdash;but he was coming, in
+eight hours. That was why she had refused to dine
+with him. Your pride stiffens again when you have just
+been on the point of throwing it aside.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that she would be good for nothing for the
+rest of the day; in that case she might as well go and see
+her father. She had money enough for her bus fares;
+half-past one found her at the Molyneux Arms.</p>
+
+<p>Buck was in high feather. His name had been proposed,
+in the interests of Church and State, as a candidate
+for the Borough Council; and the chief plank of the platform
+which Buck occupied during the whole of that afternoon,
+descending from it with the greatest reluctance only
+when Louie vowed that she could not stay another moment,
+was that as long as England had Queensberrys to make her
+P.R. Rules it didn't matter what Radicals tried to make
+of her laws. Louie fondled his silver hair; dear old dad!
+Then she made him drive her back to Chelsea.</p>
+
+<p>(Buck, by the way, was returned at the head of the poll,
+a few weeks later, amid acclamations that might well have
+rendered him deaf in his other ear also.)</p>
+
+<p>Back in the Club once more, Louie set aside the best
+chop, and made a tour of the place in search of the narrowest
+table. The one she chose was so narrow that the
+backs of the two chairs she turned up against it almost
+touched. Lightheartedly she rebuked Myrtle Morris, who
+asked her whether she was expecting "a boy"; and she
+laughed as Myrtle went off to tell another girl that "Causton
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>
+was on the warpath." Her warpaint consisted of a
+white blouse, low and perfectly plain at the neck, and a
+navy blue skirt. She was waiting at the window for
+Jim twenty minutes before he came.</p>
+
+<p>She had schooled herself to a rigorous composure. She
+opened the door for him and told him to mind the hall
+lamp, within an inch of which his hat reached; and the
+hand she gave him was not gloved this time. But she
+barely touched his hand; had she not two whole hours before
+her? He put aside a cheap hanging of rustling beads
+for her to pass, and then followed her into the large room
+on the left of the hall, empty save for a piano and a few
+chairs, that was used for parties and tableaux. Myrtle
+and another girl appeared for a moment in the doorway;
+the minxes appeared to be waltzing, but they had come to
+see who "Causton's boy" was; and as they sat down she
+asked him, as if daring him to find any but the plainer
+meaning in it, how Billy Izzard was. She exulted that
+she could say these things and he could not. Then she
+was told that their chops were ready. They passed into
+the next room.</p>
+
+<p>The table&mdash;it was a flimsy card-table covered with a
+cheap traycloth stiff with starch&mdash;accounted for all awkwardnesses
+and proximities; again she found it secretly
+delicious to murmur a demure apology for its smallness.
+She lingered over the eating of her chop merely because
+her plate was edge to edge with his; she would manage
+badly if she could not keep him at least two hours! Then,
+when she could linger out her eating no longer, she asked
+him for a cigarette and a light&mdash;for in the studios she had
+learned to smoke. He gave them to her. Her lids hovered
+as he held the match; she wondered whether she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+should look straight into his eyes or keep her lids downcast.
+In the end she did both, looking at him first, then
+down. Whether he looked at her at all she did not know;
+the first at any rate was a miss. She did not ask for a
+second match (she had, she told herself, some shame); instead,
+she put her elbows on the table and said, without
+further delay: "Well, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded as he began to tell her; it seemed to be
+pretty much what she had expected. She listened, or half
+listened; she would not have sworn, had he challenged her,
+that her attention did not wander a little. Her thoughts
+were ahead of his, but a little patience&mdash;he would catch
+up; he would see presently that what his wife might think
+or what she might not think (for that was what he was
+talking about) was of less practical importance than he
+supposed. Naturally his wife must be thinking this and
+that; marriage that left such a thing as a&mdash;call it a private
+execution&mdash;out of the calculation might even turn out to be
+a little difficult; but she might as well hear what he had to
+say about it. She waited for the cropping up of the names
+of Miriam Levey and Kitty Windus; they duly appeared.
+Mrs. Jeffries, it seemed, wanted to see Kitty, and Miriam
+Levey wanted her to do so. Why they wanted these things
+was not very clear, but possibly, if Louie was giving him
+only half her attention, Jim was not saying all he knew
+either. He still considered that aspect of the affair to be
+wholly and solely the problem: but no doubt he would
+wake up by-and-by.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she asked him whether he and his wife had
+quarrelled. He shook his head that apparently, in spite
+of its stupidity, she must still love.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;oh no."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And on he went again, still quite a number of leagues
+behind&mdash;the complication of his former engagement to
+Kitty, Evie's sense of unexplained things, Miriam Levey,
+her voracious curiosity, her presence at this new Consolidation.</p>
+
+<p>But here she interrupted him. "One moment. When
+do you start&mdash;this Consolidation?"</p>
+
+<p>He was toying with a knife; the little reflection passed
+over his massive face as he turned the blade. "In a few
+weeks. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't intend to take Miriam Levey over with
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>He put the knife down with a little slap. "I do not,"
+he said. Louie had thought as much. So, no doubt, in
+spite of what she seemed to have said to Kitty, had Miriam
+Levey.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, go on; I interrupted you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He went on. It seemed to her that if nothing had
+actually happened his overcarefulness was the one way
+likely to bring it to pass. Then, she supposed, he would
+ring her up on the telephone again.</p>
+
+<p>By this time she was thinking far more of Miriam
+Levey's empty chair at the new Consolidation than she
+was of things unaccounted for between her guest and his
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>And as for those unexplained things (Louie neither
+knew nor cared what they might be), she could only tell
+him now what she had told him that night when they had
+walked together, that wives must either be wives or not,
+must be told things or else be something less than wives.
+Perhaps she had not put it quite so plainly to him as that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+before, but that was what it had amounted to. Men with
+secrets ought to marry the right women.... She stole a
+daring look at him across the table. He was mumbling
+and twiddling a spoon now. His shoulders, bigger than
+Buck's, were clothed in an exquisite iron-grey cloth; she
+wondered whether he knew that she had kissed one of
+them that night in a Chelsea doorway.... And then,
+as he paused and looked up, she spoke. She did so almost
+curtly. If not telling hadn't answered, she said, she
+could only suggest, once more, telling. As for Kitty, he
+might put her entirely on one side; as long as she remained
+with Louie, Louie would answer for her.</p>
+
+<p>Then, for the first time, he seemed to show a gleam of
+interest in her affairs. He asked her how she got her
+living, now.... Her pulse quickened. Billy had told
+him, then; by "now" he meant now that she no longer
+sat; and his eyes avoided hers. He coloured; apparently
+he thought he was doing her an honour in wiping out all
+memory of that discovery in Billy's studio. An honour!
+She could have laughed at him. He little knew how she
+longed to tell him more&mdash;to tell him about the oyster-grey
+too&mdash;to tell him that for her it was as long ago as that.
+But no, he had seen the pearl&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And it appeared that his talk really had an object now;
+but, as usual, she had seen the drift of it before he had.
+He was thinking of Miss Levey's place, if his absurd
+delicacies would only allow him to get it out.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you accept it?" he managed at last to ask,
+sounding her earnestly with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady, silly woman," she whispered to herself,
+brightly flushing....</p>
+
+<p>But, glancing at him, she suddenly winced. Twice before
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+men had offered her posts, at more than their market
+value, and there had been no colour in her cheeks as she
+had refused them; had she coloured now at the quick
+thought that if <i>he</i> had made such an offer she might
+perhaps...? If so, there was mortification and
+despite in her colour. Why did he offer her Miss Levey's
+place? Was it his wife again&mdash;always his ninny of a
+wife? If that was so, so much the worse for him; it was
+time he learned that if he got into a mess he must make
+shift to get out of it again. There was a new little twang
+in her voice as, suddenly looking into his eyes, she said:
+"You've no right to expect that of me!"</p>
+
+<p>And as soon as the words were spoken, she saw too where
+she herself stood, and to what point beyond she was prepared
+to go. She knew now that she would have taken
+his job, not at added wages, but without wages at all.
+But to the humiliating thought that he imagined himself
+to be doing her a kindness was now superadded that of his
+entire ignorance that she might be making an attack upon
+his faithfulness at all. Suddenly she saw herself merely
+wonderful to him&mdash;<i>she</i> wonderful!&mdash;she, who had
+thought she could spend all her life up in the clouds, be
+content to be magnanimous for magnanimity's sake, virtuous
+for the mere love of virtue! Oh, if that was all, he
+needn't think <i>that</i> any longer! Wonderful?... What
+she wanted was not wonderful at all, oh dear, no: merely
+something common, coarse, filling; nothing more wonderful
+than that.... Wise mother, to have known that that
+was the end of it all, and to have taken, long ago, in
+Henson's studio, the short cut! She did not even try to
+check a wild little exclamation....</p>
+
+<p>And he evidently saw something too, though what, as he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+blundered deeper, she did not stop to inquire. He gave a
+groan. "Poor woman!" he said compassionately.</p>
+
+<p>He might just as well have set a spark to a fuse. There
+broke from her a peremptory cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that, Jim&mdash;that's the one thing I will <i>not</i> bear&mdash;I
+will <i>not</i> be called 'poor woman'&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And the rest now had to follow. It was the sum of her
+broodings, resentments, hatreds, dreams, desire, despair.
+Evie, him, herself&mdash;oh, it was not her fault if he didn't
+see now how the three of them stood. He knew only too
+well what he wanted: what Louie wanted she also knew
+only too well. Except to offer her a job that would save
+him even the trouble of ringing her up on the telephone
+when her help was required, had he ever, until this moment,
+looked at the thing from her point of view? He
+had not. She would help him still; but if their ships
+must part like this, at least no false tidings should pass
+from bridge to bridge: he should know exactly what it
+was he asked, and why she gave it! She began to speak
+rapidly, uncertainly, but sparing him nothing. Perhaps,
+after all, she said, his wife would understand; he had only
+to tell her that her husband made away with her sweetheart;
+perhaps she could bear it; if she couldn't well&mdash;he
+knew what was his for the holding up of a finger....</p>
+
+<p>Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped. Her
+voice dropped. "I've had no luck," she said, with quiet
+bitterness. "I'm out of it, and there's no more to say.
+Give me a match."</p>
+
+<p>And then she rose. He might sit there if he liked.</p>
+
+<p>He rose too, and they walked down the room in silence
+together. The bead screen of the hall parted and tinkled
+together again behind the great church-door of his back.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+Without a word he took down his coat and, under the
+coloured hall lamp, hoisted himself into it. And then he
+looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>Already in her heart she knew that that look was the
+end. Her offer had been rejected. Whatever else might
+happen, she, Louie Causton, would never come between
+him and his wife. The woman who had those eyes would
+keep their looks; had it been Louie's fortune to have them,
+she would have kept their looks. He was a plotter, but
+not of amours; a carrier through too, but not of intrigues.
+So grave an innocence was his that probably he didn't
+know that his look told her all this; if so, it was final indeed.</p>
+
+<p>So she took her dismissal, and then, with her hand on
+the letter-box of the door, stood gazing meditatively on the
+ground. She had wanted to be wooed; failing that, she
+had once more brought herself to woo; and this Joseph
+had gravely repelled her.</p>
+
+<p>At last she looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"About what you were saying&mdash;I mean that place of
+Miss Levey's," she said. "I don't think it would do&mdash;not
+now."</p>
+
+<p>The man who could plan a murder but not an affair
+looked humbly up.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he murmured. It was as if he said: "I
+don't remember that meetings of ours in Billy's studio;
+I forget this too. You see how it is. Your taking the
+job would make no difference."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she shook her head. "I should be seeing you,"
+she said. "It wouldn't do. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>She saw that she had missed even more than she had
+imagined.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And yet, before Christmas came, she was at that self-same
+Consolidation. In October a lofty refusal; in December
+a creeping back again with her tail between her
+legs. Where, she asked herself, was her pride now?</p>
+
+<p>The answer was that that had been in October, and this
+was December.</p>
+
+<p>When she told Kitty that she was succeeding to Miss
+Levey's place Kitty had certain things to say about
+treachery and broken friendships. She said them at some
+length, and then remarked that after that of course Louie
+could hardly expect her to stay with her.</p>
+
+<p>"You never liked her," she said, as if not to like Miss
+Levey was an offence in itself. "And I know you tried
+to keep me from seeing her. Oh, you think I don't notice
+things, but you never made a greater mistake; I could tell
+you things that would surprise you! You and James
+Jeffries have got some game on; don't tell me he didn't
+give her the push; Evie and Miriam both say so; oh,
+you're a deep one, Louie Causton! First you come between
+me and Miriam; and then that day your father
+came and I was asking him about black eyes and he told
+me you could have one <i>without</i> having one till you came
+to blow your nose&mdash;oh, <i>I</i> watched you! And then to go
+worming about till you got Miriam fired and then bag
+her job yourself! Thank goodness, some people have better
+ideas of friendship than that! I have, for one.
+Never mind the bit you owe me; you can pay Carter Paterson
+with it and we'll call it quits. Perhaps it wouldn't
+be troubling you too much to ask you if you knew where
+the luggage labels are?"</p>
+
+<p>So Louie let her go. The tract she received by post on
+the following day: "God's Eye Everywhere, or No Sins
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+Secret," she dropped into the fire. Even if Kitty really
+was groping blindfold on the track of that stale old private
+execution, Archie Merridew didn't matter now. The
+question had already entered the stage of blank fatality.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">V</p>
+
+<p>Louie did not succeed to Miss Levey's chair at once.
+Somebody else got that, who made room for somebody
+else, who made room for Louie. And her arrival
+at the Consolidation appeared to be the signal for Jim's
+almost immediate departure from it&mdash;that is to say, she
+saw him for three weeks, then missed him for some days,
+asked (in another week or so) a question, and was told that
+a fall of some sort, supervening on many weeks of concentrated
+work, had necessitated a trip to Egypt. She
+hinted that she would like to know what his fall had been,
+but nobody seemed able to tell her. As a matter of fact,
+she never knew. It was merely an act of spite on the part
+of the stars against herself.</p>
+
+<p>The ordeal by absence began again.</p>
+
+<p>This time she was able, somehow, to endure it. She
+always remembered him when she passed a shipping company's
+office, with a model of a liner in the window and
+pictures of palms and pyramids and a sphinx not altogether
+unlike himself looming up out of the tawny sand;
+but at other times she well-nigh forgot him for whole
+days together. She could hardly question her immediate
+superior, a Mr. Whitlock, about him, and probably Mr.
+Whitlock could not question Sir Julius Pepper&mdash;for Mr.
+Pepper was made a knight in the new year. Sir Julius
+had altogether too much <i>nous</i> and urbanity to be questioned;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>
+he asked, not answered, questions. Such an indiscretion
+would have stamped Mr. Whitlock himself as
+a man of a barbarous mind.</p>
+
+<p>The place itself, its plate glass and marble, its gilded
+lifts and high galleries and lofty central dome, its floes of
+desks and counters and the tessellated floors over which
+rubber-tyred trollies ran to the strong-room every night&mdash;astonished
+Louie. What had been consolidated, who the
+men had been who had reconciled interests so great that
+the mere overcoming of their mass and inertia must have
+been accounted a wonder, she never really knew. Perhaps
+nobody really knew; perhaps not so much men as
+forces had accomplished that task. In some of its aspects
+the concern was a huge amalgamation of mercantile companies,
+mostly railway and shipping; in others it more
+nearly resembled a Government Department. But she
+knew that Jim knew all about it. Jim, Mr. Stonor (Mr.
+Whitlock's junior) told her, and Sir Julius, had planned
+the whole enterprise. Acting alone, Mr. Stonor said, Jim
+might have done the work and then have been shouldered
+out of the rewards by such bustling men as Robson, of
+the Board of Trade, George Hastie and Sir Peregrine
+Campbell, and others to whom Louie had lifted up her eyes
+when she had kept the appointment-books for the photographer
+in Bond Street; but Sir Julius had seen to that&mdash;trust
+Sir Julius! Sir Julius could cut a throat smiling
+with the best of them; if Jim was the genius, Sir Julius
+was the impresario of the enterprise. And by-and-by,
+from the frequency with which Sir Julius and other potentates
+said, when puzzled: "What d'you suppose Jeffries
+would do?" or "Why the deuce isn't Jeffries here?"
+Louie came to much the same conclusion.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At first she was set to work with twenty other girls who,
+each sitting under a porcelain-shaded incandescent that
+burned all day long, tapped typewriters in the back part
+of the building that looked down on the white-tiled well;
+and for some weeks it was a question whether she kept her
+job or not. For she was dreadfully inefficient, and daily
+expected a reduction to the level of the girls who, with
+rigid "dolly-caps" clamped round their heads, manipulated
+the rubber worms of the big telephone switchboard.
+But again her improved French served her turn. Miss
+Lingard, who sat in Miss Levey's chair behind a screen
+twenty yards away, was absent one day; Mr. Stonor haled
+Louie off to Sir Julius's room; and Louie, following Sir
+Julius and a Frenchman from one to another of the
+spring-roller maps with which the room was lined, took
+down in English short-hand a conversation in French
+about the boundaries of some concession or other. It was
+a badly botched job, but it was initialled and passed; and
+Sir Julius, who did not so much open doors and place
+chairs as allow it to be discovered that doors were opened
+and chairs placed exactly when they should have been,
+looked at Louie, thanked her, and presently sent for her
+again. One night she had to wait on him after dinner
+at an hotel, to make notes of certain conversations; and
+perhaps Sir Julius noted the little dipping of Louie's
+mouth when she was summoned from the ante-room where
+she had been kept waiting. She wondered whether he had
+expected she would turn up in a dolly-cap. A little after
+that he asked her out to dinner, without any business excuse
+at all. Presently she was wondering whether she
+would have to walk out of the Consolidation or else to
+tell Sir Julius Pepper not to be a fool.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It never came to that; exactly how near it was to doing
+so, Louie never knew. It was her Uncle Augustus of all
+people who saved the situation. His name came up;
+Louie could not restrain a sour little smile; and "Do you
+know Lord Moone?" Sir Julius asked. "Oh yes,"
+Louie replied. That was all. Sir Julius's charming smile
+never varied. But the case was altered. Amanuenses
+of sorts are one thing, ladies with private information
+about the peerage another. Perhaps Sir Julius was a
+little of a snob. At any rate, he did not allow his little
+gallantries to interfere with business.</p>
+
+<p>So Louie became a quite superior writer of Pitman's
+shorthand. The weeks passed. Jim still remained
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Nor had she any news of Kitty Windus, of Miriam
+Levey, nor yet of Evie Jeffries. She still, however, remained
+good friends with Billy Izzard. It was from
+Billy that she heard, one night in April, something that
+filled her with a vague and ineffectual trouble.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone up to his place in Camden Town, intending
+to spend an hour or so with him; but five minutes was
+all the time Billy had to spare for her. He was just off
+to Victoria to meet a fellow, he said; if she was going that
+way they could go together; and she needn't think he was
+going to leave her in the studio to steal his sketches.
+"One of our heroes just come back from South Africa,
+a fellow called Lovenant-Smith," he said. "Coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go with you as far as Charing Cross," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Before she left Billy at Charing Cross she had learned
+quite a lot about his friend, Mr. Lovenant-Smith. There
+was nothing especially heroic about Roy's homecoming;
+no doubt his work had been useful, but it had not been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>
+fighting; for a year and a half he had not left Cape Town.
+He had now come into money, and was handing in his
+papers; he would hunt and manage his estate somewhere
+down in Shropshire. "I shall go and stop with him,"
+said Billy. "I only hope his horses are better than that
+old yacht he nearly drowned the pair of us in." And at
+Charing Cross he left Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Roy was back home, then.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it made not one atom of difference. Jim away
+was all to her, Roy in England nothing. No doubt it was
+wicked.</p>
+
+<p>So much the worse for Louie.</p>
+
+<p>Then, not a week later, Jim returned from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>But he returned only to go away once more, this time to
+Scotland. She saw him, for just one moment, coming out
+of Sir Julius's room. He was very brown, but much
+thinner, and he had a new overcoat. He went straight
+on to Scotland that day. Mr. Stonor said that he intended
+to stay there for the rest of the summer. "Overwork,
+of course," said Mr. Stonor.</p>
+
+<p>So yet another absence in her story of absences began.</p>
+
+<p>She filled it chiefly with work. She rarely got home
+before ten, and, save on Saturdays and Sundays, had to
+leave Jimmy entirely to the young woman who had succeeded
+Céleste. Billy had left town, and had probably
+gone to stay with Roy in Shropshire. Of Councillor
+Causton she now saw little. She wished she could save
+more money. Jimmy was now five and a half years old.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in October, Jim returned from Scotland. Louie
+half expected that it would be she who would have to
+leave now, but this did not happen. Not that she saw
+much of him; he did not come until eleven, and went home
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+again for tea. Sometimes, after he had left, she or Mr.
+Stonor had to ring him up at his house in Well Walk,
+Hampstead; for the rest, he remained in high seclusion.
+She was glad it was so. A half absence such as this had
+not all absence's pangs, nor was his half presence too much
+perturbation; she could take a command with calmness,
+and she had nothing but commands to take. She knew
+by this time that he had a second child, a little girl, and
+that seemed definitely to close and bar the door against
+any wild and lawless hopes she might ever have entertained.
+And so things went on until early in December.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that entirely changed their course may have
+seemed an accident to Jim, but a little reflection made it
+plain enough to Louie. She had not seen Evie Jeffries
+since that afternoon when they had met at the step of the
+bus opposite the Adam and Eve; and Evie's whole face
+and manner gave the lie to the story she told when, at a
+little after three o'clock one afternoon, Louie came upon
+her in the counting-house of the Consolidation itself.
+Near the table with the calculating machines Louie heard
+a clerk whisper: "Mrs. Jeffries!" Forty pairs of eyes
+were furtively watching her over desk-rails and glass
+screens. Some of the clerks even made errands in order
+to get a better view of her. If she wanted her husband
+she had only to ask to be taken to his room at once, but she
+stood, a slender figure in new black furs, by a waiting-room
+door. Then, seeing Louie, she almost ran to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how are you?" she cried, in an acquired voice,
+touching Louie's hand then dropping it again. "Really,
+this place almost terrifies me! I came to fetch my husband
+home to tea&mdash;the car's outside&mdash;but of course I
+know I'm early. I'd such a lot of shopping to do, but I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+got through it quicker than I thought. Well, how are
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Louie that she did not do it very well; the
+manner of the <i>grande dame</i> was the last thing she ought to
+have attempted. As Evie put up her hand as if it held an
+invisible quizzing-glass, Louie wondered whether she had
+come primarily to see her husband at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, this is stupendous!" she said. "I wonder if
+you could show me round&mdash;that is, unless I'm interfering
+with your duties? Do tell me what these things are!"</p>
+
+<p>They were the mechanical calculators; her comment on
+them was: "How quaint!" Followed by eyes, Louie
+took her to the lifts; she said they must have one like
+that put into the new house they had taken in Iddesleigh
+Gate. "It used to belong to Baron Stillhausen&mdash;you've
+heard of Baron Stillhausen, the famous diplomat?" she
+said. From the lifts Louie took her to the department
+where the girls in dolly-caps pulled at the snaky telephone
+plugs. "Oh," she exclaimed, "so <i>this</i> is where you talk
+to my husband in the evenings from, is it?"... Louie
+had a little start.... She answered, however, that the
+private line was in another place, and led the way. No,
+Evie Jeffries oughtn't to attempt this kind of thing; her
+touch was too heavy. She told more about herself than
+she ascertained about anybody else. As they left the
+private line Louie somehow had the impression that Evie
+Jeffries was counting the paces from Louie's chair to her
+husband's room.</p>
+
+<p>She returned to her own place slowly. She wished Evie
+Jeffries had not come. Her coming seemed all at once to
+have diminished Louie's composure; it was as if a closed
+question had been clumsily opened again. "Where do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+you live? I should like to come and see you," Evie had
+said, as they had parted at the door of Jim's room; and
+that was odd, since for quite a number of years Evie
+Jeffries, had given no sign that she wanted to visit her.
+Kitty Windus, yes; Miriam Levey, yes; but she had not
+wanted to see Louie Causton. But she wanted to see
+Louie now, and had come that afternoon, Louie was now
+convinced, expressly to see her. Why? Had Jim been
+talking? Had Kitty and Miriam Levey been talking?
+Louie did not know. She only knew that she had been
+settled and at peace and was now so no longer.</p>
+
+<p>And through it all shone an unquenchable recollection&mdash;the
+recollection of how she had once stumbled upon Evie
+Soames, not in wonderful furs, asking for her lordly husband,
+but dressed in a skirt and blouse, cheek to cheek
+in a dark back room with a fancy-stationer's son.</p>
+
+<p>Evie would never forgive her that discovery.</p>
+
+<p>With all the elasticity gone out of her, she resumed the
+work she had left half-an-hour before.</p>
+
+<p>But as she lay in bed that night in her little flat, Louie
+ate her heart out again. She hated Evie Jeffries. She
+had remembered, too, an old, old slander&mdash;the slander to
+know the truth about which Kitty Windus had come to
+the Nursing Home in Mortlake Road. Was it that that
+had brought Mrs. Jeffries to the Consolidation now?</p>
+
+<p>Louie tossed and tossed. Oh, she cried vindictively,
+if it only <i>had</i> been so.... But to have to submit to the
+indignity of Evie's jealousy and not to be able to give her
+grounds for it! And Mrs. Jeffries wanted to see her flat!
+Well, she should be welcome. Louie would hardly be at
+the trouble to lie about things, but every stick of furniture
+in this place in which Jim had never set foot might silently
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span>
+lie for her if they would! Would that be to drag Jim in?
+Well, let him be dragged in; a woman with a husband like
+Jim, to be jealous! Why, with Louie ready and glad to
+lose her soul for him, he was the very egotist of faithfulness!
+He could not be virtuous without damning Louie
+with his grave and candid looks! She could almost have
+laughed at him. When all was said, such virtue was a
+byword, and the story of Joseph a thing for a quiet smile!
+Then Louie's laugh became a cry aloud, that woke Jimmy.
+Jimmy went to sleep again, but she was no calmer.</p>
+
+<p>Bitter as spurge was that old story of hers now, and
+bitterer still the only moral lesson it now appeared to her
+to have. Oh, no doubt there was a deal to say for their
+conventional morality, but a pretty moral lesson it was,
+after all, that you repented of a history with one man only
+when it forbade a second history with another! And she
+swore again that that first history should not have stood
+in her way; more, far more than that was his own headstrong
+virtue, and perhaps that was not all either. She
+had been born for him, she knew it; he had had never a
+secret from her save those large open secrets that scarce
+a woman shared with a man yet; his hands, that could
+take life for love, were made to hold her. She knew it in
+her soul.... But huge as it was, he didn't see it. He
+allowed a pretty face to blind him to it all. "Oh, come,
+come!" she had called to him on the only night, of all
+those nights, when he and she had walked together; and
+his answer had been to take himself away. When she
+had kissed his shoulder she had merely kissed the spot
+where another woman's head had lain.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if that slander <i>could</i> only have been true!</p>
+
+<p>She looked at, and almost tossed aside unread, a letter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+that came for her in the morning. Not for a single moment
+had she slept, and she wanted no letter from Roy&mdash;for
+it was from Roy. Still she might as well read it.
+She did so.</p>
+
+<p>Billy Izzard was with him; it had come out that Billy
+knew her, and he wanted to see her. "I've come back for
+you," the letter said, "and I'm not going to let you go this
+time. Do write when I can come and see you. Off out
+now, but do write." She threw it into the fire. Marry
+Roy? She would far rather commit another sin than
+such a reparation. The trouble was that she could not
+commit the sin.</p>
+
+<p>That morning she was sent for by Jim. As she turned
+the handle of his door she was ready to make a bet with
+herself about what he wanted her for. She was not mistaken.
+He wanted to thank her for showing his wife
+round the day before.</p>
+
+<p>His wife&mdash;always and for ever his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"If you feel that you must&mdash;&mdash;" she said, biting her
+lip with humiliation and passion.</p>
+
+<p>"It's merely&mdash;&mdash;" he rumbled heavily on....</p>
+
+<p>As if she needed to be told what it "merely" was!
+If he cared to hear it <i>she</i> could tell <i>him</i> what was
+"merely" the matter with his wife!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, must you?" she said, quivering under the torture.
+He was playing nervously with a pen. "Must I what?"
+he said, not looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"Must you do this?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up. "Shut the door," he said. "Now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She listened to him almost scornfully. Again harping
+on that informal execution, as if he had been right and not
+right, and as if it now mattered one straw whether he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+"told his wife" or not! He was saying something about
+a doctor; the doctor, Louie gathered, had said she mustn't
+have another shock; what had Louie&mdash;always and for
+ever Louie&mdash;to say to <i>that</i>? Louie clutched at her skirt
+with both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know?" she said, clenching the skirt hard.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not."</p>
+
+<p>"Then ask me again and I'll tell you," she threatened
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I do ask you."</p>
+
+<p>Well, if he would have it.... "She's jealous," said
+Louie.</p>
+
+<p>The smile that stole slowly over his face set her almost
+beside herself. Even Potiphar's wife was probably not
+smiled at. Louie cut short the easy words that accompanied
+the smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if she isn't, why does she want to come and see
+me at my home?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>With quite remarkable clumsiness he pretended he had
+known his wife wanted this, and smiled again. She
+stamped on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"My good man&mdash;&mdash;" she broke out wildly....</p>
+
+<p>What she said she did not remember very clearly afterwards.
+It was spoken less to him than to ease her own
+breast. With nothing to give her, he still could not hold
+his tongue nor restrain that smile when she told him his
+wife was jealous. Jealous?...</p>
+
+<p>Yes, and with a jealousy that could now never pass
+away! For, out of absences, silences, refusals, virtues,
+smiles, everything, Louie had, after all, secured something
+that all the smiling in the world could not take away.
+She <i>had</i> the secret he had feared to share with his wife.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span>
+She <i>had</i> the answer to every riddle in his riddle-haunted
+eyes. His wife <i>had</i> grounds for her jealousy, after all,
+had she but wit enough to know where to look for them.
+But she too was hopelessly behind. She too was smelling
+at cold scents&mdash;telephones and visits to flats. She
+suspected a gross infidelity, and never dreamed of the existence
+of one so fatally searching that the other would
+have been a mere incident by comparison with it. Little
+dullard, how should she? Her conception even of jealousy
+was as limited as everything else about her; a call
+or two on the private wire at night, and she was found
+asking questions at the Consolidation the next day.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly Louie saw&mdash;fool that she had been not to
+see it before!&mdash;why Evie Jeffries wanted to come to her
+flat. It was not to see the place and its furniture. It
+was to see Jimmy.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if her boy could only have had eyes like a young
+lion!</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">VI</p>
+
+<p>When Kitty Windus had come to Mortlake Road
+and had refused to sit down until Louie had told
+her the truth about the wanton slander that had linked her
+name with Jim's, Louie had dismissed the matter with
+amused contempt. But now there seemed something
+rather terrible in it. Its author's stamping-out notwithstanding,
+for Evie Jeffries it appeared still to live. What
+had brought it up anew Louie could not as much as guess,
+but there it seemed to be.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's it?" she muttered to herself. "In that case
+I may certainly expect to see you again soon. You won't
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>
+say anything to your husband; he'd only smile and disbelieve
+his eyes and ears if you did&mdash;his powers that way
+are really tremendous; but you'll probably go to Miriam
+Levey, who's rather a gift for these things, and Kitty'll
+back her up, and you'll make out your case one way or another.
+Very well. When the water's troubled there's the
+best fishing. <i>I'm</i> not above certain things now; good gracious,
+no! I'll find a reason for ringing him up to-night,
+and if you go to the telephone yourself so much the better.
+And you'll be round to see me at my flat before very long."</p>
+
+<p>Evie delayed to come, but Louie knew the reason for
+that. Jim was moving into his great new place in Iddesleigh
+Gate. That would take a little time. Well, there
+was no hurry. When she did come Louie would be ready
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>Did she still hope, if those waters could be sufficiently
+troubled, for a catch? Was she in her heart now as resolved
+to wreck the peace of Jim's household as formerly
+she had been to preserve it? She could hardly have answered
+the questions herself. It was Evie, not she (she
+told herself), who was going the right way to make a mess
+of things; nevertheless, she had only to remember Jim's
+smile to feel the tigress stretch itself within her. The
+loved fool! Could he go all lengths for love without thinking
+that a woman might do the same? Louie could not
+kill, as he could, smoothly burying the consequences afterwards,
+but she could do other things; and she was not sure
+that she couldn't kill too. Ten words, it appeared, would
+do it. Jim, who did not fear murder, feared those ten
+words; well, men feared one thing, women another, that
+was all. She had only to open her mouth where Jim kept
+his shut.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The only thing was that it did not seem a very sporting
+thing to do. Jim had taken his risks; she would be taking
+none. It was not much, perhaps, but it was enough to
+give her pause.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime she continued to ring Jim up frequently
+on the private telephone.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the second Saturday afternoon in April that
+Evie at last paid her visit. Louie had sent out Rhoda,
+Jimmy's nurse, for the afternoon, and was herself setting
+out with the boy for one of their precious jaunts. They
+were half-way down the four flights of stairs when she
+heard somebody ascending. She and Evie Jeffries met on
+the second landing, where the charwoman ceased to whiten
+the edges of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Louie that Evie Jeffries must have a sort
+of lucky-bag of greetings into which to dip. She could
+hardly have been surprised to meet Louie on Louie's staircase,
+but she drew a wrong one for all that.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this is a sur&mdash;a pleasure!" she cried. "You
+see, I promised to come, and here I am! Don't tell me
+you're just going out!"</p>
+
+<p>"No; we were only going to the South Kensington
+Museum, and I was in two minds about it. Come up,
+won't you?" Louie replied.</p>
+
+<p>At first Evie wouldn't hear of it, but even as she spoke
+she had ascended another step. They went upstairs again,
+and Louie put her key into the lock. "You'll excuse me
+a moment, won't you?" she said, as Evie entered. "In
+there's my sitting-room."</p>
+
+<p>And she herself, turning along the passage, entered her
+bedroom and took that old study of Billy Izzard's from its
+paper wrappings. She hung it up on its old nail. If
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+Evie Jeffries wished to see her flat she should see her flat.
+Then she returned to the front room that looked away over
+the trees and houses to Earls Court.</p>
+
+<p>"So this," said Evie, as she entered, "is your little
+boy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's Jim. Won't you sit down? I'll put the
+kettle on and we'll have tea."</p>
+
+<p>She went into the kitchen, filled the tin kettle, and set it
+on the gas-ring.</p>
+
+<p>Evie was dressed in an exquisite coat and skirt and an
+expensive and wrong hat; silk linings made whispers whenever
+she moved; but Louie, who kept her good clothes for
+the Consolidation, wore the battered old grey felt hat and
+long grey coat in which she had passed from studio to
+studio. But she knew that Evie envied her her distinction
+of motion. Evie's figure was pretty and "stock,"
+charming but with no surprise&mdash;that of a demonstrable
+beauty. And the acquired tones had come into her voice
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"How ripping up here!" she approved. "Such a
+splendid&mdash;view! I wish we had a view like it in Iddesleigh
+Gate; but as I told my husband, even money can't
+buy a view in London. Delightful! Have you the morning
+sun?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's in my bedroom," said Louie. "How did you
+come&mdash;by car?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I felt that I needed the walk. Really people
+will be forgetting how to walk soon. Well, at all events,
+he's a beautiful boy!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie saw no reason why she should not say, in the
+simple French which may more or less be assumed to go
+with large houses and cars, that she preferred that the boy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+himself should not be told so; and then she went into the
+kitchen again to smile. She remembered Burnett Minor:
+"Voo affectay feele!" she murmured softly. Then she
+made tea.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you're not quite settled yet?" she said, returning
+with the tray.</p>
+
+<p>"Settled! Why, it will take us months!" Evie purred.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. It seems very odd to talk over the telephone,
+though, to a place you've never seen. Sugar? Is
+this place at all like what you imagined?"</p>
+
+<p>Again came the ready-made answer: "Oh, it's really
+quite too delightful!" It was a pity, Louie thought, that
+Mrs. Jeffries had not had the advantage of a few minutes'
+talk with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith before coming to see her.
+The Lady-in-Charge at Rainham Parva might have warned
+her.</p>
+
+<p>But Louie knew that already her very chairs and mats
+and brown-papered walls were silently whispering to Evie
+Jeffries. She might talk of Iddesleigh Gate, but she was
+thinking of nothing less than of Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps
+she had been reassured in the matter of Jimmy's eyes,
+which were as blue as Roy's, but her own eyes were taking
+in everything for all that. Let them. Louie wondered
+whether, did she turn her back for a few minutes, her
+visitor would question the child.</p>
+
+<p>"The Amaranth Room?" she presently interrupted
+Evie's flow to say. "Have you really a room called that?
+How lovely it sounds!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly fifty feet long, my husband says; why, it has
+to have three large fireplaces, as well as the radiators, but
+of course there's steam-heat all through the house. It's
+delicious, not to walk into cold patches all of a sudden.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>
+And all the windows on one side are double, so that the
+place is perfectly quiet. You must come some time. Of
+course," she took herself up, "our other house was quite
+a poky place; my husband never really settled there; but
+at Iddesleigh Gate, he says, he can really stretch himself."</p>
+
+<p>Louie meditated for a moment. Then: "What's
+really been the matter with him?" she asked. She knew
+that Evie would probably not believe she didn't know; for
+that reason it was better to ask.</p>
+
+<p>But she got no information. It was overstrain, Evie
+replied lightly, and then on the top of that he'd slipped one
+night and caught his head on the corner of a fender. He'd
+slipped because he'd been really fagged out, what with
+starting the Consolidation and one thing and another.
+"But he looks all right now, don't you think?" Evie
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, I should say, from the little I see of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you mostly do Sir Julius's work, don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mostly."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be great fun for you, being taken out by Sir
+Julius sometimes. My husband told me that."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite amusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Levey was never taken out like that!"</p>
+
+<p>"No? Have you seen her lately?"</p>
+
+<p>But again Louie got little information. Included in
+what she did get, however, was a lie. Evie reported that
+Miss Levey, now at some Women's Emancipation League
+or other with Kitty Windus, had actually been going to
+write to Louie to suggest that she, Louie, should apply for
+her old place. Louie gave a little nod. Of course Miriam
+Levey, rather than own to defeat, would pretend that she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+had left the Consolidation of her own accord. Louie
+rose.</p>
+
+<p>"But perhaps you'd like to see my place?" she said.
+"Not that I think you'll find it very amusing. But you
+can see it if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"I should love it! Is Jimmy coming? Do you know,
+Jimmy, I've got a little boy like you, but not nearly as
+big?"</p>
+
+<p>"Has he got a helmet like mine?" Jimmy demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I think I shall have to get him one."</p>
+
+<p>"You stay here, Jimmy," said his mother; and she led
+the way to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Evie praised the kitchen and its meagre appointments,
+and was then shown the bathroom. "It hasn't a crystal
+bath," Louie said, "but it does to wash in." She lingered
+in the bathroom a little; she was thinking of another bath
+and certain old jokes about brown-paper parcels. Then,
+first showing Evie the bedroom that had been Kitty's,
+she passed to her own room at the back.</p>
+
+<p>Against the wall on the left lay Jimmy's bed; her own
+was across the room, with its head under the break of the
+mansard roof. The little built-out window, from the glass
+sides of which rows of chimney-pots could be seen, faced
+the door, and over the fireplace on the right, full in the
+light, hung Billy's study. It was the second thing on
+which Evie's eyes rested. Louie was careful not to look
+at it.</p>
+
+<p>For in that place at any rate she was going to strike;
+the rest might fall out afterwards as it would. As she
+turned away to pat Jimmy's pillow she was suddenly
+fighting white; the little creature had come for it and
+should have it. And she should have it swiftly and without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+warning. Even as Louie had turned her back her
+heart had given a leap....</p>
+
+<p>For up to that moment it had been always possible that
+Jim had not spoken of his intrusion into Billy's studio
+that evening; but there was no doubt now! Jim&mdash;or
+perhaps Billy Izzard&mdash;had told her. Probably Billy.
+Probably Billy first, and then, seeing she already knew,
+Jim. All at once there rushed upon Louie, as she passed
+from Jimmy's bed to her own and smoothed the coverlet
+of that also, what had happened later that same evening,
+when her arms had supported a collapsing Jim in a Swan
+Walk doorway and she had passionately called him:
+"Come, come! Come, come!"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke quietly; quietness was so much more destructive.</p>
+
+<p>"This is where I get the morning sun. But it's very
+windy. The wind blew that picture you're looking at
+down the other day." Then, without either pause or
+change of tone: "By the way, that's what you came to
+see, isn't it&mdash;that and my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>Simultaneously with her blow she was commenting to
+herself: "That's good-bye to you, Sir Julius; she'll see
+I don't come back to the Consolidation after that; will
+you have Miss Levey back again, or will you try her friend
+Miss Windus? I don't think you'll offer Miss Windus an&mdash;er&mdash;increase
+of wages. As for me, I suppose I can sit
+again; nothing matters now. Or there's a plainer way
+still&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The next moment she had called sharply: "Go away,
+Jimmy, till I call for you! Go and look out of the window
+for Rhoda!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned and faced the woman who had taken
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>
+two quick, running steps towards her. Insolently she
+smiled into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"That was it, wasn't it?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jeffries did not fight white. The blood had
+thronged to her head until her very lips seemed swollen;
+Miss Levey could hardly have spoken more thickly. She
+spoke, too, in a passionate ellipsis than which Louie's own
+five words did not go more straight to the heart of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you would if you could&mdash;I've known that a long
+time!" she cried. "Wouldn't you just&mdash;rather! You'd
+do it if it was only to give <i>me</i> one for myself! <i>I</i> know
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Louie thought she rather liked her for making a fight
+of it. She still smiled. "Then that was it?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Evie flushed even more deeply. "You didn't suppose
+I didn't know all about that absurd meeting, did you?"
+she said, with a still darker flush.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, no. I've known for weeks that you 'knew'&mdash;if
+we mean the same thing. Perhaps we don't, though.
+Anyway, I can quite understand your wanting to see for
+yourself. Miss Levey can't tell you everything."</p>
+
+<p>Evie's inability to speak for mere fury was so evident
+that Louie, after watching her for a moment, continued:</p>
+
+<p>"As for that picture, naturally I wanted to keep it.
+I'm sure you'll see that for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Here Evie flamed. "'Naturally!'" she broke out.
+Louie gave an almost humorous shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, surely it's natural?"</p>
+
+<p>"Natural!... As if his coming in wasn't the merest
+accident!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know that; but what <i>are</i> you here for then?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+And now that you <i>have</i> been and seen, what can you possibly
+do about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie's lips seemed as thick as if a bee had stung them.
+She broke out again.</p>
+
+<p>"'It!'&mdash;I like your 'it,' Miss Causton or Mrs. Causton
+or whatever you call yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>Louie coolly smoothed the folds of her blouse. "By
+'it,' I mean, of course, my loving your husband," she said.
+"As you guessed, I knew that you knew about that picture.
+But it's really a much older thing than that! I
+don't quite know how old; while you were still engaged to
+somebody else&mdash;as old as that anyhow. And as it's purely
+my affair, and even he can't stop it, I wonder what <i>you</i> can
+possibly do!&mdash;I'm 'Miss' Causton, by the way."</p>
+
+<p>Louie had almost a genius for these last words that could
+be taken up; she smiled again as Evie, taking them up,
+said: "Oh, <i>are</i> you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't think I need be longer than I like,
+but that's neither here nor there. The important thing at
+present is whether you were wise to come to-day or not. I
+wonder whether you'd let me give you a piece of advice?"</p>
+
+<p>And that, as Evie still stood speechless with rage, might
+be described as the end of the first round. There was a
+long pause during which the two women stood looking at
+one another. Then the second round began, with a rapid
+exchange of half sentences.</p>
+
+<p>"Advice! Thanking you very much for your kindness&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please don't raise your voice; they aren't double
+windows here."</p>
+
+<p>"Advice is cheap."</p>
+
+<p>"Far from it, believe me."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You common&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sssh, ssh, ssh! Your husband wasn't above asking
+my advice&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take very good care&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;there are other people in these flats."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, is noise anything new here?" said Evie grossly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you really shouldn't say those things!"</p>
+
+<p>And again they fell back, as it were, for breath. It was
+Louie who presently resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't in the least know why I should want to advise
+you," she went on. "I'd no intention of doing so when
+you came into this room, and to be frank I still half hope
+you won't take the advice. But you'll please yourself
+about that. It's this. Don't be a little fool. Go home,
+and don't tell your husband you've seen me at all. If you
+do you'll make a sad mistake. You say advice is cheap;
+well, this isn't; it's fearfully dear. It's not the first time
+I've tried to help you, and I really haven't strength to do it
+any more. No, don't try to think of fresh names to call
+me either; already you've called me common and told
+me that the tenants here are used to hearing angry wives,
+and one can have too much of that. So go home, and say
+nothing to your husband about where you've been. Believe
+me, it'll be quite the best."</p>
+
+<p>It did in truth cost her more, far more, than she had
+intended to pay. The greater fool she, she told herself,
+but&mdash;she gave a quick, defiant glance round the bedroom,
+as if her eyes sought somebody who dared to meddle in her
+affairs. She would be a fool if she wished; who should stop
+her? This jealous little scold had fair warning now; let
+her take it and go while there was yet time. Louie had
+all but spoken her former <i>fiancé's</i> name once; with much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>
+more provocation she might forget herself and involve Jim
+too in a catastrophe of ten little words; and she wanted to
+do the sporting thing after all. Let Jim's wife take her
+fill of that canvas of Billy's, then, and go. Her eyes were
+glued to it now. As she looked Louie exulted; it <i>had</i>
+been so&mdash;precisely so; not all Evie Jeffries's looking could
+alter that fact....</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly, as if even in this gratification and triumph
+lurked a peril best avoided, Louie strode to the canvas,
+took it from its nail, and set it on the floor by the little
+fireplace with its face to the wall. She had felt the tigress
+stretch again. To put that thing out of sight was the
+safest thing to do. She turned to Evie again.</p>
+
+<p>"Please go," she said. ("Yes, mother's coming in a
+minute, Jimmy.) You see, he's calling me. Forgive my
+turning you out like this, but do, do go, and don't tell your
+husband where you've been. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>But Evie Jeffries seemed to suspect that Louie was
+merely "coming it over her" with something indefinable,
+essential, not to be acquired. After all it was she, this
+shabby, grey-eyed woman, who wrote shorthand for a
+weekly wage, and herself, Mrs. James Herbert Jeffries,
+who lived in the mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps
+she felt herself challenged; at any rate she plunged her
+hand into her lucky-bag once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's no need for such a hurry," she said frigidly.
+"For one thing, I'm a little particular about who I take
+my advice from. You needn't think I don't see you're
+just shutting me up?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie was almost hushing, soothing. "Then let me
+shut you up. You've seen all you came to see; if there's
+anything else you want to know, ask me, quite quickly&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Louie, in her eagerness to get rid of her and to
+remove herself from danger, almost gladly submitted to
+what Evie said next.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, if you've&mdash;an appointment," she said,
+with a toss.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've an appointment&mdash;you understand," she answered,
+with a little shepherding movement of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>But the next moment that too had turned into something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you little fool!" Louie broke out, suddenly
+seeing. "You don't suppose I'm trying to get you out of
+the way so that I can meet <i>him</i>, do you? Good gracious,
+woman, he's never set foot in this place in his life, and I'll
+see he never does! Perhaps I wanted you to think he had&mdash;I
+don't know what I thought&mdash;with one and another of
+you I'm getting almost past thinking&mdash;but that's the truth
+anyway! <i>Now</i> are you satisfied? Or have you got the
+idea so thoroughly into your stupid little head that nothing
+will shake it? If you're going to spend your Saturday
+afternoons going round to every place you think might
+possibly&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the denial counted for nothing. Evie turned
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's making the noise now? And why should I
+believe you? I knew before I came you'd say that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how you try me!... I <i>do</i> say that. There's
+nothing else to say. Do you think if it was any other way
+I shouldn't boast of it, to you or anybody else? Why,
+how <i>can</i> you know so little of him&mdash;not to speak of
+myself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't talk as if you hadn't already had the
+cheek to tell me you loved him!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Did I? Upon my soul, I sometimes don't know
+whether I do or not! Say I don't&mdash;say I lied&mdash;say I sometimes
+almost hate him as much as I do you and you me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very likely, the grapes being sour," Evie scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if they're sour&mdash;&mdash;? What more do you want?
+Isn't that enough? And isn't it more than enough that I
+let you stand there and tell me so? Oh, I'm doing my
+best to warn you&mdash;you'll make a great mistake if you make
+me <i>try</i> to get him!" She stamped. "<i>Won't</i> you go?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie too stamped. "Oh yes, I'll go, and so will you, I
+promise you&mdash;from Pall Mall&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything you like&mdash;only go&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But as Evie took a step towards the door a little accident
+turned Louie suddenly as white as paper. Billy's study
+leaned against the wall; Evie's skirt or foot caught it as
+she passed; and the canvas fell. Evie gave a short
+laugh and pushed it with her shoe.</p>
+
+<p>The dear symbol, nay, the very evidence of so many
+dreamings, that poor thing of wasted smiles and sighs and
+tears, the pearl from the heart of the oyster-grey&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A kick of her rival's shoe was treatment good enough
+for it&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>It was as if the hives of her own breasts and the heart
+beneath them had been trodden on.</p>
+
+<p>Louie stepped slowly forward. "No, stop," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She stood for a moment looking down at the picture;
+then she spoke slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"You were quite right to come," she said. "You have
+reason to be jealous."</p>
+
+<p>Evie affected not to hear, but she heard. Louie continued:</p>
+
+<p>"A moment ago I told you not to tell him you'd been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>
+here. Now I want you to tell him. He may even be
+expecting it. You see we have spoken of it, he and I."</p>
+
+<p>Evie Jeffries seemed about to say something, but
+"Just one moment," said Louie quietly&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She placed the picture against the wall again, face outwards.
+She did not display it as a taunt now; it had
+served its turn. As if Evie's looks had cheapened it, she
+no longer wanted it. She stood looking at it.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the last time I sat," she murmured to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Even that pale shadow of a bridal was to be taken from
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Well, let it go.</p>
+
+<p>This time it was her own foot that kicked the canvas
+aside; then like a flash she turned&mdash;Louie at her deadliest.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you're aware you've lost him, whether he
+knows it yet or not?" she demanded truculently.</p>
+
+<p>Again she was grateful to Evie that she stiffened up
+against her. Evie smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that way&mdash;'whether he knows it or not'&mdash;nobody
+minds <i>that</i> kind of losing! <i>That</i> wasn't what you were
+trying to make me believe a few minutes ago. Thank you
+very much for the tea, not forgetting the advice," she went
+on, "and if I might return the compliment, I should like
+to give you a piece of advice too. You say you could get
+married if you like; I'd jump at that if I were you! You
+see, there's your boy. Quite a well-behaved little fellow
+he seems&mdash;quite a superior child&mdash;and now that I've seen
+for myself, I'm perfectly satisfied, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Louie, advancing, "I'm going to spoil
+your satisfaction. Listen to me." Her eyes were like
+saucers of ice. "You've lost your husband. I'm not going
+to tell you how, but I'll tell you how you can find out.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span>
+You can tell him what he wouldn't believe when I told him&mdash;that
+you're jealous. You've reason; ask him what it is.
+If he doesn't tell you, he daren't; if he does&mdash;ck!&mdash;it's all
+up between you. Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that
+<i>you're</i> the kind of woman men tell things to? You, who
+can neither trust him nor be trusted by him? You, who
+spy on him when his back's turned? You, who listen
+while a miserable little Jewess makes mischief for you&mdash;for
+I guess Miriam Levey sent you here? <i>You</i> think you
+love him? Look at me, I say"&mdash;she rapped out the words
+like a command&mdash;"listen, and I'll tell you <i>my</i> idea of loving
+a man! I've messed my life; if you were anything but
+what you are you'd know that if you wanted to hurt me
+your way wouldn't be to point at my little boy and look
+round my bedroom as if you expected to find pipes and
+overcoats there! Oh, that's not the way! The way
+would be to let me see what a perfect marriage could be;
+there might be tears in my eyes then! But what's this
+you show me instead? Oh, I know what your marriage
+is without telling. It would take you and a woman to
+make a wife for a man! And what would mine have been
+if I hadn't thrown my chance away? What should I
+have said if I'd seen what you think you've seen? Listen!
+I should have said: 'Go, if you like; find a woman if you
+can whose love's like mine; search the earth for her; I
+give you leave, and I shall be waiting for you, just the
+same, when you come back and say there isn't one!' But
+had <i>you</i> thought of that? Not you! At a word you're off,
+asking whether this and that's true, because you don't
+trust him; and so he gives his trust to somebody else!
+That's what you've lost&mdash;and you don't even miss it, you
+know so little of love!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Evie had fallen back against the wall, a little intimidated
+by her vehemence. She did not understand, but
+she seemed to apprehend that there was something she did
+not understand. Louie broke out anew.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> know love! And when and how did you learn
+it, pray? As you learned your shorthand and things (oh,
+you're trying hard to forget you ever knew them!) at
+that place in Holborn? Why, you failed in your petty
+little examinations there; do you think love's easier?
+Something you get out of a text-book and answer a paper
+on? Your husband might know if you don't! <i>He</i> knew
+just what those other lessons were worth, but he doesn't
+seem to know that loving has a genius too&mdash;that one in a
+million has it as a gift and the others mimic it as you're
+mimicking people in your dress and talk now! And you
+call <i>me</i> common&mdash;me, who told your husband long ago
+what his only, only chance was! Oh, I mustn't say any
+more or I shall say everything! And you toss your head
+and say: 'Nobody minds that kind of losing!' That's
+your idea; that's what you really think! Why, your mind
+wants a window as badly as that little dark back room at
+your Business College.... Oh, it maddens me, the sheer
+waste! A necklace of love&mdash;pearls&mdash;and good gracious,
+a bit of cheap glass in the middle of it! Yes, I mean you."</p>
+
+<p>She was walking rapidly up and down; she struck the
+rail of Jimmy's cot with her hand as she passed. Evie,
+cowed, watched her from the wall. Louie stopped before
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you <i>do</i> for him?" she said bitterly. "What
+do you <i>give</i> him? What do you <i>bear</i> for him, suffer for
+him? Don't whimper&mdash;tell me&mdash;you've made pretty free
+with me&mdash;put that handkerchief away and tell me&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But instead of putting the handkerchief away, Evie
+burst into loud sobs. Louie watched her remorselessly.
+Tears, of course&mdash;no doubt that was the way she managed
+Jim&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That's no good with me," she said harshly. "I want
+to know what you do for your husband besides following
+him about and asking questions about him."</p>
+
+<p>Evie's hand moved as if for a chair. There was none.
+She lifted her head, walked across the room, and fell across
+Louie's bed. Louie still watched her unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she demanded again, after a quarter of a
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>Muffled in the bedclothes, Evie's voice came.</p>
+
+<p>"I give him all&mdash;all I&mdash;have. You talk as if&mdash;as if&mdash;I'd
+no right&mdash;to be on the earth at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you do&mdash;you do! How&mdash;how can I give him
+more&mdash;than I've got? Oh, you think you know, but you
+don't&mdash;you don't know what I've gone through&mdash;you've
+never had that horrible morning&mdash;when I was to have been
+married&mdash;and I never expected Jeff to propose, but he
+did&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, for goodness' sake, get up!" Louie cried.</p>
+
+<p>"He did&mdash;one day&mdash;and I said No at first, but he caught
+hold of me.... And even then I was jealous about
+Kitty&mdash;I know I'm jealous&mdash;but he told me afterwards
+that I needn't be jealous of poor Kitty because he'd only
+done it because he thought he couldn't have me&mdash;I know
+I'm jealous&mdash;it hurts sometimes so that I can only cry and
+cry&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie hadn't wanted this at all. Again she cried: "Oh,
+get up!" but Evie continued to sob.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And then when Jeff saw you&mdash;that night&mdash;at Billy's&mdash;it
+was worse than ever, but I kept it from him. I'm not
+like you, Louie&mdash;it's no good my telling myself I don't
+mind&mdash;even though I knew it was all an accident it was
+like a knife&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't lie there like that!" Louie muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"And then Miriam Levey reminded me of that thing
+Archie had said&mdash;but he's dead now&mdash;and I know it was
+absurd, but I did think he liked you. You've&mdash;such ways,
+you see&mdash;I expect you've been a governess or something in
+swell houses&mdash;I've got to learn them too, now, but Jeff
+says I'm really very quick at it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie was pacing the floor now, but more slowly and
+with downhung head. This was the very last thing she
+had wanted. More than ever she hated this unresisting
+piece of pulp; but strike again she could not; no, not with
+Evie's soul as it were a naked picture for her to set her foot
+upon. And unless she did strike it was now quite, quite
+final. To take it lying down! Gladly she would have
+goaded her into a fresh show of resistance; contemptuously
+she would have told her to stand up and fight; but the
+child&mdash;Louie felt her to be a child, and herself a faded
+woman&mdash;was merely beyond all decency exposed. Louie
+only wanted to cover her up again as quickly as possible&mdash;her
+confessions, her abjectness, her appalling artlessnesses,
+her humiliating appeals. She was beginning to sob once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't go on like that; do get up and pull yourself
+together!" Louie snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"I do love him&mdash;I haven't anything else to give him&mdash;except
+my life&mdash;he could have that&mdash;you couldn't give
+him more than that&mdash;&mdash;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I could stop blubbering for him," said Louie curtly,
+resuming her walk.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was final. Evie had overcome; Louie now
+backed out of the whole affair. If Jim liked to tell her of
+his own accord, well and good; it still seemed the only
+way out; but what was the good even then? Evie Jeffries
+would no more acquire love as Louie understood it than
+she would ever acquire the <i>nous</i> to preside without betrayals
+at Jim's table at Iddesleigh Gate. And if Evie
+had lost Jim, so had Louie. By her silence she was relinquishing
+him now. She saw his image recede, slowly,
+slowly, as if it had been indeed that ship of her fancy,
+outward bound, her own vessel already condemned for
+breaking up. Yes, the ship was drawing away. The eyes
+of her spirit tired of watching it; surely now she might
+turn them elsewhere; but no&mdash;there it was still, very
+small, leaning, no doubt, to a brisk breeze, but hardly
+appearing to move.... No, it was not gone even yet;
+that sudden anguished searching for it was but a trick of
+the eyes; it was still there&mdash;a speck&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And it had only needed six words: "James Herbert
+Jeffries killed Archie Merridew."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Louie herself sank to the floor by Jimmy's cot.
+Evie heard her sinking. She rose from the bed and ran
+to her. But Louie cried aloud and put up her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake don't touch me&mdash;go now&mdash;and say
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>The touch of Evie Jeffries would have been more than
+she could have borne.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">"Mother, there <i>is</i> a gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Jimmy's voice outside the door.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Slowly Louie rose to her feet. "Very well," she called
+shakily; "talk to him till I come. Please go at once,"
+she added to Evie.</p>
+
+<p>Evie began: "I'm sorry I said&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you want me to strike you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I&mdash;do anything&mdash;for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Go!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She heard the outer door close behind Evie Jeffries. By
+that time her eyes were straining at a wide and empty
+horizon....</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">VII</p>
+
+<p class="center b1">§<i>a</i></p>
+
+<p>What followed when, after a few minutes during
+which Louie bathed her face in the bathroom, she
+entered her sitting-room again, fell mercifully flat. Any
+visit would have been an anti-climax; a visit now from Roy&mdash;it
+was Roy&mdash;was even welcome for that reason. If she
+must see him, best get it over.</p>
+
+<p>He was sitting on a rush-seated chair with Jimmy
+between his knees. Jimmy was playing with his watch.
+Save that the rims of his stolid porcelain-blue eyes were
+pinkish, as if with suppressed tears, he had not greatly
+changed. He wore a braided morning-coat; his silk hat,
+stick and gloves lay on another chair. His watch slipped
+from his boy's hand and dangled by its chain as he rose.
+His voice carried Louie instantly back to the carpenter's
+shed at Rainham Parva.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me, you see, Louie; here I am, like a bad penny,
+always turning up."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louie spoke listlessly. "How are you? I'll get you
+some tea."</p>
+
+<p>A minute later, with a "May I come in here?" he had
+followed her into the kitchen. He merely got in her way,
+if she could be said, in her complete exhaustion, to have a
+way at all. She was cutting bread and butter.</p>
+
+<p>"Louie, old girl," he said piteously over the bread-board,
+"why didn't you&mdash;tell a fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie did not answer. Then Roy chirped up a little,
+as if something might now, past all discussion, be taken for
+granted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this settles it," he said. "Clinches it entirely.
+You know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>Louie did know. "Just take the kettle off, will you?"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"So you see that's settled&mdash;clinched," said Roy, quite
+bustling. "Right you are. The only question now is;
+how soon can you pack up."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll talk about it presently, if there's anything to say.
+There isn't, though. Will you carry the tray in?"</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy ran straight to his knee again. "May I give
+him some jam?" said Roy; and then he added to the boy:
+"Oh, come, don't mess yourself up with it like that!"
+Louie remembered his account of the accident with the
+centre-board: "Jam and all the lot!" but she did not
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Rhoda will be here in a few minutes, then I'll have a
+short walk with you," she said. "I've nothing to say,
+though."</p>
+
+<p>Presently Rhoda did come in, and Louie put on her hat
+and old grey coat. They went out and walked slowly
+across Eelbrook Common towards Walham Green. There
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>
+she told Roy that his return could make no difference
+whatever. "Don't talk such stuff, Louie," he said; "sit
+down." They sat down on a bench on the side of the common
+past which the District Railway runs and talked.</p>
+
+<p>The air rang with the shouts of poorly clad children at
+their Saturday afternoon play; the common was a-crawl
+with urchins. Into Roy's honest, statue-like eyes tears
+had come; none came into Louie's. She only shook her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"You're only lacerating me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Louie&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You want to lacerate me?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;the little chap&mdash;&mdash;" Roy said presently, with
+a gulp. "Will you tell a fellow how you manage?"</p>
+
+<p>That Louie did not mind doing, more or less. "And
+now I must go back," she said, rising.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll walk back a bit of the way with you. I'm not
+going to let you go like this."</p>
+
+<p>At the little drinking-fountain she stopped. "Don't
+make it harder," she said. He had been indicating the
+rabble of children.</p>
+
+<p>"But look at 'em, poor little beggars!" he said. "Dash
+it all, I'm not just blowing off&mdash;I <i>could</i> do such lots for
+him&mdash;he could ride&mdash;and shoot&mdash;and fish&mdash;and I've a
+corking little pony at grass now." He mentioned these
+things one after the other, slowly, as they occurred to him.</p>
+
+<p>Louie groaned inwardly, but aloud she said: "Please
+don't come any farther. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"But I may come again? You see, I jolly well know
+I could persuade you."</p>
+
+<p>"N-o&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall, though&mdash;you bet," Roy announced.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She left him, wondering whether it would have made any
+difference at all had he, in asking her to marry him, told
+her once, even once, that he loved her.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not return home. Instead, she walked past
+the block of flats, crossed Putney Bridge, and sought her
+old Nursing Home in Mortlake Road. As a drunkard
+might pant for a drink, so now in her extremity she wanted
+to hear gaiety and laughter and talk. Though she paid for
+it in prostration afterwards, she felt that without some such
+intermission she could never get through the night. And
+to-morrow was that dead day, Sunday. Further than that
+she did not see; beyond the anodyne of an ordinary human
+laugh she did not inquire. It seemed to her a matter of the
+last moment to herself that Miss Dot and Miss Cora should
+be at home; if they were not, she felt that she must walk
+straight into a public-house, as a man might, and get herself
+something to drink.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Cora and Miss Dot were at home; they had
+just come in from a matinée. They made an onslaught on
+Louie. Had she seen the piece? Oh, the funniest thing!
+They really had had some luck at the theatre at last!
+The last time it had been a slum piece, all heartstrings and
+gutter-snipes; and the time before that&mdash;would Louie
+believe it!&mdash;just when they had expected to see frocks and
+dancing and suchlike, the curtain had gone up on a dentist's
+parlour! Two half-crowns for seats in the pit for that!
+It was almost like paying money to go and see another
+Nursing Home!</p>
+
+<p>"But give the poor girl some tea&mdash;what are we thinking
+of!" said Miss Cora.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks&mdash;I've given two people tea this afternoon
+already," said Louie. "Tell me about the play."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And, both speaking at once, they told her about the
+play&mdash;<i>such</i> a frock as Ellaline Terriss had worn!&mdash;an
+e-<i>nor</i>-mous pink hat, pink like a rabbit's ear, and a frock,
+chiffon over pink satin.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! That was better!</p>
+
+<p>"But where's my bonnie boy?" Miss Cora demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let's show her the new one, the little Crowley
+baby!"</p>
+
+<p>The little Crowley baby was brought in....</p>
+
+<p>"May I invite myself to supper?" Louie asked by-and-by.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do stop!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then give me some stout or something. I'm not sleeping
+very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll see that's all right&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And when, at ten o'clock, Louie left, it was with a sleeping
+preparation in her pocket. She took it in bed. It did
+its work. Half Sunday had passed when next she awoke.</p>
+
+<p>On the Sunday afternoon she went with Jimmy and
+Rhoda to Bishops Park; then, packing them off home, she
+crossed the bridge again and took the bus to Buck's. At
+Buck's she again stayed until ten, and she smiled as, on
+the way home again, she remembered the little party to
+which Chaff had once taken her, pigtail and all. If Chaff
+had had a little party that night she would have invited
+herself to it; it would have been something to do. Although
+it was half-past eleven when she reached her own
+door she was not in the least tired; had she not slept until
+well after midday? She walked back to Putney Bridge
+again. There a man spoke to her. She wondered what
+he would have said had she stopped; it would have been
+amusing to know. She felt that she had not had enough
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span>
+amusement. She wished she could have gone back to the
+Business School in Holborn again. That had been amusing.
+Mr. Mackie had been very amusing. One of his
+songs, he had said, that about the Gorgonzola Cheese, never
+failed to create merriment.</p>
+
+<p>She hummed as much as she could remember of the air
+of it as she walked, and took two more of Miss Cora's
+sleeping-tablets before going to bed.</p>
+
+<p>She found, too, an entirely unexpected amount of amusement
+at the Consolidation on the Monday morning. Not
+that everything was not much as usual; the routine was
+the same; but a quite comic spirit seemed to pervade the
+whole place. Lacking a Mr. Mackie, Sir Julius, dapper
+and perfect in his aplomb, who had thought of asking her
+to be his mistress but had found a more profitable use to
+put her to, seemed somehow as funny as needs be; she
+wondered she had not noticed it before. It happened that
+Mr. Stonor had to rebuke one of the telephone girls that
+morning; there was diversion in the way in which the
+girl tossed her dolly-capped head and told him that she
+would talk to her "boys" if she liked. Quite right; that
+was the way to take things, as a joke. And Mr. Whitlock
+was portentously funny over a nought or so that had
+strayed into a pile of figures; and the glazed screen that
+marked Louie's superiority to the other girls in the same
+room seemed inanimately funny, and Jim himself was
+funny, when you came to think of it, sitting invisible there
+in his room with people coming and going all the time, as if
+the earth would have ceased to revolve on her axis or the
+sun have omitted to rise if Jim had not rung bells and
+jotted his initials on his bits of paper. And funnier than
+everything else was the fact that Louie should be there at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span>
+all. She laughed outright when, at nine o'clock that night
+(she had been kept on account of some urgent joke or
+other), she stepped from the upholstered lift and out into
+Pall Mall.</p>
+
+<p>Again she wished that Chaff had had a little party somewhere.
+Jim, she understood from Mr. Stonor, was giving
+a party presently, not a little one, but a large, probably
+a screamingly funny, one. But its humour would probably
+be lost on Jim. Jim did not always see jokes; that was
+where Jim had made the mistake; he needed somebody to
+point them out to him. His wife, being part of the comedy
+herself, naturally could not do so; she cried when she
+should have laughed; she had no "kick," no "buck," in
+her. It was a pity, for Jim needed these things, and ought
+to have married a woman who had them. Well, it was
+rather late, but not too late for Louie to go into a shilling
+gallery somewhere. To-morrow, if she could get away
+early, she would go up to Camden Town and see Billy.
+Billy was a joke too, spending whole, real days in making
+artificial coloured shapes on canvases or solemnly scratching
+his copper plates. One of the best things Billy had
+ever done a woman had humorously kicked aside with her
+foot. That showed what these things were worth in the
+big, big world. Of course a sense of humour was really
+a sense of proportion. The dreadful lack of it showed
+when people magnified trifles so. Yes, she would go and
+see Billy to-morrow. To-night, the theatre gallery.</p>
+
+<p>She found Billy on the following evening, still etching,
+the humorous fellow, but amusingly grave too. Perhaps
+he had heard, or guessed, something from Roy. He was
+dissolving the ground from a plate; Louie wondered what
+the curiously sweet-smelling fluid he was using was; and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>
+then she remembered. She had smelt that same smell
+when Jimmy had been born&mdash;which event also, by the way,
+had been the consequence of a lark. She remembered,
+too, the wonderful, releasing sleep that heavy-smelling stuff
+had given her. It might be rather a useful thing to know
+where to find that stuff; it was necessary to Louie's enjoyment
+of the world and its humour that she should sleep at
+night. It struck her as a very happy chance that chloroform
+should be used in the practice of etching. She admitted
+that it was rather a shame to steal from Billy again,
+but she felt that she now needed that wonderful, releasing
+sleep even more than when Jimmy had been born.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later she left Billy's with the ribbed blue bottle
+in her pocket.</p>
+
+<p>The remainder of the week also was gay; so was the next
+week, though perhaps with a slightly diminishing gaiety.
+But the level was restored again when Roy once more
+turned up at her flat, again on a Saturday afternoon.
+Really she could have laughed, as they say, fit to split.
+Roy, who seemed to think that you could ask a woman
+to marry you without the&mdash;formality, call it&mdash;of telling
+her you loved her! It was not for Louie to spoil the sport
+by pointing out the inessential omission. Not that she
+hesitated at all now; she had only to think of how it might
+have read in the paper: "At Saint So-and-So's, on such
+and such a date, by a Reverend Statue, assisted by another
+Reverend Effigy, a Tanagra Figure, to a trodden-on Painting
+by Billy Izzard," etc., etc. Oh no. That wasn't loving&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt that Roy loved Jimmy, however; and
+that was perhaps a little more serious. He had handed in
+his papers; he could provide for Jimmy; there was riding,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span>
+and shooting, and fishing, and the corking little pony;
+but ... it was impossible, of course. Jimmy was
+Louie's and nobody else's. If Jimmy must play on Saturday
+afternoons with the rabble on Eelbrook Common, well,
+he must; Louie would do all for him that she could. It
+was a pity&mdash;especially about the pony. It disturbed Louie
+a little. It disturbed her, in fact, so much that that night
+she remembered something she had forgotten about for
+ten days and more&mdash;the blue ribbed bottle she had stolen
+from Billy. But as she had left it in her drawer at the
+Consolidation she had to sleep as best she could without it.
+Perhaps it was just as well. It was not a good habit. She
+wondered whether Billy had missed the bottle; she would
+go up again and see, taking that old painting with her.
+That would square accounts a little. Certainly it was a
+shame to loot Billy like that.</p>
+
+<p>She went up to Billy's with the study. Billy received it
+absently. And she was glad that Billy had a code, for he
+was grave again, and seemed all but on the point of talking
+seriously to her, code or none. But it blew over. He
+asked her whether she'd noticed him with a bottle of chloroform
+one night; he'd lost one; stupid thing to be careless
+about; must be somewhere; had Louie seen him with it,
+cleaning a plate?&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it may turn up. Thanks for the canvas. To
+tell you the truth I rather wanted it. Merely as painting
+it's&mdash;<i>knuk</i>!" Billy made a delectable little foreign gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no judge of things as painting," said Louie.
+"And&mdash;I say&mdash;Billy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I haven't changed my mind about
+not sitting&mdash;if you asked me very nicely&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Billy looked gravely at her again. "Oh, it doesn't
+matter. I'd rather you didn't. I think I can manage.
+You'd do far better&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He looked hard at her, but the code held.</p>
+
+<p>"To do what?" said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not to sit," said Billy, turning away.</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt ridiculously touched; nevertheless, much as
+she liked his loyalty, she wasn't going to talk about Roy.
+"Thanks, Bill," she said simply. "You're a good sort."
+And there the matter dropped. Neither for Billy nor for
+anybody else did she ever sit again.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed strange that so slight a thing as an indisposition
+of Mr. Stonor should obscure the mock-sun of Louie's
+gaiety as if a vapour had crept across it; but so it was.
+Occasionally urgent messages were taken to Iddesleigh
+Gate at night; usually Mr. Stonor took them; but one day
+Mr. Stonor left at lunch-time and did not come back that
+day. Sir Julius himself, who had had dinner sent in that
+night from a restaurant, sent for Louie and gave her certain
+papers and instructions. As soon as she learned the errand
+she asked whether nobody else could go instead. She
+invented an improbable engagement.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," Sir Julius said, "but I want Whitlock&mdash;I
+shall have to wait here myself till you come back. If
+you could go, and give them to Mr. Jeffries himself&mdash;nobody
+else&mdash;&mdash;" That was as near as Sir Julius ever came
+to a direct command.</p>
+
+<p>So, as Evie Jeffries had seen Louie's home, Louie was
+now to see hers.</p>
+
+<p>She went reluctantly, by bus, changing at the bottom of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span>
+Park Lane. For days she had not seen Jim; she did not
+want to see him now. Therefore, though go she must, she
+would not sit down; she would not lift her veil; she would
+be in and out of his house again as quickly as ever she
+could. She passed the Marble Arch, and at Lancaster
+Gate got down and walked. She reached Jim's vast and
+tomblike house.</p>
+
+<p>At the word "Consolidation" the man who opened the
+door said: "This way, please," and led her along a low-lighted
+hall, round a staircase the outspread double wings
+of which resembled some huge alighting architectural bird,
+and along a narrower passage to the library. At the touch
+of a switch the room broke into a softly masked glow of
+light. "Please to sit down," said the servant; but Louie
+stood by the great writing-table, looking towards the door.
+Evie had taken stock of her dwelling; Louie looked only
+towards the door of Jim's library.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as the door was opened, she pushed up her veil
+after all. Jim came in.</p>
+
+<p>He placed a chair for her; she still refused to sit. She
+continued to stand even when it appeared that the papers
+she had brought would require some examination. As she
+stood, a bell, not unlike that of a muffled telephone, sounded
+for a moment and then ceased. It was followed by a tap
+on the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," said Jim, without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>Evie Jeffries entered, dressed as if for a State ball.</p>
+
+<p>Even had Louie not seen her face, the touch of her hand
+would have told her what had happened. Evie was back
+again exactly where she had been; the only difference was
+that she now hated Louie the more that she had abased herself
+before her. Many times on that other Saturday afternoon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span>
+Louie had begged Evie to go; now she longed to fly
+herself. After another minute Jim put it into her power
+to do so. He rose and returned the signed papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said, and added, turning to Evie, "I
+don't know whether Miss Causton's had supper?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie's face lighted up as artificially as if there too a
+switch had turned up masked lights.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; won't you let me have them lay a tray for you,
+'Miss' Causton? It won't be any trouble," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," said Louie. "Please don't come to
+the door, Mr. Jeffries."</p>
+
+<p>He came, however.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," he said, as the door was held open for her
+to pass out.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," said Louie.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered afterwards that she noticed, out in
+Oxford Street again, a sandwichman bearing an illuminated
+board with the announcement of some concert or entertainment
+upon it. Pasted across the device was a strip
+of paper with the words "To night" upon it. The date
+was the sixteenth of May. At midday on the day following,
+Louie, coming out of Mr. Whitlock's room, saw Jim
+advancing as if to come in. He saw her, stared hard at
+her for a moment, paused irresolutely, and then turned abruptly
+and walked away again. She watched his back,
+shaped like a church-door, but bowed as if with a load too
+great for him, disappear in the direction of his own room.
+He had made no attempt to conceal the deliberate avoidance.
+She half expected, though she knew not why, that
+he would send for her presently. He did not. She was
+infinitely glad. Something, she was perfectly sure, had
+happened between him and his wife. It was the first time
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span>
+he had not sought her aid. Had he, now that it was too
+late, told her? Had he realised that it was too late to tell
+her? Had he, realising this, determined to take his last
+risk and to tell her nevertheless? Or had something happened
+that had at last unsealed his eyes so that he now saw
+with a clearness as merciless as that of Louie herself?</p>
+
+<p>Louie could not tell. She only saw his face again, the
+face of a man suddenly old as he realised his defeat, and
+his disappearing back, hunched under a burden that was
+crushing him at the last.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">§<i>b</i></p>
+
+<p>"If I were you, Miss Causton, I should leave early to-night,"
+said Mr. Whitlock that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you <i>want</i> to make it a matter of conscience!
+But Mr. Jeffries is giving a party to-night, and both Sir
+Julius and I will be leaving early."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left
+her. Louie resumed her work.</p>
+
+<p>It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been
+worked over before and needed little attention; or at all
+events it got little. At five o'clock Louie gathered the
+sheets together and put them into the drawer of her table.
+As she did so some object at the back of the drawer knocked.
+She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of
+chloroform.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you
+put me a little beside myself for a day or two. Much better
+not to have things like that lying about; to have 'em's
+sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it away now."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought
+her a cup of tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer
+again. The girl began to talk. She was Ivy Warner, the
+operator who would talk to her "boys" over the telephone
+if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always admired
+the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a
+word would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be
+carrying on a flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under
+the eye of Mr. Stonor himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her
+cup of tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three
+winners to-day, one at thirty to one, a gift; like to see
+him? He's coming up this evening," Miss Warner replied.
+"I'd a chin with him a quarter of an hour ago;
+dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and
+a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's
+bringing a friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost
+afraid to introduce him; and Daisy says she really must
+give her steady a show to-night. Know anybody?"</p>
+
+<p>Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had
+never done before. She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again
+she had the hunger to go somewhere, to see lights, hear
+music, smell the cigarettes of men.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care to take me?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy was surprised. "You?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not if I should spoil sport&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather not! Do come! What a lark! I'll get on
+to Harold again now. You really mean it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Good egg!" cried Ivy, glad to make up her party and
+to improve her relations with her business superior at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span>
+same time. "I didn't really want Daisy, you see. Of
+course they do talk loud at the Troc, but Daisy's just a <i>ti</i>ny
+bit ... well, a perfect stranger had the cheek to come up
+to our table and speak to her the last time&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ivy ran jubilantly off to ring up Harold again.</p>
+
+<p>Louie told herself it was a stupid thing to do; she was
+getting into the habit of loitering about late at night, heedless
+of Jimmy. But she had promised, and would go. If
+she didn't she would only be mopishly thinking, and, after
+all, she would be no more out of place with Harold's dashing
+friend than Evie Jeffries would be in another place
+much about the same time. Perhaps the dasher for Evie
+and Jim's guests for herself would have been more fitting,
+but no matter. She would be a dasher too. She wondered
+how Ivy was describing her dashing self to Harold over the
+telephone.</p>
+
+<p>At seven o'clock she made herself ready and left the
+Consolidation with Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>She retained no very clear recollection afterwards of the
+gaieties of that evening, but the little she did remember
+arrested her a little. She had a confused impression of the
+lights and tables and pilastered walls of the Trocadero as
+of a bright beckoning vista, stretching before her as the
+white road stretches before the knapsacked and stout-booted
+walker. She knew that many girls went that way....
+The air was heavy with the smell of coffee, smoke, dishes,
+scent; Harold's friend was a Hebrew "killer," and reminded
+her of Miss Levey; noisily he claimed the privilege,
+which Harold noisily disputed, of paying for everything;
+and the waiter contemptuously accepted a tip of a sovereign
+from him. Perhaps he was the same cavalier who had
+resented Daisy's loudness; at all events he appeared to find
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span>
+in Louie's quietness another&mdash;or perhaps the same&mdash;meaning;
+and Louie had to move her chair and to change her
+attitude at the table. Afterwards they went to the Alhambra;
+it was Ivy who cried out at the sight of two cabs
+and refused to go unless they all went together. At the
+Alhambra Louie was afraid she was rather a wet blanket;
+she declined to "take a walk round" and remained seated
+in her stall; but Harold's friend was fickle as well as dashing,
+for by-and-by she had a glimpse of him with another
+lady, who had not dined with them at the Trocadero. She
+wondered how Evie Jeffries had got on&mdash;or "got off," to
+use an expression of Kitty Windus's.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly&mdash;perhaps it was this thought of Evie elsewhere
+that did it&mdash;she got up, sought the cloakroom, and walked
+out of the place. She went home, once more quietly and
+steadily thinking of that vista of lights and cigar smoke
+and laughing mouths and gilded pilasters&mdash;the way so
+many girls went.</p>
+
+<p>The row she expected with Ivy in the morning was not
+a moment delayed. It began in the lift in which they
+both happened to ascend together.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning," said Ivy stiffly. "I hope you got
+home in good time last night."</p>
+
+<p>Louie waited until the liftman had clashed the doors to
+behind them; then, "I'd a headache," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps it's better than having one in the morning,"
+said Ivy, more icily still. "All the same, there is
+such a thing as playing the game when you go out with
+people."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have come," said Louie,
+walking with the angry girl to the telephone exchange,
+where the lights on the great switchboard came and went
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span>
+like the sparks at the back of a gate. They were coming
+and going with great rapidity that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>much</i> obliged for your company, I'm sure," Ivy
+broke out, "but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sssh!" came from a girl who stretched the rubber
+worms.</p>
+
+<p>"Sssh yourself, Daisy Dawson&mdash;time you knew how to
+speak into a phone by this time!" snapped Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>But another and a louder "Sssh!" came from another
+girl, and suddenly Mr. Stonor's head appeared in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet there!" he rapped out, and withdrew his head
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Sssh, Ivy&mdash;haven't you heard?" Daisy Dawson said
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy's own voice dropped. "What?" she asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"About Mr. Jeffries."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stonor came in again&mdash;but not before Louie had
+heard Daisy whisper the word "dead."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she remembered the face of the liftman. She
+clutched Mr. Stonor's arm. He looked at her. There was
+no need to ask.</p>
+
+<p>Dead!</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she walked to her own table behind the screen.</p>
+
+<p>The place was at once busier and more hushed than
+usual. Presently Mr. Whitlock passed. Mr. Whitlock
+was thirty-five; he looked fifty. Louie only asked him a
+single question: "Is it in the papers?" He nodded and
+passed on. She sought a messenger.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the right-hand middle page. It had happened
+at one o'clock in the morning; cerebral hæmorrhage. That
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span>
+very evening he had given a dinner-party; followed a short
+interview with Sir Peregrine Campbell, one of the guests;
+but Mr. Robson, of the Board of Trade, had declined to be
+seen. There would be no inquest. Heartfelt sympathy
+was extended to his widow. Half-a-column of "career"
+closed the announcement. The early edition of the evening
+paper for which she sent out had it all over again.</p>
+
+<p>Dead!</p>
+
+<p>Another absence!</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she turned the paper and began at the beginning
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Jim dead!</p>
+
+<p class="p2">That night Louie fetched Jimmy from his cot into her
+own bed. It was not, she felt, for comfort for herself;
+she had a strange feeling that she ought to be comforting
+Jimmy. Jimmy slept, but, her eyes alternately very
+widely open and very tightly closed in the dark, she whispered
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've got to look after ourselves now," she
+whispered to the sleeping child. "I don't think we care
+to go and see him, do we? I daresay she wouldn't refuse
+it, but we won't go. That was his wife, who said she'd
+a little boy like you, and of course we're all very sorry for
+her. She did give him all she had; she said she'd die for
+him; but of course that's only a way people have of speaking
+when they mean they love somebody very much. Nobody
+wants her to die for him really; that would only be two
+dead instead of one; and she won't actually die.... And
+she'd a sad thing happen once before. Nobody ever
+knew about that really except me and him; she didn't
+know; if she did she might die really then. People have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span>
+to be careful, they say, when they've once had a terrible
+shock. It's rather funny though, Jimmy, that mother
+shouldn't feel very much of a shock. Of course I didn't
+expect it, but as soon as it happened it seemed as if it had
+been bound to happen. That's queer&mdash;and I don't know
+that I wouldn't have preferred the shock."</p>
+
+<p>She continued her curious consolation of the sleeping
+boy:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Jimmy&mdash;poor mother! He looked beaten yesterday&mdash;done&mdash;but
+I didn't think.... One never does think
+till afterwards.... Ah, but mother did, once, a long time
+ago! Mother danced with him once, and knew then&mdash;and
+the next time she saw him Jimmy was quite a big
+boy. If she could only have seen him a few times in between,
+she doesn't know what she could have done, but she
+would have done something, and then by-and-by he would
+have blessed her for it&mdash;she's sure, quite sure he would....
+And there she was, with some terrible people at a
+music hall&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She choked a little.</p>
+
+<p>Even had it been proposed to her, she did not think she
+would have gone to see Jim. That was another woman's
+affair; Louie's part in him had nothing to do with what
+remained now. Not that she was so absurd as to tell herself
+she had lost nothing; even when it is only yours to
+look at, or perhaps to put your arms about just once, a
+body counts for something; but the other woman had had
+nothing but that. "Nothing but" was perhaps a queer
+way of putting it; for that "nothing but" Louie might
+perhaps have given all the rest; but all the same it was not
+very much her business now. Her business now, like the
+other woman's, was to jog on just the same, the one in her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span>
+empty mansion, the other one it didn't much matter where.
+Again she whispered to Jimmy.</p>
+
+<p>"How thankful I am that I didn't tell her&mdash;something!
+Oh, I don't think I could bear her to die for him as she said
+she would! And I do hope he's not been so foolish as to&mdash;leave
+anything about; anything that might tell her, I
+mean; she can't bear what I can bear. But he wouldn't.
+He wouldn't cover it all up so cleverly to go and uncover
+it himself. I always knew it would happen if that insect
+got in his way; Jim wouldn't think twice about it, except
+how to make himself safe.... Was it Kitty Windus who
+told me that about him&mdash;about his father having been
+an English merchant captain and his mother a Corsican
+woman he found dancing in a sailors' café in Marseilles?
+If it wasn't Kitty I dreamed it; mother's done a most foolish
+lot of dreaming; but it must have been Kitty. They
+say they do that kind of thing in Corsica. I shall never
+know.... Well, it doesn't matter.... Poor little
+Jimmy...."</p>
+
+<p>She deliberately tried herself, to see whether she was
+capable of emotion about him. She seemed to be quite
+incapable. "I'm simply callous," she thought.... She
+tried several days later, on the day of his funeral; the words
+she repeated to herself had no meaning for her; "gone,"
+was merely a thing of four letters, "never" one of five.
+The word "absence" she quite failed to understand. She
+heard that Mrs. Jeffries was prostrated, but quite as well
+as could be expected in the circumstances. Perhaps Mrs.
+Jeffries too was repeating the words "gone" and "never."
+Louie wondered whether she would marry again. It would
+not surprise her.</p>
+
+<p>Well, if Evie Jeffries could live, Louie could live.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A piece of news, however, which she had from Billy
+Izzard one night&mdash;this was three weeks later, but her stony
+insensibility had not changed&mdash;filled her, she could not
+have told why, with a quite different disquietude. It appeared
+that Billy had felt himself permitted to call on
+Mrs. Jeffries, and had found her (so he told Louie) busy
+with her husband's private papers. Sir Julius also had
+been there, to advise if advice was necessary; and Sir
+Julius had been of opinion that the painful task would be
+more quickly over if Mrs. Jeffries would have a number of
+papers that were written in shorthand transcribed by a
+clerk, if a trustworthy one could be found. "In fact, he
+mentioned your name," said Billy. But it appeared that
+Mrs. Jeffries knew some shorthand, had other reasons, and
+so forth. She had refused to have the papers transcribed.
+Naturally they had not said much with Billy there, who,
+indeed, had not stayed many minutes; but he had gathered
+that the papers formed some sort of a journal.</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt her flesh grow queerly crisp. This, by the
+way, was in a little restaurant not far from the Palace
+Theatre. Louie had had three consecutive nights at home,
+and felt that a fourth would kill her. She and Billy were
+going to the Palace afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"A journal?" she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Pepper rather thought a novel of some sort; I'd
+a talk with him afterwards; but I suppose he only knows
+what Mrs. Jeffries tells him. It wouldn't surprise me in
+the least that poor old Jeff dabbled a bit in that sort of
+thing. I'm quite sure he'd have made a painter. One
+of the big sort he was, the Titian, Leonardo, Cellini sort&mdash;the
+big men, who can take an art or so in their
+stride."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What made Sir Julius think it might be a novel?"
+Louie hoped that her new agitation did not show.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl, you know as much about it as I do."</p>
+
+<p>"And it was in shorthand?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"His own?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I can't say. It was in his desk though.
+Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"And you say Mrs. Jeffries is reading it herself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when Pepper suggested you&mdash;and a Miss Levey,
+I remember, whoever she is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Miriam Levey? Yes?" Louie said, with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>Billy looked hard at her. "What's the matter?" he
+said abruptly. "You're as queer as Mrs. Jeffries herself
+was about it."</p>
+
+<p>"She was queer? How, queer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. How can one describe things like
+that&mdash;just impressions one gets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did she strike you as queer because she'd perhaps read
+some of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I understand it was private&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean she <i>must</i> have read some of it to find that
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>Again Louie had that curious crawling of her flesh. She
+hesitated for a moment; then, slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of terms are you on with Mrs. Jeffries,
+Billy?"</p>
+
+<p>Billy stared. "Oh, quite all right&mdash;I don't understand&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any influence over her?"</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of influence?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louie hesitated again. After all, it might be only a
+fear. She went on. "Say influence enough to advise
+her about reading that journal, or novel, or whatever it
+is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, no!" said Billy. "I was his friend, hardly
+hers, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it could be put as a matter of friendship with
+him?" Louie was speaking almost feverishly now.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew exactly what you meant," said Billy.</p>
+
+<p>"Order me another cup of coffee. That's what I can't
+tell you, because I don't know myself. But let me ask
+another question. Do you happen to know whether there
+are any real names in this thing, whatever it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really, I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment. I'll tell you why I asked. If this is
+a journal, and has names of people in it, the chances are
+mine's there."</p>
+
+<p>Billy was quick enough. He nodded. "I see; at least
+I think I see. You mean about his coming in that night
+and Mrs. Jeffries possibly not liking it? Well, to tell
+the truth I don't think she did much. I could have bitten
+my tongue out when I'd told her; but I suppose everybody
+doesn't look on these things quite as we do. You mean in
+a word&mdash;excuse me for putting it rather stupidly&mdash;that
+she's jealous and thinks she can find out the truth? Supposing
+there was any 'truth' to find out, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the idea. Of course there was no 'truth.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well? Why not let her discover that and make her
+happy, poor thing? You see, he was her husband."</p>
+
+<p>Louie winced, but continued. "That's all right as far
+as it goes; but if there's one name there are probably
+others."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Billy looked sharply at her. "Other women? Jeffries?
+Don't you believe it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say women."</p>
+
+<p>"What then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you. And perhaps I'm altogether wrong.
+But if I'm not wrong, Billy," she said earnestly, "and
+you've any interest in Mrs. Jeffries at all&mdash;say interest
+enough to want to spare her a shock&mdash;she oughtn't to be
+allowed to read that journal&mdash;always supposing it is a
+journal."</p>
+
+<p>Billy gave a short laugh. "Really, Louie! Is this the
+Surrey or Sadlers Wells?... You're not serious, are
+you? Of course it's bound to be painful for her at the
+best, but she's getting on very well&mdash;better than we could
+have hoped."</p>
+
+<p>Louie made a little despairing gesture. "Well, I can't
+tell you any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it's as important as all that, why don't <i>you</i>
+tell her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't do that either. Look here, Billy, couldn't
+you find out about this for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dash it all&mdash;how can I?"</p>
+
+<p>The saucer of Louie's coffee cup was full of ashes; she
+added another butt and reached for Billy's case. She
+looked Billy full in the eyes as he struck a match for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you go much to Iddlesleigh Gate?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, just at present, you see&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, <i>could</i> you go? Where does all this take place?
+In that library? (Yes, I've been once.)"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. At least that's where we were that night."</p>
+
+<p>Still Louie looked steadily into his eyes. "Now this
+really <i>is</i> Surrey and Sadlers Wells," she said. "Could
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span>
+you get those papers out of her way&mdash;anyhow&mdash;so that
+she doesn't read them?"</p>
+
+<p>Billy twinkled a little. "It takes a woman to do these
+things, Louie."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose without asking any questions, if you did I'd&mdash;marry
+Roy?" After all, to marry Roy would be no
+worse than anything else now.</p>
+
+<p>The twinkle disappeared. Billy was grave again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like you to marry Roy, Louie."</p>
+
+<p>"Well ... is it a bet?"</p>
+
+<p>But Billy only shook his head. This was all very well
+at the Surrey and Sadlers Wells, but&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It's a physical impossibility," he said. "And if it
+wasn't, I wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"That's final?" said Louie, looking into his eyes for
+the last time.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Louie rose. "All right. Then we may as well get
+across to the Palace and see Marie Lloyd."</p>
+
+<p>Could she have said more? She did not see that she
+could. The chance loomed tremendously large now that
+Jim <i>had</i> been fool enough to write things after all, and
+perhaps his wife was reading that journal, if it was a
+journal, even then&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Louie could not stop her&mdash;no power on earth could stop
+her. What Jim had evidently not told her during his life
+she would read for herself now that he had gone.</p>
+
+<p>He would have done better to tell her.</p>
+
+<p>But there: perhaps it was not a journal&mdash;&mdash;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span></p>
+<h2 class="p6">ENVOI</h2>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;Miss Causton," Sir Julius called&mdash;"can you
+stay for an hour or so? No, a private affair; I
+hope it's not inconvenient; thanks."</p>
+
+<p>He was sickly white and tired-looking; Louie's feet
+dragged, and her brain was as stupid as clay. She was
+sorry for Sir Julius; <i>he</i> had had no preparation; as for
+Louie, it seemed to her now that she had been passing
+from preparation to preparation for such things for the
+whole of her life. This of the morning paper was only
+the latest of her fulfilments. The prophets, she thought
+dully, must have been very weary men.... But on second
+thoughts perhaps Sir Julius ought to have been sorry
+for <i>her</i>. Even shock is better than foreknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>For of course Sir Julius wanted her to stay in connection
+with this of Mrs. Jeffries.</p>
+
+<p>She had put on her hat and coat for departure; as if
+she walked in her sleep, she passed out of Sir Julius's room
+and removed them again. She bathed her face, but felt
+little fresher; then she returned.</p>
+
+<p>It was about Mrs. Jeffries. It was about them both.
+Then Louie seemed to remember that Sir Julius had said
+something about an article on his deceased colleague for a
+Review. She supposed that was why he wanted her to
+take down his words in shorthand. Unless it was for the
+inquest. Gas-taps turned on, doors and windows sealed,
+and so forth usually meant an inquest; and they would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span>
+not have far to look for her motive&mdash;suicide through natural
+grief. It was only that morning, but it seemed an
+old, old story already.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Tragic Death of a Lady</i>,'" Sir Julius read out from
+a newspaper....</p>
+
+<p>Well, he wouldn't want that part taken down; indeed,
+if he had only known what Louie knew, he would not have
+asked her to take anything down at all. But her notebook
+was on her knee and her pencil sharpened, and when Sir
+Julius had finished reading her hand began to write, purely
+functionally, of itself. It was no trouble to Louie whatever;
+nay, her hand was hardly called upon more than her
+mind; the pencil itself did it. After all, foreseeing minds
+could be put to better uses than the mere recording of
+things after the event.... "Sad business, sad business,"
+Sir Julius was saying; and "Sad business, sad business,"
+the obedient pencil wrote. But Louie wondered whether
+it was so sad after all. Evie Jeffries had had a sort of
+foreknowledge too; "I could die for him; you couldn't
+do more," Louie remembered she had once said; yet it
+was doubtful whether she had died for love of him after all.
+Call it gas-taps, or the shock of discovering that Jim had
+been her lover's executioner....</p>
+
+<p>Still, she had died, from whatever reason, and she had
+been quite right in saying that Louie could have done no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>It was strange the way the pencil wrote of itself. "A
+page of notes in her husband's shorthand has been found
+under one of the pillars of the writing-table," it wrote, and
+it omitted, as if it had been endowed with Louie's own
+intelligence, Sir Julius's interpolated remark, "I've got
+that page of notes, by the way." Mr. Whitlock had described
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span>
+to Louie one day a contrivance called a tele-writer;
+a pen dipped itself into a bottle of ink and wrote, unassisted,
+a telegraphed message; they were new, and they
+hadn't got them at the Consolidation yet; but they were
+putting them into some of the post offices, Mr. Whitlock
+had said. Her pencil moved like the pen of a tele-writer.
+She watched it, fascinated. It was writing as Sir Julius
+talked, about Jim now.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a
+guess there weren't many things he hadn't done at one time
+and another, short of a murder or a matrimonial infidelity.
+Don't think he could have been tempted to do that. One
+woman could do anything she liked with him, but the
+others wouldn't have much chance&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Very little chance, Louie thought. That, in a sense,
+had been the tragedy of it all. Louie knew more about
+that than Sir Julius; Louie had once said, "Come, come!"
+to him, in tones that might have brought angels from above
+and devils from below running for love, but it had not made
+a ha'p'orth of difference to Jim. Sir Julius seemed to be
+praising him for it; Louie was not sure that she could
+exactly do that; she could almost as soon have mocked him
+for it; but you neither mock nor praise a blind man merely
+because he is blind. It was funny that Sir Julius, with
+not very much to boast about himself, should set up an idol
+of faithfulness; and not just for somebody else to worship
+either; that was the funny part; men did that kind of
+thing; sinned, and yet worshipped, and called it "the
+maintenance of an ideal." They honoured Joseph, and
+winked when his back was turned. Perhaps they made
+much of him because of his rarity. Well, it was all the
+same to Potiphar's wife....
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But all at once something seemed to have happened to
+the pencil. It was tele-writing very furiously. Sir
+Julius was reading from another piece of paper; Louie
+fancied, somehow, that it might be the piece that had got
+wafted under the pillar of Jim's desk.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+"<i>&mdash;show him that red thing on the floor and that
+curved thing on the door.</i>"</p>
+
+<p><i>But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become
+divided. He had turned suddenly white. But
+an habitual pertness still persisted in his tongue.
+I don't think this had any relation whatever to
+the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised
+he was in. I stood over him huge and black
+as Fate.... "Spare him if you can," that
+generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered
+quickly....</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow
+morning&mdash;or&mdash;&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Shall I?" he bragged falteringly....</i>
+</p></div>
+
+<p>He seemed to have hanged him, then; "that curved
+thing on the door" evidently meant a hook. That was
+rather revolting; these were the things about murder that
+Louie had not wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Sort of grim tale he would write," said Sir Julius to
+the pencil; "and of course&mdash;<i>de mortuis</i> and so on&mdash;but he
+did marry the wrong woman. I suppose they're together
+again now."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Louie put down her notebook and pencil. Her
+voice, too, as she spoke, seemed to her a sort of tele-voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you excuse me just a moment?" she said. "I'm
+thirsty."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She went out. When she returned, three or four minutes
+later, Sir Julius sniffed once or twice and asked her
+if she had a toothache. She took up the pencil and notebook
+again. Sir Julius resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"What was I saying? Oh yes, about his marrying the
+wrong woman.... But he was a mass of contradictions,
+and one of 'em was that he merely idealised her. Pretty,
+of course, but poor Jeffries could have done better for
+himself than that. She never could bear me...."</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt no difference yet; she did not know how long
+these things took. For a moment she wondered what would
+happen after ... and then it struck her as foolish to
+wonder about a thing she would know so soon. She fastened
+her eyes on the pencil again. It went on writing,
+and Louie was thinking of her loved little Jimmy now....
+She could not have done very much for him; he
+might even have grown up to bear her some sort of a
+grudge; Roy would adopt him; he would be far, far better
+with Roy. There was a pony out at grass for him now;
+he would ride and shoot and fish, and his father would
+send him into the army; and perhaps there was already
+a baby girl somewhere in the world who would one day be
+his wife&mdash;the right wife. "Was die Mutter träumt, das
+vollbringt der Sohn...."</p>
+
+<p>It was far, far better....</p>
+
+<p>"Well," the pencil wrote, "there's nothing to be said
+now, poor creatures.... Funny smell in here, Miss Causton;
+I'll smoke if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Julius lighted a cigar. Its penetrating odour
+mingled with that of the sweet, releasing stuff.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! It was coming! The pencil wrote no less
+quickly, but it looked a little smaller and farther away.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But sometimes it made me almost angry that he hadn't
+married the woman he ought...."</p>
+
+<p>Louie felt her head sinking.... Yes, the woman he
+ought....</p>
+
+<p>That had been the real fatality....</p>
+
+<p>Her lids dropped for a moment, and then heavily lifted
+again; but she could still see the pencil&mdash;mistily&mdash;dreamily&mdash;as
+if endued with a life not her own&mdash;flying on.</p>
+
+<p class="center b1 p2">THE END</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Louie, by Oliver Onions
+
+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 Story of Louie
+
+Author: Oliver Onions
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2011 [EBook #37838]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF LOUIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+  Words printed in italics in the original document are represented|
+  here between underscores, as in _text_;
+
+
+
+
+     THE STORY
+     OF LOUIE
+
+     BY
+     OLIVER ONIONS
+
+     Author of "In Accordance With the Evidence,"
+     "The Debit Account," etc.
+
+     GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+     NEW YORK
+
+     _Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton_
+
+
+
+
+     TO
+     GWLADYS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                          PAGE
+
+     PROLOGUE                9
+
+     PART ONE
+     RAINHAM PARVA          25
+
+     PART TWO
+     SUTHERLAND PLACE      109
+
+     PART THREE
+     MORTLAKE ROAD         175
+
+     PART FOUR
+     PILLAR TO POST        213
+
+     PART FIVE
+     THE CONSOLIDATION     259
+
+     ENVOI                 356
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+I
+
+
+In an old number of _Punch_, under the heading "Society's New Pet: The
+Artist's Model," is to be found a drawing by Du Maurier, of which the
+descriptive text runs:
+
+   "And how did you and Mr. Sopley come to quarrel, dear Miss
+   Dragon?"
+
+   "Well, your Grace, it was like this: I was sitting to him in a
+   cestus for 'The Judgment of Paris,' when someone called as wished
+   to see him most particular; so he said: 'Don't move, Miss Dragon,
+   or you'll disturb the cestus.' 'Very good, sir,' I said, and off
+   he went; and when he come back in an hour and a 'alf or so he
+   said: 'You've moved, Miss Dragon!' 'I 'aven't!' I said. 'You
+   '_ave_!' he said. 'I 'AVEN'T!' I said--and no more I 'adn't, your
+   Grace. And with that I off with his cestus an' wished him
+   good-morning, an' I never been near him since!"
+
+Du Maurier may or may not have been wrong about the newness of this
+craze of "Society's." If he was right, the Honourable Emily
+Scarisbrick becomes at once a pioneer. Let there be set down, here in
+the beginning, the plain facts of how, a good ten years before the
+indignant Miss Dragon "offed with" Mr. Sopley's cestus, the Honourable
+Emily found a way to bridge the gulf that lies between Bohemia and
+Mayfair.
+
+Except in the case of one person not yet born into these pages, the
+report that the lady had engaged herself, early in the year 1869, to
+"Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master," had only a short currency. It was
+probably devised by the Honourable Emily herself in order to soften
+the blow for her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to whom
+she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton. Under this name he
+appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon Guards as a trooper in the
+years 1862-1867; and as "Buck" Causton he attained some celebrity
+when, in the last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in
+the prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and ending
+with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.
+
+For all we know, it may have been Miss Dragon's Mr. Sopley who, seeing
+the magnificent Buck in the ring, first put it into the ex-trooper's
+head to become an artists' model. However it was, an artists' model he
+did become, and, as such, the rage. No doubt Sopley, if it were he,
+would gladly have kept his discovery to himself; but a neck like a
+sycamore and a thorax capable of containing nine-hours-contest lungs
+cannot be hid when Academy time comes round. Sopley's measure was
+known. If Sopley painted an heroic picture it was certain he had had a
+hero as model. The Academy opens in May; before June was out Sopley's
+find was no longer his own. Sir Frederick Henson, the artist who moved
+so in the world that in him the tradition of the monarch who picked up
+the painter's brush for him might almost have been said to live again,
+saw Buck, marked Buck down as his own, and presently had sole
+possession of Buck.
+
+The Honourable Emily Scarisbrick already had possession of Sir
+Frederick. To be sure, it neither needed a Sir Frederick Henson to
+teach her the stippling of birds' eggs and the copying of castles for
+the albums of her friends, nor was the great Academician accustomed to
+stooping to the office of salaried drawing-master; but--the Honourable
+Emily was a Scarisbrick, of Mallard Bois.
+
+In Henson's studio the Honourable Emily first saw Buck Causton.
+
+To say that she fell in love with him would demand a definition of the
+term. Certainly she fell in something with him. Perhaps that something
+was the something that at the last thrusts baronies and Mallard Boises
+aside as hindrances to a design even larger than that in which they
+play so important a part; but we have nothing to do with large designs
+here. Call it what you will: something proper enough to legend, but of
+little enough propriety in a modern lady's life; a feeble echo of
+Romance, perhaps, but never itself to become Romance unless, of it or
+present scandal, it should prove the stronger. At any rate, it was a
+very different thing from anything she felt, or ever had felt, for
+Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars, her brother's nominee
+for her hand.
+
+It was a word dropped by the gallant Captain, himself a follower of
+the fancy, that led her to the discovery that the hero of some feat or
+other of extraordinary skill and endurance, and the young Ajax, all
+chest and grey eyes and brown curls, who did odd jobs about the studio
+in the intervals of posing for Henson's demigodlike canvases, were one
+and the same person. Her already throbbing pulse bounded. She herself
+was twenty-eight, a small, dark, febrile woman, given over to
+discontents based on nothing save on an irremediably spoiled
+childhood, and perhaps hankering after an indiscretion in the
+conviction that indiscretions were of two kinds--indiscretions, and
+the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Naturally she became conscious
+of a quickened interest in her art.
+
+The first indication that this interest passed beyond birds eggs and
+castles was that she began "Lessons in Drapery." If here for a few
+moments her story becomes a little technical, it may be none the less
+interesting on that account.
+
+The study of Drapery _as_ Drapery has not much interest for anybody
+unless perhaps for a student of mechanics. For all that, it is, or
+then was, regarded by drawing-masters as a self-contained subject, to
+be tackled, ticked off, and thenceforward possessed. To the study of
+Drapery in this unrelated sense the Honourable Emily apparently
+inclined. Seeing her therefore, in this fundamental error, Sir
+Frederick, a master of Drapery, took from her the "copies" which had
+already supplanted the "copies" of castles in her portfolio, and
+good-humouredly began to tell her what she really wanted. What she
+really wanted, he said, was to rid her mind of the idea that folds
+existed for their own sake, and to endeavour to realise that their
+real significance lay in the thing enfolded. Miss Scarisbrick thanked
+him.
+
+So, at first from the lay figure, and then from Henson's model, she
+began to draw Drapery with special reference to the thing draped.
+
+About this time she gave Captain Chaffinger for an answer a "No" which
+he refused to take. His devotion, he said, forbade him. If by his
+devotion he meant his devotion to his creditors, his constancy
+remained at their service. In the meantime he was still able to pay
+his old debts by contracting new ones.
+
+The Honourable Emily's studies became diligent.
+
+There is little to be said about these things except that they do
+happen. A word now about Buck's attitude.
+
+Had the Honourable Emily's maid thrown herself at his head he would
+have known what to do. His sense of the holiness of social degrees
+would have received no shock. But the Honourable Emily, who could
+command her maid, could not command what in all probability her maid
+would not have had to ask twice for. The most she got (when after much
+that is omitted here, it did at last dawn on the bashful Buck that she
+had any will in the matter at all) was a blush so sudden and violent
+that it compelled an embarrassed reddening of her own cheeks also.
+Buck was not personally outraged. It was his sense of Order that was
+outraged. He remembered the lady's station for her, and, stammeringly
+but reverentially, put her back into it.
+
+Now to be merely reverential to a woman who is in love with you is to
+provoke impatience, anger and tears. On the other hand, to see a woman
+in tears because you will not permit her to humiliate herself is to
+have the other half of an impossible situation. It was one
+luncheon-time (the Honourable Emily now lunched frequently at the
+studio) that the tears came.
+
+"Oh, you don't care for me--you don't care for me!" she sobbed.
+
+Buck could not truthfully have said that he did care for her; but
+there she was before him, in tears.
+
+"If it were that Dragon girl, now----"
+
+Buck, while not failing to see the force of this, could only make
+imploring movements for the Honourable Emily to calm herself.
+Presently she did calm herself, sufficiently to change her tone to one
+of irony.
+
+"Do you read your Bible?" she shot over her shoulder.
+
+"Yes, miss," said Buck--"that is--I mean----"
+
+The reason for Buck's hesitation was that he had suddenly doubted
+whether the Honourable Emily would know a Racing Calendar by the name
+she had just used.
+
+"Do you mean _The_ Bible, miss?" he said, fidgeting.
+
+She snapped: "Yes--the one with the story of Joseph in it----"
+
+She burst into tears anew.
+
+"Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me! I hate myself--I
+hate you!"
+
+Her hatred, however, did not prevent repetitions of the scene. At the
+last repetition that need trouble us here her tears conquered. The
+helpless Buck comforted her after the only fashion he knew anything
+about--the fashion he would have used towards her maid--on his knee.
+
+He still, however, called her "Miss."
+
+They were privately married in the June of 1869.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Don't_ call me 'Miss'!" she broke out petulantly one day in the
+middle of the honeymoon. "And you are _not_ to have your meals with
+the servants! I shall lunch in my room to-day, and you are to be ready
+to take me out at three o'clock."
+
+"Yes, m'm," said Buck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Probably Lord Moone had less to do than he supposed with the
+separation that took place in the September of the same year. We may
+assume that a much more potent factor was the Honourable Mrs.
+Causton's remembrance of her own words, "That I should have to beg a
+man to marry me! I hate myself--I hate you!" She did very soon hate
+both herself and him. Poor Buck merely hated the whole subversive
+anomaly.
+
+He accepted the proposal that they should separate with perfect
+docility. It seemed to him entirely right. Indeed the only thing he
+had not accepted with docility had been his introduction to Lord
+Moone, on the only occasion on which the two men ever met, as "Mr.
+Buckley, the drawing-master." Buck hadn't liked that much. He had made
+himself Buck Causton in nine hours of terrific combat, and as Buck
+Causton he preferred to be known. But all else he suffered with
+touching obedience, and at the proposal that they should go their
+several ways his finger flew to his forehead.
+
+"Yes, miss," he said; and his heart, if not his lips, murmured the
+prayer that begins: "God bless the Squire and his relations----"
+
+They parted.
+
+They only met once more. This was in the January of the following
+year, in the great antlered hall at Mallard Bois, that was as
+regularly used on all occasions as if there had not been salons and
+galleries and drawing-rooms in a dozen other parts of the great place.
+The Honourable Mrs. Causton lay on a couch drawn up to the fire-dogs;
+her husband looked submissively down on her, dwarfing the suit of
+armour of Big Hugo by which he stood.
+
+She made a new proposal. It was that he should put it into her hands
+to set herself free once for all.
+
+"Yes, miss," said Buck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Then," said the Honourable Mrs. Causton a quarter of an hour later,
+"there's the question of cruelty."
+
+Buck's thoughts wandered slowly back to the Piker.
+
+"Yes, miss," he said.
+
+"I need hardly tell you that as far as--er--procedure--can be
+stretched it will be stretched."
+
+"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."
+
+Then wistfully Buck's eyes wandered from Big Hugo's suit of armour to
+his wife's face again.
+
+"Beg your pardon, about that cruelty, miss," he said unhappily.
+"Couldn't I go down--just for once, Miss--as Mr. Buckley?"
+
+"No; but I can assure you that _I_ don't want this talked about more
+than must be either. Perhaps I ought to tell you that I shall probably
+marry again."
+
+Buck's finger went to his forehead again, this time in a duty to his
+successor. Then his eyes grew grave. His wife had made a slight
+movement.
+
+"If I might make so bold, miss--there's another thing----"
+
+She knew what he meant.
+
+"You've nothing to do with that," she said quickly.
+
+Buck would have thought that he had, but if a lady said he hadn't,
+well, he hadn't, that was all.
+
+"Yes, miss.... And asking your pardon again--about that cruelty?"
+
+"Oh, that's over," said Mrs. Causton, closing her eyes. "Six months
+ago."
+
+"I--I don't remember," said Buck; but once more, if a lady said it was
+so, so it was. Again the grave look came into his eyes, and again she
+understood.
+
+"I can have it looked after better than you can," she said.
+
+"And--please--you will?" he dared to supplicate.
+
+She nodded.
+
+Still he hesitated.
+
+"If it's a little boy, miss--I might be opening a Sparring
+Academy--strictly for the gentry--I wouldn't charge him nothing----"
+
+And after a little further discussion the shameful piece of collusion
+came to an end.
+
+They were divorced in the March of 1870. On the 15th of April the
+child was born--a girl. Fifteen months later the Honourable Emily
+married Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars.
+
+
+II
+
+The child never got on well with her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger never
+forgave her her paternity. The gallant Captain, on the other hand,
+treated her as he would have treated his own child--that is to say, he
+bought her extravagant toys if the proximity of a toyshop put it into
+his head to do so, pinched her arms and cheeks and neck jocularly
+whenever he found her head at the level of his waistcoat, and then
+departed, as likely as not to pinch maturer arms and necks, not Mrs.
+Chaffinger's, elsewhere. He took his wife's former _mesalliance_ with
+perfect serenity. She had paid his debts and enabled him to spend a
+day or two in his father's house when he cared to do so, and the
+Captain, who was a gentleman and not very much else to boast of, held
+faithfully to his part of the bargain. He even dropped in once or
+twice at Buck Causton's new _Salle d'Armes_ in Bruton Street. The
+child was called by his name--Louise Chaffinger; he called her Mops,
+because of her quantities of thick brown hair. The Honourable Emily
+became querulous and an invalid; took to falling into dozes no matter
+who was present, and waking up again with alarming cries; and she
+busied herself with charitable works performed in an uncharitable
+temper.
+
+Louie was not pretty; but the jocular Captain pinched no prettier neck
+than hers, and he declared, as the child grew, that her "points" would
+be best displayed could she go about in the largest and shadiest hat
+and the most closely fitting tights possible. His house (which, by the
+way, he had begun to encumber again) was Trant, in Buckinghamshire;
+but the child was packed off occasionally, to be rid of her, to
+Mallard Bois, Lord Moone's seat, there to romp with her cousin, Eric
+Scarisbrick, already preparing for Eton, and such small fry as climbed
+trees and cheeked the gardeners with him. Here she revelled in the
+liberty that was denied her at home; and perhaps she already realised
+instinctively that her mother's relief at having her out of the way
+was tempered only by the invalid's resentment that the child could be
+happy out of her own not very cheerful company. Be that as it may, the
+girl was told, at twelve years of age, that she was getting too big to
+kick these limbs her stepfather so admired about among growing boys.
+She was given half-long skirts and French and English governesses: the
+French one, though she did not yet know it, as a preparation for
+sending her to a Paris convent.
+
+At fourteen years of age she had not heard of the man whose grey eyes
+and perfect shapeliness of body she inherited. The Scarisbricks, be
+sure, had allowed that episode to be hushed up. But the day was bound
+to come when she should hear of the Honourable Mrs. Causton and
+identify that lady with her mother. The day did come, no matter how;
+and, inwardly trembling but outwardly resolved, she sought her mother.
+Mrs. Chaffinger had just come with a cry out of a doze. Her daughter
+demanded to be told who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was. She was told
+that there was no such person.
+
+"Then who was she?" the girl demanded. There were few of her questions
+to her mother that were not demands.
+
+"Who's been telling you about her?"
+
+That did not seem to Louie to matter. She repeated the question.
+
+"She was a very great fool," Mrs. Chaffinger snapped. "Why aren't you
+with Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Who was she besides being a very great fool?" the child persisted.
+
+It had to come out.
+
+"Then papa _isn't_ my father?" Louie said, pale. All through her life
+she was pale in her moments of stress.
+
+"I'm your mother, and I tell you to go to your French lesson at once."
+
+But Louie did not move.
+
+"Then who was my father?" she asked.
+
+"Who do you suppose he is, when I was Mrs. Causton?"
+
+"Is?... Then he isn't dead?"
+
+Mrs. Chaffinger compressed her lips.
+
+"I was going to tell you all about Mr. Causton all in good time" (her
+daughter looked coldly unbelieving), "but since you are here I'll tell
+you now. Sit down on that chair and stop fidgeting----"
+
+And she told the girl the facts, not to be denied, of the divorcing of
+Buck.
+
+The end of the matter was that Louie now hated, not only her mother,
+but her father also.
+
+Her stepfather she thenceforward addressed as "Chaff." He liked it.
+
+Three months later she was sent to Paris.
+
+Eight months later still she turned up again, not at Trant, but at the
+Captain's club in London. She announced that she had run away from the
+convent and did not intend to return to it. Her arrival, though not
+unwelcome, was inopportune, for the Captain had a little party that
+evening and seemed disconcerted. The toyshops, he reflected, were
+closed, and then he looked at his stepdaughter again.... It could not,
+after all, have been one of the more characteristic of the Captain's
+parties, for he took Louie to it, pigtail and all, and for a whole
+evening pinched nobody. Then he took her to his chambers, winked at
+his man in token of something extraordinary, hesitated, and then, with
+an "Oh, be hanged to it!" expression, gave Louie the key of his own
+sleeping apartment. Louie examined his prints a little wonderingly,
+but approved of his ribboned haircurlers and large frilled pincushion,
+and then went to sleep. The next day the Captain took her down to
+Trant and left her there.
+
+The next few years were a constant succession of wrangles with her
+mother. She had flatly refused to return to the convent, and if the
+Honourable Emily was petulant, her daughter was merciless. She had
+been put off with the drawing-master version of her mother's marriage,
+but that was enough; she held it over her mother's head, and Buck, if
+he had desired revenge, had it. She knew herself to be hybrid, and
+treated the Scarisbricks and their drawing-masters with equal scorn.
+Worse, she treated them equally with a contemptuous tolerance. She
+harped with pride on the baser strain. In a word, there was no doing
+anything with her.
+
+She reached the age of twenty-one.
+
+At twenty-two she expressed a wish to go on the stage. The Captain,
+who was genuinely fond of her, stopped that. At twenty-three she
+declared plainly that "a girl in her position" ought to have a means
+of earning her own living--not necessarily drawing. The Captain being
+averse from this also, she took the matter into her own hands by
+writing to the secretary of a Horticultural College in Somersetshire,
+paying her fees, and enrolling herself as a student without saying a
+word to anybody. She packed her boxes, and in the second week of
+January 1894 presented herself before her mother, dressed for
+travelling, and announced that she had very little time in which to
+catch her train.
+
+"Oh, by the way," she said, turning at the door, "if you write, you
+might address letters to me in my own name--Causton."
+
+Then she left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Was die Mutter traeumt, das vollbringt die Tochter._" Here, with its
+repetitions of and its departures from that of the Honourable Emily,
+follows her story.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+RAINHAM PARVA
+
+
+I
+
+The Horticultural College at Rainham Parva, now defunct, was hardly a
+college in the modern sense at all. Its technical books were
+antiquated; it had only one or two old microscopes; and it totally
+lacked the newer trimmings of specialisation. Its founder, a Bristol
+seedsman called Chesson, had bought the place cheaply, house and all,
+a dozen years before, and having five hardy daughters eating their
+heads off at home, had, as the saying is, economically emancipated
+them. That meant then (whatever it may mean now) that, realising that
+the wages of two men and a boy might be saved, he had had them down to
+Rainham Parva and had set them to work.
+
+The second Miss Chesson, Miss Harriet, had shown a real aptitude for
+the work. She had won, after three years, a Diploma, and this Diploma,
+together with the presence in the house as paying boarder of a niece
+of Chesson's, had put an idea into the seedsman's head--the premium
+idea. With the Diploma properly advertised, its grantee made
+Principal, a premium or so forgone (called a Scholarship) and the
+proper person installed over all as Lady-in-Charge, Chesson had
+foreseen a good deal of his work being done by young women who would
+pay for the privilege of being allowed to do it. There is no need to
+describe the development of the idea. The enterprise had prospered,
+and when Louie Causton had put her name down on the books and paid her
+fees the complement of thirty girls was full.
+
+She did not, after all, travel down alone. Her stepfather, hinting
+that it was not necessary to say anything about this to her mother,
+made the journey with her. The pair of them shortened the hours by
+guessing which of the young women in the same train were to be Louie's
+fellow-students; and when they alighted at Rainham Magna station the
+Captain put Louie and her traps into one of the nondescript vehicles
+that only saw the light when the Rainham girls arrived or departed,
+and drove off with her to the college. There he shook hands with the
+Lady-in-Charge, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, and asked her whether she was
+related to Lovenant-Smith of the 24th. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's reply did
+not actually affirm her regret that she was so related, but the
+Captain's affability dried up suddenly. He was returning to town by
+the four-o'clock train; before doing so he took a turn round the place
+with Louie.
+
+"Well," he said, as Louie took her leave of him at the gates, "it's a
+good growing country, I should say; rum idea of yours though....
+You've heard me speak of Lovenant-Smith, haven't you? Adjutant eight
+or nine years ago; not a bad chap at all, _I_ should have said. She'll
+be one of the Shropshire lot, I expect. I knew he had people down
+there.... Well, mind you don't run away with a gardener. 'Bye,
+Mops----"
+
+And he was off, tugging at his moustache and inwardly commenting that
+the whole escapade was "just like Louie."
+
+It was a good growing country. Chesson said that the mildness of the
+winters was due to the Gulf Stream; Miss Harriet Chesson attributed it
+to ozone--ozone having been a word to conjure with at the time when
+she had taken her Diploma. Ozone or Gulf Stream, it provided wild
+violets in December, lemon-verbena that grew in trees up the sides of
+the cottages and had to be cut away from the upper windows, and filled
+the deep lanes with the hart's-tongue fern. It also brought forth rich
+produce. The dairy business and poultry farm flourished; crates and
+parcels and returned empties kept the goods clerk at Rainham Magna
+station busy; and, when the heather bloomed on the hill that rose
+between Chesson's and the sea, the "Rainham Heather Honey," green as
+bronze and thick as glue, was at a premium. At the crest of the hill
+the seedsman's estate ended. Beyond that, dropping abruptly to the
+west, lay deep wooded coombes, green to the very rocks of the shore.
+
+Louie's age put her at once out of the class of the "new girl" who, in
+the school tales, sits pathetically on her box and waits for somebody
+to speak to her. She was twenty-four, and probably only one other
+student, the copper-haired girl with the long thin neck and the
+"salt-cellars" showing through her white flannel blouse, who asked her
+her number and offered to show her the way to her cubicle, was more
+than twenty-two. Her large black feathered hat (see the first part of
+the Captain's advice as to how she would make the most of herself),
+and her expensively simple navy blue coat and skirt down to her toes,
+further distinguished her among the tweed jackets and ankle-length
+skirts of the younger girls. No doubt she had her perfect management
+of these and her numerous other garments from her mother's former
+interest in the study of Drapery. If the Captain did not think her
+face pretty, it must be remembered that the Captain had standards of
+prettiness of his own. Pretty in the professional-beauty sense her
+irregular mouth and long chin perhaps were not. Her large, clear,
+pebble-grey eyes at any rate were arresting.
+
+The copper-haired girl, having shown Louie her cubicle, offered to
+show her the rest of the house also. They began upstairs on the first
+floor, where the girls slept. The place was an old mansion in the form
+of a hollow square, and as they came to each latticed embrasure Louie
+stopped to look at the famous Rainham yew that almost filled the
+grassgrown inner courtyard. The corridors were dark, and sudden steps
+where no steps were to have been expected made of the uneven floors a
+series of booby-traps for those not familiar with them. Memories of
+the Monmouth Rebellion seemed to linger round the corners and to be
+shut up in the cupboards of the place. They passed downstairs. Through
+the doorway of the handsome Restoration facade they saw the yew again,
+dark beyond the shining flags of the hall. Louie had already been in
+the reception-room and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's private apartments on the
+right of the doorway; on the left, she was told, were the quarters of
+Miss Harriet (who alone of Chesson's daughters remained there) and the
+staff. The domestics slept at the top of the house; the four male
+gardeners (all married) occupied the farm a furlong away at the back.
+
+"But wouldn't you like some tea?" said the copper-haired girl. "It's
+in the dining-room."
+
+"I was told to report myself to Miss Chesson at five," said Louie,
+looking at her watch.
+
+"Well, you've just time, if you're quick----"
+
+They sought the room where the housekeeper ran cups of tea from the
+tap of a large and funereal bronze urn.
+
+It was ten minutes to five when Louie entered the dining-room. Before
+the clock had struck five she had taken a certain position in the
+college.
+
+She herself hardly knew how it happened. The room was full of noise
+and chatter, and near Louie, talking louder and making more noise than
+anybody else, was a lanky child of sixteen, to be a tall blonde beauty
+in another three or four years' time, but so far only a mass of
+unadjusted proportions and movements that lacked co-ordination. She
+had several distinct voices, and in one of these she was now engaged
+in unabashed mimicry. Louie, who had got her cup of tea, heard a
+bell-like "_Os_-trich feathers!" and she was about to put a question
+to the copper-haired girl when, with a mock reverence and an explosive
+"Your _Ma_-jesty!" the child swept backwards into her. She barely
+saved her cup of tea. The girl gave a quick turn; her "Clum----" was
+changed to a "Sorry!" as she saw a new face, and Louie smiled.
+
+"Your feet were all wrong," Louie said.
+
+The blonde child turned eagerly again.
+
+"Can you do it?" she asked.
+
+The next moment, before Louie could get out "A drawing-room curtsy?
+Yes," the child had cried: "Girls! Girls! Here's somebody who knows
+how to do it! Do come and show us!"
+
+"Really?" said Louie, smiling, and handing her cup of tea to the
+copper-haired girl.
+
+"Yes--come here, Rhoda, and watch (that's my sister--she's to be
+presented, you know)."
+
+Louie laughed. "Quickly then--I have to see Miss Chesson----"
+
+And, pushed unceremoniously forward, and still in her feathered hat
+and navy blue costume, Louie made her first bow to her fellow-students
+at Chesson's in the deep and swanlike genuflexion she had practised
+with her cousin, Cynthia Scarisbrick, a couple of years before. Then
+she ran out, smiling.
+
+"_How_ ripping!" she heard somebody say as she did so. "I expect she's
+been presented."
+
+Louie sought Miss Harriet.
+
+The Principal, a businesslike, damson-complexioned woman of
+forty-five, with a deerstalker hat on her close-cropped curly hair,
+asked her what course of study she proposed to take. Louie replied (in
+other words) that all courses were the same to her. Miss Harriet had
+had that kind of student before. She asked a few further questions,
+and then put Louie down for the elementary course. She dismissed her
+with a marked syllabus and a copy of the Rules.
+
+Louie read the Rules, nodded, as much as to say, "I thought so!" and
+then laughed. There was no need to ask who had drawn them up; she
+remembered the frigid way in which Chaff had been put into his place
+that afternoon. There was a serenity about them that transcended the
+ordinary imperative mood. "_Students do not absent themselves from
+Morning Prayers or Divine Service without Permission._" "_Students do
+not give Orders to the Gardeners or Domestics._" "_Students do not
+pass beyond the Bounds of the College (Map appended)._" If on occasion
+students did all of these things, that did not detract from the
+_largior ether_ in which the Rules were conceived.
+
+Nor did mere evidence to the contrary ever in the least degree abate
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's persuasion that the young ladies of Chesson's,
+being the daughters of gentlefolk, were by that very fact almost to be
+trusted to do without Rules at all.
+
+On the following morning Louie, with leggings of doe-skin buttoned to
+her knees (see the second of the Captain's recommendations for the
+attire that suited her best), and wearing a wide-pocketed jacket not
+unlike a man's, began the practical study of Horticulture.
+
+
+II
+
+She was attached to the "posse" of six girls of which the
+copper-haired student, whose name was Richenda Earle, was the head.
+This girl, as the holder of the scholarship mentioned a page or two
+back, was the single non-fee-paying student in the place. Her father
+was a bookseller in Westbourne Grove, and she had kept his books for
+him before coming to Chesson's. She had picked up her knowledge of
+book-keeping at an obscure and ill-appointed Business School in
+Holborn, but, her health being anything but robust, she had taken up
+gardening under the impression that it was an out-of-doors pursuit. It
+was only this at Chesson's to a strictly limited extent. Whatever
+students did or did not learn, the output for the market had to be
+maintained, and this necessitated, for days and days together, work in
+the twelve long glass-houses, from the humid heat of which the girls
+came out limp and listless and relaxed. Richenda Earle suffered from
+these depressions more than most of them, and now only remained at the
+college because Miss Harriet had held out hopes for her of a place on
+the staff. She was easily head of all the classes of which she was a
+member, but was hopelessly incapable of making her personality felt.
+Add to all this that she was avid of popularity, and that her
+self-consciousness took the form of making her more assertive
+(without being a bit more effective) than any girl in the college, and
+you will see why Louie felt a little sorry for her without taking to
+her very much. She for her part had fastened herself on Louie from the
+start, and had been the first to put the question that Louie had had
+to answer a dozen times before she had been at Chesson's two hours.
+
+"No, I haven't been presented," Louie had said, finding herself
+waylaid almost at the door of Miss Harriet's room as she had come out
+again. "My cousin has; that's where I learned it. We practised it
+together."
+
+"I've seen them go in," Richenda had murmured, a little wistfully, a
+little dully; "the carriages and things, you know. I live in London."
+
+Thereupon she had volunteered some of the information stated above, as
+if inviting a confidence in return. "I'm glad you're in my posse," she
+had concluded, as Louie had turned away without giving any information
+whatever about herself.
+
+The remaining members of "Earle's posse" were the two Burnett sisters
+("B Major," the girl who was to be presented, and "B Minor," the
+sixteen-year-old beauty-to-be), a Scotch girl called Macfarlane, and
+one other girl, half French, Beatrice Pigou. There were four other
+posses at the college, and each was told off each day to put itself
+under the direction of one or other of the four gardeners, to pot,
+"prick out," water or whatever the task might be. The gardener at
+present in charge of Louie's posse was a sullen young Apollo called
+Priddy, whose face and neck and forearms ozone or the Gulf Stream had
+turned to the hue of some deep and old and mellow violin; and Burnett
+Minor and the younger girls, talking in terms of the life to which
+their eyes were yet sealed, discussed Priddy with a freedom perfectly
+innocent and entirely appalling.
+
+Louie had not been at Rainham Parva two days before she was wondering
+whether after all she wanted to stay. She didn't know really why she
+had come. Not one of the three commonest reasons for girls being
+there--a stepmother, to be able to earn a little pocket-money, or to
+get over a youthful love-affair--quite fitted her case. And then there
+were those ridiculous Rules. She supposed that if she stayed she would
+be on the same footing as the juniors, and she hardly thought she
+could submit to that. Not that the Rules did not seem to justify
+themselves; on the contrary, they did. Merely because Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith affirmed that students did not do this or that,
+students as a matter of fact either did not do these things, or else
+consented to class themselves as transgressors when they did.
+
+But Louie's own attitude in the face of a prohibited thing, inherited
+from her mother and now made inveterate by her upbringing, was
+invariably that of a wonder what would happen were the prohibition to
+be disregarded.
+
+It was just a wonder, nothing more.
+
+Then, on the night of her third day at Chesson's, she made up her mind
+to forfeit her fees and leave in the morning. The reason for her
+decision was this:
+
+During the vacation certain digging had been allowed by the gardeners
+to fall into arrears; and Earle's posse, together with another set of
+six girls, had been set to do it. Now digging was the hardest work the
+girls were ever called upon to do, and at the beginning of the term at
+any rate they were spared it as much as possible. But education or
+output required that this digging should be done, and accordingly the
+twelve girls had digged for the whole morning, and in the afternoon
+had varied the labour by carrying heavy pots from House No. 6 to House
+No. 10--a distance of perhaps sixty yards. The next morning twelve
+girls (or rather eleven, for Burnett Minor's unset muscles had
+suffered but little) were half incapacitated by stiffness, and that
+night there was an outcry for hot baths and arnica. Louie, clad in
+dressing-gown and slippers and carrying her soap and sponge and towel,
+hobbled to the bathrooms, and came, in the box-room, upon an
+indignation-meeting.
+
+This box-room was the common meeting-ground for students who awaited
+their turns at the baths. It lay over the back courtyard arch, and the
+four bathrooms adjoined it, two on either side. It was piled almost to
+the ceiling with trunks and boxes and dress-baskets, the white
+initials of which glimmered in the shadows cast by a couple of candles
+on the floor; but there were isolated boxes enough to make seats for
+the seven or eight girls already assembled there. They had slippers on
+their naked feet and single garments on their aching bodies; and on
+one of Louie's own boxes Burnett Major was peering at the little blue
+flame of a spirit-kettle and mixing in a row of cups the paste for
+that beverage of revolt--cocoa. Burnett Minor had traitorously turned
+the general righteous anger to private account, had "bagged" the
+hottest bath, and was now carolling at the top of her lungs in the
+right-hand bathroom.
+
+"----then if Earle won't do it I vote we draw lots!" Macfarlane was
+exclaiming shrilly as Louie opened the door. "Those lazy louts of
+gardeners are supposed to have all the digging done before we come
+up----"
+
+They were not--not if Chesson knew it; but "Of course they are!" cried
+five voices at once.
+
+"Well, I'm just not going to stand it--there----"
+
+"And I'm not----"
+
+"Nor me----"
+
+"And for two pins I'd tell Priddy so!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, but only because, all having spoken at
+once, all had to take breath at once.
+
+"It's abominable----"
+
+"Disgusting----"
+
+"Cela m'embete----"
+
+"Here's Causton--what do _you_ vote, Causton?" they cried, turning to
+her.
+
+"What about?" Louie asked.
+
+"Why, everything, of course--this beastly place--and setting us to dig
+the first week--and Priddy's beastly cheek----"
+
+Then every tongue was unloosed.
+
+"_And_ a row every time we want an extra blouse washed----"
+
+"_And_ washing two guineas a term extra----"
+
+"_And_ only the vuggles for dinner that aren't good enough for the
+market----" ("Vuggles" were vegetables.)
+
+Another pause for breath.
+
+"Let's what-d'-you-call-it--strike----"
+
+Louie laughed as she sat stiffly down by Burnett Major.
+
+"Oh, I'll vote for anything you like; I don't care," she said.
+
+Then they began anew.
+
+"Earle's head of the posse--_she_ ought to do it----"
+
+Richenda Earle's voice broke in in loud complaint.
+
+"How _can_ I? You know I would like a shot if it wasn't for my
+scholarship. But I should just be told that if I didn't like it I
+could go. Elwell's head of your lot. Elwell ought to go."
+
+"I don't care who goes, but I will _not_ be told to do things by
+Priddy."
+
+"Priddy!----"
+
+(Louie smiled again as there came from the bathroom the joyful voice:
+
+"_Early one mo-o-orning--as the su-un was a-rising!_----")
+
+"And those pots hadn't got to be moved--he was only making work----"
+
+"--gros tyran!----"
+
+"--like they kept us three weeks grading and packing tomatoes last
+autumn, and called it 'study'----"
+
+"--and the bruised ones for us----"
+
+"--not even fit for ketchup----"
+
+"--Dothegirls Hall _this_ establishment ought to be called!----"
+
+Another momentary pause: then:
+
+"--let's all sign a petition----"
+
+"--no, a what-d'you-call-it--an ultimatum----"
+
+"--just telling them straight----"
+
+"Your bath, Earle----"
+
+From the bathroom had come the gurgle of escaping water. Boiled pink,
+turbaned with her towel, smelling of somebody else's scented soap and
+radiating unrepentance that Earle's bath must be a tepid one, Burnett
+Minor bounced in.
+
+"Friends, Romans, countrymen, do lend me a dry towel, just to finish
+with. Oh, Causton, the curtsy, now that I've something loose on!
+Crocks! My cocoa, Major, and who said Priddy just now? 'Students do
+not fall in love with Priddy.' (I sha'n't hush.) Sugar, Mac, and,
+Causton, I wish you'd do my hair your way, just to see how it
+looks----"
+
+And, twirling twice in the midst of a corolla of pink cashmere
+dressing-gown, she sank to the floor and began to nurse a chilblain on
+her heel.
+
+Louie, her hands behind her head, leaned back and watched the scene
+with the greatest amusement. A master-rebel herself, she knew that
+here was no rebellion. The meeting, like other meetings, was merely
+letting off steam, and the girls who "wouldn't stand it" would be
+standing it exactly the same on the morrow. Well, on the morrow she
+herself would be off. Her boxes were only half unpacked; half-an-hour
+would put the other things back again. Already she saw that this
+Chesson's was an imposition. In the meantime, the indignation meeting
+was very amusing. She felt almost motherly towards these tractable
+revolutionaries. Her indulgence became still greater as they spoke out
+again.
+
+"Another thing," a girl of Elwell's posse demanded; "why couldn't I go
+to Rainham yesterday to have my photograph taken?"
+
+("Break the camera," Burnett Minor murmured to the chilblain.)
+
+"And just because somebody'd bagged my boots and I was five minutes
+late the other day----"
+
+"Je m'en fiche pas mal----" Pigou began.
+
+("Parly Angly, voo affectay feele," from Burnett Minor.)
+
+"I should like to see one of the gardeners at home looking at us the
+way Priddy does----"
+
+"Or Miss Harriet either for that matter--she's only a sort of
+forewoman----"
+
+"--applewoman----"
+
+"--tomatoes----"
+
+"--that's all she is really----"
+
+"--nothing else----"
+
+Louie laughed outright. Another gurgle had come from the bathroom, and
+Earle reappeared. Her announcement that the water was now cold added
+to the general sense of wrong.
+
+"Not even enough hot water!"
+
+"Scarcely a drop, ever!----"
+
+"Odious!"
+
+"Then will somebody come into my cubicle and rub me--not you, B
+Minor."
+
+("Just give a squint out of the window, Elwell.")
+
+("It's all right. Her lights are out. Lovey's too.")
+
+"Well, I _won't_ have a cold bath, to please Lovey or anybody else!"
+
+Nor did Louie want one. She had risen. She moved to the window that
+looked out over the courtyard yew--the window from which watch was
+kept to see when Miss Harriet and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith retired--and
+yawned. In the middle of her yawn she suddenly laughed again.
+
+"Good gracious!" she thought. It was too amusing.
+
+Suddenly Richenda Earle, who also was standing by the window, spoke to
+her. Evidently Richenda did not think she had been fairly treated by
+the meeting.
+
+"Do _you_ think they ought to ask me to?" she complained.
+
+Louie turned.
+
+"To ask you to what?"
+
+"To complain to Miss Harriet--me, the only Scholarship girl."
+
+Louie shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. "Oh, they won't complain to
+Miss Harriet!"
+
+"No--but one doesn't like to refuse things----" Earle said in injured
+tones.
+
+Before Louie would have had time to reply to this, had she thought of
+replying to it, a diversion occurred. Nobody had heard steps
+approaching, but all at once the door opened, and Authority, in the
+person, not of Miss Harriet, but of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith herself, stood
+looking in. The hubbub ceased as the boiling of a kettle ceases when
+cold water is poured in. Several of the conspirators rose to their
+feet; Burnett Minor, making no bones about it, bolted behind a box.
+Great is even the look of Authority; it was almost a superfluity when
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked in measured tones from the doorway: "What is
+the meaning of this?"
+
+Already the tails of two dressing-gowns had vanished out of the other
+door.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked again.
+
+Then she looked round to see on whom to fasten her displeasure.
+
+Louie saw her look, and instantly fathomed its purpose. She and
+Richenda Earle stood by the window, as it were the dramatic centre of
+some Rembrandtesque composition to which all else was merely
+contributory. The Scholarship girl was going to get into a row. She,
+Louie, had lived for years among rows; and was leaving anyway on the
+morrow.
+
+Before the "Miss Earle" had passed Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's lips Louie
+had stepped forward.
+
+"We've been waiting for our baths," she said.
+
+Perhaps already Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would have preferred Richenda
+Earle to Louie; there is expediency even in Authority; but the
+challenge, if it was that, was a public one. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+turned to Louie.
+
+"Do you know what time it is?" she asked freezingly.
+
+It pleased Louie to take Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's question _au pied de la
+lettre_.
+
+"I'm afraid my watch is in my cubicle. I could tell you in a moment,"
+she said.
+
+This the Lady-in-Charge saw fit to ignore. She drew her own watch from
+her belt.
+
+"It is ten minutes past eleven," she said. "Students are not out of
+bed at ten minutes past eleven. Neither are candles burning. Miss
+Earle----"
+
+But again Louie interposed. After all, it was rough on the Scholarship
+girl.
+
+"Miss Earle came in only a moment ago to send us to bed," she
+affirmed, without a tremor.
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, turning to Louie, and perhaps
+feeling herself once more headed off, "you, Miss Causton, as a new
+student, are perhaps not yet familiar with the Rules. Be so good as to
+come to me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning and I will explain them to
+you."
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith did not make the discomfited rebels file out past
+her. She herself retired with dignity. Students do not linger in the
+box-room when it is made known that they are expected to go to bed at
+once.
+
+But no sooner had the door closed on Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's back than
+the pent-up general breath escaped again in a fluttering exhalation.
+In it were awe, delight, homage.
+
+"Oh, Causton!" somebody breathed. "You _are_ a brick!"
+
+"_Isn't_ she?"
+
+"Wasn't it stunning of her?"
+
+"You'd have caught it, Earle!"
+
+"I saw it in her eye!"
+
+"But I say, Causton, you'll get a wigging!"
+
+"She didn't speak to you, you know!"
+
+"You cut in----"
+
+Louie felt quite confused, so much did they make of so little.
+
+"Good gracious," she said, "what are you all talking about? That's
+nothing, especially as I was thinking of leaving in any case
+to-morrow."
+
+There was consternation in the box-room. Had Rebellion found its
+leader only to lose her again immediately?
+
+"Leaving!"
+
+"Oh, I sha'n't leave till after ten o'clock now, you may be sure,"
+Louie laughed.
+
+"But--oh, I _say_!"
+
+The dismayed voices dropped. There was a blank silence. It was only
+after half-a-minute that Burnett Minor, who had issued from cover
+again, begged: "Don't leave, Causton."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't leave because of anything like this," said Louie,
+enormously amused at the thought. "The place is a fraud--that's why I
+should leave."
+
+"Oh, don't leave," another girl begged.
+
+"Well, we'll see what she says to-morrow."
+
+"She can't be _too_ down on you----"
+
+"Not the first time----"
+
+Something that can only be described as a pleasant hardening came into
+Louie's grey eyes. Her laugh dropped a note. She looked at the adoring
+faces.
+
+"That's just what I mean," she said. "If she _is_----"
+
+"What?----"
+
+"I'll stay."
+
+And that also her stepfather would have described as "just like
+Louie."
+
+
+III
+
+Punctually at ten o'clock on the morrow Louie knocked at the door of
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's office or drawing-room--it was both--and
+entered. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was writing at an escritoire that was not
+big enough to accommodate her elbows, and so supported her braceleted
+wrists only. There was something contradictory about her attitude. Its
+rectitude as she sat at the inconvenient little desk suggested that
+she expected Louie, her turn, pause and inquiring "Well?" that she did
+not. Louie's observant eyes had already noticed a curious
+inconsistency about the Lady-in-Charge. A great number of things
+seemed to lie on the tip of her tongue, ready, apparently against her
+own better judgment, to be detached from it by a perfectly-timed
+fillip of opposition.
+
+And Louie had only to remember the word or two with which she had
+dashed Chaff's affability to be fairly sure that though cocoa and
+candles in the box-room at eleven o'clock at night might seem a good
+enough reason for the present interview, as like as not another lay
+behind it. She stood just within the door.
+
+"Well, Miss Causton?"
+
+"I think you told me to come here at ten o'clock."
+
+"Ah, yes. Please to wait a moment."
+
+Louie listened to the squeaking of her quill and the faint jingling at
+her wrists as she continued to write.
+
+When Mrs. Lovenant-Smith turned again it was almost as if she had
+thought better of something or other--say of an encounter with this
+long-chinned, grey-eyed girl who stood, not dressed for gardening, but
+in a long grey morning frock, looking at her from the door.
+
+"I merely wished to impress on you, Miss Causton, that the Rules must
+be observed," she said. "I believe there is a copy of them on the
+smaller bureau by your right hand there. Take it and be so good as to
+study it. That is all I wished to say."
+
+Louie did not believe the last sentence, but no disbelief showed in
+her eyes. She inclined her head, but watched Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+waiting for more. She thought that if she waited more would come. It
+did. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, having just dismissed Louie, rescinded the
+decision by speaking again.
+
+"You are older than the others," she said, "and it ought not to be too
+much to expect of you that you will set a good example."
+
+Louie, perhaps gratuitously, read a meaning into the words. Perhaps
+you guess what it was. Many of the older people of her world still
+remembered her mother's first marriage, and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+though Louie did not like the look of her, was still undeniably of her
+world. With Louie herself the drawing-master theory of her paternity
+had long since gone by the board; the girl had not rested until she
+had discovered that her father was Buck Causton, pugilist and artists'
+model, none other; and if Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had ever chanced to
+hear of her as Louise Chaffinger, and identified that person under the
+name which (whether from pride, spleen, sensitiveness or what not) she
+had since reassumed, there would probably be something very near the
+tip of her tongue indeed. And just as Buck had always been a pale
+fighter, so Louie's own mixed blood, though it might surge at her
+heart, left her cheeks untinged in moments of stress. She still stood,
+making no motion to go.
+
+"I don't think I quite follow you," she said slowly. "Why do you say
+that something 'ought not to be too much to expect'?"
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stiffened and drew in again.
+
+"It is not necessary to follow me," she said. "You will find all that
+is necessary in the Rules. You may keep that copy; Rule 6 is the one I
+wish especially to call your attention to. Would you be so good as to
+pass me that bell as you go out--the small brass one on the cabinet
+there?"
+
+She half turned to her writing again.
+
+("Good gracious, what next!" thought Louie.)
+
+The bell was a small Dutch figure in a metal farthingale, and Louie
+passed it. As she did so she glanced at the hand that took it. Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith's face was wrinkled like a dried apple, and the hand,
+though beautifully kept, was wrinkled too, and had, moreover, rather
+stumpy nails. Louie's own hands were exquisite. The bell passed from
+hand to hand.
+
+Whether or not it was the glance at the hands, suddenly the word too
+much dropped from the tip of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's tongue. She put the
+bell down with a little clap.
+
+"The Rules of the college are not called into question," she said. "So
+far they have proved quite sufficient for the kind of student the
+college was founded for. By the way, why are you not dressed for the
+gardens?"
+
+("'Kind of student'--good--gracious!" Louie cried in astonishment to
+herself. "Very well, madam----")
+
+She spoke calmly, looking modestly down at her long cashmere skirt,
+but taking in her lovely hands (which toyed with the copy of the
+Rules) on the way.
+
+"My dress?" she said. "Oh, I wasn't sure whether I should be staying
+or not."
+
+Louie knew perfectly well that her leaving would make, at any rate
+until her cubicle should be filled again, a difference of something
+like sixty pounds a year, with extras, to Chesson's. That is rather a
+lot of money to hang upon a mere breach of Rule 6. Perhaps Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith betrayed herself in the quickness with which she took
+her up.
+
+"Do you mean you're thinking of leaving?" she asked.
+
+Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped them demurely
+again.
+
+"I mean," she replied, "that I didn't know whether _you_ were going to
+dismiss _me_ or not. You see, you may not want my--kind of student.
+I'd rather not be in any way considered as an exception," she added.
+
+Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would have known that
+she had now no intention whatever of leaving. As it was, there
+probably came into her head the thought that after all Louie was a
+Scarisbrick and a niece of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of
+horticultural colleges do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and
+Lord Moone. All at once her severity relaxed--but she hated Louie
+thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but the smile
+had a twitch in it.
+
+"I don't think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss Causton," she
+said. "All the same, I'm afraid the Rules are necessary."
+
+"I dare say," said Louie.
+
+"And so long as that is understood, that is the chief thing. In regard
+to candles in particular, in an old place like this there is always
+the danger of fire. In fact, I'm not at all sure that a fire drill
+ought not to be instituted. May I add that I quite appreciated the
+chivalrous way in which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night?
+Indeed, I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think that
+is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton."
+
+"Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out.
+
+As she crossed the Restoration hall, "'Kind of student'--good
+gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me as if I were Burnett
+Minor! 'Kind of student!'--I wonder it doesn't occur to her that
+somebody might have told me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener
+four years ago!--'Kind of student,' indeed!"
+
+Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past the orchards,
+up the hill, and sat looking down over the coombes to the sea.
+
+Leave Chesson's, now? Oh no, nothing was farther from her thoughts!
+She would stay, and why? Not because she had been treated as a junior,
+but because she had been taken, as it were, at her own word. She
+herself might be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her mixed
+birth, but she did not intend to allow anybody else--Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith or anybody--to show as much as a flicker of
+consciousness of it. "Kind of student"!--Oh no, that amusement was
+going to be Louie's own private preserve.
+
+For it had been her cynical amusement. Approximately, the mood took
+her once in five or six months, with or without occasion. Her mother
+knew its times and seasons, and its passings into abeyance, not into
+extinction. She did not call her sensitiveness morbid; quite on the
+contrary, she saw to it that it took the form of a pose of gaiety; she
+could be pitilessly gay with herself. Meek, harmless Cynthia
+Scarisbrick, for example, could have told tales about her gaiety when,
+not knowing whether she herself was eligible for presentation or not
+(but gathering from the tense silence on the subject that had reigned
+at Trant that she was not, or at any rate that her mother did not wish
+it), she had practised the ceremonial curtsy with her cousin. It had
+been Cynthia, not Louie, who had shed the tears.
+
+But to be agreed with by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that her origin was open
+to question (for the Lady-in-Charge had all but said that)--oh no,
+that was really too much!----
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, who took a seedsman's salary!
+
+She might have known that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would know all, all
+about her----
+
+Then, as she sat, she began to wonder where she had heard the name of
+Lovenant-Smith before. She had wondered it when first she had received
+her prospectus at Trant. Of course her stepfather knew these other
+Lovenant-Smiths, the adjutant's lot, and had probably spoken of them,
+but she did not think it was that. For a minute or two she sought in
+her memory....
+
+She was ceasing to think when the recollection came of itself. It was
+only a trifling one after all. One of the boys with whom she had
+romped at Mallard Bois--Roy she had called him then--had been, she now
+remembered, a Lovenant-Smith. He would be a connection of the
+adjutant's. Of course, she had heard the name at Mallard Bois....
+
+Then Louie bit her lip. If there had been any doubt at all that Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith knew the story of Buck there was none now. The
+association with Mallard Bois was quite enough....
+
+Louie was glad she had looked insolently at those stumpy hands....
+
+Beast!
+
+The trees below her tossed restlessly, and far out the grey sea was
+whitecapped as if it had been rasped with a file. No boat had put out
+for the pollock-fishing or to lift a spiller that morning; only a
+pilot, a couple of miles out in the Channel, slowly lifted her nose
+for a moment and then hid it again. Louie felt a little cold, and
+rose. She made an attractive picture as she did so. Her brown hair was
+tossed by the wind, and her long grey skirt cracked behind her and
+clipped her limbs almost as if she had worn the garments of a man.
+
+"Beast!" she muttered again.
+
+Then she thought of another beast--this father of hers whose name she
+had not needed to take but had taken out of rancour against her mother
+and despite against herself. (But not for Mrs. Lovenant-Smith to turn
+up her nose at!) He now (she had this from Chaff) kept a public-house
+somewhere up the Thames--Lord Moone's cast-off brother-in-law in a
+public-house!--and any fitful romantic light that might ever have
+shone about him was now extinguished. Of course the Captain had
+uttered his usual wistful formula: "Not a bad fellow at all, I should
+have said"; but that was rather a criticism on the Captain than on
+Buck. Yes. Buck was simply another beast. But though he were a
+potman, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith should give him every bit as much
+deference as if he had been a brewing peer....
+
+"And I don't care--if it _is_ the pride of the cobbler's dog, I'm
+going to keep his name," Louie muttered.
+
+Suddenly she turned and climbed the stile that led back to Chesson's
+land. As she did so she realised that she had been out of bounds. She
+laughed curtly. Rule 3! Much she cared for their Rules! What about the
+Rule: "Miss Hastings does not elope with What's-his-Name the
+gardener"?--but that would keep. In the meantime she would change into
+her gardening clothes before lunch. She had shown Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+that she had garments of freedom. The next time Louie threatened to
+leave she might be able to add to the force of the threat that she
+would take half-a-dozen girls with her.
+
+Well, lunch was in half-an-hour; she had just time to change.
+
+But as she descended through the orchards again she came upon Richenda
+Earle. The copper-haired girl was washing an espaliered plum-tree, and
+as she turned her head Louie saw that she had been crying. She asked
+Louie if she was going.
+
+"Leaving here, do you mean? No. What's the matter?"
+
+The girl turned her eyes away.
+
+"Thanks awfully for last night," she grunted. "It was ripping of you.
+But you see it hasn't made much difference."
+
+"How, not made much difference?"
+
+Richenda glanced at the tree, and from the tree to the syringe in her
+hand and the pail of disinfectant at her feet. "This," she said.
+"Anybody can do this job, and I've been sorting out pots over there
+all the morning," she indicated the yard behind the trees where the
+flower-pots and debris were kept. "And _I_ can't threaten to leave."
+
+"Your scholarship, of course?"
+
+"Yes. And I'm supposed to be working for the medal."
+
+Chesson's wanted a Horticultural Society's medal badly. They had never
+had one, nor were likely to get one unless Richenda Earle got it for
+them. Louie, who was quickly fathoming the real economy of the place,
+looked again at Richenda's red eyes.
+
+"Well, they won't send you away till you've failed," she said.
+
+But Earle made an impatient gesture, and her eyes began to stream
+again.
+
+"Oh, what's a girl like you know about it!" she broke out. "Yes, I
+know they'll keep me till then, but you don't know anything at all
+about it! You would if you'd had my upbringing! You don't know what
+the struggle is. You think digging and carrying pots is hard work; you
+wouldn't if you'd seen what I've seen! When you go to London it's just
+shopping and theatres and suppers and things; but just you try to keep
+a small bookseller's accounts for him, when they're hardly worth
+keeping, I mean, and collecting his debts when all his money's tied up
+in stock and your father's nearly bankrupt--not that he's ever
+solvent--you'd know what I meant then!"
+
+Then the unexpected outbreak stopped suddenly.
+
+Louie stood silently staring. She disliked seeing anybody cry.
+Richenda's words had little meaning for her; she supposed they
+contained a hidden meaning somewhere. Then the copper-haired girl
+went on, more quietly but no less bitterly:
+
+"I should get a hundred pounds a year on the staff here," she said,
+"that is, if they won't waste me half-days just out of spite, like
+they're doing this morning. That's nothing to you. You others are here
+just for pocket-money, but we live on your pocket-money. I suppose I
+oughtn't to have come here at all. Not among all you. But I begged
+father to let me. Father once apologised to me--that was when there
+was a distraint out against him, if you know what that is--because he
+wasn't rich. Fathers ought all to be rich, he said. There are seven of
+us girls at home, and only one married. Oh, I tell you, you don't
+know!"
+
+Louie wondered why she preferred Richenda Earle loud and striving for
+the popularity she never got to Richenda Earle unburdening herself
+thus. She herself went brightly masked, and disliked to see another's
+mind naked. Richenda's mind was stripped now. It was distasteful.
+Somehow or other Richenda contrived to miss both the balm of
+popularity and the solace of private sympathy.
+
+"I'm--I'm awfully sorry," Louie said awkwardly and a little stiffly.
+
+At the tone Richenda drew in instantly.
+
+"It doesn't matter," she said, compressing her lips and beginning to
+straighten her hair. "I shall just have to buck up, that's all. But
+girls of your class don't know anything about it, so you needn't think
+you do. There's the first gong. Come on."
+
+As they passed the dairies a rabble of students raced past the end of
+the house on their way to the boot-lockers. Louie and Richenda entered
+by the side door. Richenda plunged at once into the scramble for
+house-slippers, but Louie, not having put on her garden boots that
+day, did not need to change. It was too late now to put on another
+dress. She waited by the inner door.
+
+Suddenly she was spied by Burnett Minor. The child rushed towards her,
+a book in her hand.
+
+"Are you going, Causton?" she shouted.
+
+There was a loud "Ssssh!" They could be heard from the dining-room.
+The girls flocked round Louie, and hoarse, excited whispers broke out:
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"She's dressed!"
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"Did you see her?"
+
+"Does Causton say she's going?"
+
+"Ssssh--not all at once!----"
+
+"No, I'm not going," said Louie.
+
+Mouths gaped their very widest to make up for the inaudibility of the
+cheers.
+
+"Hooray!"
+
+"Is she going?"
+
+"No, she's not going--hooray!"
+
+Burnett Minor threw her book joyfully into the book-locker. Ordinarily
+her reading varied between an adoration of Tennyson and mocking and
+dramatic declamations either from the "Pansy Library," or from its
+brother-classics, of which the typical burlesque is "The Blood-stained
+Putty-knife, or The Plumber's Revenge." But this book was her album.
+
+"I saw you come down dressed, and I did want you to put something in
+it if you were going," she whispered gleefully; "but you're not going!
+Hoo----"
+
+Her voiceless mouth gaped wider than them all.
+
+That midday Louie walked demurely up to Mrs. Lovenant-Smith at the
+head of the table and apologised for not yet having changed. From her
+tone Mrs. Lovenant-Smith may or may not have inferred that she had
+spent the hours since their interview in contrite meditation. She
+inclined her head graciously. But Louie, taking her place for grace
+between Burnett Minor and Richenda Earle, was murmuring to herself
+once more:
+
+"'Class of student,' indeed!... Good gracious me!..."
+
+
+IV
+
+Louie quickly became the most popular girl in the college.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her studies she pursued very much as who should say: "I am Louie
+Causton--take it or leave it." Neither Miss Harriet nor the gardeners
+could ever tell when she was interested in a lesson; if she learned,
+she concealed her processes. Before April was out--(the intervening
+time may be slipped over; the daily work in the gardens and houses
+went on as usual, the usual number of crates and parcels was
+despatched from Rainham Magna station, and already the girls were
+looking forward to June, which was always a slack month)--before April
+was out she could "slip" and "bud" as deftly as any when she chose;
+but few made more mistakes than she, and none accepted correction with
+her remarkable nonchalance. Afternoon "theory" she had begun to cut
+almost entirely. A slate hung in the hall, on which students were
+supposed to write down where they might be found when they left the
+immediate precincts of the college. One day towards the end of April
+there appeared on this slate: "Gone to Rainham; L. Causton." Then she
+awaited events with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+
+There were no events.
+
+She sent to Trant for a bicycle.
+
+Truth to tell, as the spring advanced she needed the air. The
+glass-houses, with their smell of musk and mould and heated pipes and
+cherry-pie all mingled, oppressed her; the long forcing-house, where
+for the time being most of the work for the markets went on,
+completely took the starch out of her. She felt as if she was being
+forced herself. She hated the sight of the twelve houses; they merely
+meant so much ventilation, so much shutting-down for the evenings, so
+much watering, so much lassitude for the girls, so much money in
+Chesson's pocket. She was glad she had sent for the bicycle. Somebody
+else might read thermometers and close down and sprinkle floors and
+ply the hissing hoses. Louie wanted air.
+
+Yet even the outer air was not sharp enough. It is not an invigorating
+air in which the lemon-verbena grows in trees up the cottage walls and
+scented geranium flourishes out-of-doors like a common hedge plant. In
+the sunken lanes through which she idled on her bicycle the primroses,
+twice as big as she had ever seen them, and the cowslips, great
+sub-tropical clusters, were already past; and she expected to see the
+roses out presently, big as sunflowers. There was something almost
+rank in the sweet bursting out of the land. She thanked goodness that
+a daisy was a daisy still, modest and unmagnified. She was not used to
+hedges of fuchsia. Nature might have been a little more sparing of her
+myrtle too. Louie always dropped from her bicycle when, coming out of
+one of the canals of still and scented air, she saw, across a burnt
+heath-patch or a clump of hardy gorse, a glimpse of the sea. For the
+sake of a look at the sea she often walked up the hill behind
+Chesson's and sat on the stile she had crossed on the morning after
+her interview with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+
+Except by her example, however, she incited nobody else to break the
+Rules.
+
+It was curious that she should know herself to be popular, and yet at
+the same time should also be secretly aware that she was a little out
+of things. All went well enough for the present, but only for the
+present. She knew quite well what would happen did she, a year or two
+hence, chance to meet any of her present fellow-pupils. She would not,
+then, be older than they in quite the same sense that she was now.
+They would meet; there would be eager recollections of the old days at
+Chesson's; oh, for that matter she could make it all up now!... "Come
+where we can have a really good talk! Where's Burnett Major now, and
+her sister? And have you heard from Elwell lately? And I wonder what's
+become of that red-haired girl--what was her name--Earle--yes, Earle?
+And of course you know Macfarlane's going to be married.... Now tell
+me all about what you're doing!"... Oh yes, Louie could make all this
+up--the bursts, the pauses, the dead stops, and then the falsely
+bright, perfunctory talk about Chesson's again. For she and her
+fellow-students would not be doing the same things. They would have
+taken recognised places, and Louie was not sure that she herself had a
+place to take. Her father and mother had seen to that. She remained a
+spectator. If she was liked now, it was not because she went one inch
+out of her way to be so. She was just as ready to go out of her way to
+be disliked if she must go out of it at all.
+
+In the meantime, however, here she was at Chesson's, to all intents
+and purposes her own mistress, and made so much of that she had Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith largely at her mercy--for, had she been requested to
+leave, the two Burnetts, Elwell and others would now have left with
+her. So, doing exactly as she liked, and adored on every hand, Louie
+even wondered sometimes whether she had not been wrong in supposing
+that restlessness and discontent were bred in the very bones of her.
+
+She was at the very top of her popularity about the time Burnett Major
+gave the birthday "cocoa" in her cubicle. (That is to say, Burnett
+Major gave the nucleus of the "cocoa"; the rest of the party happened
+by a natural process of accretion.) This time the junketing was held
+by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission; it had been acceded readily.
+"Lovey's not such a bad old sort when you get used to her," B. Major
+said. It was in mid-May, on a hot evening, and, though Burnett's
+window was flung wide open, showing the dark yew outside, not a breath
+stirred, and the flames of the candles were four inches long in the
+air. Besides cocoa, Burnett had provided cake and biscuits and candied
+fruits and an enormous box of "assorted" chocolates; and Burnett's bed
+was like to break down with the weight of girls upon it.
+
+Louie had had Burnett Major especially in her mind when she had
+painted her fancy picture of a possible meeting with her
+fellow-students a year or two hence. The two sisters were the
+daughters of a Gloucestershire M.F.H., and Louie could forgive B.
+Major for being a little dazzled by her approaching presentation.
+There was nothing unfamiliar to Louie, either, in the rest of the
+things she felt herself, at one and the same time, both "in at" and
+"out of," for probably Mewley Hall, the Burnetts' home, was not very
+different from Trant or Mallard Bois. But Burnett Major's position a
+few years hence was a forgone conclusion; she filled it already in
+anticipation; and the noisy talk that was in progress as Louie joined
+the party threw bright lights on it.
+
+They were discussing the coming vacations. These were Chesson's yearly
+dread. They interrupted his supply of free labour, and there were
+always fewest girls when he most wanted them. As the vacation
+arrangements rested after all chiefly with the parents, he could do
+little except express his preference that as many of the girls as
+possible should take their holidays in the empty month of June, and
+his hope that those who did not do so would defer them until as late
+as they could. Otherwise he was, to that extent, no better off than
+his trade competitors.
+
+"Here she comes," Burnett Minor was crying as Louie entered the
+crowded cubicle. "I want to be here when Causton is. It's all
+right for Major--oh, you needn't think we don't know, Major--if you
+aren't actually engaged he's always about the place when you're at
+home--and I'm going to stalk you both with a camera and then
+what-d'you-call-it--blackmail him----"
+
+"Shut up, Minor, or I shall send you out," B. Major ordered.
+
+"Then I shall tell everybody who he is and shout his name through the
+keyhole. It's----" She moved her lips, threatening to pronounce the
+name there and then.
+
+"Sneak!" said her sister.
+
+B. Minor bridled.
+
+"I _will_ tell them if you call me that again! Causton, have you a
+young man? (That means, Avez-voo un jeune homme, Pig?)"
+
+"Not for you to shout his name through keyholes," Louie replied,
+smiling.
+
+"No, but do tell us--have you?"
+
+"At my age?" said Louie mockingly, sitting down on the edge of the bed
+and reaching for candied fruits.
+
+"Go on--you're trying to wriggle out of it--_have_ you?"
+
+"Hush, little girl--open your mouth----" She popped a fruit into the
+mouth that itself resembled an untouched fruit.
+
+Pigou, from the lower deck of the washstand, interposed loudly:
+
+"Elle a vingt-quatr'ans--elle est perdue!"
+
+"Uppe petite chose, avec voter Francay," commented Burnett Minor.
+
+"Cau-ston coiffe deja Sainte Catherine," said the ruthless Pigou: "a
+vingt-quatr'ans on est deja--pff!"
+
+"Non elle isn't pff--rude chose! But she'll tell me when we sleep out,
+because I'm going to have my mattress next to hers, sha'n't I,
+Causton?"
+
+"Mais elle vient d'promettre----"
+
+"--and we shall talk about all those things you always say 'Hush' when
+I come in--sha'n't we, Causton?"
+
+"Prrridd-ee!" taunted the French child: and B. Major spoke.
+
+"But I say, Causton, when do you take your vac.--June or September?"
+
+"And where shall you go?" somebody else demanded.
+
+"I'm going to Ireland--father's taken a house," cried a third.
+
+"Nobody cares where you're going! Causton, will you come home with
+us?"
+
+"No; come to Ireland with us!"
+
+"Well, can I come home with you? I loved that man who brought you
+here!" (Burnett Minor was the young woman who had loved Chaff.)
+
+"It wasn't Lord Moone, was it?" Macfarlane asked.
+
+"Or was it your father?"
+
+"Your cocoa, Causton," said B. Major.
+
+Louie had never been so run after before. She curled up among the
+slippered feet at the foot of the bed (there were four girls stretched
+upon it), and alternately stroked the hair and tweaked the ears of
+Burnett Minor, who had defeated Pigou in the scramble to put her head
+into Louie's lap. "I _can_ have the pitch next to yours, can't I?" the
+child demanded, her eyes turned up and her face (to Louie) upside
+down. "There, you see, Pig, she says I can--so voo juste pouvez
+sechey-up, la."
+
+This sleeping out was a summer custom at Chesson's. It began with the
+warm weather, sometimes in June, sometimes in July. On account of the
+morning and evening carrying of bedding and mattresses, the "pitches"
+nearest the house were deemed the most desirable, and weeks ahead
+there was bickering about the "bagging" of them. They bickered now,
+and then turned to the vacations again.
+
+Louie listened, saying little. For her, vacations in this sense hardly
+existed. Vacations lose their value when you study as slackly as Louie
+did. It might be amusing to go home with one or other of the girls for
+a week or two, but on the other hand she hardly thought she would.
+These were the things she was both "in at" and "out of." B. Major was
+talking about them now. Soon she would be taking her presentation
+lessons; she was coming out; she had an unofficial admirer; yes, Louie
+saw quite plainly what B. Major's future would be. What was her own
+going to be? She had not the least idea.... No, she did not really
+want a vacation. More or fewer, there would be girls at Chesson's
+throughout the summer. Chesson's still amused her; she could leave
+once for all when it ceased to amuse her. She was learning nothing.
+She neither wished to start a lavender farm, as Elwell, the daughter
+of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, did, nor to grow peaches, as did
+Macfarlane, nor to add to her pocket-money by selling pot-pourri at
+extravagant prices to her friends, which was Burnett Major's
+idea--until she should marry. She could hardly sell pot-pourri to her
+prize-fighting father. She might (she smiled) sell him hops--she
+seemed to remember that beer was made of hops....
+
+And she certainly did not intend to mug at theory for the sake of a
+medal, as Earle was doing at this very moment....
+
+The party was still discussing this life which was hers and yet not
+hers when Miss Harriet, going her rounds, tapped at the door and
+entered.
+
+"Bedtime, young ladies, please," she said. "Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+compliments, and she hopes you have enjoyed yourselves."
+
+Her tone was that of one who might say: "You see, young ladies, what
+liberty you have _within_ the Rules; isn't it much pleasanter all
+round?"
+
+The party broke up.
+
+The weeks passed. In June a number of the girls went home, Earle among
+them. Permission to sleep out was given, a little earlier than usual
+on account of the heavy mildness of the nights; and Louie lay in the
+orchard, between Burnett Minor and little Pigou. The convolvulus came
+out, great white trumpets in the hedges; the sea over the hill became
+of a milky blue; and there floated out to it dense tracts of odours,
+lilies, and syringa, jasmine and roses and hay. You wearied of the
+smell of meadow-sweet; in the houses you could hardly take breath. The
+sun was reflected piercingly from their glass roofs, and the girls
+spent the afternoons in deck-chairs under the shadow of the courtyard
+yew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The thing that (Louie sometimes told herself afterwards) made all the
+difference and yet (as she also sometimes told herself) made no
+difference at all, began very trivially. It was just such another
+accident as that which, nine or ten years before, had sent her to her
+mother with a demand to be told "who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was."
+
+Ordinarily, the girls at Chesson's were a little careless about the
+dressing of their hair. You cannot move constantly among banks of
+plants, and pick fruit, and net cherry-trees, and be for ever stooping
+over beds and frames, and keep your hair fit to be seen. Therefore,
+once a month or so, the girls might, if they wished, go in parties of
+four or five to a hairdresser's at Rainham, there to be
+professionally--whatever the word may be. These parties were made up
+more with a view to the enjoyment of the half-holiday than to the
+business strictly in hand; and Louie, had she cared, might have been a
+member of each detachment that went. On this particular day Louie had
+had much ado to free herself from Burnett Minor's affectionate clutch.
+
+"Oh, do come with our lot, Causton!" B. Minor had begged. "Oh, you
+are rotten! You know you went with Elwell before, and with Major
+before that, and I do want mine properly done like yours, not just
+punched up the way we do it!"
+
+"What, like Saint Catherine?" Louie laughed.
+
+"Do come."
+
+But Louie had shaken her off.
+
+"He'll remember how mine's done; I was there a week ago. No, I won't
+come. I'm going to do some theory this afternoon."
+
+"Oh, what a fib! You never do theory!"
+
+"Well, I ought to. No, I won't come."
+
+"Then will you lend me your bicycle?"
+
+"Yes, if you like; but the others are walking, aren't they?"
+
+"Well, I'll wobble with them."
+
+And Louie had watched the party set out, Burnett Minor on the bicycle,
+"wobbling" and leaving behind her a complicated track in the dust of
+the drive.
+
+She did not know why she had said she would do theory that afternoon.
+She supposed it was because she felt slack and bored. Nor did she do
+very much theory. She went into the classroom, languidly turned over
+the pages of an old "Balfour," wondered what it mattered to anybody at
+Chesson's (except perhaps to Earle) that "movements had been observed
+in the pollen-grains of Cereus Speciosissimus," or that "changes took
+place in the stamens by suppression and degenerations of various
+kinds." Then she glanced at a preparation on the stage of the
+microscope opposite Richenda Earle's empty chair, and yawned. She
+looked out into the courtyard. Three or four girls dozed in
+deck-chairs under the dark yew. There was an empty chair--but no; a
+clatter of washing up was going on in the kitchen under the box-room;
+she would go up to her cubicle.
+
+She did so, and, pushing off her slippers, lay down on her bed.
+
+Her window was open as far as it would go, but the yew seemed to shut
+out even what little air there was. All that entered was the faint
+acrid smell of consuming rubbish; they were slow-burning somewhere at
+the back. The sounds of the washing up were fainter now; a pigeon
+alighted on her sill. She had been an idiot, she told herself, to fag
+herself that morning listening to Hall's demonstration in the
+forcing-house. She wished there was a pond about the place, with a
+boat or a punt. She would have bagged the boat to sleep in. It would
+be jolly to be rocked to sleep in a boat or a punt.
+
+She closed her eyes. The last thing she saw before she did so was the
+little black-framed miniature of the fourth Lord Moone, the last but
+three, in his tied wig and ensign's uniform. Louie had tacked it up by
+her mirror merely because it had been in her room at Trant as long as
+she could remember and, if one might judge from the youthful face, he
+was less of an opinionated fool than the other Moones--much less so
+than Uncle Augustus....
+
+She turned over. Then she slept.
+
+Sleep also was deep, too deep, at Rainham Parva. It weighed on the
+girl like a mulch. At five o'clock Louie could hardly drag herself out
+of it. She fumbled at her loosened belt and pulled out her watch.
+Five! The tea-gong must have gone.
+
+Well, perhaps tea would rouse her.
+
+She felt by the side of the bed for her slippers, rose, touched her
+hair as she passed the glass, and went drowsily downstairs.
+
+As Mrs. Lovenant-Smith and Miss Harriet always took tea in their own
+or one another's rooms--which, for that matter, the students also were
+permitted to do if they chose--the meal was a noisier one than either
+lunch or supper. Louie heard one of Burnett Minor's several voices as
+she pushed at the door. The child saw Louie's face in the opening and
+sprang up.
+
+"Here she is--give it to me--I'm going to read it myself----" she
+cried.
+
+Burnett Minor always wanted to read it herself--"it" usually being one
+of the sublimer passages from the current number of the "Pansy
+Library" or an especially choice one from an office-boys' periodical.
+Louie smiled languidly now as the girl snatched a booklet from
+Elwell's hand and gave tongue.
+
+"I've punctured your back tyre, Causton, but Mac has some solution and
+we'll mend it after tea--and I'm always to do my hair like this,
+Harris says--do look at it, isn't it stunning?--and now--aha!"
+(somebody had made a grab for her book). "Thought you'd got it, didn't
+you, Elwell? Now I'll read it first and then show her the picture, and
+that reminds me, Mac, you've never given me my 'Jack Sheppard' back
+that I lent you----"
+
+Louie reached for a chair. She yawned again.
+
+"Do give me a cup of tea, somebody. I hope the watering's all done,
+for I'm not going to do any. What's the child got now? If it's 'Maria
+Martin' or 'Irene Iddesleigh,' I think I know them by heart."
+
+The child herself answered her question. She jumped on a chair and
+extended an arm for silence.
+
+"Ready?" she cried. "Now!"
+
+   "'THE LIFE AND BATTLES OF BUCK CAUSTON,'"
+
+she declaimed in her most ringing voice,
+
+   "'_Being the Full Story and Only Authorised Life of this Famous
+   Pugilist_'--
+
+("Causton's uncle, don't forget, girls)--
+
+   "'_Revised by Himself and now Published for the First
+   Time--including his Historic Encounter with the Great Piker
+   Betteridge_'--
+
+("Piker Betteridge--'Piker'--isn't it lovely?)
+
+   "'_Entered at Stationers' Hall and All Rights Reserved_
+
+     "'PRICE ONE PENNY'"
+
+B. Minor drew out every syllable of the linked sweetness, and
+concluded;
+
+"And lo and behold--on the cover--Buck himself--Uncle Buck,
+Causton--you needn't say he isn't--as large as life and twice as
+beautiful--there!"
+
+She held up the booklet in triumph.
+
+But she drew it back again, bubbling with enjoyment. "Wait till I find
+_the_ gem--the one about Piker," she cried.
+
+Her fingers fluttered rapidly through the precious pennyworth in
+search of the "gem."
+
+Louie's cup of tea had been at her lips, but not a drop spilt as she
+put it down again. If her colour changed at all it was only as that
+other pale fighter's had done whose story, Price One Penny, the
+unconscious Burnett Minor was rapturously searching.
+
+"Here it is!" cried B. Minor, peremptorily extending her hand again.
+"Listen, everybody!--
+
+   "'_But the redoubtable Buck refused to allow the wiper to be
+   skied. He recked nothing of his bunged optic and the claret that
+   flowed from his beezer. Game as a buck-ant he advanced for the
+   twenty-eighth round. The Piker, whose bellows were touched_----'"
+
+But Louie had risen and walked to the child. She held out her hand.
+
+"Let me look," she said.
+
+B. Minor gave her a suspicious look, as if she feared she might be
+reft of her treasure. "You will give it me back?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+Louie took the book.
+
+She supposed she was awake now, but somehow a curious air of unreality
+enveiled whatever it was that was happening. She looked at the cover
+of the "Life" in her hand. The most execrable of woodcuts could hardly
+disguise what she saw. Traditionally posed, nude above the waist, and
+clad below only in tights and fighting-shoes--formidably watchful,
+lightly poised for the blow--in appearance at any rate he was a man
+and superb. But really he had been cruel, faithless, divorced.
+
+As if she had passed merely from one state of half-wakefulness to
+another, she did not think of the bomb she was about to drop among the
+girls. She only wanted to look, and to look, and to look again at this
+man, who was her father.
+
+"Isn't it just Causton's mouth and chin?" she barely heard Burnett
+Minor bubbling. "But I can't say she has Uncle Buck's beezer----"
+
+Slowly Louie handed the "Life and Battles" back. At any rate she had
+now seen him, if only in a wretched woodcut. She looked quietly about
+her.
+
+"That's my father," she said, perhaps a shade distinctly and loudly.
+
+Then she looked about her again.
+
+Burnett Minor jumped down from her chair. Her eyes shone flattery on
+Louie. The very audacity of such a lie compelled her admiration.
+
+"O-o-oh--_what_ a whopper!" she cried. Louie turned her eyes to
+Burnett Minor.
+
+"You said uncle. You weren't quite right. That's my father," she said
+again.
+
+Burnett Minor's life was full of miracles. A miracle more or less made
+no difference. Her eyes sparkled. She alone of the girls believed.
+
+"Not really?" she gasped.
+
+Louie nodded.
+
+"Qu'est c'qu'elle dit?" Pigou cried excitedly, somewhere at the back.
+
+"Pooh, she didn't--she only nodded--nodding isn't a lie," a casuist
+scoffed.
+
+"Stupid, don't you see she's joking?"
+
+But Burnett Minor was watching Louie--only to be quite sure.
+
+"Honour?" she cried. "Spit your death?"
+
+"Honour."
+
+"How splen-_diferous_! And you never told us!"
+
+But Burnett Major had already looked at her sister. She was shocked
+into using her Christian name. "_Genista!_" she reproved her.
+
+"Let me look again," said Louie.
+
+She looked again at the man who had been cruel, faithless, divorced.
+Again she handed the "Life" back.
+
+"He keeps a public-house up the river," she said.
+
+At that the tension was suddenly relieved. That, of course, was too
+much. They breathed freely again. The derisive clamour broke out.
+
+"Oh, don't you see? They've made it up between them--frauds!"
+
+"Of course they have! Come and finish tea."
+
+"She'll be saying that was the man who brought her down next!"
+
+"Causton, I'll never, never believe another word you say!"
+
+"Come on--the housekeeper will be here in a minute."
+
+"Pig, you've stolen my piece of cake that I was saving!"
+
+"Hurl the bread and butter, Mac."
+
+And the crowd which had gathered about Louie dispersed to the tables
+again.
+
+Not until ten minutes later, when she had gone up to her own room
+again, did Louie begin to wonder what had impelled her to make her
+surprising declaration. But in an instant her ten-years'-old habit of
+thought asserted itself again. Why have made it? Rather, why not have
+made it? She would have made it sooner had occasion offered. Elwell
+and the Burnetts did not drag their fathers in; she had not dragged
+her father in either. She had not told them that her mother was Lord
+Moone's sister--it was known, but she had not told them; why should
+she have paraded the fact that her father was this redoubtable Buck,
+from whose beezer the claret had flowed as he had advanced for the
+twenty-eighth round? They could have known it any time they had
+wanted! Conceal it? Why, had she not all her life been glorying in
+that very pride of the cobbler's dog?
+
+And still, deep down in her, she wondered whether it had been even
+that sort of pride, and not rather that secret hunger of the heart
+that, while she was "in at" everything, she was also "out of"
+everything. Had it been that that had caused her to say quietly:
+"That's my father"?
+
+Or perhaps it was even something deeper still. Perhaps, in a word, it
+had been her blind groping towards that crude and strong and cruel and
+joyous life Richenda Earle had said she knew nothing about.
+
+She wondered whether the girls downstairs were talking about her now.
+
+Her eyes fell on the black-framed miniature of the fourth Lord Moone.
+Then, as if her brain had received a number of disordered impressions
+all heaped one on the top of the other, she sat down on the edge of
+her bed, not so much to think as to remember again exactly what had
+happened.
+
+Gradually the disorder cleared. Phrases and the tones in which they
+had been uttered began to stand forth more distinctly. Presently she
+was able to allocate each to its speaker. It was her first attempt to
+estimate differences in the future her declaration might have made.
+
+Burnett Minor, of course, she could dismiss summarily. To her it had
+been a high lark, that but endeared Louie to her the more. But Burnett
+Major? What about her? "_Genista!_" she had exclaimed, shocked at her
+young sister's apparent belief in the socially impossible. Yes, it
+would be interesting to see what difference, if any, was to be seen in
+Burnett Major's attitude now. And Elwell's "_Oh!_" What about that?
+And Macfarlane's blank look? And what did Richenda Earle think?
+
+Louie did not know yet.
+
+And what about Mrs. Lovenant-Smith? Undoubtedly Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,
+knowing about it herself, would have preferred Louie to keep silence.
+
+The thought of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, however, always braced Louie. That
+curious pleased coldness came into her eyes again. She would see about
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith by-and-by. In the meantime, the last thing she
+intended to do was to absent herself from them all. She would go down
+to supper.
+
+She took a clean blouse from a drawer, laid it out on her bed, and
+then, reaching for a towel, started for the bathroom.
+
+Before she reached the bathroom, however, one of her conjectures was
+already answered. Richenda Earle's cubicle was on the same corridor as
+hers, four doors lower down, and she met Richenda herself, who had
+come back from her vacation a week before, by the embrasure of one of
+the latticed courtyard windows. It was almost dark; in the recess the
+little reflectored oil lamp had been lighted, and it shone on the
+Scholarship girl's copper hair and angular shoulders. Louie stopped.
+She did so deliberately. Let Earle allude if she dared.
+
+"You washed?" she said, on a rising note.
+
+"No, not yet. I--I came up for a book," said Richenda.
+
+"You're not studying to-night, are you?"
+
+"Ye-es--oh yes, I must."
+
+"Classification?"
+
+"Ye-es--yes."
+
+"How far have you got now?"
+
+Louie's mood was on her. It was overdue, but it had come now, and she
+was challenging Earle. Nevertheless, she was ignorant of what she
+really challenged when she challenged Earle. Hard knowledge of the
+true weight of Life will tell, and Earle's knowledge of that weight
+told now. The girl's head was downhung, so that the nodule of bone at
+the back of her neck caught the light sharply. Suddenly she looked up.
+
+"But you are Lord Moone's niece, aren't you?" she said, without
+preface.
+
+Since her vacation, this daughter of a struggling Westbourne Grove
+bookseller had seemed less assertive than before, and was, somehow,
+none the worse for it. Louie didn't know what had made the difference,
+but she momentarily dropped her point.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Why?"
+
+"Then----?" Richenda halted.
+
+"Then what? The other that I told them downstairs is just as true, if
+that's what you want to know."
+
+"But--but----"
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+Earle evidently mitigated what she had been about to say.
+
+"I only mean that--that you must have thought it queer, my talking as
+I did--that morning, you know?"
+
+Louie saw the approach of the first attitude for her garner.
+
+"What morning?" she demanded.
+
+"When they punished me--when I was washing the fruit trees."
+
+"I remember. Well, why should I think anything queer?"
+
+Earle's head dropped again. Again the sharp nodule of bone showed.
+
+"Do you mean," Louie said, "that if my father's what I said, no doubt
+I know as much about what you were saying as you do?"
+
+"Oh no!" Earle said, the more quickly that that probably had been what
+she had meant.
+
+"Then what do you mean?"
+
+"Only that it's--so odd----"
+
+But suddenly Louie gave her towel a twitch and turned away. She spoke
+with her chin over her shoulder.
+
+"I don't love my mother," she said, "but for all that she is Lord
+Moone's sister--Augustus Evelyn Francis Scarisbrick, Lord Moone. And
+the other's my father. I wouldn't study too hard about it if I were
+you. You have your medal to get."
+
+She walked abruptly to the bathroom.
+
+That night, as usual, she sat at supper between Burnett Minor and
+Richenda Earle. The ordinarily irrepressible child on her left was
+silent; but others, two or three places removed from Louie, leaned
+back or forward from time to time to speak to her. She fancied Burnett
+Minor had been crying; she was sure of this when, giving the child's
+hand a pat under the table, she felt her own hand impulsively caught
+and squeezed. Then, in proportion as Burnett Minor cheered up (which
+she usually did very quickly), the others ceased to talk across to
+Louie. It was as if, whoever did it, some normal level of chatter must
+be maintained. Soon supper was as desultorily talkative as it always
+was. Louie, glancing at the top table, saw that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+knew nothing of what had happened at tea-time. She was, however, quite
+ready for her the moment she should find out something.
+
+
+V
+
+One afternoon about three weeks later Louie Causton had occasion to go
+into the carpenter's shed. This shed lay between the dairies and the
+boiler-house that was the centre of the hot-water-pipe system, and
+Priddy had a frame making there. Half this frame, protected by a board
+with "Wet Paint" chalked upon it, leaned against the outside wall,
+and, with his back to the sunlit doorway, a young man, whom at first
+Louie took to be Priddy, was doing something at a bench. Hearing her,
+he turned. It was not Priddy. Louie did not know him.
+
+There is in the British Museum a small helmeted head very like the
+young man Louie saw. It is on the upper floor, among the Tanagras, in
+a case on the left as you walk from the stairs. This young man, of
+course, was not helmeted. His face was handsome and slightly vacuous;
+his eyes in particular had something of the blankness of the little
+terra-cotta head; and his mouth was full and classically curved, and
+had the slightest of smudges of dark moustache along the deeply
+indented upper lip. A pair of rolling muscular shoulders showed
+through his white sweater; his old trousers were tucked into a pair of
+wooden-looking boots; and he was filing something. Louie wondered what
+business he had there.
+
+He told her. He spoke in a slow voice, as if he had got his
+explanation by rote. He was there by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission,
+he said.
+
+"We had a smash with the centre-board, you see," he explained.
+"Crash--just at tea-time. Izzard wanted to send it to Mazzicombe, but
+I told him they'd charge nearly as much as we gave for the beastly
+boat. So I'm doing it myself."
+
+Then, as if his presence within the precincts of a horticultural
+college for young women was quite explained, he bent over his filing
+again. Louie, who had come for a couple of boards that had been put
+aside for her, took them and went out. She was twenty yards away when
+she heard the young man call slowly after her: "I say--I ought to
+carry those for you, you know----"
+
+The boards were for her bed. This she had removed from the orchard.
+The new place lay quite beyond the orchard, at the foot of the hill
+between Chesson's and the sea. There, for the first time on the
+previous night, she had had the best of what breeze there was.
+
+It had been the attitude of her fellow-students during the past
+month--or, more fairly, what she had conceived to be their
+attitude--that had caused her thus to remove herself.
+
+It might be too much to say that she was still not as popular as ever.
+These things are not demonstrable. Popular she had been; now--well, it
+depended a little more than it had done. Burnett Minor, of course,
+would have eaten from the same plate with her by day and shared her
+bed at night had she been permitted--also had she not left for her
+vacation a fortnight before; but Burnett Major--Louie was not so sure
+about Burnett Major. Her attitude had been more than correct; it had
+been so correct that Louie had been put altogether in the wrong. The
+words, of course, had never been said, but Louie had imagined Burnett
+Major's private opinion to be as follows:--
+
+"But why didn't she tell us sooner? What earthly difference does she
+suppose it would have made? Who cares about things like that? I dare
+say her father's just as good as anybody else's father; for that
+matter, mother's grandfather was only a farmer--mother told us so
+herself; but nobody likes being treated as if they were snobs. It
+showed a lack of confidence, that's what it showed; and I don't
+know--now--I mean no girl, unless she _wasn't_ quite a lady,
+would----" Louie could supply that part too.
+
+"I don't care--I _love_ Causton!" she had also imagined B. Minor as
+having sobbed, bold and unconvinced. "He didn't sky the wiper when his
+beezer was bleeding, anyway!"
+
+Yes: for Burnett Major, presentation and all the rest of it lay ahead.
+
+Matters would probably have stopped at that had Louie herself allowed
+them to do so; but that would not have been like Louie. Allow them to
+stop there? Good gracious, no! Her cynicism had become bright indeed.
+_She_ was not the girl to contaminate the innocent Burnett Minor;
+neither--for she was a Scarisbrick when all was said and done--was she
+going to be driven willy-nilly into the society of Richenda Earle as
+company good enough for her. She could look after herself, thank you.
+Coventry is no unpleasant place provided you have the putting of
+yourself there, and at any rate her Coventry at the foot of the hill
+was cooler at night than the other one. It meant carrying her mattress
+and bedding a little farther, but she had a prizefighter's physique to
+carry them with, which was more than her nearest neighbour, Elwell,
+the daughter of the Treasury mandarin, could say.
+
+It is true that she did sometimes wonder (with Burnett Major, perhaps)
+whether she had not inherited also from the prizefighter something
+less desirable than his physique--a discontented and ill-conditioned
+nature. But that did not mend matters. It merely made her, if it did
+anything at all, distrustful of herself. And as this is the story of
+Louie, virtues and vices and all, her moods must go down with the
+rest.
+
+At any rate, rolled in her blanket at the foot of the hill, she could
+feel the night wind on her face, and see the stars, and in her fancy
+deride or boast of her parentage to her heart's content.
+
+On the afternoon following that on which she had fetched the boards
+from the carpenter's shed she went to the shed again, this time for a
+couple of tent-pegs and a piece of cord for the better securing of her
+blankets. The vacant young Tanagra was still there. But this time he
+was not quite so vacant. He had had leisure to think of quite a number
+of words.
+
+"I say," he said, lifting slow and bashful eyes of the colour of blue
+porcelain to Louie, "I've been thinking. Haven't I seen you before?"
+
+"Yes. Yesterday," said Louie shortly. He had had the bad luck to catch
+her at her brooding. But he did not seem to notice her curtness.
+
+"No, but I mean--before----"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Isn't--isn't your name Chaffinger?" He almost blushed.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Then she relented a little.
+
+"I was called Chaffinger for a time. My name's Causton. I suppose
+yours is Chesson, or you'd hardly be here?"
+
+"Chesson? Why Chesson? No. Mine's Lovenant-Smith--Roy Lovenant-Smith."
+
+"Oh!" said Louie. "Then you're right. We have met before, at Mallard
+Bois."
+
+Roy Lovenant-Smith appeared to be so relieved at being rid of a
+perplexity that he didn't much care if they never met again.
+
+"I thought we had," he said mildly. "You were Louie Chaffinger then. I
+knew you were."
+
+"But what," Louie asked, "are you doing here?"
+
+He radiated simplicity.
+
+"That centre-board, didn't I tell you? Izzard would make me go halves
+in the rotten old thing; just look at her; hardly a shroud on the port
+side, and the centre-board was hitched up with a piece of old rope
+instead of a chain and down it came the other tea-time. It's the cabin
+table as well as the centre-board, you see, and the whole thing shut
+up-just like that----"
+
+He set the inner edges of his hands together and then closed his palms
+with a slap.
+
+"All the tea--jam and all the lot," he said.
+
+He amused Louie. "That was a pity," she said demurely.
+
+"Wasn't it? But I say, I shall be catching it. I might use the shed,
+aunt said, but she told me it was a fixed Rule about men, unless
+you're a gardener, of course----"
+
+("An obedient nephew," Louie thought.) "Then I must go at once," she
+added.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't like to get you into a row too," said Roy
+Lovenant-Smith ingenuously.
+
+"No," Louie agreed, more demurely still. "They have to be strict, you
+know."
+
+"Rather!" said Roy Lovenant-Smith heartily.
+
+And Louie left him.
+
+She was hardly out of sight before her laughter broke forth. "'All the
+tea--jam and all the lot!'" she repeated softly, and laughed again.
+She scarcely remembered this delightful young man. When, as a child of
+eleven, she had played leapfrog, he could hardly have been more than
+seven, and she felt herself to be far more than four years his senior
+now. He was the adjutant's son, she supposed. Well, he would hardly
+need Chaff's usual extenuation about his being a bad fellow at all:
+Louie would be very much surprised if he had wit enough to be very
+bad, or, for the matter of that, very anything else either. Once more
+she laughed. At any rate she had to thank him for dispelling her
+megrims for the time being. Still laughing softly, she passed through
+the orchards, ascended the hill, and sought her favourite place by the
+stile at the top.
+
+She had not thought very much about young men. She had observed them
+as so many phenomena, obviously superior to the animals, yet not quite
+identifiable as beings with inner experiences akin to her own. They
+looked at her irregular mouth and elongated chin, said the things
+young men did say, and departed again, taking their various moustaches
+and their unvarying smell of tobacco to some girl of the kind she knew
+they accounted "pretty." They were quite different beings from the
+fairy prince of her childhood; and since her childhood's days she had
+grown gradually, she did not know how, to a fairly accurate estimate
+in retrospect of the "little party" to which Chaff had once taken her,
+pigtails and all. Her views of marriage too were coloured by that
+mixed parentage that made her, she supposed, not "common" and not "a
+lady." She would not marry unless this was clearly understood. What
+else there might be in marriage was shadowy, to be considered after
+this redoubtable magnanimity was safely out of the way.
+
+With no young man had she ever had "a lark."
+
+She was, however, more in the mood for a lark now--not necessarily
+with a young man--than she had ever been in her life before. "Cau-ston
+a vingt-quatr'ans--elle coiffe deja Sainte Catherine," the remorseless
+Pigou had said: oh, had she? Did she? Moreover, you cannot put
+yourself gloomily into Coventry; others must be made to see that you
+consider your sequestration the most desirable of conditions. Indeed,
+she had said as much to Richenda Earle only the night before.
+
+Richenda was the only one of the girls who slept indoors, and Louie,
+carrying her bed-trappings out from the house, had come upon Richenda
+by the little green door of the espaliered wall that led to the
+orchards. Richenda had made an advance, willing, apparently, to forget
+the snub Louie had administered after the "Life and Battles"
+revelation, and had offered to carry her pillow for her.
+
+"Why do you go so far?" she had asked, as they had left the orchard
+behind.
+
+"Oh, I hate being disturbed," Louie had replied. "I'd go right down to
+the shore if it wasn't for the climb up again."
+
+"But suppose you wanted anything during the night?"
+
+"What should I want?"
+
+"Of course, I forgot. You don't have headaches. I have--frightful
+ones."
+
+"Then why don't you come out too? There's quite a jolly place here.
+I'd help you to carry your things."
+
+"Oh, I've got to read," Richenda had shaken her head.
+
+"You'd be heaps better for it----"
+
+Louie had not much in common with Richenda--save perhaps (she loved
+little cuts like this at herself) that both of their fathers were
+literary. But she had had that rather brutal snub on her conscience.
+That had come out next.
+
+"You do study too hard," she had said, "and--I say, Earle--I'm sorry
+for what I said that night--you know--when I snapped at you and said
+you'd your medal to get. Will you forget that?"
+
+The next moment she had almost wished she hadn't said it, Earle's
+hungry gratitude had shown so.
+
+"It wasn't your fault a bit," the red-haired girl had broken out
+impulsively. "It was all mine. I ought to have minded my own business.
+But I was so--so----"
+
+"Well, try sleeping up here," Louie had cut her short. "It's jolly."
+
+But Richenda had gone on. "I was stupid," she had murmured.
+
+"I don't know that you were. You see how it is."
+
+"Oh, I was, I was----"
+
+"Well, as I tell you, I don't think much of my mother's lot."
+
+"Ah, _you_ can say so," Richenda had replied, shaking her head. Then,
+as Louie had thrown down her mattress, "You don't mean to say you
+undress here?" she had asked.
+
+"Well, I don't sleep in my clothes."
+
+"But don't your things get wet?"
+
+"I wrap 'em in my waterproof.... You won't come up, then, and run down
+to the shore for a bathe before breakfast?"
+
+"Causton, they'll be dropping on you yet!" Earle had said, almost
+frightened.
+
+"Well, without the bathe?"
+
+"Oh, I should die!"
+
+And Richenda had gone back to sleep where she might find remedies for
+her headaches within reach of her hand during the night.
+
+Louie sat on the stile. The sea had a soft bloom, and the sky was of
+the colour of the whites of a baby's eyes. Bees hummed among the
+scabious, and blue and sulphur butterflies hovered over the patches of
+wild thyme. A tramp, sullying the air behind her, crept slowly up to
+Bristol; a single nodding grass-head near at hand shut her out almost
+completely. Mazzicombe, down under the hill, was hidden. Louie watched
+it all, thinking of nothing, or, if of anything, of how sweet it was
+to relax all her muscles to the point of not stumbling off the stile,
+and all her mind save that she might still be just conscious that she
+existed and was Louie Causton....
+
+"Hallo," said a slow, imperturbable voice behind her; "here we are
+again."
+
+She started a little. Roy Lovenant-Smith was returning with a baulk of
+old wood over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said. She did not know whether she was glad or
+annoyed to be interrupted.
+
+"Yes, it's me," he replied placidly.
+
+She was silent for a moment; then: "I thought you hadn't to hang about
+here?" she said.
+
+"Well," he put it to her candidly, "how can I get over the stile when
+you're sitting on it? How can I, now?"
+
+She laughed. "Well, I must get off on my proper side." She did so.
+"There," she said.
+
+He climbed over with great deliberateness, walked a few yards with his
+piece of timber, and then turned again.
+
+"No, you can't see her from here," he said. "She's down under the hill
+there. I don't think she's worth bothering about, but Izzard says
+she'll be quite all right with a new stay or two. I suppose I shall
+have to get 'em."
+
+Louie felt a return of her amusement.
+
+"Who's Izzard?" she asked.
+
+"Izzard?" He looked at her as if she ought to know that. "Izzard's the
+other chap. Always painting, you know. Painting and mooning about and
+leaving me to do all the work. He's away there somewhere now." He
+pointed vaguely across the Channel. "I suppose he'll come back when
+he's ready. She _is_ an old egg-box!--I say, how's your cousin Eric?
+And that girl--what's her name--Cynthia, wasn't it?"
+
+She didn't know, and told him so; she did not tell him that she didn't
+care either. He cogitated for a moment, and then said:
+
+"But I say--what do you _do_ at this place? Seems funny to me.... Mind
+yourself--somebody wants to get over----"
+
+She had not heard anybody approach. It was Priddy, going down to
+Mazzicombe. Louie stood aside from the stile. Priddy climbed over it
+and began to descend the hill. Lovenant-Smith looked at Louie in
+surprise.
+
+"I say," he said, "that's cool! Don't those fellows take their hats
+off to you?"
+
+"No," said Louie. Then she turned her clear grey eyes on him. She had
+been fairly caught.
+
+"Don't they? By Jove!... What are you looking at me like that for?"
+
+The rippling laugh with which Louie replied dropped a note. "Guess!"
+she said.
+
+"How can I guess?" he asked, with his innocent and statue-like stare.
+
+For answer, Louie glanced to where Priddy's brown bowler hat was
+disappearing over the edge of the hill. Roy Lovenant-Smith saw--he
+really saw----
+
+"What?" he exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that that chap will----?"
+
+She nodded. He stared.
+
+"What, get you into a row for talking to me?"
+
+"He may not."
+
+"No, but really, joking apart?" he said incredulously.
+
+"Perhaps he won't."
+
+"Oh, come, I say!... Look here, shall I go back with you and explain?"
+
+The innocent! "I don't think I would," said Louie, smothering her
+laughter.
+
+"But--hang it all! I say, I _am_ sorry!"
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"I mean sorry I've got you into a row, of course," he amended.
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant sorry you stopped and talked to me."
+
+"Of course not. That is, if it doesn't get you into a row."
+
+"And if it did----?"
+
+"Well, a chap doesn't like getting people into rows. Look here--that
+beggar wants talking to!"
+
+Louie dropped her eyes. "I've been in rows before," she said.
+
+Instantly he cheered up. "Oh, I see! You mean it wouldn't be much?"
+
+"Well, your aunt can't exactly skin me." At the recollection of Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith she glanced with satisfaction at her hands.
+
+"Oh, I'll make that all right with her," said Roy Lovenant-Smith
+hopefully.
+
+She looked at him. He _was_ an innocent! "You know what that would
+mean?" she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, merely that you wouldn't see me again."
+
+His look too rested on her hands. "Why?" he asked.
+
+She straightened herself. "Oh, never mind about it. I'm going now."
+
+He coloured a little. "But I say--Louie--you don't mind my calling you
+Louie, do you? I used to, you know.--I should like to see you again."
+
+"Perhaps you'd better not," she said, with great demureness.
+
+"Oh, rot!" he expostulated. "A fellow can't get a girl into a mess and
+then leave her in the lurch!"
+
+"You'd like to see me just once again, to see whether I'd got into a
+row or not?"
+
+"That's what I mean."
+
+It wasn't what Louie had meant him to mean, but "Well, once, if you
+like," she conceded.
+
+"All right. What about here, at this time to-morrow?"
+
+"I'll see if I can get away from my studies."
+
+"Right. And if I see that chap in Mazzicombe, may I say anything to
+him?"
+
+"Please don't."
+
+"Not about not taking his hat off?"
+
+"Oh, they don't trouble about that sort of thing here."
+
+"Well, they jolly well ought. All right, I won't. Good-bye----"
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+He took his board and followed Priddy; she turned back to the college.
+She laughed again. At any rate, a lark with a pleasant image was
+better than a hole-in-corner, Miss Hastings affair with a gardener.
+She would _not_ "coiffe Sainte Catherine."
+
+She duly got her wigging. She was put "on her honour" by Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith not to see the young man again who had betrayed the
+confidence put in him. This struck her as quite richly arrogant. To be
+put "on your honour" by somebody before whom you stand mute as a fish,
+and to have it assumed that you accept the bond, was the _largior
+ether_ indeed. Louie did not even feel called upon to say that she
+declined to consider herself bound. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith might take her
+"off her honour" again. She met Roy scarcely three hours later. The
+interview he himself had had with his aunt in the meantime affected
+the situation but little; his centre-board was now patched up, and the
+withdrawing of the privilege of the carpenter's shed made no
+difference.
+
+They met again on the afternoon following that, and again on the one
+after that. Louie found herself hoping that Izzard, whoever he was,
+would not return from "over there" just yet. Let somebody else attend
+to the hair-combing of the Saint.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A score of different things contributed to her enjoyment of that
+affair of atmosphere--her "lark." First, the initiative was hers--for
+her empty-eyed statue accepted everything with as much candour as if
+he had been born into a virgin world on the eighth day of its
+creation. Next, the mere disregarding of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was a
+pleasure she felt it incumbent upon herself not to forgo. Next, there
+was the instinctive courage with which she translated her sulks into
+carelessness and gaiety. Next--but allow what you will for the rest:
+pique, vanity, her derivation, her upbringing. When, the third time
+she met Roy by the stile, the half-French girl, Pigou, came upon them,
+and instantly flew to spread the news among such girls as still
+remained at Chesson's, Louie's Coventry was the coveted thing she had
+all along intended it should be.
+
+For she was more than merely popular now; she was romantic, apart, a
+being to be looked up to with something like awe. Meet a young man!
+She felt herself to be the channel by which every girl in the place
+might have access to her own dreams. They gave her longing glances,
+that mutely implored her to tell them all, all about it; she talked
+about everything else, but not about that, and hearts and mouths
+watered. They offered to do things for her--to carry her mattress, to
+do her Sunday watering, even to clean her bicycle; and Louie let
+them--but told them nothing. Nay, she even drew Richenda Earle to
+herself. Richenda actually carried her mattress to the foot of the
+hill one night and slept out. The two mattresses were placed not six
+feet apart, and, as the birds settled on the boughs and the stars
+came out, Richenda set herself wistfully to pump Louie.
+
+Then it appeared why Richenda had seemed changed since her vacation.
+Speaking in a low voice, she too admitted that there was
+now--Somebody. Weston, his name was, Louie learned, and he was some
+sort of a commercial schoolmaster at the same place in Holborn where
+Richenda herself had studied. So instead of Richenda pumping Louie,
+Louie pumped Richenda. What was her Mr. Weston like? Well (Richenda
+said), some might think him an oddity--the Secretary Bird, his
+nickname was--but he was, oh, a soul so sensitive, so gentle! Was
+there any prospect of their marrying soon? Richenda sighed; it would
+be a long time; if she got her post at Chesson's he might apply for a
+country schoolmastership somewhere near, and then she would get a
+bicycle; or if he got a "rise" in London she might relinquish her
+appointment--when she got it. But in any case it could hardly be for
+years. Louie asked flatly what Weston got, and was told one hundred
+pounds a year. She looked up in surprise. Her own dress allowance was
+treble that amount.
+
+"And you'd get a hundred here too?" she asked.
+
+"If I get the place--which means if I get my medal," said Richenda.
+
+Then, Louie thought, that would be two hundred between
+them--two-thirds of her dress allowance.
+
+"But--but----," she said, "I thought people got paid more than that!"
+
+"I told you you didn't know," said Richenda softly.
+
+"But--but--why, my aunt paid Miss Skrine one hundred and fifty pounds,
+just to go through her engagements, opening bazaars and charities and
+so on--just to write down on a slate what she had to do each day!"
+
+"Your aunt's Lady Moone," came from Richenda's couch.
+
+"I _know_ she got one hundred and fifty pounds, _and_ lived with them.
+One hundred pounds seems absurd."
+
+"That's what father said when he apologised to me."
+
+"But surely, all--all the people one sees aren't paid at that rate!
+Why, some cooks get a thousand--I've heard that for a fact----"
+
+"Some don't," came from the other pillow.
+
+"Well, some do, and if you strike an average, or whatever it's
+called----"
+
+But Richenda interrupted, softly and wearily:
+
+"Oh, you don't, don't, don't know."
+
+Louie asked further questions. She frowned, puzzled, at the answers.
+Of course Richenda herself wasn't a very effective sort of girl; if
+anybody had to be downtrodden it would very likely be she; but the
+things she was telling her now (Richenda had begun to talk again,
+resignedly rather than bitterly) were preposterous. There must be
+something wrong with Richenda, probably with her Weston too; she did
+not look quite right; she was very different from the rosy housemaids
+at Trant, for example. One hundred pounds a year!... She had forgotten
+all about Roy. When, presently, Richenda came as near to putting a
+question about him as she dared, she forgot about him again. One
+hundred pounds a year!... She lay on her back, her knees up, her hands
+behind her head, her sleeves fallen from her wonderful arms, the brows
+above the grey eyes knitted. She was sure that _she_ could do better
+than that! She even went so far as to say so. Richenda showed no
+resentment.
+
+"You've got Lord Moone behind you," she said.
+
+"I've got a prizefighter and a public-house behind me," Louie replied.
+
+"Yes--I know you think you know----"
+
+Louie lay awake, still pondering it all, long after Richenda had
+fallen into an uneasy sleep.
+
+On the following afternoon she met Roy by the stile again. She was
+restless, unsettled, she knew not what. She spoke almost sharply to
+him.
+
+"I'm not going to stand here with you," she said; "that's twice I've
+been seen. Come down the hill."
+
+Roy no longer urged the Rules. They walked together a hundred yards
+down the hill, and sat down under a gorse-bush. He made her move quite
+behind it, and even then tucked her skirt a little farther out of the
+gaze of a possible passer-by.
+
+"Now we're all right," he said. "How's Lovey this morning?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't seen her."
+
+"Well, don't bite a fellow's head off, Louie."
+
+"Then don't bother me to-day.--No, I don't want my hand held."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"If you don't leave me alone I shall go. I didn't sleep till nearly
+daylight."
+
+"I didn't sleep for quite an hour, either," he said sympathetically.
+"I say, isn't it funny, Louie, when you come to think of it, that till
+a week ago I hadn't thought of you for years?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't lying awake thinking of you," she said bluntly.
+
+"I was of you." He put out his hand again.
+
+His approach only made her impatient. "Oh, don't!" she snapped.
+"Really I shall get up and go if you worry me."
+
+He was, as he would have put it, "keen": keen enough to begin to sulk.
+She let him sulk, and watched the sea, always of a milky bloom, and
+the sky, still of the hue of an infant's eyeball. After some minutes
+she turned to him again.
+
+"What _do_ people get paid?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"What people?" He spoke over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, people--you know what I mean!"
+
+"We get dashed little, I know that." (He was going into the army.)
+"What sort of people? Servants and those?"
+
+"And those--yes."
+
+Roy expounded.
+
+"Jolly good pay, _I_ call it; lot of lazy beggars! Why, the fellow
+down there wanted to charge me two pounds for patching up that
+centre-board, that I did in about a day. I shouldn't mind getting two
+pounds a day!... Why?"
+
+"I want to know."
+
+"Some of your gardeners been grizzling to you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A wonder--rotten grousing lot! They ought to have uniforms to buy,
+and mess-bills and clubs and things; they'd know all about it then!
+Two pounds for filing a piece of iron and putting a patch on a piece
+of wood!--I think it will hold all right," he continued naively; "we
+shall make a deuce of a lot of leeway if it doesn't. We're
+flat-bottomed, you see, with only bilge-keels, and that reminds me;
+Izzard's coming back on Wednesday; I'd a note from him this morning.
+But he won't be in the way, dear, if you'll only be friends----"
+
+She could not help laughing. After all, Richenda's "grousing" was a
+little spoiling her fun. She turned to him again.
+
+"I haven't seen her yet," she said. "Let's go down to her now."
+
+He chuckled mildly. "You do play the dickens with the Rules, Louie."
+
+"Bother the Rules!"
+
+"Well, you don't want to go just this minute; it's jolly here----"
+
+This time she did not withdraw her hand.
+
+But he was very slow, she thought, in kissing her. He had never kissed
+her yet. What was the good of being caught at--nothing?
+
+Well, statues (she reflected), especially young ones, are slow----
+
+Even as she was thinking it he did that very thing. Perhaps it was to
+summon up resolution to do so that he had lain awake the previous
+night. He kissed her cheek.
+
+The result was curious. It was the law of her physique that most
+moments of perturbation only turned her paler; but at this particular
+form of perturbation she turned suddenly pink.
+
+In a few moments she was as before. The first sign that she was Louie
+again was that she forbade him to repeat the offence. He sulked again.
+
+"All right," he said resentfully; "then we may as well go and see the
+yacht."
+
+"I don't want to see the yacht."
+
+"Well, you needn't be stuffy about it----"
+
+Statues _were_ distractingly slow!
+
+Then she looked at him with a faintly mocking smile.
+
+"Aren't you going to say you're sorry?" she challenged him (but she
+had for a moment a faint return of the unhabitual colour for all
+that).
+
+He seemed to suspect that he was being mocked; nevertheless it was
+with a rather tremulous boldness that he answered "No."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You see," he explained, "you did let me hold your hand."
+
+She caught her breath. Good gracious! Why, he would be saying
+presently that she had asked him to kiss her! "You see, you did let me
+hold your hand!" What next?
+
+"You know you did," he argued simply.
+
+Even so it is written, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings----"
+
+Suddenly she laughed. O admirable innocence, that alone can defeat
+guile! After all, it was too unpardonable not to be pardoned. She
+turned her face away again.
+
+"You _are_ stupid!" she murmured, her face, even her neck, pink once
+more.
+
+At that quite a new gleam seemed to irradiate his good-looking clay.
+
+"I say," he said slowly, as he struggled with the newness of the idea,
+"you mean--do you mean?--about my not kissing you--properly?"
+
+Oh, the heaviness! But he should kiss her "properly," as he called it,
+now!
+
+"Oh," she said briskly, "it's too late now. You can't very well after
+that, can you?"
+
+But he beamed. "Of course I can!"
+
+"No, Roy!"
+
+"I will----"
+
+This was outrageous. She made as if to rise.
+
+"No, Roy--no--you know very well you don't think I'm pretty----"
+
+"Well, you aren't ugly," said he.
+
+(Great heavens! She "wasn't ugly"!)
+
+"Very well, Mr. Statue," she thought, compressing those irregular lips
+whose degree of prettiness he estimated so nicely. "I'm going to be
+pretty in a very few minutes, and you're going to tell me so."
+
+"No, Roy," she said aloud; "just let's sit and talk--sensibly--I don't
+know what made you behave like this all of a sudden----"
+
+And there was none to say "Provoking hussy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later they rose. It was too late to go to the yacht now. They
+walked together back to the stile. Their shoulders overlapped. The
+kisses came easily now.
+
+"Then we'll go aboard her to-morrow?" he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+"'Once aboard the lugger'--ha, ha--but of course she's a cutter, not a
+lugger. That's just a saying, 'Once aboard the lugger.'"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes, hadn't you heard it? 'Once aboard the lugger and the girl is
+mine,' it is. And I say, you'd better put some old clothes on if I'm
+to show you how the centre-board works."
+
+"All right."
+
+"What about Lovey?" he asked once more.
+
+"Oh, we write down on a slate where we're going."
+
+He held her a little away. "I--_say_!... You wouldn't tell her where,
+would you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"What--cheek!"
+
+"She put me 'on my honour'--impudence!" quoth Louie.
+
+"But I say--what frightful cheek!"
+
+"Good-bye----"
+
+"Just a minute----"
+
+"Well----"
+
+Then, "'Bye----"
+
+"Good-bye----"
+
+He called her name after her. "Louie!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Good-bye----"
+
+"Good-bye, boy----" She waved her hand.
+
+Anyway, she thought with satisfaction, she had made him
+say--swear--that she was pretty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next afternoon, as good as her word, Louie wrote on the
+hall-slate: "Gone to Mazzicombe: L. Causton." Then she walked,
+whistling, out of the house and up the hill.
+
+
+VI
+
+This time she fully expected to catch it, and did catch it. No time
+was lost. A note from Mrs. Lovenant-Smith just before supper ordered
+her to report herself immediately after that meal. At a quarter past
+nine she presented herself.
+
+The French window stood wide open, but night was fast falling over
+the front lawn, and a clipped peacock of box showed against a
+brownish-green sky. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stood by the window. It moved
+as she turned, and there swung slowly across the pane the reflection
+of the tall, yellow-shaded standard-lamp in one corner. Miss Harriet
+Chesson had followed Louie in. In her hand was a piece of
+paper--Louie's "conduct-report."
+
+The beginning of the encounter was no skirmish; its end was positive
+slaughter. This is no place for a report of it, round by round; it
+must be summarised, even as the "Life and Battles" summarises the
+combat between Buck and the terrible Piker. Louie "led," so to speak,
+by asking whether she might sit down, giving as her reason that she
+had had a long walk that afternoon; permission was only refused her
+after she had put her hand on the back of a wheatear chair and said
+again: "I think you said Yes?" She then placed the chair for Miss
+Harriet to sit on, as near as possible to that of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+She herself stood in the middle of the room.
+
+Miss Harriet, evidently wishing she was somewhere else, read aloud the
+conduct-report. It was longish and detailed. It also, as Louie well
+knew, did not contain one of the real points at issue. She looked from
+one to the other of the two women. The Lady-in-Charge wore a
+discreetly-necked evening frock, with a fichu secured by a mourning
+brooch; and her fingers kept touching this brooch, and also kept
+leaving it again, as if Louie's eyes had been capable of a physical
+plucking of them away. She had had Miss Harriet in, Louie knew, for
+moral support. The principal's dress, too, was a give-and-take between
+her gardening costume and conventional evening attire. Her indictment
+read, she seemed more than ever anxious to depart. Louie, for her
+part, was rather glad that she had been called in. Buck had always
+fought better for the eyes upon him.
+
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith began correctly; her first trace of acerbity
+showed only when Louie, having listened to her arraignment with
+downcast eyes, lifted them for a moment to make a modest and quite
+immaterial correction.
+
+"Have the goodness to cease this exaggerated deference, Miss Causton.
+It doesn't deceive me. It's only a form of veiled insolence."
+
+Louie heard her indictment out in silence.
+
+First blood was drawn when Louie mentioned the name of Roy
+Lovenant-Smith. She called him, with aggravating naturalness, "Roy."
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith rose nearly an inch in height.
+
+"'Roy!'" she echoed. "'Roy,' indeed!"
+
+"I quite expected Priddy would tell you that first time. Of course he
+would. The gardeners here don't like outsiders intruding," said Louie.
+
+The point told. There was no need to mention the name of Miss
+Hastings. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's face deepened its ochre.
+
+"Go on, Miss Causton," she said; while Miss Harriet timidly
+interposed: "I think that's all you wanted me for?"
+
+Louie went on. "And anyway, you gave your nephew permission to come on
+the premises, which seems to me quite as much against the Rules as
+anything there." She pointed to the charge-sheet.
+
+"Pray go on, Miss Causton," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, swallowing her
+wrath. Piker Betteridge, counting the moral advantage to be more than
+the pain endured, had formerly been wont to thrust out his undefended
+jaw in order to prove its invulnerability to attack; Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith was doing something of the same kind now.
+
+"Pray go on----" she said.
+
+"And of course that's all bunkum," said Louie, warming, and pointing
+once more to the paper in Miss Harriet's hand. "That isn't in the
+least what you mean. What you really hate is my having told the girls
+what you've had in your mind ever since I came--I mean about my
+father."
+
+"Pray go on!" The jaw was thrust out once more.
+
+("Perhaps I'd better go?" Miss Harriet still fidgeted. Seedsmen's
+daughters are not at their ease at these Olympian conflicts.)
+
+"All right, I will go on," said Louie, warming still more. "You would
+have preferred me to hold my tongue about it, and if you're thinking
+of asking me to resign I should like to say now that probably at least
+half-a-dozen others will go with me."
+
+Here, however, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith scored a point.
+
+"That may have been true a little while ago," she said, "but--go on."
+And Louie remembered certain little incidents and unbendings that had
+caused it to be indulgently rumoured that "Lovey wasn't such a bad old
+sort once you got to know her." Louie conceded the point.
+
+"Anyway, that's what she does mean," she said, turning to Miss
+Harriet--"that she didn't want me to tell them that my father was a
+prizefighter and kept a public-house!"
+
+"Address yourself to me, if you please," ordered Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
+
+"Certainly! You've been set against me from the first, for that very
+reason; and as for your nephew, I've known him for years and years,
+and you've no business at all to have him here, and it would sound
+rather well, wouldn't it, if the tale got about that you allowed----"
+
+But at this Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's hardly held composure gave way with
+a snap. Well-born but necessitous Ladies-in-Charge of horticultural
+colleges do not submit to being told their duty by the daughters of
+pugilists. She stamped on the floor.
+
+"Silence!" she cried, shaking. "I was a fool ever to have had
+you here! You make discipline impossible. You corrupt your
+fellow-students--you make a boast of your unfortunate parentage--you
+show no respect for the Rules--you think yourself at liberty to come
+and go as you please--you carry on a vulgar intrigue----"
+
+"--not with a gardener----"
+
+("Oh, I _really_ must go my rounds!" murmured Miss Harriet; but she
+lingered; the spectacle of Olympians forgetting themselves does not
+occur every day.)
+
+"--disgracing yourself among younger and more innocent girls----"
+
+"--with a Lovenant-Smith, anyway----"
+
+Again the stamp. "I forbid you to mention his name!"
+
+"Roy----"
+
+"Leave the room!"
+
+("Please, please!" besought Miss Harriet.)
+
+"You will pack your boxes at once!"
+
+"I shall consult Lord Moone's lawyer first. You accepted my fees--your
+college is an imposition from beginning to end, and I'll see that's
+known. That will be another scandal----"
+
+"Ah!" choked Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, perhaps with some hazy recollection
+of the law of slander in her head. "You hear that, Miss Chesson? You
+hear that? You heard those words?"
+
+"No, I didn't quite catch--ladies--please!"
+
+"If you didn't catch it, I said the whole place was a shameless
+fraud," said Louie calmly.
+
+"Very good. Ring the bell, Miss Chesson!"
+
+But the servant appeared only in time to see Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's
+complete collapse. She sank, shaking, into a chair, and gazed
+unseeingly into a pigeon-hole of her desk, as if she might find some
+help against this devilish girl there. As she clung (as it were) to
+the ropes, Louie let her have it (so to speak) on the beezer.
+
+"You oughtn't to be here at all, really, you know," she said. "You
+ought to be in one of those places--you know--in the Queen's gift, at
+Kensington or Hampton Court, with the dowagers and maids-of-honour. If
+you like I'll ask my uncle whether he can't do anything."
+
+And without waiting for an answer she swept out, not by the door, but
+by the French window. The reflection of the yellow-shaded
+standard-lamp swung again as she did so.
+
+She entered the courtyard by the side door, passed under the dark yew
+and the arch beneath the box-room, and made her way through the
+orchard. She had reached her pitch at the foot of the hill before she
+remembered that she had forgotten her mattress and blankets. She
+returned in search of them. Twenty minutes later she was in bed, her
+knees up, her hands clasped behind her head.
+
+She was white with triumph. That woman! Well, Louie thought she had
+held her own. She had had the last word, at all events, and an
+optic-bunging one too. Now should she leave, or stay? It was entirely
+a question of balance between her desire to see the last of the place
+and her resolve to go at nobody's pleasure but her own. It might be
+that she would have to stay another week in order to avoid the
+suspicion that she was turning tail. The fraud of a place!
+
+She lay, pale and victorious, thinking the matter over.
+
+One thing was certain; she would not return to Trant. She supposed she
+was vindictive by nature, but that would merely mean at the most a
+week's gradually increasing strain on her temper and then another
+series of embroilings with her mother. A philosophic elf somewhere
+deep within her--it was hardly affection--bade her spare her mother
+what she had not spared Mrs. Lovenant-Smith. Why seek a known trouble
+at Trant? If she must take trouble with her wherever she went, she
+might as well take it to a fresh place.
+
+Before she was aware they had done so, her thoughts had flown to the
+vouched-for but incredible things Richenda Earle had said about life
+and London.
+
+Lord Moone had a house, and Captain Chaffinger chambers, in London,
+and she knew both. For the rest, her knowledge of the place was pretty
+much what Richenda had guessed it to be--shops, restaurants, theatres.
+Of her five visits two had been spent at Lord Moone's, two at
+Cynthia's friends, the Kayes, and one at an hotel--this not counting
+the night on which, having run away from the convent, she had occupied
+Chaff's room and had wondered at his large pincushion, his pictures,
+and ribboned haircurlers that he doubtless kept in memory of his
+departed youth.
+
+Her father, too, lived in London, or thereby----
+
+She fell to wondering about her father.
+
+There was a full but late-rising moon that night; it had not yet
+cleared the tree-tops of the eastern end of the orchard below. She
+watched its silver through the topmost boughs. Already it filled the
+heavens with a mist of light, dimming the stars; the glister on near
+leaves was brighter than the Plough over her head. Scents of the
+distant gardens stole undispersed through the night; that of the
+night-flowering tobacco-plant was for some minutes almost sicklily
+oppressive; and behind her she heard the scurrying of the rabbits at
+play.
+
+It was odd that she thought of her father rather than of Roy. Somehow
+only Roy's actual presence had the power to colour those now pale
+cheeks of hers. Certainly it had done so that afternoon. For an hour,
+aboard the yacht, the rose-peonies in the garden had been paler than
+she. But her father had her thoughts now, and the sum of them was that
+she would have given much to be able to think of him as not cruel, not
+faithless, not a man who had had to be thrust back into the ditch
+whence he had come. She might have sought him out then.
+
+For she was going to London; that was settled. She had her allowance,
+more by a half than the income Richenda and her Mr. Weston would
+gladly have married on, and not one penny more of it would she waste
+at Chesson's. The next day or two would almost certainly provide her
+with a "good exit." Then nobody would be able to say she had slunk
+out.
+
+Oh, if her father had but not been a brute!
+
+The moon cleared the trees, and another too-sweet tract of the
+night-flowering tobacco enveloped her. A bird or two stirred. Some
+time before she had thought she had heard the sound of a curlew's
+whistle, low and not very near, but she had disregarded it. Now it
+came again. All the effect it had was to turn her thoughts, tardily
+and almost unnoticed by herself, to Roy.
+
+She knew little about yachts; yachting was no pastime of Lord Moone's;
+but even her vaunting mood relaxed to a momentary smile as she
+remembered the yacht down under the hill there. Those two boys must be
+crazy to risk their lives like that. They had rounded Land's End in
+her, and in quite good faith evidently expected the miracle to be
+repeated. The only wonder was that the centre-board had gone before
+the rest of the crazy fabric. "I told you to put some old clothes on,"
+Roy had apologised for his vessel, "--and I say--I don't think I'd sit
+on the table if I were you--I'm not _quite_ sure about it, you
+see--may have to send it to Mazzicombe after all--come on the locker."
+So they had sat on the locker----
+
+She had felt safer when, half-an-hour later, she had clambered down
+into the little dinghy again. It would be Davy Jones's locker for
+Master Roy and his friend Mr. Izzard unless some fatherly fisherman
+took them and their boat in hand.
+
+Then came the thoughts of her unknown father again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Ee-oooo-eee!_"
+
+She sat up. The whistle came from the stile up the hill. And suddenly
+she knew it was no curlew. It was Roy.
+
+She listened.
+
+"_Ee-oooo-eee!_"
+
+It was Roy.
+
+She knew he would not seek her farther than the stile. Had there not
+been other sleepers just below the orchard, it would still have been
+the extreme of his boldness that he had got so far. But--she
+remembered how from the first she had been the prime mover in their
+entirely wanton flirtation--was it necessarily the extreme of hers?
+
+Then, as the devil would have it, something brought Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith into her head again.
+
+That woman!
+
+All the blood left her cheeks and thronged to her heart again.
+
+Roy would certainly not pass the stile----
+
+She hesitated for a moment longer, and then suddenly got up from her
+bed.
+
+Her clothes were wrapped in her waterproof; she took the waterproof
+and put it on. She thrust her feet into a pair of slippers. The
+waterproof was not so long as the garment beneath it; the moon was now
+well above the trees; it showed the hurrying white about her heels as
+she walked quickly up the hill. She drew the under-garment up a
+little. The waterproof was almost the colour of the scorched grass.
+The small shadow that preceded her was now the thing most plainly to
+be seen.
+
+Over the stile she saw the shoulder of his white sweater. Again her
+caution awoke.
+
+"You might have put a coat on," she said, a little out of breath. "You
+can be seen half-a-mile away on a night like this."
+
+"I thought you were never going to hear me!" he said.
+
+"Oh! You seem to have been sure I'd come if I did."
+
+"Well, you have come, haven't you?" he answered. "I say, isn't your
+hair different?"
+
+"Well, it isn't done for a call, if that's what you mean; I always do
+it like that at night, stupid. But I'm not going to stand here with
+you as white as a cottage wall."
+
+Thereupon he paid her the only compliment he ever did pay her--and
+that was unintentional.
+
+"It isn't any whiter than your feet, anyway," he said.
+
+"Well, I'm not going to stop a minute."
+
+"Oh, dash it all!" he protested. She did think him cool!
+
+"Good gracious, how long do you think I _am_ going to stay?"
+
+"Hardly worth coming for, I call it," he grumbled.
+
+"_Thank_ you!"
+
+"For you, I mean, of course--as if you didn't know I'd walk miles--how
+you take a fellow up!"
+
+"Well, two minutes."
+
+Two minutes can be a very short time; five minutes had passed when,
+making a movement to free herself, she said: "Let me go now, Roy--I
+think we're both as mad as we can be."
+
+"There isn't anybody about," he muttered.
+
+More minutes passed; then:
+
+"Do you really think my feet are white?" she whispered. A slipper had
+come off.
+
+Then, close against his breast, she made an inconsequential, halting
+little appeal. "Oh, Roy--don't go in that dreadful boat again! You'll
+be drowned--I know you will----"
+
+"Should you care?" he whispered.
+
+"Silly boy!"
+
+"No, but should you care?"...
+
+"Roy, let me go!" she ordered suddenly. The minutes were passing
+fatally quickly.
+
+"No--no----"
+
+"Oh--yes----"
+
+"I won't let you go."
+
+"Roy, let me go, I say!"
+
+But it was not a command now. It was a supplication--perhaps not even
+that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not love him; in her heart she knew she did not love him. He
+loved her--years afterwards; only years afterwards. The thought of her
+left him--but it returned to him, never to leave him again. The moon
+made the crest of the hill like day, but the shadows of the
+gorse-bushes lay dark on the short grass and stunted bents and the
+patches of wild thyme. The moon southed, then rode less high. In the
+short night a lamb called; and then the birds, reaching the shallows
+of their sleep, gave a drowsy twittering and went to sleep again. It
+was the false dawn. The stars grew a little brighter as a deeper
+darkness possessed the earth; then in the darkness a cock crowed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They met again on the next night. On the night after that they met
+once more.
+
+Only after that did she sit down, alone in the box-room, in the
+twilight, to think.
+
+Her boxes were packed and strapped, and the cart was coming for them
+from Rainham Magna in the morning.
+
+She wished Burnett Minor had been there. She would have liked to say
+good-bye to the child. There was nobody else it would break her heart
+to leave.
+
+Yet Roy was still down there under the hill. The centre-board had gone
+wrong again. She was to see him at the stile, in the morning, before
+leaving. It seemed, somehow, superfluous.
+
+But she did meet him. His face was set, and he had forgotten to
+shave.
+
+"Don't look like that; it wasn't your fault," she said composedly.
+
+"It was--it was----" he muttered, hands clenched.
+
+"Rubbish!" She gave a short laugh. "You've nothing at all to blame
+yourself for."
+
+"Oh, I have--I have."
+
+Then he turned to her. "Louie, you've got to promise me one thing----"
+
+But she stopped him. She knew what he was going to say.
+
+"That's quite out of the question," she said.
+
+"But look here!" He used the words he had used the second time they
+had met. "A fellow can't get a girl into a mess and then leave her in
+the lurch. You must marry me, Louie, if--if----"
+
+At that she had found a touch of her old irony.
+
+"Not unless, of course?"
+
+"Oh yes--yes."
+
+But she turned away. "No. Good-bye."
+
+"Won't you even kiss me?"
+
+"No."
+
+But there was a gentleness in her refusal such as he had never had
+from her before. Kisses came hardly now.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+SUTHERLAND PLACE
+
+
+I
+
+Richenda Earle could have told Louie Causton that an allowance of
+three hundred pounds a year, paid in quarterly instalments, only
+permits of a sunny little bedroom and a charming sitting-room in
+Lancaster Gate on certain terms, of which terms a dipping sooner or
+later into reserves of capital is certainly one. It is true that Louie
+still had capital of which she knew nothing. She did not yet, for
+example, count her wardrobe as capital, nor reflect that if its
+present standard was to be maintained money must be set apart for the
+purpose of maintaining it. She did not yet count her time as capital,
+nor write off the days she classed as days of "looking about her" as
+so many obligations against the time when looking about her would no
+longer serve her turn. She did not count her health as capital, nor
+her wild, resilient spirits, nor her "placeableness" at a glance among
+those whose possession of some capital may be assumed. All she
+reckoned as capital was the hundred odd pounds she had placed in a
+small but sound bank of her stepfather's recommendation, and (she had
+vaguely heard of such things) such additional credit as the Captain's
+name might command. But perhaps it is enough to say that she had this
+conception of the potency of the Captain's name.
+
+Nevertheless, her second week's bill at Lancaster Gate was enough to
+cause her to send for her landlady, and to ask that person whether she
+had not a single room anywhere empty that might combine the prettiness
+of her present quarters with the convenience of having all her
+belongings within a single door. She was conscious of reasonableness,
+almost of magnanimity, when she remarked that she didn't mind going up
+another flight of stairs. The landlady had such a room, but pointed
+out its lack of cupboard-space and the number of Louie's dresses.
+That, Louie replied, did not matter; she intended to sell a number of
+the older dresses; and her things were carried upstairs.
+
+Her idea in selling the older dresses was that thereby she might add
+another thirty pounds or so to her balance; the half-dozen she thought
+she could spare had cost thrice that amount. The wardrobe dealer who
+waited upon her offered her five pounds for them. Louie thanked her,
+told her that she had thoughts of going into a business so lucrative
+herself, and bade her good-afternoon.
+
+She had come to London at the beginning of September; before that
+month was out she had decided to leave Lancaster Gate. For some reason
+or other her quarter's allowance had not arrived, and she wrote to
+Chaff about it. Chaff promised to look to the matter. She wrote also
+to Richenda Earle, stating the kind of lodging she required, and
+asking whether Richenda knew of such an one. To this last letter she
+had a reply by return of post. Richenda proposed the house of her
+married sister, which was in Sutherland Place, Bayswater. Without
+prejudice to her choice, Louie took a walk along Sutherland Place, and
+received an impression of a quiet street with milk-carts drawn up by
+the kerb and virginia creeper covering the houses with crimson. As she
+passed the door Richenda had specified, the door opened, and a squarer
+and older Richenda came out with a string bag in her hand. That, Louie
+thought, would be Mrs. Leggat, the wife of the estate-agent's clerk.
+
+A week later Louie moved into Mrs. Leggat's first
+floor-front-bed-sitting-room. That night she counted her money. The
+result of her calculations caused her to jump up, as if she had
+thoughts of seeking some occupation or other that very night. Her
+quarter's allowance had still not come. Then Mr. Leggat, a
+lumpy-headed man with rabbit teeth and a Duke of Wellington nose, came
+in to fix a gas-burner for her, and she fell into talk with him. He
+wiped his hands ceaselessly on an old rag as he talked. He told her it
+was a pity that Rich had not stuck to her book-keeping; he himself
+would have been head clerk by this time had he had her thorough
+practical grounding instead of having had to knock about the world and
+fend for himself; and he asked her what sort of a villa-building-site
+Rainham Parva would, in her opinion, make. He added that it was nice
+to have "the rooms" (he used the plural) let to somebody they knew
+something about, and then, having omitted to shake hands with her on
+coming in, did so before going out, and evidently accounted their
+introduction complete. He came back presently for a pair of pincers he
+had forgotten, left her a Carter Paterson card for her window in case
+she should have need of one, said that one of these Sundays they must
+all go round to the Earles in Westbourne Grove to tea, made a pun on
+the words Earle and Lord, and went out again. An hour later Louie
+heard him tiptoeing discreetly past her door on his way upstairs to
+bed.
+
+Louie was resolved, however, to put a stop to the "Earle and Lord"
+business once for all. She was a Causton, not a Scarisbrick, in
+Sutherland Place.
+
+She felt herself to be already on the verge of a new life that
+was--let us say amusing--precisely in proportion as it was different
+from any life she had ever known. She must be--if the word may
+pass--amused; she told herself so, clinching the argument by adding
+that it was far better to laugh than to cry. She had promised Richenda
+that she would call and see her Mr. Weston at his Business School in
+Holborn; and this might be--well, amusing. She went without loss of
+time. She took the Oxford Street bus one morning and alighted at the
+door of the School.
+
+She mounted three floors of narrow, old-fashioned stairs, asked a
+fair, perky boy, who somehow managed to make a good suit of clothes
+look cheap, where she should find Mr. Weston, and presently found
+herself introducing herself to a thin and melancholy-looking man with
+a sparse and colourless beard, a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, and
+a gentle and hopeless voice. This was "the Secretary Bird," then. He
+shook hands slackly with her, placed a chair for her in one of the
+bays of a sort of =E= that was lined with books of reference, and
+she listened to his soft, dispirited voice and to the clicking of
+typewriters in an adjoining room. He thanked her for "all her
+kindnesses" to Richenda, whatever these might have been, and presently
+a skimpy little woman in green plaid, with eyes that peered
+quizzically behind spectacles and "destined spinster" written all over
+her, tiptoed for a moment at the end of the bay of books, uncertain
+whether to approach. Then the fair, perky boy who made good clothes
+look cheap also came up. Mr. Weston said: "Excuse me--yes, Miss
+Windus?" Louie saw that she was interrupting the morning's work. She
+rose.
+
+"I daresay we shall see one another again," she said. "Good-bye."
+
+And, outside on the Holborn pavement again, she said to herself with
+decision: "Thanks--but no Business Schools for me!--Poor Richenda!"
+
+Three weeks later she became a student at that very school.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no puzzle about it. Some things come no less unexpectedly
+that they are more than reasonably to be expected. To put this as
+briefly as it can be put, she had merely discovered that an affair of
+atmosphere had become an affair of fact. That was all--nothing more,
+nothing less. But that was no reason why she should not be amused.
+
+The natural thing for young women in such circumstances to do is to
+seek their mothers. If Louie did this natural thing a little
+unnaturally--well, she did it unnaturally, that was all. The row,
+scene, or whatever it was going to be, had better be got over; then
+she could proceed to amuse herself. She had wired that she was coming;
+the Captain had met her at Trant station; but she had had nothing to
+say to the Captain.
+
+The Captain, however, had had something to say to her. At first his
+mumbling into his moustache had not penetrated to her intelligence;
+she had only heard broken repetitions of "Dear old Mops--only for a
+week or two--knew you weren't without--meant to write, but dashed
+awkward thing to explain by letter, and was coming up in a week in any
+case--if she stuck fast he'd see what could be done----"
+
+"Eh?" Louie had said at last. "What's that, Chaff?"
+
+Chaff had repeated his mumblings. At the end of them she had gathered
+that the needy Captain had borrowed the quarter's allowance that had
+been entrusted to him for despatch. Louie had merely given a little
+preoccupied laugh and patted his hand.
+
+"All right, old boy; don't worry," she had said.
+
+A sample or two of her conversation with her mother must answer for
+the rest. For quite twenty minutes the Honourable Emily's head had
+been buried in the sofa-cushions, and the Trant coal-and-blanket
+charitable account had lain where it had fallen from her hand--across
+her cheek.
+
+"That's all," Louie had ended with hard composure.
+
+"Oh--oh----" the mother had moaned.
+
+"And as I say, I won't marry him."
+
+"Oh--you must--you must!"
+
+"Why? Because Uncle Augustus will say I must?"
+
+"Oh--you must!"
+
+"I'll go and see Uncle Augustus."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't--you mustn't!"
+
+Then, in an interlude, the reasons why everything must at all costs be
+kept from Lord Moone had been brokenly explained. In another interlude
+a few minutes later Louie had invented a fictitious name.
+
+"That conveys nothing to me," Mrs. Chaffinger had moaned. "What is
+he?"
+
+Louie had invented a station in life to fit the name. Her mother's
+face had disappeared behind the coal-and-blanket account again.
+
+"And this--this!--is your study of horticulture!" she had half
+faintingly wailed.
+
+"Yes. Yours was art, wasn't it?"
+
+Then Mrs. Chaffinger's querulous despair had shown a weak, vindictive
+gleam. Both pronouns had been a little emphasised as she had retorted:
+
+"I married your father!"
+
+It was only a flicker. Her head had gone into the cushions again.
+
+"That didn't last very long," the devilish girl had commented.
+
+"I married your father, I say--for your sake," had come from the
+cushions.
+
+"That's one of the differences. There are others. If you're thinking
+of wiring to Uncle Augustus I'll wait; if you're not, I'll go."
+
+Lord Moone had been wired for. He had wired back: "Impossible"; but a
+second wire had brought him over post-haste the next morning. The
+situation had been explained to him; the peer had walked away for a
+few moments; Louie had thought she had heard something about "our
+damnable women"; then, coming back, Lord Moone had abruptly convened a
+Committee of Ways and Means. Words like "Impossible ... once in a
+lifetime quite enough ... secrecy ... the Continent for a few months
+... institution," had been used; and at one other alternative Louie's
+eyes had become hard and chill as ice.
+
+"Thank you," she had come harshly in. "As you say, all these things
+may be possible. I decline them all."
+
+Then Lord Moone, whose habit of ordering masses of men probably misled
+him into thinking that the ordering of one young woman who says "I
+won't" was a comparatively simple matter, had made his pronouncement.
+
+"Very well," he had said. "Then as head of the family I order that
+your allowance shall be stopped till you come to your senses. You hear
+that, Emily?"
+
+"You mean you'll starve me out?" Louie had said, with dancing eyes.
+Like her father, she came up to time as long as she could stand.
+
+"I mean what I've said."
+
+"Then ring the bell, please--and don't light that cigar till I've
+gone. I shall be ill if you do."
+
+And Lord Moone himself had ordered the carriage in which she had
+turned her back on Trant.
+
+Burnett Minor, when Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had surprised the rebellion in
+the box-room, had not made herself more inconspicuous than had Captain
+Chaffinger during this scene. Indeed, probably considering that Lord
+Moone, his sister and Louie herself formed a quorum, he had presently
+been discovered to be not there. But it seemed to be the Captain's lot
+to receive and despatch Louie in her comings and goings, and before
+the carriage had reached the lodge he had stopped it and climbed in.
+Ordinarily, the whites of the Captain's eyes had yellowish marblings;
+the yellow had now deepened to the hue of cayenne. He had blown his
+nose repeatedly and violently, and Louie, glancing covertly at him,
+had suddenly had a pang. All at once he had shown his age. Somehow
+Louie resented his doing so. People and things you have never taken
+quite seriously have no right to come near the tragic. It was as if
+some puppet strutting within a proscenium should suddenly bleed.
+
+"Mops," he had said by-and-by, blowing his nose again, "that was a lie
+you told them, wasn't it?"
+
+Louie had tried to shut her eyes to Chaff's bleeding. Her hand had
+sought his.
+
+"The name I told them? Of course it was, you clever old Chaff, to see
+that."
+
+"You don't tell me that, do you, Mops?"
+
+"You?! No, poor old boy, it isn't worth while telling lies to you."
+
+"I'm glad of that, Mops----"
+
+So, for his private comfort, she had invented for Chaff quite a new
+lie, name, station in life and all.
+
+Then: "Oh, Mops, Mops, Mops!----" he had murmured sorrowfully.
+
+Little parties were one thing, but his Mops quite another.
+
+But her anger had stirred again. She had remembered her uncle's
+proposals.
+
+"Did you hear what he said--Moone? No; you'd gone out. Listen----"
+
+He had tugged unhappily at his moustache as she had told him, bringing
+out the words with vehemence and hate.
+
+"Well, but, Mops----" he had demurred wistfully.
+
+"What, are you going to tell me _you_ think so too?"
+
+"All right, Mops, all right, all right, old girl----"
+
+"Much I care for him and his family name! He could bully mother into
+marrying people, but he can't bully me.... Sorry, Chaff, that was
+clumsy; we're pals at any rate. Uncle Gus and his Scarisbricks!"
+
+Her exclamations of contempt had occupied the rest of the time to the
+station. Chaff had put her into her carriage.
+
+"You'll let me know where you are and what you're doing, won't you,
+dear?" he had pleaded. "I can't let you go like this!"
+
+"I hardly know where I shall be myself yet. Very likely I shall go to
+a Business School; I shall have to do something, and that's all I know
+anything about. Anyway, the bank will find me--no, you poor old thing,
+of course I don't mean the money! Of course I'll ask you for that
+when I want it. I've quite a lot yet. Good-bye, old thing."
+
+"Good-bye, dear."
+
+And this time he had not warned her not to run away with a student of
+book-keeping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went to the Business School partly (_bien entendu_) for amusement,
+and partly because there would be very little sense in sitting all day
+long in Mrs. Leggat's first-floor bed-sitter in Sutherland Place,
+Bayswater. Perhaps, too, Lord Moone helped to drive her there. Her
+very skin crept when she remembered the lengths to which he would have
+gone--he, the corner-stone of orthodoxy when such subjects came up for
+(very) full-dress debate--to save that precious thing, the family name
+of the Scarisbricks. Louie had had vanities of person, scores of them;
+but she had also the sense of the holiness of the body, and she had
+had enough of Trants and Mallard Boises and their masters for a time.
+The Business School would be as amusing as anywhere else; indeed, she
+knew of nowhere else. Here she was at last in a London that was not
+the London of shops and dinners and theatres and drives in the Park.
+She would have the fun--always the fun--of it. She would go with the
+Leggats to see Richenda's sisters and that father of hers who had
+apologised to her for having brought her into the world. She would
+learn these unfamiliar accents that met her ear, breathe this
+invigorating if dusty air. She would know what life meant to that
+skimpy woman in the green plaid, would inspect that new specimen, the
+jaunty boy who made his good clothes look like an ordinary
+"reach-me-down." And she knew, without knowing how she knew, that
+before long she would be seeing her father. Sit in Sutherland Place?
+Oh no, that wasn't amusing. Besides, she would presently have her
+living to earn. She had thought, when Richenda had told her those
+dismal tales, that there must be something wrong with Richenda and
+that she herself would be able to do better. Well, she would very soon
+know.
+
+
+II
+
+At Chesson's she had taken her proper place among her fellow-students
+at once; it was not her fault if here, at the Business School, she did
+not at first so much make friends as watch a number of amusing
+phenomena. She watched them with wonder; all was so very, very
+different. The building itself seemed once to have been some sort of a
+dwelling-house, for there were cabbagey wall-papers of a bygone
+fashion on the walls, broken ends of bell-wire stuck out from the
+mantel-sides and the cornices, and the gas-brackets were old and
+ornate and grimy. Louie was conscious of something like a shock the
+first time she approached one of the third-floor bay windows and,
+looking across the street, saw in the windows opposite men packing
+things in brown paper, waitresses carrying trays, and gas-jets burning
+in the dark interiors beyond. They seemed so near. The width of
+Holborn lay between, but they seemed to crowd on her much more closely
+than the yew at Rainham Parva had ever crowded on the inner windows of
+the courtyard. The yew, moreover, was thinned at intervals, but there
+was no cutting and lopping the forward-thrusting, amusing humanity
+across the way. They seemed to be caged there expressly for her
+observation. Well, she was there to observe--to observe, and, of
+course, to be amused.
+
+Her new companions, too, were unlike anybody she had ever known; they
+no more resembled them than the sweet heavy airs of Chesson's
+resembled these diverting smells of dust and damp and bad ventilation
+and the whiff of the Holborn pavement below. Their accents (amusing,
+however) struck her sharply; their faces--alert, sophisticated, highly
+entertaining but without candour--no less sharply. They too, like the
+buildings across the way, seemed to ignore intervening space and to
+press intrusively forward to look at her. She was glad that the first
+thing she had done had been to stop Mr. Weston's mouth on the subject
+of the Scarisbricks and Lord Moone; half the drollery of her
+experience would have gone had these people known who she really was.
+And the things these slovenly voices said had no candour. They struck
+her as a series of (merry) "scorings-off," a succession of (cheery)
+"chippings" of one another. If their reticences seemed all in the
+wrong places, and hand in hand with their defensiveness went an eager
+volubility about the things Louie would have kept to herself, why, so
+much the more laughable the whole joke.
+
+She had been only just in time in extorting her promise from Mr.
+Weston. She was sure of this from his manner of speaking to herself.
+It was extremely, syllabically distinct. To words that he had been
+pronouncing correctly and without thought all his life he gave (as if
+he must find something superior for her, and knowing better all the
+time) pronunciations marvellously new. He found new words, too; must
+look 'em up, Louie thought, in the dictionary. Richenda, who had begun
+by being his sweetheart, became his "intended," and once even his
+"inamorata." But he was to be trusted. Louie saw that. If he gave
+away her identity at all it would be only by the portentousness of his
+secrecy. As a matter of fact he never did so.
+
+It was the skimpy woman in the green plaid, Miss Windus, who answered
+most of Louie's questions about her new companions. She too was a
+delightful novelty to Louie. As if to make her own position quite
+clear at the outset, she had confided to Louie at once that she
+herself was "partly independent." Seeing Louie's slightly puzzled
+look, she had gone on to explain that by this she meant that she
+enjoyed an income of perhaps a pound a week "on her own." With this
+title to consideration thoroughly understood, she went ahead. When
+Louie asked a question about the high-heeled little Cockney Jewess,
+Miss Levey, Miss Windus answered it in terms of her own pound a week.
+"Miss Levey?" she said. Oh, she'd nothing; she lived at home and had
+her fees paid for her, of course, and wouldn't stick fast, being a
+Jewess, not she; but Kitty didn't suppose Miriam Levey had one
+shilling to rub against another; not, that was, "on her own." Louie,
+finding other questions answered from this same standpoint, took her
+cue and framed her questions accordingly. Had the other female student
+(there were only four women), Miss Soames, anything? Well, Kitty
+didn't know; she fancied her aunt must have a tidy bit coming in; they
+lived together in a boarding-house in Woburn Place, and as the aunt
+did nothing all day perhaps she too was partly independent, or even
+wholly so. Had Mr. Merridew, the swaggering boy who cheapened his
+clothes so curiously, a tidy bit coming in? Here Kitty evidently had a
+tale to tell. Had Archie Merridew a bit coming in, indeed! Why, his
+father was Mr. Merridew of Merridew and Fry's, the fancy stationers
+with branches everywhere, so Louie could judge for herself whether
+that meant a bit or not! Archie a bit? Why, Mr. Merridew Senior had
+retired, and lived at a big place near Guildford, with a tennis-lawn,
+if you please. Archie Merridew a bit!--Then what about Mr. Mackie?
+(Louie might have been estimating people by what money they had all
+her life.)--Mr. Mackie? No, Kitty shouldn't think Mr. Mackie had very
+much, but he had a splendid "permanency" offered him when he had
+passed his examinations, as an auctioneer's clerk, four pounds a week
+to start with--to start with, mind you--and a "rise" every year. Yes;
+Mr. Mackie was all right, and, oh dear! _wasn't_ Mr. Mackie funny?
+
+Louie thought this Mr. Mackie more than funny; in her inexperience of
+the type she could never believe he was quite true. For Mr. Mackie
+sang songs, imitated music-hall artistes, could "gag" for a whole day
+on end, and never forget for a moment the immense success he was. He
+fascinated Louie. "Ladies and bipeds in trousers!" he would begin,
+with rapid gestures and still more rapid speech, "before the applause
+I am waiting for has had time to subside--good word, subside--(thank
+you, Cuthbert, you can take the bouquet round to the stage-door)--as I
+was saying when Fitzclarence interrupted me, ladies and tripeheads in
+blouses, whoa, backpedal, never mind--as I was saying, I will now
+endeavour to give you my celebrated imitation of Roderigo the
+gasfitter at one o'clock on a Saturday with the thirty bob in his
+pocket and Hildegarde Ann his wife licking the paint of the lamp-post
+at the corner to squench her thirst--_heu_, her thirst!... Chord on,
+please, titillate the catgut, Professor, and take firm hold of his
+hand, girls----"
+
+Then, while the eyes of Lord Moone's niece would grow bigger and
+bigger, would follow the performance.
+
+"_Isn't_ he funny!" Kitty would giggle, faint with laughing; "oh, give
+us some more, Mr. Mackie!"
+
+And Kitty, like Saint Paul, died daily at yet another trick of Mr.
+Mackie's--the putting of his handkerchief to his nose, and the drawing
+of it slowly downwards to the accompaniment of a piercing whistle.
+
+But Louie was only moderately amused by young Merridew. Mr. Mackie had
+his own perfection; but vulgarity _with_ a tennis-lawn! "Good
+gracious, no," said Louie.
+
+She had entered the School as a day student; but within a week she had
+put her name down for the evening classes also. Even then she had the
+evenings of Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and the whole of Sunday
+quite unamusingly on her hands. She did not want time on her hands. As
+much Mr. Mackie as you pleased, but no time on her hands. So she
+joined the classes that met on the evenings of Mondays, Wednesdays and
+Fridays.
+
+On her very first evening she saw a student whom she had not seen
+before.
+
+She had taken a text-book on Elementary Book-keeping from one of the
+shelves of the =E= of books in which she had had her first talk
+with Mr. Weston (who, by the way, had said that he would like to see
+her for a few minutes before she left that evening), and finding a
+chair within the recess, had sat down where she was to read it. She
+had not looked up when somebody had passed the mouth of her little
+compartment and entered the next one. She had heard a book taken down
+from a shelf behind her, and, after some minutes, put back again; and
+had she not chanced to straighten her back at that moment she would
+probably not have seen the man repass. She had no time to notice more
+than that he was very big and not very well dressed. She went on with
+her reading, wondering, in the intervals of her slack attention to her
+book, what Mr. Weston wanted with her.
+
+She saw the big man again at the close of the class. This time he was
+standing at the head of the stairs, waiting for young Merridew. He
+really was immensely big, so big that a too prolonged first look at
+him seemed unpleasantly like impertinent curiosity. Indeed, he seemed
+already to feel her eyes upon him, for he moved as if to look back at
+her in turn; but young Merridew came up at that moment and they went
+out together. The big man's head and shoulders were to be seen beyond
+the handrail for quite an appreciable moment of time after young
+Merridew's had disappeared. But she had been wrong in thinking that he
+wore a shabby suit. His suit might be shabby also, but it could not be
+seen. He wore, and had apparently worn in class also, a tawny old
+ulster of yellow and black check. In spite of its age it seemed
+somehow a better garment than did the more expensive clothes of his
+companion. He did not, however, strike her as very amusing.
+
+She turned away to seek the Secretary Bird--Mr. Weston.
+
+For the moment Mr. Weston was engaged. He was standing near the
+lecture-room blackboard, talking to the girl who lived with her partly
+independent aunt at the boarding-house in Woburn Place. Louie had
+already remarked the likeness of this girl, who might have been twenty
+but looked younger, to Polly Ross, the pretty daughter of the tipsy
+veterinary surgeon at Trant. Polly too had sported that running of
+pale blue ribbon beneath the openwork of what Kitty Windus called her
+"pneumonia blouse," and the clumps of dark hair on her nape too was
+like Polly's, and she had Polly's dark and sidelong glance, and highly
+conscious air of unconsciousness when that glance had attracted what
+it had probably been meant to attract, attention to herself. She had a
+copy of the Pansy Library in her hand, and Louie smiled as she
+remembered Burnett Minor and her spoutings. She waited until Weston
+should be at liberty.
+
+As she waited, Kitty Windus, wearing an Inverness cape and a
+boat-shaped hat, came up. Miss Windus lived in a street off Tottenham
+Court Road, and already once or twice Louie had walked with her as far
+as the Oxford corner. She was waiting for the Polly Ross girl now,
+whose direction was the same. She asked Louie whether she intended to
+walk or to "hop on a bus." She always spoke in these rather sprightly
+terms, just as she always stiffened the line of her back a little the
+moment a man, any man, entered the room; and she referred, brightly
+and hopefully, to proposals of marriage as "chances." Louie was
+already learning when she might expect any given one of Kitty's
+innumerable _cliches_, and had several times (humorously) given them
+back to Kitty again with complete success. As they waited for the
+Polly Ross girl (whose name was Evie Soames) Louie asked Kitty who the
+big man who had gone out with Mr. Merridew was.
+
+"Oh, the Mandrill!" said Kitty, laughing even before Louie had got out
+the word "big." "That's Mr. Jeffries. Isn't he a caution? But he only
+comes in the evenings."
+
+She meant that Mr. Jeffries had not a pound a week on his own.
+Students who only came in the evenings were of a slightly inferior
+order to those who came during the day.
+
+"I suppose he had his brown paper parcel with him?" Kitty said, with
+more mirth in her peering little eyes.
+
+Louie remembered that Mr. Jeffries had carried a brown paper parcel.
+Kitty twittered.
+
+"Bet you can't guess what was in it--that is, if you haven't heard
+it?"
+
+She said "it" as if it had been a riddle or some sort of a joke. Louie
+admitted that she could not guess what had been in Mr. Jeffries'
+parcel.
+
+"Good old brown paper parcel!" Kitty chuckled. "You'll get to know it
+by-and-by! You see," she explained, "he goes to Archie's for a bath.
+Isn't it killing?"
+
+"I--I don't quite see what you mean," said Louie. She honestly did
+not.
+
+"Why, for a bath--you know, a common or garden bath, with hot water. I
+peeped into it once (the parcel, I mean; for shame, you dreadful
+girl!) and it had a clean shirt and a pair of socks in it. I suppose
+he wraps those he takes off up when he's done."
+
+Louie's eyes had opened very wide indeed. A man to have to ask another
+man for a bath! Well, that was something learned about London! A
+bath--a thing so necessary that its existence was assumed--how
+extremely amusing! She knew that entertaining word, "poor," but what
+was this other, this new and side-splitting word that meant that a man
+had to ask another man for a bath? She had never heard of anything
+so--so--there was no adjective that quite fitted the humour of it.
+
+The next moment she had wasted an irony on Kitty.
+
+"Hasn't he--a tidy bit?" she asked.
+
+But it took far more than this to get through Kitty's hide. She gave
+another little laugh and drew her gloves more smoothly over her thin
+hands.
+
+"Him? The Mandrill? (I always call him the Mandrill, my dear.) Not a
+penny to bless himself with; look at him!"
+
+"Nor a permanency?" Louie asked.
+
+"What, with those clothes? I ask you, now: it isn't a cold night
+to-night, is it? Well, why does he keep that heavy old coat on all the
+evening? Enough said, my dear. He works somewhere in the City, I
+believe--'something in the City'--sounds most prosperous, doesn't it?
+And Archie's awful kind to him, I think, but of course he is
+frightfully clever, and does help Archie with his work sometimes, so
+Archie gives him a bath (I don't mean what you mean, I mean lets him
+have one). Here's Evie. Are you coming along?"
+
+But Louie, besides being tickled, smarted a little too. To have to beg
+for a bath--and then to have the gift made a matter of common
+knowledge and a joke!--
+
+Well, if these people were different, differences, after all, were
+what she was here to see.
+
+She turned to Mr. Weston.
+
+What Mr. Weston wanted to say to her she could not guess; but he had
+hardly spoken twenty words before she was smiling at herself for not
+guessing. The examinations were to be held just before Christmas, and
+unless Louie could be ready for her Elementary by that time she would
+have a good many months to wait before she could enter for the
+examination again. What Mr. Weston had to propose was, in a word, that
+he should coach her privately.
+
+She knew what that meant. It meant that he would come to Sutherland
+Place on Sundays and talk about Richenda.
+
+Well, even talk about Richenda would make shorter that _dies non_.
+
+"It really would be a great furtherance of your aims, Miss Causton,"
+Weston said wistfully.
+
+Louie smiled at the periphrasis, and then considered.
+
+"It might be the best thing to do," she said; "but of course I should
+accept it only on one condition."
+
+"May I venture to inquire what that condition is?" Weston inquired
+deferentially.
+
+"That you let me pay you for it," said Louie promptly.
+
+But Weston put up a peremptory hand. "Oh no--no, no, no--I should be
+ashamed after all your kindnesses----"
+
+Louie laughed again. "Good gracious, what kindnesses?"
+
+"Ah, you once shielded an individual very dear to me and took the
+blame upon yourself, Miss Causton----" His tone was reverential, his
+eyes did her homage. Louie had forgotten all about the box-room
+rebellion and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith. She laughed once more.
+
+"Well, just as you like. But no pay, no coaching, that's all."
+
+Weston sighed. No doubt his acquiescence cost him a pang. If he took
+money for giving lessons, lessons he must give, and the talk about
+Richenda must go.
+
+"Do you dwell on the point with insistence?" he asked.
+
+"Very much."
+
+"I am far from denying that it would be of some assistance in the
+furnishing of our future nest, if I may use the expression----"
+
+"Of course it would. So that's agreed?"
+
+"So be it," said Weston.
+
+Louie half expected him to add: "Amen."
+
+She was in the habit of dispensing money a little largely, and for the
+present she could quite well afford to do this. For Chaff had done
+more than pay his debt. That very day she had had a letter from him,
+forwarded by the bank. He had paid one hundred pounds into her
+account, asking her to regard the extra twenty-five pounds as interest
+on his unceremonious borrowing. But she did not for a moment believe
+his cheerful tale that "things were all right again now"; poor old
+boy, ten to one he had borrowed pretty ruinously elsewhere in order to
+pay her. At all events, Weston should not give up his Sundays for
+nothing, and she might, after all, allow him an outpouring about
+Richenda and the future nest once in a while. It was only half-a-crown
+a week.
+
+But as she left Weston she was thinking of something else that
+half-a-crown a week had power to buy. Half-a-crown a week would have
+bought this big shabby student a bath almost every day.
+
+To have to carry a change of underclothing in a brown paper parcel to
+another man's place----
+
+And to have that parcel peeped into----
+
+How damnable--no, how funny, she meant!
+
+In the light of her knowledge of this extraordinary economy Mr.
+Jeffries had to practise she felt--she didn't know why--almost shy in
+his presence the next time she saw him. She felt that she possessed
+something of his--namely, this knowledge--which she ought not to have
+possessed. She wondered whether he knew how he had been given away.
+Something about him almost suggested that he might.
+
+Perhaps it was his mouth. It looked, except when he deliberately
+opened it, as if it might very well not have opened during the whole
+of the twenty-eight or twenty-nine years Louie guessed him to have had
+a mouth at all. The rest of his face, which would have been too large
+for any man less huge, was an unrelenting slab. It was in the mouth if
+anywhere that sensitiveness must be looked for. Certainly there was none
+in the eyes. These Louie found (it was on a Wednesday night that she
+noticed these things; she had seen him first on a Monday) remarkable.
+They were the eyes of a lion--clear amber, sherry-coloured. They were
+made more than ever to resemble the eyes of a lion by that tawny
+ulster he never removed, and she remembered Kitty's sinister and
+mirthful suggestion. Did his keeping on of that ulster mean something
+hardly less stark and laughable than the circumstance of the bath
+itself? (Louie felt that she was learning.) Then she noticed his
+hands. She always noticed hands. He stopped in passing to pick up a
+pen for her. The hand that returned it was not only a magnificent
+engine of sinew and bone and muscle, powerful and heroic; it was also
+(this was not so funny) exquisitely kept. Her own hand, pale and
+slender as the leaf of a willow by contrast with his, was not in its
+different way more perfect. He might cadge for a bath, but his hands
+he could look after himself for nothing. And that was true of his hair
+also. It was tawny, close-cut, and took the light as cleanly as a new
+silk-hat; hair-brushing was evidently cheap also. The man did what he
+could. She would have liked to hear his voice, but he handed her the
+pen in silence and passed on.
+
+"Well, he looks forbidding," was her comment on him as the great
+church-door of his back disappeared into the typewriting-room, "and
+he has got too big a face and a rather frightening jaw; but he does
+shave it properly, and I don't see where the 'Mandrill' comes
+in--wretched little creature with her pound a week! And he is like a
+lion, with those eyes and that ulster----"
+
+And merely because he seemed to be a person to be scored off and given
+meanly away, she was already prepared, had she been challenged, to vow
+that he was handsome--in his heavy and unhumorous way. As a matter of
+fact, if Roy Lovenant-Smith resembled the little terra-cotta head in
+the Tanagra Gallery of the Museum, this Mr. Jeffries suggested
+something from the Assyrian Gallery downstairs--something in black
+basalt, that might carry the doorway of a temple on its head. In any
+case, with the ulster, the eyes, and the silky tawny hair, he was as
+like a lion as needs be.
+
+When she had seen him twice only she took it upon herself to snub
+young Merridew on his behalf.
+
+She and Kitty were leaving the School at four o'clock on the Thursday
+afternoon when the son of the fancy stationer joined them, and, taking
+it quite for granted that his tidy bit and his tennis-lawn made him as
+desirable to Louie as they evidently exalted him in Kitty's eyes,
+walked westwards along Holborn with them. He wore a new red waistcoat
+with brass buttons, and perhaps it was in order to live up to his
+splendour that he made Louie an offer which she curtly declined. They
+were passing a confectioner's shop; perhaps he noticed--for he seemed
+a sharp enough little bounder--Louie's glance at the window; he turned
+to her.
+
+"Like some chocs?" he said.
+
+Had Louie not already detested him, this would have been quite
+enough. Priddy would have had less appalling manners. As it happened,
+she would have liked some chocolates; lately she had craved for
+chocolates as much as she had hated the smell of tobacco; but she
+wanted no chocolates of this young man's buying.
+
+"No, thank you," she replied; and presently she contrived to put Kitty
+(the straight-backed Kitty whom a man accompanied) between Mr.
+Merridew and herself.
+
+She had the outside berth of the pavement, and she was wondering
+whether she would not cross the road and hop on a bus, leaving Kitty
+and the heir to the tennis-lawn together, when something Kitty said
+detained her. It was something about Mr. Jeffries. Hitherto Louie had
+hardly been listening.
+
+"--oh, Jeff!" Merridew was saying. "He'll have to go till we come
+back. Anyway I shall save half-a-cake of soap."
+
+"There's such a lot _of_ him," Kitty giggled. "How big's your bath?"
+
+"Well, he's an awfully useful coach for the Method exam., I will say
+that for him; so we'll call it a fair swap. You know Evie's aunt,
+don't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Thought you did. Good old Aunt Angela! (She always gets ratty when I
+call her that.) I didn't know she was an old friend of the pater's
+till we saw 'em at the Zoo that Sunday. So that's why they're coming."
+
+"Oh, perhaps, perhaps not," said Kitty archly. "Perhaps it isn't the
+aunt they want to see----"
+
+A passer-by elbowed Louie off the pavement; all she caught of what
+followed was Kitty's laugh.
+
+"So that accounts for the new blouse! You never think of asking _me_
+down to Guildford, Archie!" she said reproachfully.
+
+"You must get a chaperon," Archie replied gallantly; "can't be did
+without, Kitt-oh. The mater don't allow running after yours truly."
+
+Then of another light passage Louie heard only the concluding laugh.
+
+"Well, what of it?" Archie was saying knowingly; and Louie heard
+something else about apron-strings. "Pale blue baby ribbon ones, eh
+what?" Archie added, with a grin.
+
+"Archie!" Kitty reproved him.
+
+"Oh, come off it!" replied the fancy stationer's son. "As if a fellow
+hadn't eyes! If you girls _will_ wear pneumonia blouses----"
+
+"Archie, you're dreadful!" said Kitty, deliciously shocked.
+
+"Well, it's a tannersworth at the Holborn Public Baths for Jeff next
+week-end----"
+
+Here Louie interposed. Even amusement can be too rich. "Good-bye," she
+said, "there's my bus."
+
+She heard Kitty call after her something about the penny stage, but by
+that time she was half-way across the road.
+
+Brass-buttoned little beast!
+
+She got on her bus.
+
+But a quarter of a mile farther on she descended from it again. She
+wanted to buy chocolates for herself. She bought them, walked to the
+Marble Arch, and there turned into the Park. She ate the chocolates as
+she walked.
+
+Little animal! He appeared to keep the whole School posted about Mr.
+Jeffries' personal habits. He could not go down to his home for the
+week-end, taking the Polly Ross girl and her aunt with him
+apparently, but Mr. Jeffries and half-a-cake of soap must be dragged
+in. And that pathetic, pathetic care the man took of his hair and
+hands! For all that, as she strode along, crunching her chocolates,
+she became almost angry with him too. Was soap so frightfully dear,
+and was there no water anywhere but at Mr. Merridew's rooms? She could
+not understand a man who had any sensitiveness at all suffering his
+mind to be turned over and inspected and thumb-marked by these people
+in this way.
+
+Still, she must not forget that these things were diverting.
+
+There was no class that night: Louie forced herself to apply herself
+to her book-keeping until half-past nine, and then went to bed. That,
+as has been said, was on a Thursday. On the following evening, feeling
+indisposed to work, she moved about the School, amusing herself to her
+heart's content. She was getting adept in the sport of it. She bandied
+back to Kitty Windus, with whom she found herself in talk,
+half-a-score of her own expressions: "Beg yours," "Granted," "As the
+poet says," and the like; and she all but openly stalked Mr. Mackie
+for the sake of the pearls that rippled from his lips. If Mr. Mackie
+had offered to take her for a walk or to a shilling hop at the Holborn
+Town Hall on the next blank evening, Lord Moone's niece, who must
+allow no chance of amusement to slip her, would have let him. Indeed,
+she was in two minds whether or not to go to this last place of
+entertainment alone.
+
+It was not for another week that her amusement at the School in
+general and at Mr. Jeffries in particular became almost painfully
+ecstatic.
+
+
+III
+
+On that Friday afternoon she did not go home as usual to Sutherland
+Place to tea. She went instead to the tea-shop across the street the
+waitresses of which seemed to crowd upon her as if the width of
+Holborn did not exist. As she sat down at her little marble table she
+glanced involuntarily across to the windows of the Business School and
+for a moment dropped the mask to herself. "Dingy place!" she thought;
+"well, we're a dingy crew inside it." Then, after a long, long walk
+down Chancery Lane and along the Embankment almost as far as the
+ship-breakers' yard at Millbank, she returned to evening class.
+
+It was the evening before the day when Polly Ross--she begged her
+pardon, Miss Evie Soames--was to go with her aunt to the house with
+the tennis-lawn at Guildford. Young Merridew was not at the School
+that evening; indeed, he had only been once in the evening all the
+week, and then, Louie had thought (dropping the mask for another
+moment) he had better have stopped away. In a word, she had not been
+sure that he had been entirely sober. But perhaps in that she had been
+wrong. It didn't matter. She set a wide difference between the
+gaieties of the sons of fancy stationers with a tidy bit coming in and
+such diversions as that to which her stepfather had once taken her,
+pigtail and all. Besides, if people didn't drink liquor she supposed
+her father would not be able to sell it.
+
+On two occasions already during the past week that mask of her
+amusement had not so much fallen off as been twitched off before she
+herself had been aware. Very remarkably, both times the big leonine
+student, Mr. Jeffries, had been the twitcher. In both cases the actual
+incident had been the same--a glance, nothing more. But those two
+glances had set Louie very curiously indeed waiting to see whether a
+third surprise of the same funny kind would follow them.
+
+The glances had been given by Mr. Jeffries, and they had been directed
+towards the Soames girl. There had seemed to Louie to be an
+extraordinary unfitness about them. Had the red-waistcoated boy stolen
+those glances Louie would have thought no more about it; he and Polly
+Ross were pretty much a pair; but they had surprised her coming from
+the other. Louie had been sure that on the first occasion Mr. Jeffries
+had fancied himself to be unobserved, for he had looked stealthily
+round about him, had waited for a moment, and then, moving his eyes
+only, had given that long, slow, daring, masterful look. This had been
+on the previous Monday evening, in the general room. A few minutes
+later Mr. Jeffries had gathered up his papers and had stridden past
+Evie Soames as if he had been unaware of her existence.
+
+Even had something very similar not occurred again on the Wednesday
+evening, Louie would hardly have forgotten that look; but it had been
+repeated. But this time, finding Louie's eyes on him, he had seemed to
+guard himself, to busy himself quite fussily with his papers, and a
+little to overdo his sudden affectation of indifference. Louie
+admitted that it would be at her own risk that she put any
+interpretation that was not amusing on these trifles; but about the
+glances, their surreptitiousness and the man's deliberate attempt at
+concealment, there had been no doubt whatever. Polly herself, Louie
+had to admit, had been quite unconscious of either look. To all
+appearances, she had been thinking of nothing but of the new
+novelette in the Pansy Library, or else wondering whether the new
+pair of shoes she was to go down to Guildford in would come home in
+time.
+
+On that Friday evening Louie again found herself a little less
+inclined for amusement than she knew to be good for her. She supposed
+she ought to work, for if book-keeping and typewriting and so forth
+were to be her living they might just as well be taken seriously; but
+she preferred to work where gossip was going on. So she began the
+evening in one of the days in the =E= of reference books, where
+Miss Windus and the thick-lipped Miss Levey were sitting on the short
+library-ladder, whispering and tittering. Louie opened one of the
+windows, for she found the place airless, and then idled towards her
+two fellow-students.
+
+She had gathered that Miss Levey did not like her. Miriam Levey was
+far less stupid than Kitty Windus, and it was not safe to hand her
+_cliches_ back to her. Indeed, she had given Louie a far too
+intelligent look when Louie had gratified this hunger for humour of
+hers at the unconscious Kitty's expense; and Louie had told herself
+that it might be as well to be a little more careful. They looked up
+as Louie joined them, but did not exclude her from their talk.
+
+"I _vill_ find out who she is!" Miss Levey was saying--her W's did
+sometimes become V's. "I shall plague him till I do!"
+
+"He won't tell you, my dear--not if he wouldn't tell Archie."
+
+"But did Archie actually say 'engaged'?"
+
+"Well, a person's either engaged or not, I suppose."
+
+"Oh no, my dear, not by long chalks! Vy, you might as well say that
+Archie and Evie are either engaged or not!"
+
+"Well, they aren't--yet."
+
+"'Yet'--there you are!"
+
+"Well, I'll bet they aren't, even after this week-end. Why, they're no
+age! _I_ don't believe in getting yourself engaged and done for before
+you've had a good look round!" Kitty tossed her head.
+
+"Vill you bet they aren't engaged in three months?" said Miriam Levey.
+
+No, Kitty wouldn't bet that. She returned to the original subject,
+whatever that had been.
+
+"It's all very well to say you'll find out, Miriam, but--how?"
+
+Miss Levey tittered, and then suddenly said: "Ssss--I'll show you now!
+Just you watch me----"
+
+She slipped noiselessly round to the cords of the window Louie had
+opened a few moments before.
+
+No doubt her sharp eyes had seen Mr. Jeffries approach. She gave him a
+helpless look, and he took the cords from her fumbling hands and
+closed the window for her. It was the more cleverly done that she
+detained Mr. Jeffries and managed to get closed the window which Louie
+wanted open at one and the same time. She turned her prominent brown
+eyes in gratitude to Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"Oh, thank you so much! You see, I've got rather a cold, and I'm going
+to a dance and don't vant to make it any vorse," she explained. "You
+don't dance, do you, Mr. Jeffries?"
+
+But Mr. Jeffries merely replied "No," and turned away at once. Miss
+Levey turned to Kitty again.
+
+"He needn't think he's put me off!" she said. "I _vill_ find out! I
+shall offer him some tickets now, for self and lady. And I bet if she
+dances I'll make him buy them!"
+
+Kitty tossed her head. "_I_ should expect the gentleman _I_ was
+engaged to to take _me_ to dances," she said.
+
+"But Archie didn't say 'engaged.' Just after somebody, I should
+say--and don't I just vish her joy!"
+
+"It's evidently nobody at the School," mused Kitty Windus. "Archie was
+almost certain about that."
+
+"Vell, it isn't _me_, if you're thinking of suspecting me!" said Miss
+Levey merrily. "_I_ vouldn't touch him with the end of a long pole."
+
+"Chance is a fine thing, my dear," remarked Miss Windus.
+
+"Opportunity's another." (This reply, Louie had noted, was _de
+rigueur_.)
+
+"I expect she types or something at his place in the City."
+
+"She might be in an A.B.C. shop--no, a Lockhart's."
+
+"Or a barmaid," Kitty hinted.
+
+"Or his vashervoman."
+
+"Oh, I expect he washes his own shirts."
+
+"Perhaps he'll vash her blouses, too, whoever she is."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+Louie, her mask once more a little out of place, turned suddenly away.
+
+Little as she had been inclined to work, she was now, somehow or
+other, not much more inclined for amusement. She wandered into the
+shorthand dictation class, but in a few minutes came out again. Then
+she walked into the lecture-room, where some example or other had been
+left chalked up on the big blackboard from the last lesson. Thence she
+went into the typewriting-room, and back to the lecture-room again.
+Finally she got from the "library"--the little back room where the
+files and presses and gelatine copiers and a few books were kept--a
+number of old examination papers, and, finding a chair near the
+folding door that divided the lecture-room from the general-room, sat
+down and began to turn them over.
+
+But she thought more of the conversation she had just overheard than
+she did of the examination papers. It had meant, as far as she had
+been able to make it out, that Mr. Jeffries had told young Merridew
+that he was engaged, or hoped to be engaged, to somebody outside the
+school altogether. That sounded--odd. Of course if Mr. Jeffries said
+so, Mr. Jeffries ought to know; but it is a difficult matter to
+disbelieve your own eyes. She supposed she had no choice but to
+disbelieve them, but--but--there _were_ those two glances he had given
+at the Polly Ross girl--whom, by the way, she must learn to call by
+her proper name, Miss Evie Soames.
+
+Louie was perfectly certain that she had not been mistaken in the
+nature of those two glances. Her reason for certitude was quite
+unassailable. She had known what they meant for the simple reason that
+she had never received such looks from a man herself.
+
+Suddenly she dropped this mask of fevered amusement entirely. As she
+had once sat on the stile between Rainham Parva and the sea, so Louie
+now sat by the folding door--relaxed, thinking of nothing, or, if of
+anything, certainly neither of her late resolute pose nor yet of
+study. Her mind was what she had determined it should not be if she
+could help it--an empty chamber for unknown devils to enter.
+
+Students passed and repassed. Weston had been through several times,
+and twice Evie Soames had come and gone again. This so-much-talked-of
+Mr. Jeffries went into the library for a book and walked past with it
+again. He still wore that concealing ulster; the Soames girl had on a
+brown tailor-made and a cap of knitted white wool. Louie was hardly
+conscious that she noticed these things. She still sat, all slack and
+unbraced, with the examination papers on her knee.
+
+All at once she came to herself. Why she should do so at that
+particular moment she did not know, but, doing so, she found herself
+completely awake again. To all intents and purposes she had come out
+of one of those naps which, lasting perhaps only a minute, have all
+the effect of a refreshing sleep. She could reassume her mask now.
+Evie Soames was talking to Weston by the blackboard; opposite her, a
+pale student called Richardson was copying down an exercise from a
+sheet on the wall; and she supposed Mr. Jeffries would be bringing his
+book back presently. Louie was as alive to her surroundings now as she
+had been oblivious to them a few moments before.
+
+A minute later Mr. Jeffries, returning with his book, passed into the
+library. A few seconds later still Evie Soames had left Mr. Weston and
+had followed him.
+
+"Now," thought Louie, "for a little more amusement."
+
+The library had only one communicating door; its other door led only
+to a small room called the old ledger-room, a dusty cubby-hole, seldom
+entered, that had no outlet save the small pivoted window, high up,
+that gave on the head of the stairs. Mr. Jeffries and Miss Soames
+would have to come out by the same way they had entered, and Louie
+rather wanted to see them come out. It was no business of hers, but
+she had remembered those two glances and the conversation between
+Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey, and she had a perfect right to sit by
+the folding door and to use her eyes if she wished. She was now almost
+preternaturally awake. No jot of the jest, whatever it was, should
+escape her.
+
+Evie came out first, after four or five minutes; but Louie was not
+interested in Evie. She was merely a dull tale: Louie wanted to see
+him.
+
+Then, a moment later, he came.
+
+But no amusement came with him. Instead, Louie knew not what sudden
+private ache stirred deep at her own heart. It was not a question of
+those two furtive, possessive glances now. Unmistakable enough those
+had been; you do not mistake the kind of glance for which you yourself
+have hungered when you see it given to another; but not only had Louie
+never seen--she had never, not even in her own rapt dreamings as a
+half-grown girl in her teens, thought it possible that a man's look at
+a woman could change his face as this man's face was changed now. It
+was irradiated, transfigured. He took no pains now to hide it. He
+could see clear down the room before him--could see (or so he
+evidently thought) any who saw him----
+
+And since he did not see Louie by the folding door, Louie knew that in
+his former passings and repassings he could not have seen her either.
+
+He disappeared. The Soames girl was waiting by the door, evidently for
+him. No doubt he was going to see her home. Probably she would have
+preferred the other, the little cad with the red waistcoat, but she
+had the lion----
+
+He returned, with his hat on, and they left together.
+
+But what had brought that sudden ache into Louie's breast? Mr.
+Jeffries was nothing to her. If his face shone, Louie's heart need not
+therefore ache. What ailed her?
+
+Unmasked, as alive to things within herself now as she had just been
+to things outside herself, she sat, deeply wondering.
+
+Against the wall at her left hand there stood a tall stationery
+cupboard. It had glazed doors, and the pale student called Richardson,
+coming up a moment ago to put his exercise-book back into its place,
+had left one of the doors open. The door moved on its hinges back into
+its place. With its motion there swung slowly into Louie's view the
+reflection of the grimy chandelier with its three naked gas-jets.
+
+Was it this that reminded her of the night when she had swept out of
+Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's French window with the yellow-shaded standard
+lamp mirrored in its pane?
+
+It had been on that night----
+
+Suddenly her eyes closed, as if closed eyes could have shut out a
+mental picture. Her lips trembled--voicelessly they shaped a name.
+
+It was the name of Roy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hitherto she had hardly known what her feelings towards Roy really
+were. It had been in order to avoid asking herself that question,
+among others, that she had amused herself with Kitty Windus and
+welcomed the buffooneries of Mr. Mackie. But it presented itself to
+her startlingly now. Her own complete ignorance had just revealed a
+shining thing to her, the beautiful thing that had transformed Mr.
+Jeffries' face; now--handy-dandy--that very transformation threw her
+brutally back on her ignorance again.
+
+She had thought she had sounded a mystery; had she, after all, _not_
+sounded any mystery, and was she to pay in labour and pain for
+nothing?
+
+Her thoughts had flown back; they remained where they had flown. Good
+gracious! What an escapade! Without mercy for herself she examined it.
+What had really happened? Anything worth what it was about to cost?
+
+The radiant look of another man at another woman answered her: No.
+
+She had courted him--what a conquest! She had made him say she was
+pretty--what a victory! She had schemed, planned, ensured her
+kisses--what a triumph!... Why, she now asked herself for the first
+time, had she wanted to triumph? Why had she not seen sooner that what
+she had really wanted had been to be triumphed over? Triumph?--It came
+to her with a strange newness that women didn't triumph by triumphing.
+That man with the back like the church door, for example, who had just
+gone out with that pretty snippet----
+
+Instantly, and with extraordinary resilience, her mind established a
+contrast.
+
+No woman would have to cajole this shabby, lion-eyed man into
+admiration of her beauty. Rather she would have to save herself from
+his onslaught--and then, in her very flying, she would triumph. Louie
+had found a fool invincible; but this other, when he loved, would go
+down with the vehemence of his own assault. When Louie had refused to
+kiss Roy at their parting she had not known exactly why she had done
+so: she had obeyed an instinct; a chapter had been closed, and had
+had to be marked as definitely closed; her heart had known no rancour
+against him. But now!--she might just as well have kissed him. Now, in
+this strange place, two strange people--or rather one, for the girl
+mattered nothing--had in a moment, and infinitely, enlarged her sense
+of what, at any rate to a man, love might mean. In the light of that
+enlargement any kiss she could have given to Roy would have meant
+nothing--nothing, nothing. Poor Roy, whom she had had to woo! This
+other would do his own wooing. Why, he was doing it now----
+
+Then a startling recollection caused Louie to sit suddenly upright.
+This lion, who had given those looks at that girl--this shabby giant,
+whose face she had just seen enheavened out of all knowledge--had told
+young Merridew, who had told Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey, that his
+heart was set on somebody outside this poky little Business School
+altogether!
+
+Involuntarily Louie drew a long breath of amazement.
+
+He had told them that!
+
+Then Louie became matter-of-fact. There was one thing and one thing
+only to be said. If Mr. Jeffries had told him that, Mr. Jeffries
+had--lied.
+
+She turned it over again--she found no flaw in it.
+
+Yes, if he had said that, he had lied.
+
+Louie pondered. The result of her pondering was that she said slowly
+to herself: "Ah--this is going to be more than amusing--unless I'm
+mistaken it might even become dramatic."
+
+Up to the moment of this astonishing discovery--for Louie knew that
+she had made a discovery--Mr. Jeffries had been to her a phenomenon,
+different from Mr. Mackie and Kitty Windus, but not to be observed
+very differently; now in a twink she placed him in quite another
+category. Or, if she still lacked a category in which to place him,
+she certainly removed him for ever from the other. He had called
+suddenly on her profounder attention, and, as if he had struck upon a
+rock, the waters of it gushed forth. Apparently to others he was a
+butt, a jest, a pathetic figure; he was not that to Louie Causton now.
+They had said, Kitty and the Jewess, that Evie Soames and the
+red-waistcoated boy, off to Guildford together to-morrow, would before
+long be engaged to be married; but Mr. Jeffries, the third person in
+the commonest of dramas, and Mr. Jeffries, the introducer into that
+drama of a preposterous, impossible fourth actor, whose name Miriam
+Levey was resolved to know, were not one and the same man. Louie sat
+astounded again at his lie. It struck her as really in its way
+stupendous. Others thought he was below his fellows in this shabby
+little hutch of a Business School; not so Louie now! She saw those
+clear yellow eyes again. Ruses and machinations lived in them. A butt,
+with his brown-paper parcel? A pathetic figure, with his cadged baths?
+No--good gracious, no! The faces of butts and pathetic figures were
+rather less capable of irradiation. This man's kind made great
+somethings--great men, great saints, great lovers--if it came to the
+worst great criminals. Had she, Louie, been that jaunty young man in
+the red waistcoat, she would have chosen for a rival and enemy anybody
+she had ever seen rather than this needy, gigantic Mr. Jeffries, who
+made this barefaced attempt to throw dust into people's eyes by means
+of apocryphal women he was "after" elsewhere.
+
+And he helped this youngster he must hate with his studies--cadged on
+his probably-to-be-successful rival for a bath.
+
+He was masked too, then.
+
+Yes, at this dingy School in Holborn Louie had found something even
+more interesting than amusement.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Sec._a_
+
+Louie had not yet allowed herself much time for fear of what was to
+happen to herself physically; she had amused herself too heartily. She
+bought chocolates and hated the smell of tobacco; and so far that was
+all. What hung over her was as inevitable as Death, and for that
+reason was, like Death, to be kept at arm's-length as long as
+possible.
+
+But she had already seen enough of Richenda's sister to be aware that
+in all probability her stay in Sutherland Place would not be a long
+one. Mrs. Leggat was formally kind, to Lord Moone's niece rather than
+to herself; but for the rest an armed neutrality seemed to exist
+between the two women. The Leggats were childless, and for that reason
+the less likely to be charitable. Louie had, in fact, found the social
+layer that is bounded on the one hand by the wickedness of pugilists
+and on the other by the scapes of young gentlemen about to enter the
+army. Within these limits Virtue reigned--not always harshly, always
+consciously. Not the wives of the Caesars (it seemed to Louie) were
+above suspicion, but the Mrs. Leggats; not the saints, who confessed
+that they were tempted, but the Westons, who did not know of
+temptation's existence. It was as if some unseen, august Mrs.
+Lovenant-Smith had decreed that landladies and teachers in business
+schools did not do these things. And they did not.
+
+Louie went to the house of Richenda's father, the bookseller--once.
+She had no wish to go again. As Richenda had described him there had
+been something tragic about him; to Louie he had appeared merely as a
+grey-bearded, rheumatic, complaining old man, a picture of pathos
+without dignity. And those six other Richendas, of various ages,
+struck her as horribly superfluous. She wanted Life's colour, not its
+greyness; she greatly preferred the garnish, incredible Mackie.
+
+The weeks passed. Weston came regularly on Sunday mornings, and on
+Sunday afternoons she took long walks. On the nights when there was no
+class she rode on buses, along Oxford Street, down Regent Street to
+the Circus, and back by Park Lane to the Marble Arch and Notting Hill
+Gate again; or sometimes she went Paddington way, up the Harrow Road
+and out and back through Kilburn. She began to know something of the
+streets of London. Her health was far better in London than it had
+been at Rainham Parva. It was perfect. She still feared nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Christmas Examinations drew within sight, and hand in hand with
+the preparation for them another and a more lightsome preoccupation
+engaged the School. This was the Christmas Social with which the last
+term of the year always closed. An Executive had been formed; on it
+Louie's name appeared; and it met frequently at the close of afternoon
+school. One of the younger students was sent across to the teashop
+over the way for scones and cake; a kettle was set on the
+general-room fire; and the social was discussed over tea.
+
+Mr. Mackie was the life and soul of these meetings. He was especially
+strong on the subject of whether evening-dress was to be obligatory,
+permissible or debarred. He declared himself at one of the earlier
+meetings as out and out for fancy dress, but was outvoted.
+
+"See me as a Woodbine, girls, beg pardon, miss-cue, a Columbine, I
+mean, nearly cold with the kilt, kilt with the cold, I should say,
+sixpence in the box for the opera-glasses, Gerald, but don't ogle me
+while mother's in the wings, wishing she was twenty-one again--good
+old mother--
+
+     "'Here's to the happiest hours of my life,
+     Spent in the arms of another man's wife--
+                               My Mo-the-rr!'"
+
+(The shake on the long note produced by a rapid play of Mr. Mackie's
+fingers on Mr. Mackie's Adam's apple.) "Thought I'd have to backpedal,
+didn't you, Miss Causton? Nay, fear not, fair damsel, the intentions
+of Ferdinando are honourable, as long as you watch him, pip-pip,
+phee-ooo!" (The shrill whistle behind the handkerchief closed the
+strophe.)
+
+But this was rushing matters. Kitty Windus spoke, no doubt on behalf
+of the students who hadn't a pound a week on their own.
+
+"Fancy dress would keep a good many away," she said. "I should love
+it, but it really is an expense, you know."
+
+"Weston can buy a penny bottle of gum and come as a foreign stamp."
+
+"Do be serious, Mr. Mackie, now! We want the social to be for
+everybody here----"
+
+"_And_ their friends," Miss Levey interpolated, with a look of private
+understanding at Kitty Windus. There was a short interlude between the
+two women.
+
+"You _won't_ find out, Miriam!"
+
+"I _vill_!"
+
+"Did you offer him tickets for the Holborn?"
+
+"Yes; but he vouldn't buy them."
+
+"Doesn't Mrs. J. as-is-to-be dance?"
+
+"I don't know. He vouldn't buy the tickets."
+
+"I'll bet you another half-crown you don't get him there, let alone
+her!"
+
+"Done vith you, Kitty Vindus!" cried Miss Levey excitedly.
+
+Here Mr. Mackie interposed. "Who's that? Jeffries? He can come in his
+ulster as Boaz--_heu_, how Ruthless! (Beshrew me, but have I not a
+pretty wit?)"
+
+"He's got that new brown suit to come in--or did he get it
+second-hand, Archie?" asked Kitty.
+
+"New," quoth Archie authoritatively. "Allworthy's, in Cheapside. Two
+ten."
+
+"I nearly died when he turned up without that old ulster!"
+
+"Vasn't it screaming?" simpered Miss Levey. "No, don't, Archie!"
+(Young Merridew was pulling out the frill of her jabot.)
+
+"Do tell us exactly what he said when you congratulated him on his
+engagement, Evie!" said Kitty Windus, turning to Evie Soames.
+
+The girl coloured a little. In common fairness Louie had to acquit her
+of full participation in the joke of Mr. Jeffries and his unknown
+_fiancee_. Louie had learned that it had been in order to congratulate
+Mr. Jeffries on this supposed engagement that she had followed Mr.
+Jeffries into the library on that Friday evening before her departure
+for the week-end to Guildford. She thought little more of her on that
+account. In being too ready with apologies and congratulations Evie
+Soames merely showed the vulgarity of the rest of the place.
+
+"No, do let's get on with business," Kitty Windus broke in. "I vote
+for ordinary dress."
+
+"Yes, ordinary dress," came the chorus.
+
+"Vith vite gloves, of course," said Miss Levey.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Vot do you say, Miss Causton?"
+
+"White gloves, of course," said Louie, with her demurest look. "And
+flowers in their buttonholes."
+
+"Some gentlemen don't like to vear flowers," said Miriam Levey
+suspiciously.
+
+"Aha, doesn't he?" from Mr. Mackie. "_I_ saw you at the Holborn, Miss
+Levey--naughty, naughty----"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean very big ones," said Louie, sipping her tea.
+
+And the discussion went on, and meeting followed meeting; but the
+examination was to take place before the social.
+
+The only fear Louie had for her Elementary was whether it would be
+worth very much when she had got it. She supposed that as an earnest
+preparation for the struggle of life this place was not quite such a
+fraud as Chesson's, but that struggle could hardly be as fierce as
+Richenda Earle had said if this Elementary took her very far. Indeed
+she had wondered more than once lately, especially since she had
+ceased to amuse herself quite so desperately, whether it was likely
+that typewriting and book-keeping were to be her destiny after all.
+She supposed they were, but she couldn't quite realise it. But she was
+fully prepared, and hoped Mr. Jeffries was as sure of his Honours
+paper as she was of her simple Pass.
+
+For she had gathered that success in the coming examination was of
+importance to Mr. Jeffries. She did not know the nature of his
+studies; later she surmised that those had been only loosely linked to
+the ordinary school curriculum, and that while for his Certificate's
+sake he must acquire all that text-books could tell him, his real
+broodings had been over matters that are antecedent to text-books.
+That was probably the difference between him and Mr. Weston. Mr.
+Weston was said to be clever, but his cleverness ended at the point
+where real inquiry began. More than this Louie did not know. You
+cannot, after all, ask the pioneer what he goes forth for to see. He
+goes forth to see whatever there may be to be seen.
+
+The weeks that had intervened since that evening when Louie had seen
+that wonderful radiance of his face had done nothing to alter her
+conviction that if there was a dark horse in that Holborn stable at
+all the name of that horse was Mr. Jeffries.
+
+As it happened, Mr. Jeffries was almost the first person she
+encountered when, on the Friday morning of the examination, she
+entered the School at half-past ten. He wore the new brown suit that
+had been remarked on at the meetings of the Executive of the social,
+and he was looking with curiosity about him. They had made quite
+extensive preparations for the examination. The whole place had been
+divided into compartments with hired yellow-painted screens, and
+screens also barricaded the =E= of reference-books near the bay
+window of the general-room. New pens and new blotting-paper lay on
+the desks, and the little porcelain inkwells had been newly filled.
+Then it occurred to Louie that it was more than likely that Mr.
+Jeffries had never been in the place in the daytime before. He must
+have got the day off from that "somewhere in the City" that Kitty
+Windus had said sounded so prosperous. His tawny hair was as flat and
+silky as ever, and his chin as cleanly shaved. He passed her with a
+curt bow and continued his inspection of the place. The candidates
+stood talking in groups, waiting for eleven o'clock.
+
+"Have you discovered your--er--appointed place, Miss Causton?" said
+Weston, coming up to Louie. "Good, good! I must now take my departure.
+Members of the Staff are not permitted to remain on the premises
+during the hours devoted to the examination. I wish you--er--good
+luck."
+
+He seemed to change his mind about saying "a happy issue from all your
+afflictions."
+
+By eleven o'clock Louie was seated in her little screen-enclosed
+compartment. A sort of hired mourner read a formal caution to the
+candidates. She noticed that it lacked the _largior ether_ of the
+third person indicative, being, indeed, in the second person
+imperative; and then she drew her paper to her.
+
+Quiet fell on the examination-rooms.
+
+She found her papers no more difficult than she had anticipated. On
+one point only, a matter of indenting in actual practice, was she a
+little in doubt, and a minute in the old ledger-room at lunch-time
+would tell her whether her answer had been right or wrong. She read
+over again what she had written; it seemed, with the possible
+exception of that single point, all right; and she tilted her chair,
+put her hands behind her head, and leaned back. The candidates had
+been warned that they must bring lunch with them. It was half-an-hour
+from lunch-time yet.
+
+Her place was by the folding door of the general-room. From it she
+could see nothing save the stationery cupboard on her left, and,
+beyond it, the next screen-enclosed compartment. She was wondering who
+was in it when a foot moved beneath the yellow screen. It was the foot
+of Mr. Jeffries. Louie hoped that he was getting on well, and then
+dismissed him from her thoughts. She began to wonder about the
+practical usefulness of the examination again.
+
+Doubtless it was well enough in its way, but less than ever could she
+persuade herself that this kind of thing was to be her destiny. There
+were too many other likelihoods--not to speak of the one certainly so
+huge that she had sometimes been actually in danger of leaving it out
+of the account altogether. Idly she counted them. First, there was the
+certainty.... Next, she would probably be leaving Sutherland Place
+soon, to go--where? She did not know. At the price of submission to
+Uncle Augustus she could go back home; or Chaff would have her looked
+after; but both these courses were rather out of the question. They
+were out of the question because lately something else had been more
+and more in her thoughts--her unknown father. That father might, for
+all she knew, be the bugbear her mother had always made him out to be;
+but on the other hand he might not. She knew her mother, and the more
+she thought of it the more she gave her father the benefit of an
+increasing number of doubts. Until she should have seen him it was now
+no more than fair that she should do so. Moreover, she could see him
+at any time without his being any the wiser of the--inspection. Chaff
+knew where he was; Chaff, who was always fetching or taking her
+somewhere, would take her there also. She was resolved to go sooner or
+later, and later might be--who knew?--too late.
+
+For at last she had admitted a dread.
+
+In any case, her destiny was quite as likely to be determined by a
+visit to that public-house up the Thames as by writing, in this stuffy
+Holborn third floor, answers to ridiculous questions about _pro forma_
+invoices and bills of lading.
+
+She was still turning these things over in her mind when the bell rang
+for the close of the first part of the examination.
+
+She ate her lunch in the company of Kitty Windus and Miss Levey, and
+then the three women passed out on to the staircase and sat down
+half-way down the stairs. But the men had flocked to the staircase for
+their noxious smoking, and Louie re-entered the general-room again.
+Then she remembered the doubtful point in her paper and walked to the
+library. She passed through it into the old ledger-room. Any old
+ledger would settle the point on which she was not quite sure.
+
+The room was almost dark, but Louie knew where the musty old books
+were. She put out her hand to the nearest of them. But suddenly she
+withdrew her hand. The high window that gave on the head of the stairs
+afforded no more than a glimmer of light, but Louie thought she had
+seen something move. She peered into the twilight, "Is anybody there?"
+she said, but she had no answer.
+
+But the room was occupied. The next moment she had seen and fled.
+
+Her irregular lips were pursed as she came out into the light again.
+There was a confusion, too, in her eyes, probably as much as there had
+been in the eyes of the two she had come upon in there. They must have
+seen her come in, and have realised that their only chance of escaping
+detection lay in keeping perfectly still.
+
+Polly Ross, cheek to cheek with that horrid little bounder!
+
+There was no question now of whom the girl preferred.
+
+Louie, wondering what right she had to do so, felt nevertheless a
+little sick.
+
+But the next moment her fastidiousness had vanished. The door that led
+to the stairs had opened; Mr. Mackie's voice sounded loud for a moment
+on the landing; and then Mr. Jeffries lurched in, stumbled, and almost
+ran to his compartment between the yellow screens.
+
+How he too knew what was going on in the old ledger-room, Louie could
+not guess; but she knew that he did know.
+
+She walked slowly to her own place and sat down.
+
+A few minutes later the bell for the second half of the examination
+rang, and a new paper was put before Louie. But she neither glanced at
+it nor yet heard the voice of the hired mourner repeating his caution.
+She sat with her chin in her hands, looking straight before her. She
+was wondering what was taking place behind the yellow screen beyond
+the stationery cupboard. Amusement was hardly the word for that.
+
+For she had seen Mr. Jeffries' face as he had stumbled in. She
+sought words for the expression that had been upon it.
+Lost--despairing--devilish----
+
+There was not much doubt about who _he_ was in love with either.
+
+Devilish, despairing, lost----
+
+"Poor--soul!" she thought compassionately....
+
+She wondered why she should be so unaccountably nervous. She was
+nervous. She even jumped a little when somebody on the other side of
+the folding door allowed a pen to fall to the floor. She could see the
+feet beneath the lower edge of the screen in front of her; they did
+not move; the examination quietness had fallen on the place again, and
+the very quietness grew on her. Strong drama, if not tragedy outright,
+was being enacted behind those half-inch yellow boards beyond the
+stationery cupboard, but the quietness continued. It was such a
+quietness as she had read of in tales when, somebody's ears being
+sharpened for an expected scream, their eyes had not at first noticed
+the little dark rivulet of blood trickling slowly across the floor.
+Involuntarily her eyes went to the yellow screen.
+
+But rubbish; this was morbid.
+
+Morbid or not, however, her lips almost shaped the words, slowly and
+deliberately: that boy with the red waistcoat would do well to be
+careful. He would do especially well to be careful if, after this,
+after the glare on the other's face, he should still have help offered
+him with his studies or be asked for a bath. For something would
+happen then. Eggshells such as he did not come into collision with
+bronze without something happening. And if anything not easily to be
+accounted for did happen to that odious little whippersnapper, nothing
+would ever persuade Louie that she did not know a likely quarter in
+which to look for the reason.
+
+Blind, devilish despair!
+
+And all for an empty-headed little thing who could have been found in
+her dozens behind twenty shop counters not a quarter of a mile away!
+What on earth, what on, or under, or above the earth, could this
+brooding, clever, gigantic, laughed-at creature want with such a doll?
+Why could he not leave her in her proper place--cheek by cheek with
+the little bounder of her choice in that smelly, unlighted old
+ledger-room? The man must be blind, or a fool.
+
+Then a sort of lethargy took Louie. Suddenly she cared for nothing.
+Let the fancy-stationer's cub take his risks; let the other eat his
+heart out if he would; it was no business of hers. Nor was that absurd
+table of questions before her any business of hers. Kitty Windus might
+answer that sort of thing; Mackie might answer it; but the
+Scarisbricks were not Kittys, with her "part-independency," not
+Mackies, to stuff their heads and ink their fingers like this for
+their "permanencies." She did not know now why she had ever come to
+the place, and she wanted no more of it. What she was going to do she
+did not know. She did know, however, that she was not going to answer
+that silly paper.
+
+So, by-and-by, she allowed the paper to be collected again, as blank
+as when it had been placed before her.
+
+She came upon the perverse Mr. Jeffries once more before she left. He
+almost ran her down bodily as they met in the doorway of the
+typewriting-room. But this time she did not look at his face. With a
+swift intaking of her breath she fell back to save herself. She did
+not hear whether he apologised or not; in one moment, without
+premeditation, her whole being had become constrained to a new,
+protective, instinctive attitude.
+
+Slowly and thoughtfully she left the School.
+
+She alone of the students was unsurprised to hear, four or five days
+later, that Mr. Jeffries, who had passed with distinction in the first
+part of his paper, had, like herself, failed in the second part.
+
+
+Sec._b_
+
+For the examination the rooms had been cut up with screens; for the
+breaking-up social they were cleared of everything that could be
+stowed away into dark corners. Never was such a hoisting and calling
+as those with which the hired piano was got up the three flights of
+stairs. Most of it came from Mr. Mackie, turned for the nonce into a
+shabash-wallah.
+
+"Mind her funnybone--all together--up with her! Oh, pursue me,
+wenches, I've got my muscle up, first time since the second housemaid
+ran away with the dustman! Don't tickle her parson's nose, Archi-bald,
+or she'll sneeze when I sing, key in the usual place--and mind the
+stair above the top, it isn't there. This way--excuse my
+shirt-sleeves, Miss Windus, I'm in mourning."
+
+And so the piano was trundled to its place in the corner by the big
+blackboard.
+
+Mr. Mackie was of service, too, in the French-chalking of the floor,
+for the men hauled him about by the arms and legs on a piece of
+sacking in order to give it its final polish for dancing. Half the
+students, male and female, helped to wind the blackened old brackets
+and chandeliers with red and green tissue paper, to set evergreens on
+the tops of the cupboards, and to affix the trophies of little
+Christmas tree flags on the cabbagey old walls; and Louie helped with
+the refreshments. Three women had been got in, one to make coffee and
+the others to preside in the cloakrooms, and Miss Levey had won
+half-a-crown from Kitty Windus.
+
+For Mr. Jeffries was coming to the party after all. More, it had been
+Louie herself who had asked him, though it had been Miss Levey's
+cunning that had made her do so. On no grounds at all save that it
+appeared to annoy, the Jewess had once or twice twitted Louie that Mr.
+Jeffries favoured _her_ and, when Mr. Jeffries had declined her own
+invitation, had nudged Louie. "_You_ ask him, and see whether he
+doesn't come!" the nudge had meant. Louie entered into no contest with
+Miss Levey. She had turned at once to Mr. Jeffries and repeated the
+invitation. He had accepted it.
+
+Louie doubted her own wisdom in going to that social at all. Even when
+she had reached Sutherland Place and spread out her frocks on her bed
+she still doubted. But suddenly she gave a short laugh. Of course she
+was going! It was her first "social," and it might be her last; she
+was going, and she was going to wear the oyster-grey satin that, ever
+since she had had it, had always seemed to "live" so on her shoulders.
+
+She declined Mrs. Leggat's help in getting into it; if Mrs. Leggat
+would be so good as to get her a hansom instead----Mrs. Leggat went
+out. The oyster-grey was one of the oldest of her frocks; Louie knew
+every stitch of it; and she smiled as she thought that for that very
+reason she would have chosen it had she deliberately intended to make
+a conquest. She surveyed herself in it in the tilted glass. Yes, she
+thought she would do.
+
+"It's your last time on, poor old rag," she muttered.
+
+She heard the pulling up of the hansom; she put on a light shawl and
+descended; and Mrs. Leggat lingered in the doorway as she drove off.
+
+They had set candles on the floors of the landings of the Holborn
+stairs, but they guttered in the draughts, and showed little but the
+feet of those who ascended. Louie followed a pair of orange
+silk-stockinged ankles and a trammel of orange petticoats (she didn't
+know whose) up the stairs, and entered the general-room. The library
+had been converted into a ladies' cloakroom, with the old ledger-room
+as an annexe; and in this last room Evie Soames, with an elaborate
+running of pink ribbons beneath the openwork of her cream net blouse,
+was putting on her slippers. She only showed Louie the top of her dark
+head; in this and other ways she had displayed reserve since the lunch
+interval of the examination day. A woman with a pair of very chapped
+hands and a very clean apron took Louie's shawl; and Louie, first
+glancing at her hair over the powdered shoulders of the person in
+orange, went into the double room that had been prepared for dancing.
+
+Students and their friends had turned up in their best bibs and
+tuckers. Most of the men wore swallow-tailed coats; one of the
+exceptions was Mr. Jeffries in his brown jacket-suit. He was talking
+to Miss Levey, or rather Miss Levey was gasping to him; she had just
+given him, or rather hung upon his wrist, one of the violet-written
+cards, printed from the gelatine-copier, which served as programmes.
+Weston wore a tightly fitting old frock-coat, which Mr. Mackie
+humorously likened to the overcoat of sausage that had spent the night
+in the coal-hole. Archie Merridew had a white waistcoat. All the men
+stroked the wrinkles out of their white gloves without ceasing. The
+women, to the reflective eye, had lost little by the foregoing of
+out-and-out evening-dress. There was an "I could an' if I would" about
+their long sleeves and high necks. Kitty Windus, in her blue foulard,
+with a cutlet-frill about her thin neck, graciously consented to the
+level of those who had not a pound a week on their own; Miriam Levey,
+in a maroon pinafore-frock with broad braces over her shoulders,
+instantly put every simple blouse in the room at its ease. One frock
+only flouted the modest agreement to which the executive had come;
+this was the orange satin one which Louie had followed upstairs. It
+partially clothed a friend of Mr. Mackie's. Louie heard the words in
+which Mr. Mackie introduced young Merridew to its wearer.
+
+"Mr. Merridew, Miss Dulcie Levine, Miss Levine, Mr. Merridew, two of
+the best, seasonable weather for the time of the year, ain't it, what?
+Permit me, Dulcibella, a bit of fluff" (here Mr. Mackie cast aside the
+bit of fluff, if there was one, which he had taken from Miss Dulcie's
+shoulder, and represented the noise of its falling by a loud stamp on
+the floor). "Ought to be dancing soon; what time is it by your clocks,
+Dulcie? _I_ saw them as you got out of the Black Maria, the cab, I
+mean--_heu_, desist, Mr. Mackie, you wag!" (Mr. Mackie smacked his own
+wrist in reproof of himself.) "Why am I not in me usual spirits, gin
+cold, to-night, Dulcinea? 'Tis thy fatal beauty has undone me; what
+ho, a needle and threat, O fairest of thy socks, sex I should say....
+Ay, she dances, Archibald, but not with thee, base varlet; she dances
+at the Theatre hight Alcazar, nigh unto ye Square called Leicester."
+
+Louie heard Kitty Windus whisper to Evie Soames that Mr. Mackie was
+going to be splendid to-night; but her approval did not extend to Mr.
+Mackie's friend, who was already too splendid. Kitty's head was held
+so high when Miss Levine passed that she appeared to be looking at her
+with her nostrils. With her eyes she saw only the orange creature's
+back. This was a rather handsome =V=, and that did not improve
+matters. Kitty whispered behind her fan about "some people." Miss
+Dulcie used Kitty as a quizzing-glass for the inspection of whoever
+happened to be behind her.
+
+Mr. Jeffries stood with his back against the thrown-back folding door.
+He did not dance, but he had not at all the air of a wet blanket; on
+the contrary, his face wore a quite lively smile. He was smiling at
+the red and green tissue paper that enswathed the central chandelier.
+Louie saw Evie Soames pass him; his eyes rested on her for a moment,
+but only as they rested on everybody else, and then went back to the
+red and green tissue paper of the chandelier again. He had accepted
+the inevitable, then. Indeed, had he not done so, Louie could hardly
+imagine that he would have been there. Well, it was the most sensible
+thing he could do. Louie would go and speak to him presently.
+
+Louie made a tour of the rooms. The =E= of reference-books had
+been turned into a place for sitting out, and in the typewriting-room
+the lids of two or three desks had been wedged up to form card-tables.
+Into the room beyond, which was the smoking-room, she did not
+penetrate. Already a fiddle was tuning up, but Louie had told young
+Merridew, who had magnanimously asked her for her card, that she did
+not intend to dance. None the less he had taken her card and scrawled
+something on it. She had tossed the piece of violet-written pasteboard
+into a corner.
+
+At nine o'clock there was a tapping on the top of the piano, and the
+music began. Mr. Mackie and the lady in orange glided out over the
+French-chalked floor. Two minutes later the room was full of waltzing
+couples.
+
+Louie had sat down on the opposite side of the room to Mr. Jeffries.
+Through momentarily clear spaces she saw him from time to time. He did
+not move from his station by the folding door, where, among the
+hoppers and caperers who sped past him, he seemed to have something of
+the stability of a monument in some centre of apparently aimless
+traffic. Still, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and Louie intended
+to go across to him when the waltz was over.
+
+A word she overheard, however, caused her to change her mind and to
+rise to her feet at once. Mr. Mackie, passing with his orange partner,
+had repeated his jape about the Ruthless Boaz.
+
+Without more ado Louie threaded her way through the dancers and stood
+before Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"Won't you try to dance?" she said.
+
+As he turned the amber eyes on her she had the feeling that she slid
+all at once into the field of some piece of apparatus with an
+object-glass. She was the object. For a moment he forgot his smile; he
+looked attentively at her; and then the smile returned. He answered in
+an easy, deep voice, the accent of which was neither Cockney nor yet
+quite of the mode of the men Louie knew.
+
+"Oh, I--I don't dance," he said.
+
+"Won't you let me teach you?"
+
+His eyes were still on hers. He seemed to give the simple question
+weighty consideration. Then his eyes dropped to his hands.
+
+"Hallo," he said, as if to himself. His programme was where Miss Levey
+had put it, dangling from his wrist as if from a hook. Apparently he
+had not noticed it before. Then, looking at Louie again, he said: "I
+mean, my gloves--I've no gloves."
+
+"Gloves!" she said quietly. "Come."
+
+She took the absurd programme from his wrist, threw it away, and put
+her gloved hand into his naked one.
+
+She drew Mr. Jeffries into the current.
+
+Louie had danced with ignoramuses before, but never with a man quite
+so awkward as this. She did her best to steer him, but before they had
+gone half-way round the room they had collided with Evie Soames,
+leaning back in the crook of young Merridew's arm--with Kitty Windus,
+tiptoe and leaning forward over her partner--with Mr. Mackie, who had
+lighted a cigarette and was singing the refrain of the dance as he
+passed. Then Mr. Jeffries begged her, out of consideration for
+herself, to stop. But she had no desire to stop. She wondered why,
+bumped and trampled so, she should want to go on, but she gave that
+riddle up. He did not cease to apologise for his ungainliness.
+
+But the riddle of why she did not wish to stop refused to be given up.
+It renewed itself with each of his apologies. Stumbling ludicrously,
+she knew that she still wished to go on. What she did not know at
+that time of her life was that she had secrets that hitherto she had
+kept even from herself.
+
+Then, all in a moment, the strange thing happened. She felt that
+colour, that stress and anger never brought there, rise slow and warm
+into her cheeks. Her glance had merely rested for a moment on that
+hand of hers that lay slender as a willow leaf in his, but the riddle
+was a puzzle no longer. Abashed, she _had_ surprised a secret.
+
+She had caught herself wishing--half wishing--she did not quite know
+what--that she too had taken off her glove.
+
+Her colour lasted for half-a-minute; then, perhaps because of the
+colour, her voice became matter-of-fact. She glanced up at him.
+
+"I'm sorry you failed in your examination," she said.
+
+Louie was tall, but his head was clear and away above hers. He looked
+down, earnest, anxious, smiling, all three.
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said. "Why should it?" he added.
+
+Louie had thought that it had mattered a great deal, but she was still
+a little bewildered. Even out of the answer to the riddle another
+seemed to have sprung already. She laughed a little.
+
+"Oh--only that one doesn't like to be beaten," she said.
+
+This too he seemed to give profound yet (if such a thing may be)
+absentminded attention.
+
+"Is anybody ever beaten?" he asked slowly. "I mean, unless they
+deserve to be?"
+
+Archie and Evie Soames had just overtaken them again, laughing
+together, as, hand in hand, they took a running glide towards the
+door. His remark came oddly from a doubly beaten man. What then did he
+call a beating?... She looked covertly at the two hands again.
+
+"But--mayn't circumstances be too strong for you?"
+
+This again he considered. "Circumstances are strong," he admitted.
+"But then, if one's a fool, so are a good many other people. There's
+always that chance, you see."
+
+He spoke as gently as if he had been speaking to a child, but Louie
+suddenly found herself wondering whether he had accepted the
+inevitable after all. This hardly sounded like it. She spoke quietly.
+
+"Nobody thinks you're a fool just because you failed--at least I
+don't."
+
+"Failed?" he repeated, as if puzzled.... "Oh, you mean the
+examination! Of course I ought never to have gone in for it. (Oh dear,
+another bump--I'm afraid you find me hopeless.)"
+
+"Not have gone in for it? Why?"
+
+The lion's eyes looked at her in surprise.
+
+"Why? Why, because I failed." He seemed to consider it an entirely
+conclusive answer.
+
+"But you'll surely try again?" said Louie.
+
+"Eh? 'Try,' did you say?... Oh, the men who have to try are no good.
+For that matter it's always the duffers who try the hardest. I admit
+they pull it off, but then things are arranged so that the duffers can
+pull them off--have to be, I suppose. But the men who aren't
+duffers----"
+
+He stopped suddenly.
+
+"What?" she said.
+
+But once more she had the feeling that she had only just swum into
+the field of his vision. It was singularly disconcerting. His smile,
+which had disappeared, appeared again. He seemed to remember that he
+was at a dance.
+
+"I suppose you're coming back after Christmas?" he said.
+
+It was not very likely, but she said: "Very likely. You were saying,
+about the men who aren't duffers----"
+
+Again he got her focus. "Was I? Well, there aren't so many of them
+that we need bother about them. So you are coming back?"
+
+Louie found him extraordinary, unclassifiable. She could not say that
+his answers were not ready; they were instant to the point; but
+somehow they weren't answers. Of course, they _were_ answers if you
+liked, but they seemed in some way to be private communings as well.
+She wondered whether he was in the habit of talking much to himself;
+he spoke rather as if he was--as if, his consciousness of her presence
+notwithstanding, he considered himself to be as good as alone now.
+
+Louie had heard the expression "second self"--well, this, "second
+self" or not, was certainly a curious accord. And then he allowed that
+deliberate, altogether discordant smile (that might just as well have
+been hooked round his ears like a false beard) to come between, and
+asked her if she was coming back after Christmas!
+
+Then--this came suddenly--she knew for a certainty what hitherto had
+hung in doubt--that she would not be coming back after Christmas. She
+must sit down. Of course, it was to have been expected. She had been
+unwise to dance.
+
+She spoke faintly. "Please take me to a seat."
+
+Quite automatically he did so. He led her to the =E= of
+reference-books. The waltz closed. So did Louie's eyes.
+
+"Please leave me alone for a few minutes," she murmured.
+
+He bowed, and retired as automatically as he had come.
+
+In a few minutes she felt better, but she still sat in the little
+book-lined recess. Her eyes remained closed, but not now altogether
+from faintness. She heard Mr. Mackie's voice, apparently a long way
+off, shouting, "Come on--let's get the ice broken!" and partners were
+being chosen for the Shop-Girl Lancers. More minutes passed. Louie,
+her eyes still closed, had begun once more to think of that secret she
+had surprised within herself.
+
+She doubted herself profoundly now. For all she now knew her nature
+might contain other such secrets as this that had sent the warm blood
+into her cheeks at a touch--nay, at the thought of a touch. She might
+have, so to speak, a basic, unsuspected layer of them, needing only to
+be stirred to provide surprise after surprise. Those surprises might
+make all she had hitherto known--all--seem stupid and flat and
+commonplace. If so, why must the discovery come now? Secrets from
+herself--now? Impossible!
+
+But, as if limned on her closed lids, she saw the two hands again, her
+own like a lanceolate leaf, lying within that great masculine engine
+of his.
+
+And all at once she felt unutterably lonely.
+
+It was some time before she opened her eyes again. By that time Mr.
+Mackie had succeeded in breaking the ice. The floor shook to the
+fourth figure of the Shop-Girl Lancers, and Louie saw, beyond the
+reference-books, the Alcazar beauty swung clear off the ground, a
+goldfish whirling almost horizontally past. Miss Levey's skirts
+followed, their owner crying, "Help, help!"... "_For it ain't the
+proper way to treat a la-ady!_" Mr. Mackie's jubilant voice sang--and
+when the figure ended there were shouts and clapping of hands and
+uproarious cries of "Again, again!"
+
+By-and-by Louie rose. She walked up the room again. At the piano Mr.
+Mackie, who was to sing, was now confidentially humming the air of his
+song into the hired pianist's ear. Mr. Jeffries, once more looking as
+if he needed a niche and a plinth, was standing in his original place,
+by the folding door. Miss Levine and Archie Merridew were half hidden
+behind the piano; and Kitty Windus, radiant, was openly flirting with
+the pale student called Richardson. Evie Soames had just spoken to Mr.
+Jeffries; she was sulking at Archie's desertion of her. Then Mr.
+Weston announced, solemnly and distinctly, that Mr. Mackie was about
+to add to the enjoyment of all present by singing a song entitled
+"That Gorgonzola Cheese." Applause greeted the announcement, and Mr.
+Mackie, who had slipped behind the piano for a moment and returned
+with his coat on the wrong side out, began.
+
+Louie found herself once more by the side of Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"I should like some coffee," she said.
+
+The coffee was in an adjoining room. For the first time since she had
+been at the School Louie did not want to hear Mr. Mackie.
+
+But the hint was lost on Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"Eh? Certainly," he said, and went away in search of the coffee.
+
+     "'Oh--that--Gorgonzola Cheese!'"
+
+Mr. Mackie sang,
+
+     "'It must have been unhealthy, I suppose,
+     For the old Tom Cat fell dead upon the mat
+     When the niff got up his nose!'"
+
+Kitty was laughing almost hysterically.
+
+     "'Talk about the flavour of the crackling of the pork!
+     I guess it wasn't half so strong
+     As the delicate effluvia that filled our house
+     When the Gorgonzola Cheese went wrong!'"
+
+Mr. Jeffries had returned with Louie's coffee, but Louie barely
+touched it. Great stupid fellow!
+
+Then he turned to her with some merely banal remark, and Louie, giving
+it all the answer it deserved, turned and left him.
+
+That unspeakable loneliness had come upon her again.
+
+Louie made no further attempt to talk to Mr. Jeffries. She watched
+another dance, heard Mr. Weston recite "The Raven," and then went to
+the cloakroom for her shawl. There she came upon Kitty Windus, who had
+found it necessary to do up her hair again.
+
+"You surely aren't going?" Kitty exclaimed. She herself was a-tremble
+with flirtation and happiness. "Why, you're as bad as Mr. Jeffries!
+Though I will admit that even _he_ came out of his shell for once. I
+shall begin to think Miriam's right soon!" She gave Louie an arch
+look.
+
+Louie's opinion was that Mr. Jeffries had never been more completely
+concealed in his shell than he had been that even, but "Oh, has he
+gone?" she said indifferently.
+
+"Yes, a few minutes ago. Isn't everything going splendidly! Why, Mr.
+Mackie's a host in himself!"
+
+"Quite," said Louie, passing her shawl over her head.
+
+"I suppose we shall see you in the morning?" said Kitty. "Everybody's
+coming to help to clear away."
+
+"Very well," said Louie.
+
+And as the piano broke into the prelude to the waltz cotillion she
+left.
+
+But she did not leave that dingy Holborn third floor, never to enter
+it again, without a grateful word to Mr. Mackie. She came upon him on
+a landing. His trousers were French-chalked almost to the knees with
+the vigour of his dancing, and for his next song he had put on a false
+nose with blue whiskers attached to it. He was making sure that the
+adornment did not interfere with his whistle.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Mackie," said Louie, holding out her hand.
+
+Mr. Mackie stopped the whistle. "What, you toddling, Miss Causton?" he
+said. "Why, we ain't properly warmed up yet!"
+
+"I must go. And"--she smiled almost fondly at him--"I should like to
+thank you."
+
+Mr. Mackie was quite conscious of desert. "Not at all," he said. "You
+mean the 'Gorgonzola Cheese,' I suppose? Went all right, didn't it?
+Never known that song fail yet: it always gets 'em----"
+
+"Oh, for more than that. If you're ever thinking of setting up a cure
+I daresay I could find you a few patients. You're wonderful.
+Good-bye."
+
+"Say olive oil, but not good-bye--and Merry Christmas," said Mr.
+Mackie.
+
+But Louie knew that it was good-bye.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+MORTLAKE ROAD
+
+
+I
+
+On a sunny morning in mid-January Louie Causton went to see, but not
+necessarily to be seen by, her father. Captain Cecil Chaffinger
+accompanied her. As they walked across Richmond Park they talked.
+
+"You're sure the walk isn't too much for you, Mops?" said the Captain
+solicitously.
+
+She pressed his arm. "No, I'm ever so much better for it."
+
+"We could get a cart or something at the Star and Garter, you know."
+
+"I'd much rather walk, Chaff. We can take the train back."
+
+"All right, little Mops."
+
+They walked for a few minutes in silence; then--
+
+"That woman wasn't--wasn't a beast, was she?" Chaff asked.
+
+"Mrs. Leggat?"
+
+"If that's her name. I mean, there was no row?"
+
+"Not the least in the world."
+
+The Captain tugged at his moustache. "H'm! Not like you. Ever leave
+anywhere without a row before, Mops?"
+
+Louie laughed a little. "Now you mention it, I don't think I ever
+did," she admitted. "But there wasn't a word said. She knew, and I
+knew she knew. So I cleared out. That was all. She made me some
+beef-tea before I left."
+
+Again they walked in silence.
+
+The daintiest of hoar-frosts lay over the Park; on Putney Heath they
+had passed skaters. The keen wind had reddened the Captain's nose, and
+Louie could not help smiling as he took out his handkerchief for the
+twentieth time. She had remembered Mr. Mackie.
+
+"Ought to have a silk one a day like this," Chaff grunted, blowing
+hard. "Makes you perfectly raw.... I say, dear old Mops----"
+
+"What, old boy?"
+
+"Anything _I_ could have done, you know----"
+
+She squeezed his arm again. "I shall be giving you plenty to do
+presently. And you say he's not a bad sort."
+
+"Oh----" said the Captain doubtfully.
+
+"Well, you'll take me in, and then wait outside till I've seen for
+myself."
+
+But at that Chaff rebelled. "Hanged if I do--dash it all, it's a
+public-house! You'll find me in the parlour or whatever it is."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Let me see: he'll be fifty. Yes, he'll be fifty. Your mother's
+fifty-four."
+
+"You'll remember your promise, Chaff?"
+
+"About where you are? Oh, I'll be mum as the grave. Don't you forget
+yours."
+
+"No. You shall come and see me."
+
+The Captain sighed. His Mops was a strange being. That fool Moone had
+taken the wrong way with her, but a better way might have been found
+than this. Well, Chaff would have a word or two with Mr. Buck Causton
+himself.
+
+They continued their walk.
+
+When Louie had first resolved that she would seek her father, nothing
+had seemed more natural. In prospect, the thing had been simplicity
+itself. But it was, somehow, less simple now. Indeed, its difficulties
+had increased with every step she took. What about Buck? Must he
+necessarily make her so very welcome? Suppose, when she made her
+announcement, he should shake hands, ask how her mother was, offer her
+tea (or whatever publicans did offer ladies), say he had been very
+glad to see her, and let her go again? How, in the face of that, could
+she say: "I am your daughter; I really don't know why I have come; I
+have stayed away a good long time, but here I am, needing friends; why
+I need friends I will explain to your wife." Was it not likely that
+Buck had had more than enough of her family?
+
+Had Chaff, as they descended to Kingston, once more urged that she was
+on a wild-goose chase, as likely as not she would have turned back at
+the first word.
+
+They reached Buck's public-house--The Molyneux Arms, near the corner
+of Kingston Bridge.
+
+"Well," said Chaff, stopping, "what do we do now, Mops?"
+
+"We go in, I suppose," said Louie. Without pausing, she moved towards the
+largest door (there was "Public Bar" written upon it) of an establishment
+that, if it lacked the garishness of a modern drinking-palace, was yet
+not quite the red-curtained, lattice-windowed, Christmas-number
+hostelry of Louie's imaginings. But Chaff, with a "No, not there,"
+drew her round the corner to a quieter door, where small bay-trees
+stood in green tubs. The step had a brightly polished brass sill and a
+thick rubber mat perforated with the name "Molyneux Arms." Beyond the
+little vestibule were double doors with cut-glass panels and a
+diagonal brass bar on each and a piston for automatic closing at the
+top.
+
+"Perhaps you'd better wait here," said Chaff.
+
+"All right," said Louie, now heartily wishing she had not left her new
+abode in Mortlake Road, Putney.
+
+With a soft sigh of the piston, the brass-barred doors closed behind
+Chaff.
+
+This entrance lay in a short blind alley off the main street, the end
+of which seemed to be closed by a stableyard. Somebody over a brick
+wall was walking a horse over cobbles, and a man's voice muttered,
+"Come up." There was a light clashing of harness, and the same voice
+began a soft but strong singing, hoisting itself to the higher notes
+as if the interpolated aspirates had been so many stirrups:
+
+     "No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave
+     For the pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----"
+
+Then a back door opened, and a woman's voice was heard.
+
+"A gentleman to see you, James."
+
+The song ceased. "A what, Susan?" said the man's voice. "Remember----"
+
+"A gentleman--in a top hat," said the second voice.
+
+"You know that travellers sometimes have top hats, Susan," cautioned
+the first voice.
+
+"I'm sure it's a gentleman, James----"
+
+"Very well, let us hope you're not mistaken and that you were hooked
+up behind. Ask the gentleman to wait a minute."
+
+The voices ceased.
+
+Instinctively Louie had walked to a half-open coach door and had
+looked through. She saw a bright little picture. A horse was being
+put into a gay yellow trap, and the man who was buckling the harness
+had begun to sing again:
+
+     "Oryn--thia, my Beloved!----"
+
+All that Louie could see of him was a pair of glossy black boots and a
+pair of grey check trousers cut close about the knee. The harness
+twinkled; the horse's coat shone in the sun like Mr. Jeffries' hair;
+and somebody within the stable was running water into a bucket. Then
+the man came round the horse, and she saw him--cropped silver hair,
+long dewlapped chin, and a back and shoulders that might have served
+Henson's turn yet. And as Louie watched, with no more emotion than if
+the scene had been one on a coloured bioscope, he sang again:
+
+     "Oryn--thia, my Beloved!----"
+
+Then, as she watched, it came over her for the first time that she had
+planned and was performing a suspect thing. She had no right to
+inspect this man and then to know him or not to know him, as she
+chose. He had no less right to inspect her. She, not he, stood to
+gain; cards on the table, then; either she must go away at once,
+taking Chaff with her, or else take her courage in both hands without
+further spying.
+
+Which was, perhaps, as much as to say that she had already seen and
+was willing to risk it.
+
+She passed through the half-open door into the yard.
+
+Yet even as she advanced she had a final cowardice. By a man at any
+rate, anything would be forgiven her, and she really had had a long
+walk.... There was a bench by the stable door.... But she pulled
+herself together. No, not that. She was not faint, only very, very
+pale. She continued to advance.
+
+Then Buck looked up, and their eyes met.
+
+They say of a newly born infant that your first impression of facial
+resemblance is that to which the child, grown a man, will return. So
+perhaps it was for one moment with father and daughter. But, if so, it
+passed instantly. Buck made an upward, deferential gesture of his
+fore-finger.
+
+"Sha'n't be three minutes, m'm," he said. "Now, Judson, the lady's
+here! He's just ready, m'm. A beautiful day!"
+
+Then something in Louie's look seemed to strike him.
+
+"It _is_ for Mrs. Allonby's, m'm, isn't it? For one-fifteen;
+one-fifteen Allonby, Richards, seven to-night. You needn't have come;
+he'll be there sharp."
+
+Louie was looking steadily at her father. "You've made a mistake," she
+said.
+
+"What? Hi, Judson! What's this?"
+
+"I came--I came--with the gentleman who's just asked for you. Don't
+you--don't you----" she faltered and stopped.
+
+"But aren't you from Mrs. Allonby's?"
+
+Louie was conscious that she was becoming pitifully flurried. She
+could not believe now that she had ever thought this would be an easy
+thing to do. And she would have to do it all herself; he had a
+handsome, slightly pompous face, but it was not the face of a man who
+apprehends things by intuition. She tried again.
+
+"You are Mr. Causton, aren't you?"
+
+"Beg pardon, m'm? You see, one ear----" The Piker had burst the drum
+of one of Buck's ears. He inclined his head. "What did you say, m'm?"
+
+Suddenly Louie put one hand on the shaft of the trap and sank half
+sitting on the step. The trap dipped. Her pallor was now extreme.
+
+"The gentleman who wishes to see you----" she began again.
+
+"Yes, m'm?"
+
+"I--I came with him----"
+
+"Yes, m'm--aren't you well, m'm?"
+
+"Don't you know me?"
+
+"If it isn't Mrs. Allonby's, one-fifteen----" said Buck.
+
+"His name--the gentleman's name----"
+
+Then, as the horse lifted a foot, she slipped a little on the step.
+She might not have fallen, but his old and instinctive muscular
+discipline counted for something. Buck had made a remarkably swift
+movement, and his arm now supported her. Suddenly she surrendered her
+weight to him.
+
+"Here, m'm," said the astonished Buck, "come and set down on the
+bench."
+
+Louie turned up entreating eyes. "You can't guess?"
+
+"If it's Richards, seven----"
+
+"The gentleman's name--I came with--is Chaffinger----"
+
+"You said----?"
+
+"Chaffinger."
+
+She was too close to him to notice that he too had suddenly become
+white. He still held her, but slowly half a cubic foot of air came
+from his chest. Probably with a purely mechanical movement he set her
+on her feet. His hand was at his sound ear.
+
+"Will you say it again, m'm?" he said huskily.
+
+Louie did so.
+
+"Cap-Captain Chaffinger, m'm?"
+
+"Oh," Louie choked, "don't call me 'm'm'!"
+
+"You did say Captain Chaffinger?"
+
+Then, leaning limply against the shaft, Louie began to speak low and
+rapidly.
+
+"Send me away if you like--perhaps I was stupid to come--but I
+wanted--I wanted--I couldn't bear it any longer--I'm all
+alone--father! I'm Louie--Louie----"
+
+Only Buck's Maker knows whether even then he fully understood. His
+grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes. Her voice, as she continued
+to mutter broken phrases, possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but
+some other sense informed him that she was telling him that she was
+his daughter--his daughter----
+
+And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come sluggishly to life.
+He repeated the phrase after her.
+
+"Putney, m'm? Did you say Putney?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I live there----"
+
+"You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?"
+
+"Mortlake Road."
+
+Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a century and more
+before he had said to the Honourable Emily: "_The_ Bible, Miss?" Now
+he said to his daughter:
+
+"_The_ Mortlake Road?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"You live there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically remote from
+Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness of the Scarisbricks. But
+Putney was near. To keep himself in spring and condition, he
+frequently walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could walk
+to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings' bus. And they
+rowed the boat race there. Therefore, while it outraged all Order that
+a Scarisbrick should live there, that fact nevertheless brought his
+daughter into the same world with himself. For the first time he
+looked seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more quickly
+than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her had beguiled his
+fancy through the years.
+
+This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with head back, lips
+parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her whole pose an appeal.
+
+"Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through those rare things,
+her tears----
+
+Judson came out of the stable. Buck gave him a curt order, and the
+trap moved away. Its departure left Louie standing by the little bench
+outside the stable door. Buck had taken a step towards her. He was
+murmuring something quite ridiculous--something about "strictly for
+the gentry." Perhaps he remembered that had his little girl been a
+little boy he would have given her instruction for nothing at the
+Sparring Academy in Bruton Street.
+
+All in a moment he passed his arm about Louie. Scarisbrick or not, she
+was going to be a Causton and his for once--just for once. In an hour
+he might be calling her "m'm" again, but just for once--his face was
+beautiful.
+
+"That little girl," he said foolishly, holding her with as gentle a
+fear as if she had been still in her cradle.
+
+Louie's answer was to faint suddenly on his breast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of the Molyneux Arms in a moment. A word about Mortlake Road
+first.
+
+Two houses had been thrown into one to form the establishment at which
+Louie had now resided for a week. Officially it was a nursing home;
+actually it accepted declared invalids and quite well but unrobust
+lodgers alike. Miss Cora Mayville "ran" it; her cousin, Miss Dot
+Mayville, was "sister," and from four to eight uniformed nurses came
+and went continually. None of them had theories, moral, social, or of
+any other description; to them things were as they were. Nurse Meekins
+made Louie's bed as who should say, "Helpers of people in trouble do
+not go beyond their proper business"; Nurse Chalmers brought her
+letters or called her to dinner in the narrowminded spirit of one who
+leaves the systematics of charity to others. All were reprehensibly
+incurious and shockingly affectionate, and so far was Louie's case
+from being peculiar that, in the eyes of the law at any rate, Miss Dot
+Mayville was herself twice a parent. Twice (when, from reasons Lord
+Moone could have explained, the real parents had refused to do so) she
+had signed the birth-certificates of undesired infants. This
+irregularity the registrar for the district held perpetually over her
+head. She laughed, and held other things over his head in return. They
+were engaged to be married.
+
+It was to this retreat that Buck drove Louie back that January
+evening, cutting "Richards, seven" without compunction. Poor Chaff had
+been sent off soon after lunch; there was somebody else to fetch and
+despatch his Mops now. Buck lifted Louie from the trap and rang the
+bell of one of the two brass-plated doors. A German youth dressed as a
+waiter appeared, and Buck bade him hold the horse. Then he went with
+Louie up to her room. He took off her hat and coat for her; he seemed
+unable to leave her. He had learned how it was with her.
+
+He had hardly turned a hair at the news. He accepted it as part of the
+Scheme of Things. To him also indiscretions were of two
+kinds--indiscretions, and the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Only
+a wistful look had crossed his face; he had hoped Louie's somebody was
+a gentleman otherwise than in the top-hat sense of the word; and Louie
+had reassured him about that. For the rest, it was not for Buck to
+inquire into the private affairs of these great ones. He would as soon
+have allowed the young German who held the horse to inquire into his
+own.
+
+"That little girl," he said once more, holding her away from him at
+the side of her bed.
+
+"And you won't call me 'm'm,' daddy?" Louie laughed.
+
+Buck gave it thought; it was not so simple as it looked. "And you
+really took daddy's name?" he asked. He had asked it twenty times
+already.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And told all those young ladies?" (Louie had related the incident of
+Burnett Minor and the "Life and Battles.") "All about daddy and the
+Piker?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Buck found it too wonderful. He enfolded his little girl again.
+
+"But you must go now," Louie said by-an-by.
+
+"But I can come in the morning?"
+
+"Yes. And, daddy----"
+
+"Little girl?"
+
+"You'll be good to poor old Chaff? He's fond of me too."
+
+Buck promised that he would. Had there been none other, the tantrums
+of the Honourable Emily were no doubt bond enough between them.
+
+The next morning Buck had to be told that eight o'clock was too early
+for a visit, and so, on the next morning again, he did not turn up
+until eleven. After that eleven became his accustomed hour. Wet or
+fine was the same to him, and he cancelled all afternoon orders for
+the trap; his little girl must have the trap at her disposal for a
+daily drive. And because his fidelity to the Social Order and their
+own professional tolerances amounted in Louie's case to pretty much
+the same thing, the nurses one and all fell in love with Buck.
+
+And here, once for all, or at any rate for a long time, a cogent
+matter may be dismissed, even as those pagan nurses dismissed it. It
+is Louie's conviction of moral guilt as apart from her persuasion of
+the practical inconveniences of it. Louie Causton would have been poor
+stuff for the hot gospeller to practise upon. There were things she
+would have had undone, and that not merely because the consequences
+pressed upon her; as they could not be undone, she had begun the tune
+and intended to fiddle it out. What she saw fit to hide her historian
+hides also. Louie seized what happiness she could, and it served. She
+was sorrier for Chaff than she was for herself. She would have been
+less happy had she taken Uncle Augustus's way out.
+
+And whether the days were happy or not, at any rate they were
+peacefully alike. Breakfast with the nurses, a morning or afternoon
+drive with Buck or a walk along the river bank or on Putney Heath,
+tea (if they drove) perhaps at Kingston, supper with the nurses again,
+and bed--that was the tale of them. She kept her promise to Chaff;
+several times he came to see her. Twice he met Buck. At these meetings
+the shade of the Honourable Emily almost visibly presided.... Chaff
+tried to talk of "Lives and Battles," Buck of the same--it was not for
+him to choose topics before his betters. And once, but once only, Buck
+brought Mrs. Buck, formerly Susan Emmidge, the chemist's servant at
+Mallard Bois. He hooked her up behind himself before they left
+Kingston, and Louie did her the same service at the end of the visit.
+For the rest, if Louie wanted to see her father's second wife she had
+to go to the Molyneux Arms to do so.
+
+
+II
+
+As the singer of "The Pilgrim of Love" Buck was known far and abroad
+up the Thames. It will be believed that he contrived to get an
+infinite personal pathos into the song; he also made of it, by means
+of those gratuitous aspirates, an affective athletic exercise in
+breathing.
+
+     "No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave
+     For the Pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----"
+
+As he closed his eyes at each soaring, the effect was as if he
+inwardly looked back on that remarkable pilgrimage of his own. Bidden
+to marry, he had married; bidden to unmarry and to marry again, he had
+done so; and at a word from Louie he would have taken up the
+pilgrimage once more.
+
+But while Buck exalted the Scarisbricks high above himself, so also
+he exalted himself high above all beneath him. He ruled the Molyneux
+Arms with a rod of iron. Only mediately and through him would the two
+barmaids have dared to address Louie; and his wife's position was
+altogether anomalous. It was only because Louie would have it so that
+she sat down to tea with them; and, what with her hooks and eyes and
+Buck's perpetual admonitions, there was little rest but the grave for
+her either. Buck subscribed to the _Almanack de Gotha_ and _Modern
+Society_; these were always to hand; but _The Licensed Victuallers'
+Gazette_, which he took in the way of business, was kept out of
+Louie's way. Mr. Mackie he would have torn from limb to limb. Far more
+royalist than the king was Buck; Radicalism was chaos, which word he
+pronounced "tchayoss." Of pugilism, save to Chaff, he never spoke.
+"God bless the Squire and his relations."
+
+And (Louie thought) God bless this simple-hearted father of hers also.
+Buck in the ring had been a better man than Uncle Augustus in the
+House of Lords, and Henson would not have looked twice at Chaff.
+Granted he was pompous; with a little more pompousness her mother
+would have come more creditably out of that old affair. So much for
+the Scarisbricks. Already, in January, Louie loved her father; by
+March his daily visit was a necessity of her life. She had been right;
+her destiny was quite as likely to be bound up with Buck and his
+beer-pumps as with anything in that dingy old Business School.
+
+Of the Business School she still thought a good deal, however. She
+could not forget the interesting little drama of which she had seen,
+as it were, the first act. Somehow, time and distance had simplified
+some of its details without diminishing her interest in it, and, as
+she walked along the Putney towpath by day, or lay awake in her
+white-painted room at night, she wondered that this should be so. By
+the brutal logic of events, Rainham Parva should have been nearer to
+her than Holborn; but Rainham Parva seemed now disproportionately
+remote. Why?
+
+Had the conclusion which persisted in presenting itself not been
+impossible, perhaps she would not have faced it so frankly. It was
+impossible--manifestly absurd--that Mr. Jeffries should have any hold
+on her imagination. Therefore she allowed herself to consider it. No
+doubt the fancies which filled her head would pass and be forgotten.
+
+Give them a month, then--two months.
+
+She gave them that, and more. They did not pass. But that, no doubt,
+was due to the curious interrupted story. She felt as if she was
+reading an interesting serial tale, for the next instalment of which
+she was suddenly required to wait another month. She wanted to know
+what was going to happen among the fair, perky boy, the girl who
+resembled Polly Ross, the lionlike Mr. Jeffries, and that apocryphal
+fourth actor in the piece. When she had learned that she would close
+the book. In the meantime she occupied herself, as serial readers do,
+with guessing.
+
+The spring was advancing towards May when there happened something
+that suddenly precipitated her guessings. Buck still came daily, but
+she walked more in the back garden of the nursing home now and less on
+the heath and on the towpath, and drove, when she did drive, more
+slowly. Sometimes on her drives a nurse accompanied her. Her doctor
+found her health excellent.
+
+The thing that happened began with Richenda Earle. Some weeks before,
+Louie had had a letter from Richenda forwarded from Sutherland Place,
+which she had neglected to answer; and Richenda had apparently written
+again, this time to her sister. Louie now gathered that Mrs. Leggat
+had kept the reason for her disappearance from Mr. Weston, but not
+from Richenda. By way of Richenda and Mr. Weston it had now reached
+the Business School. A hastily scrawled letter from Kitty Windus
+informed Louie of this. Kitty wanted to come and see her.
+
+Well, there was no reason why Kitty should not come. Louie wrote and
+told her so.
+
+She came on a Saturday afternoon. It was not urgently necessary that
+Louie should have received her in bed, but the recollection of the
+spinster's peering eyes held some obscure prompting. Moreover, to
+receive Kitty in bed would be an intimation that the call must not be
+a long one, and she had arranged its duration with Miss Dot Mayville.
+
+"Miss Windus," Miss Dot announced, and Kitty entered.
+
+She had brought Louie a bunch of violets; that was the first of
+several new amenities Louie noticed in her manner. Louie discouraged
+the second amenity, which was a shy motion as if to embrace her. And
+the third showed when, after a few minutes in which Kitty's fluttered
+spirits had become a little calmer (_she_ was not the one to turn her
+back on people in trouble, she had said, let others hold up their
+heads as they pleased), she wistfully took Louie's hand on the
+coverlet. She had cried over Louie a little. Her eyes were still wet.
+
+"Of course--but I don't know whether you've heard--I might have been
+just like everybody else, only something else has made an awful
+difference too," she said, her eyes downcast.
+
+"Oh? What else?" Louie asked a little offhandedly. She had not wanted
+to be wept over.
+
+"Oh, then you haven't heard.... I'm engaged. I've been engaged nearly
+two months."
+
+"Really? Then I must congratulate you. Is it a secret who to?"
+
+"No," said Kitty. "It's to Mr. Jeffries."
+
+Slowly Louie sat up. She turned, as if, like Buck, she had been deaf
+on one side. "_Who?_" she asked.
+
+"Yes. To Mr. Jeffries. Since early in March. You remember he told
+Archie there was somebody?--and," Kitty became suddenly voluble, "I
+couldn't believe my ears at first. I'd never dreamed--never dreamed.
+And after I'd been such a beast--I don't mean a beast exactly, but
+getting at him, you know. I was just as bad as the others--about his
+baths and all that. Oh, I did feel ashamed--as mean as mean--oh!" She
+choked a little. "I don't mind saying it now, but I'd--I'd begun to be
+afraid I should _never_ get off!"
+
+"Yes--no, I mean," Louie murmured, dazed.
+
+"Just fancy, it's being me! That night, when he asked me, I thought I
+should have gone clean off it. Sometimes I can hardly believe it yet.
+I hadn't a notion--not a notion! And it makes everything perfectly
+wonderful, knowing a man's so struck on you, though he _is_ quiet and
+don't say much about it. Of course they mean all the more, that sort.
+We walk along the streets, but he won't let me stop out late for fear
+of tiring me, and he always takes me right to the door, and I'm trying
+hard not to be selfish, but it makes me so sorry for other girls who
+haven't got off--and perhaps if I sell some of my shares to start us
+with we can get married next year--if he gets a permanency, that is."
+
+Louie was still thunderstruck. Mr. Jeffries engaged to--Kitty Windus!
+That unnamed personage was--Kitty Windus! She, Louie, was asked to
+believe _that_, in the face of all she had seen!
+
+"I am glad," she found herself murmuring again.
+
+"Did _you_ guess?" Kitty asked eagerly. She would have given her ears
+to be told that somebody else had guessed.
+
+"No," Louie replied, and added, seeing Kitty's fallen face: "I should
+have thought Mr. Merridew. You seemed such great friends."
+
+At that Kitty broke in: "Poor Archie! I said it made one selfish....
+His father's very ill. We were going on Putney Heath to-day, all four
+of us, Archie and Evie and Jeff and me; but Archie had a wire to go
+home this morning, poor Archie, and so I'm going to meet the others
+by-and-by. But anyway, if anything does happen, he'll be able to get
+married as soon as he likes--he's an only son."
+
+At this Louie was even more startled. Mr. Jeffries and the Soames girl
+together at that moment! She remembered those irrevocable looks.
+
+"So Mr. Merridew and Miss Soames are engaged, then?" she said.
+
+"Well," Kitty admitted, "it comes to the same thing. They're as good
+as. I wish Jeff was coming into a bit, like Archie."
+
+"You say they're here, at Putney, this afternoon?"
+
+"Jeff and Evie? Yes. I'm meeting them at five."
+
+Even as Louie was inwardly predicting that Kitty would not see her Mr.
+Jeffries at five, Miss Dot Mayville entered. But Louie did not want
+Kitty to go just yet. She wanted to know more of this extraordinary
+development of her drama. "May we have some tea?" she asked, and Miss
+Dot went out again. Louie lay back on her pillow and frowned at the
+foot of her white-painted bed.
+
+"It's very kind of you to give up your afternoon to me," she said
+by-and-by.
+
+"Oh, my dear, as if I wouldn't!" Kitty broke out almost reproachfully.
+"I keep telling myself I mustn't be selfish, when Jeff and I have
+years before us--I'm just beginning to realise it--years--and, oh
+dear, here I am, selfish again, talking all about myself and never a
+word about you."
+
+But Louie did not want words about herself. She wanted to hear all,
+all, about Kitty and Mr. Jeffries. The thing became more incredible
+moment by moment.
+
+"I'm sorry about Mr. Merridew's father," she said presently. "I
+suppose Miss Soames is very much upset?"
+
+"Frightfully," said Kitty. "But Jeff's looking after her. It was he
+who persuaded her to go out this afternoon. It's better for her than
+moping indoors."
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Merridew asked him to."
+
+"Oh no. He only got the wire this morning. But it isn't a surprise.
+Jeff saw him last night----" She checked herself. She had no gibes
+about brown-paper parcels now.
+
+"Well, you'll be quite a courting quartet," said Louie presently, with
+a brightness she did not feel.
+
+"Yes; jolly, isn't it? But there, I'm simply _not_ going to talk
+about myself one moment longer. I feel a regular beast. But it's only
+because I'm so happy. Now let's talk about you. How long are you going
+to be here? What sort of people are they? Isn't it fearfully
+expensive? Are you frightened?"
+
+The suppressed inquisitive questions and Louie's preoccupied parries
+lasted through tea. At a quarter to five Kitty rose. Again Louie found
+herself wondering whether Kitty would see her Mr. Jeffries that day.
+Kitty bent over her.
+
+"I should like to kiss you, dear, if you'd let me," she said timidly.
+"You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes. And I'd love to come
+again; I love little babies. Now I must run. I won't say a word to
+Miriam Levey; you know what she is--but I simply must learn not to say
+those things. Good-bye, dear."
+
+And she was off, waving her skimpy hand from the door.
+
+Louie did not know why her heart should ache already, as at a
+premonition--for she had no certitude. Indeed, in all that portion of
+her relation to Mr. Jeffries she had no certitude; but she was only a
+little less certain on that account. Already she entirely rejected the
+figment in which Kitty so pathetically believed. Months before she had
+snapped her fingers at his impudent tale of a shadowy _fiancee_; now
+she wondered whether he had not been caught in his own trap and found
+himself compelled, by mere daily exigencies, to give that shadow
+substance--the substance of Kitty. Impossible--and yet the conceivable
+alternatives were equally impossible! Incredible that he should have
+chosen Kitty for his stalking-horse--yet whom else had there been to
+choose? If this really was a putting-upon the Business School, Mr.
+Jeffries would see to it that his dupe was as known as his purpose
+was secret. That left him three candidates from whom to choose
+indifferently--Kitty, Miriam Levey, and herself.
+
+In her indignation she was unconscious of the pink that crept like a
+danger signal into her cheeks.
+
+That poor, unconscious, betrayed woman!
+
+Good gracious! It was blackguardly and monstrous! Kitty of all women!
+To have "predestined spinster" written large all over you was bad
+enough, without being played upon thus and then cast back into
+spinsterhood after all! And this new softness of Kitty's, this timid
+opening of the heart, this new, awkward unselfishness, these pathetic
+little maxims of conduct! The man must be a cur. Deliberately to waken
+a heart that was sealed, asleep and not unhappy, and then to leave it
+to a pain it must keep for ever--good gracious!
+
+Still ignorant of the tell-tale red in her own cheeks, she found Mr.
+Jeffries vile.
+
+But she must be just to Mr. Jeffries. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps
+there was--nay, there must be--something she didn't know. Why, even if
+Mr. Jeffries could be so cruel, Kitty herself could hardly be so
+blind. Struggle with new magnanimities as she would, jealousy was
+native to Kitty, and jealousy has sharp eyes. No, she, Louie herself,
+was building a fantastic fabric. It was mere common-sense that Kitty
+must be supposed to be capable of looking after herself.
+
+But it was one thing to tell herself that she must suspend her
+judgment and another to do it. That theory of hers seemed to unroll
+itself brightly and convincingly before her again. She would discard
+it when she found one that better explained the known facts. Mr.
+Jeffries was with Evie Soames at that moment. Louie's thoughts flew
+to Evie Soames.
+
+It was then that she became conscious that her cheeks were hot. It was
+then also that she told herself angrily that they were not, and found
+them grow hotter still. The hotter they grew the more she denied their
+heat. Why should they grow hot? And even granting that they were hot,
+wasn't this imposture that was being practised on Kitty enough to make
+anybody's cheek hot? That was it. That discovery made, she admitted
+the heat--for Kitty's sake. That that great, taciturn, clever man
+should be infatuated by that pretty fool she resented--for Kitty's
+sake. That his sleek head, bright as the coat of Buck's horse, should
+stoop over that empty dark one she found ironically unfit--for Kitty's
+sake. She told herself all this, forgetting that she had just set
+Kitty's engagement down also as an absurdity. Her indignation would
+have been neither more nor less honest had Mr. Jeffries engaged
+himself (as according to her theory he might quite well have done) to
+Miriam Levey.
+
+Or to herself.
+
+She lay, the colour coming and going.
+
+At last she roused herself and sat up. "Pretty thoughts for an
+expectant mother!" she muttered. "I'll go downstairs and talk to Dot."
+
+She dressed, and descended to the nurses' sitting-room in the
+basement.
+
+Miss Dot and her Registrar were there; they had just come in from a
+walk. They were telling of a nightingale they had heard sing near
+Queens Mere. "Oh, and we saw your friend again, the one who came to
+tea," said Miss Dot, turning to Louie.
+
+Louie pricked up her ears. "Oh? Alone?" she said quickly.
+
+"Yes. Coming down Putney Hill."
+
+"Yes, she said she was going to take a walk," Louie remarked.
+
+But to herself she cried with conviction: "I knew it--I knew it--I
+knew it!"
+
+For the rest of the evening she was lost in her own thoughts. Miss
+Cora Mayville worked a hand sewing machine; Miss Dot and her Registrar
+played bezique at a separate table; other nurses, in print aprons or
+cloaked and bonneted, came and went; but Louie sat and gazed into the
+fire. When spoken to she smiled mechanically and then resumed her
+gazing. There was no more continuity in her thoughts than there was in
+the shape of the flames that illumined her grey eyes. Roy appeared in
+them for a moment or two--she had seen Roy's name in _The Gazette_ a
+week before--and then Roy was supplanted by Burnett Minor. Her old
+French governess at Trant popped up for no particular reason, and then
+she too gave place to Mr. Mackie. She heard Buck saying again, "That
+little girl"--and then came a wrangle between Dot and her Registrar.
+In the adjoining kitchen she heard sounds of frying, and then somebody
+came in to lay the table for supper. The gas rose and whistled as the
+stove in the next room was turned off. The three night nurses came
+down. Louie had her gruel where she sat, and at half-past nine went
+upstairs again. She got into bed, and dreamed that night that she was
+dancing with Mr. Jeffries again at the breaking-up party. Her hand lay
+like a willow leaf in his. "_You_ understand," he was saying to her;
+"it's no good hiding things from _you_; _you've_ got the key of it
+all. It had to be somebody, and you'd left. There was only Kitty for
+it. You see what an ignominious thing you escape. Don't tell me how
+degrading it is; I know it; but I'd do it a thousand times for the
+woman I loved and meant to marry."
+
+Louie knew, in her dream, who that was.
+
+Then she awoke with a start. The street lamp outside, shining through
+the venetian blinds, made long bars of light on the walls and ceiling.
+The hot-water bottle at her feet was cold. She heard the creaking of
+Dot's bed in the little dressing-room adjoining, and the minute
+ticking of her watch on the table by her bed-head. But what had woke
+her had been the sound of her own reply, in her dream, to Mr.
+Jeffries.
+
+"You'll shuffle Kitty off," she had replied, still dancing with him,
+"but _I_ should have found a way to keep you."
+
+Then, with a deep sigh, she turned and went to sleep again.
+
+
+III
+
+Her boy was born towards the end of June. Her mother did not visit
+her; instead, she sent a letter the chief characteristic of which was
+fright that she had dared even so far to disobey her brother. Louie
+understood, and in her dictated reply made allowances. She wondered
+whether she should write to Roy also, but in the end did not. The
+child was born at three o'clock in the morning; he was hardly six
+hours old when Buck arrived. The old champion stood looking down on
+his little girl's little boy. It was long before he spoke.
+
+"I wasn't let see you," he said, two big tears rolling down his
+cheeks.
+
+"You shall teach him to box, daddy," said Louie, smiling up at him.
+
+But Buck shook his head. "No, no," he said gently--"except just to
+take care of himself--when he's fourteen, perhaps--if I'm here.
+Swimming, not sparring. They're a queer lot, them in the ring."
+
+"You must go now, Mr. Causton," said Miss Dot.
+
+The boy was thirty hours old when there arrived for him a great case
+of toys suitable for a child of four. Buck and Chaff had been round
+the toyshops together. Mrs. Buck, disobeying her husband for the only
+time in her life, came by stealth with a flannel binder that might
+have enwrapped a six-pounds' child; Jim (as Louie had decided to call
+him), weighed ten pounds, beef to the heel.
+
+He throve at once, and continued to thrive.
+
+The pair of them were the pride of that pagan Putney Nursing Home.
+
+The first of the two incidents that may be allowed to close this
+portion of Louie's story was a second visit by Kitty Windus to Louie.
+
+She came at ten o'clock at night, and only with difficulty obtained
+admission. She was allowed ten minutes, on the condition that Louie
+was awake. Louie was awake. Kitty neither lifted her veil nor asked to
+see the child. There was no trace now of her little maxims of conduct;
+she spoke agitatedly, and out of a stinging, jealous pain.
+
+"I've come to ask you something, Miss Causton, and you've got to tell
+me," she announced, without preface. "I've a right to know."
+
+"Speak a little lower," said Louie, glancing at the babe. "Sit down
+and tell me what it is."
+
+But Kitty would not sit. Incapable of grandeurs of style, she
+nevertheless attempted them.
+
+"I don't know whether you happen to be aware what people are saying
+about you," she said. Her boat-shaped hat and Inverness cape gave her
+a little the appearance of a scanty tree with which some topiary
+artist had done his best.
+
+Louie could not help smiling a little; she could have that kind of
+thing out with herself without calling in Kitty.
+
+"My dear! Of course I know they might be saying anything!" She drew
+her child a little closer to her.
+
+"Suppose we keep the my dears till we've finished talking," said Kitty
+coldly. "I mean what they're saying at the Business School."
+
+Louie spoke quietly. "I suppose you mean about me and my boy?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean that, and I've come to ask you to your face; _I'm_ not
+the one to beat about the bush! I want to know who----" There was no
+need for Kitty to complete the sentence.
+
+"You won't know that," said Louie, more quietly still.
+
+"Ah! perhaps you won't tell me because you daren't?"
+
+"I've not told anybody, and I'm not going to tell you. I'd die first.
+Perhaps before we go any further you'll tell me why you want to know?"
+
+"You don't suppose I'd ask you if it wasn't my business, do you?"
+
+Slowly Louie turned her eyes on her. She spoke slowly too. "We should
+get on more quickly if you didn't jump so to conclusions," she said.
+"I don't know what your conclusions are, but you seem to have made
+your mind up about something. If you'll change your tone I'll talk to
+you; if you won't, I won't."
+
+At that Kitty began to sob. She had to lift her veil in order to put a
+wisp of wet handkerchief to her eyes. But she changed her tone.
+
+"I only want to know," she said. "And I don't want to know if it isn't
+my business. But I _have_ seen him look at you, and he _did_ dance
+with you, and when they said----"
+
+"Who said?" Louie interrupted; but she had already made a guess. "And
+said what?"
+
+"Jeff, of course," Kitty replied. "Miriam Levey noticed him looking at
+you first, but after that I saw for myself. And you did dance with
+him. I might forgive him, but I'd never, never forgive _you_."
+
+Louie suddenly put a question. Apparently it was for nothing less
+preposterous than that question that Kitty was here.
+
+"One moment," she said. "Do you mean there's something about Mr.
+Jeffries and myself you want to know?"
+
+"Yes; and I mean to know," Kitty snapped.
+
+"And that's all?"
+
+"Enough, _I_ should say!"
+
+"Please hear me out. In fact"--Louie paused for a moment and then
+rapped out sharply--"you want to know whether my lover was Mr.
+Jeffries?"
+
+"That'll do to be going on with," said Kitty sullenly.
+
+"Then I'll tell you if you'll tell me who said he was."
+
+"I don't see what that's got to do with it, but I'll tell you if you
+like. Archie Merridew said so. There!"
+
+Archie Merridew!--But Louie restrained her gasp. "Thank you," she
+said. "May I ask whether you've asked Mr. Jeffries? _He_ might be in a
+position to know, you know."
+
+"No, I haven't."
+
+"But evidently you've seen something in his manner that would make it
+not quite impossible?"
+
+"I tell you, you've danced with him, and he's looked at you in a sort
+of way--more than once, Miriam says--and you're trying to shuffle out
+of the question," said Kitty, her suspicions aflame again.
+
+"Oh, I'll answer the question! If it had been he"--she glanced at the
+little head under her breast--"I'd tell you in a minute--for my baby's
+sake, you see. But it was not; and you might have saved yourself a
+journey if you'd gone to him first. And now please tell me a little
+more."
+
+Kitty still looked at her suspiciously. "You said you'd die sooner
+than tell," she cried quaveringly.
+
+"You mean you don't believe me? Well, I can't make you. If I told you
+the truth you'd just think I'd made up a name."
+
+"It _was_ somebody else?" cried Kitty eagerly.
+
+If it wasn't Mr. Jeffries, naturally--there was the child----
+
+"Oh, I _want_ to believe you!" Kitty suddenly broke out.
+
+Louie laughed desperately. "Well, my dear, you may. If it was so, I
+suppose you'd get it out of me. It isn't, that's all. And now I think
+I've a right to know exactly what this Mr. Merridew has been saying."
+
+Kitty looked hard at her for one moment longer, and then sank on her
+knees by the side of the bed. She had no choice but to believe. She
+broke into a torrent of words, low-spoken, not to rouse the child.
+Louie heard them, amazed. Slowly her incredulity turned into contempt.
+
+The horrid little beast! But, after all, she was not surprised. It was
+all in his character. Perhaps he had been drunk; perhaps it was merely
+a fancy-stationery idea of humour. Not that she minded a straw; she
+laughed; she supposed she was there to have stones thrown at her; it
+was merely a little annoying that they were not thrown straighter. She
+could picture the over-pocket-monied little bounder, measuring all
+pecks out of his own bushel, leaning up against a bar somewhere,
+probably too fuddled to distinguish his own humorous fancy from a
+story of life with names given, and believing it himself by the time
+he had repeated it once or twice.
+
+The little worm!
+
+"But," she said presently, disgustedly smiling, "_you_ remember when I
+came to the School, and that I asked _you_ who Mr. Jeffries was----"
+
+"Of course!" said Kitty, suddenly entirely believing. "How absurd! But
+oh, I do love him so."
+
+Louie mused.
+
+"And he--Mr. Jeffries--knows nothing about this, you say?" she asked
+presently.
+
+"No. He thinks something's wrong. He's been teaching at the School,
+you know, and of course he must have wondered what was the matter all
+this last week."
+
+"It's a week since Mr. Merridew--did me this favour?"
+
+"Yes. But perhaps Jeff thought----" She checked herself.
+
+"What? I think I ought to know what Mr. Jeffries may have thought."
+
+Kitty hesitated, and then, with a little burst, told her. It was
+curious. It appeared that Mr. Jeffries had been very hard up indeed,
+so hard up that, quite recently, he had actually had to take a
+position as a commissionaire. It was known, and possibly he had set
+any oddities of behaviour towards himself down to that.
+
+A commissionaire! Louie was astounded.
+
+"And aren't you going to tell him?" she managed to get out.
+
+"I must, the very next time I see him."
+
+"You mean to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know. You see"--Kitty hesitated again--"he's left the School.
+Practically been dismissed. He's got some work at Bedford now."
+
+"Dismissed on account of this?"
+
+"I expect so."
+
+"And now, of course, you've got to tell him that you believed this?"
+
+Kitty dropped her head on the bed. She gave a little moan. "I don't
+know how I shall ever do it!" she groaned in the bedclothes.
+
+Louie considered herself entitled to agree that it wouldn't be easy.
+
+Presently Kitty rose. She crossed to Louie's mirror and adjusted the
+boat-shaped hat. Then she came back to the bedside again and craned
+her head forward.
+
+"May I see the baby?" she asked.
+
+"Another time, I think," said Louie, her lips compressed.
+
+Kitty left.
+
+Louie's mind was in a whirl. At her request, Kitty had turned out the
+gas before leaving, and only a nightlight glimmered on the little
+invalid's table. She gazed at it. So she too had been haled into the
+drama!
+
+On the young fancy stationer she wasted never a thought, either of
+indignation or of anything else; but Kitty--Evie Soames--Mr.
+Jeffries--Roy--herself!--What a nightmare--what a pantomime! What an
+incredible genius this Mr. Jeffries seemed to have for getting himself
+into complications and dragging other people after him! It might well
+have puzzled anybody--anybody who had not the key of the puzzle--to
+know which among them all he really had honoured with his choice! Only
+Miss Levey seemed to be immune. Surely, for the sake of completeness,
+he could have found a way of dragging her in too!
+
+Louie had to hold her key exceedingly firmly in order to retain even
+that lunatic theory that seemed to be the truth.
+
+By dint of holding fast, however, the theory still stood the strain.
+Evie Soames and Mr. Jeffries were still the central figures of the
+piece. Kitty was still the stalking-horse behind which, for whatever
+reasons, he machinated. She herself was still merely dragged in at the
+whim of a vicious little scoundrel over whose tongue whisky and
+calumnies ran indifferently, and this little beast was still engaged,
+or all but engaged, to Evie Soames. Yes, the triangle re-established
+itself. Kitty and herself were no more than imported complications.
+The big man and the red-waistcoated youth were still the protagonists,
+and they faced one another over the stupid little head of Evie Soames.
+
+And yet Louie, lying with her boy at her breast and blinking at the
+nightlight, refused to class herself with the superfluous Kitty. She
+did not see herself in a "walking on" part. Though she made her entry
+late, something told her that she would have a word to say--or else it
+was a botched and mangled piece indeed. Of life itself as a botched
+and mangled piece she had no conception; though she kept her thoughts
+of Him locked within her own breast, it was still the bed of them that
+there _was_ an Artist over all. But for a false start she would have
+been on the stage now, and she would have given a voice to that
+pitiful part of poor Kitty's. Say she had not left that Holborn School
+when she did--she remembered that breaking-up dance--had one more
+opportunity like that been given to her----
+
+Then in the darkness she coloured violently. She had realised her own
+thoughts. This was as much as to say that she would have accepted
+Kitty's role--would have consented to be an understudy--would, like
+other understudies, have ousted the principal in time--would have
+topped the bill with a man the latest of whose mysterious activities
+was that he had been a commissionaire----
+
+She loved, or was on the point of loving, Mr. Jeffries----
+
+"Nonsense!" she ridiculed herself.
+
+But nonsense or not, it was stronger than all her efforts to think
+about something else. Perhaps it was her own false start that set her
+wondering, and ever returning to her wonder, whether he had not made
+one too. He seemed to have set up the figure of Evie Soames in his own
+imagination, and probably had not looked at Evie Soames as she
+actually was since. He seemed to have his full share of that masculine
+vanity which will have nothing to do with the compromise by which the
+world jogs on; his rapt, lion's eyes might see visions afar off, and
+he would not as much as know that his shins were black and raw with
+the bruises of the hard facts among which he stumbled. Little as Louie
+knew of him, she thought she knew that. Lucky Evie Soames, who might
+be as stupid as the mud beneath her feet, yet in one man's blind,
+far-seeing eyes could do no wrong!
+
+But of course it was nonsense that Louie should have to recognise Evie
+Soames for her rival.
+
+Yet, on one other point, as she lay with the babe at her breast and
+her eyes fixed on the little flame of the nightlight, she was already
+prepared to make a wager with herself. Her theory was still only a
+theory; she could not prove it; but it could prove itself. It would
+work out or it would not work out; if it worked out--well, Louie was a
+woman, and no woman hesitates for a single moment to put on the mantle
+of the prophet. Indeed, she had prophesied long before. "Circumstances
+are strong," this Mr. Jeffries who had since been a commissionaire had
+admitted when she had danced with him, "but is anybody ever beaten
+unless they deserve to be?" And he had taken his failure in the
+examination as a sign that he ought not to have gone in for it, and
+had refused to enter again. Yes, the earthenware vessel was on the
+point of collision with the one of bronze, and which would break the
+months or the weeks or the days would show. Kitty must not think that
+it availed a predestined spinster anything that she got engaged; Mr.
+Jeffries would never marry Kitty.
+
+And if Louie herself had returned to the Business School after
+Christmas----
+
+Her dream of how she had danced with him, and he had said "_You_
+understand," and she had replied, "_I_ should have found a way to keep
+you," returned vividly to her----
+
+She would have found a way.
+
+Then she remembered that which even then had stood between.
+
+Excitedly she clutched her boy to her--he woke with the pressure, and
+gave a little croaking cry.
+
+This, then, was the first of the two things that remained to be told
+about this part of Louie's story.
+
+For the second of them she had neither years nor months to wait, but a
+bare fortnight. A very few words will tell it.
+
+One evening after the boy had been put to bed she went down into the
+nurses' parlour and helped Dot and Nurse Chalmers to overhaul the
+blouses in which the doctors operated. Besides themselves, only Miss
+Cora was present; she was reading an evening paper. Louie saw her
+purse her lips and then throw the paper away. Presently Louie, tossing
+a patched blouse aside, reached for the paper.
+
+A few minutes later Miss Cora, with a "Why, what's the matter?"
+started forward and bent over her. Louie had gone deathly white.
+
+"It's nothing--I shall be all right presently," she muttered, her eyes
+closed.
+
+Miss Cora took the paper. The page at which she herself had last
+looked was still uppermost. It contained an account of a suicide.
+
+"What is it, dear?" Miss Cora asked again. "Not that?" She pointed to
+the paragraph. Indeed, there was little else of interest on the page.
+
+"I shall be all right in a minute," Louie murmured again.
+
+There was nothing remarkable about the suicide. A young man had hanged
+himself behind his bedroom door, and a verdict in accordance with the
+evidence (which, it was suggested, was largely medical) had been
+returned. He had left a letter for his mother, precisely like almost
+every other such letter, and parts of it were quoted. The young man's
+name was Archie Merridew. He was to have been married on the morrow.
+
+"Is that it?" Miss Cora asked again.
+
+Louie nodded.
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+Louie made no reply.
+
+They are experienced women at nursing homes; especially about
+suppressed medical evidence they are able to draw conclusions. The
+next morning a few rapid guarded words passed between Louie and Miss
+Cora. The effect of them was to give Louie a sudden feeling of nausea.
+Miss Cora's whispered explanation seemed only too probable. That also
+was all in his character.
+
+"That's it, you may be sure," said Miss Cora. "They ought to be
+lethal-chambered, nasty little sewer-rats; one of 'em's saved them the
+trouble at any rate. Did you know the girl he was going to marry too?"
+
+"Yes," said Louie.
+
+"Well, she's had an escape. But don't think about it. You have your
+own little boy. Come into the garden till your father comes and then
+have a nice long drive. Shall we wrap Jimmy up and let him go with
+you?"
+
+That, then, was the second thing; but already Louie had heard a
+prophetical whisper in her soul.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+PILLAR TO POST
+
+
+I
+
+When, in the October of 1896, Louie Causton left Mortlake Road, with
+half the nurses of the home waving their handkerchiefs after her, she
+went to a house near the Parson's Green end of Wandsworth Bridge Road.
+As she left that house before Christmas, going to another one near the
+Walham Green Town Hall, there is no need to describe it. Neither need
+the Walham Green house be described, since from there she went, in
+February 1897, to yet another house, in a street off the Bishops Road,
+Fulham. These and other removals did not necessitate the use of a
+pantechnicon; a four-wheeler sufficed on each occasion. Louie, the boy
+and the nurse went inside; the top was quite big enough for her
+belongings. She stuck to the south-western district; at no time did
+she move farther east than when she took two rooms in Cheyne Walk,
+over a bicycle shop near the Chelsea suspension bridge--which rooms,
+by the way, she was forced to leave at an hour's notice, her landlord,
+a man of straw, being himself ejected and involving his sub-tenant in
+his own catastrophe. She kept to this district because of its nearness
+to Kingston and the Molyneux Arms. By the time the boy was nine months
+old she was living in Tadema Road, not far from where the Chelsea
+power-station now stands.
+
+The nurse whom she had engaged was a link--save for Chaff the only
+one--with Trant. She was, indeed, her own old French governess, once
+Celeste Martin, now Celeste Farnier and a widow. She was a
+Provencale, from Arles. On the death of her husband, which had taken
+place while Louie had been still at the home in Mortlake Road, she had
+sought out Chaff with a sheaf of testimonials, and by-and-by Louie had
+engaged her. She paid her ten shillings a week, on the distinct
+understanding that she must not hesitate to accept the first decent
+post that offered. It was already plain that, even if Celeste could
+have brought herself to leave the little girl to whom she had taught
+the order of the personal pronouns in French, her affection for Master
+Jim would have haled her back again.
+
+Louie changed her abode so frequently for one reason and another. In
+perhaps a third of the cases the landladies to whom she offered
+herself as a lodger found reasons for asking her to leave when they
+saw that her letters were addressed to "Miss Causton." Then, to save
+cab fares, Louie began to make her position plain at the outset.
+Sometimes this made a difference, sometimes none. On the whole, London
+S.W. showed itself charitable or merely indifferent. By May 1897 she
+was at another house in Wandsworth Bridge Road.
+
+She had not refused to accept, easily and as a loan, a sum of money
+from Buck; but thrice she had well-nigh quarrelled with Buck because
+she would accept it only as a loan. Twice, for the same reason, she
+had had tussles with Chaff. But money, until she should find something
+settled to do, she must have. No doubt Richenda Earle would have
+shaken her head and have pointed out that now Louie not only had the
+Scarisbricks behind her, but a prosperous publican also; but Louie,
+though she lived as frugally as if she had to earn every penny, did
+not see why her boy should go short while there was money to be had.
+She took the sensible view of the matter, and borrowed, while walking
+her shoes out and answering advertisements for this, that and the
+other.
+
+Up to the summer of '97 her occupations had been almost as various as
+her addresses. She very soon discovered that her Holborn training was
+of little use to her, and she could not (as also she discovered) play
+the piano well enough to give lessons. What she dreamed of, of course,
+was a comfortable private secretaryship; no young woman is so
+ill-trained or so incompetent but she fancies herself good enough for
+a private secretaryship. Perhaps Uncle Augustus might have helped her
+to one, but she would have nothing to do with Uncle Augustus; and
+Chaff was unable to beat up anything of the kind. Buck's proposal,
+that she should keep his books, had been the cause of their second
+altercation. Common-sense in the matter of borrowing she was prepared
+to be; beyond that point she remembered her pride and Richenda's
+words. So for the present she was spared the worst of the pinch.
+
+So, in the early part of that year, she was in an A.B.C. cash-desk,
+traveller for a History, and saleswoman at an Earls Court
+chocolate-stall. Then, in June, she obtained, actually in the face of
+considerable competition, a place in the showrooms of a Bond Street
+photographer. Perhaps her dresses, of which several still remained,
+helped her to this place. She wrote letters, arranged appointments,
+answered press and other calls on the telephone, and received sitters.
+No doubt some of these knew Uncle Augustus. Robson, of the Board of
+Trade (who came one day), would probably know him; so would George
+Hastie, Robson's friend and colleague, and perhaps Sir Peregrine
+Campbell and others. Some of them, the more sporting sort, might even
+know Buck too, for Buck was still a tradition; in short, Louie's own
+position amused her immensely. By taking her letters home with her and
+leaving a younger assistant in charge, she was frequently able to
+leave the showrooms by half-past four and to spend the evenings with
+Celeste and her boy. Incidentally, Louie improved her French a good
+deal, for Celeste crooned over the boy in French and English
+indifferently.... "The darleeng--the lo-ove--the precieux--oh, oh, oh,
+mais il existe--il manifeste, le petiot----"; and she would break off
+to sing, in a cracked voice, "Le Pont d'Avignon," or some lullaby of
+Frederic Mistral. She idolised the infant; when he was put to bed she
+did not delay long to follow him, for Louie, who had her work to do
+during the day, must not be roused at night; and so Louie frequently
+sat alone, writing her letters or wrapped in her own musings. She
+received thirty-five shillings a week. Her job had the appearance of a
+"permanency." In July she got a "rise" of three shillings a week. She
+also got ten days' holiday, the greater part of which she spent in the
+company of her father. She was beginning to know what holidays meant
+now.
+
+On one of those days she had an unexpected little meeting in Richmond
+Park. Celeste and the boy had gone on by train, and she was walking.
+The meeting was with a girl called Myrtle Morris, who, when Louie had
+kept the confectionery stall at Earls Court, had sold cigarettes at
+the stall adjoining. Miss Morris was accompanied by a tall young man;
+she stopped to greet Louie, and the young man walked slowly on. Myrtle
+asked Louie what she was doing now. Louie told her. "And you?" she
+said.
+
+"Oh, I've gone back to my old trade," the girl said, nodding towards
+her retreating companion. "Artists' model. That's my present
+employer--Izzard."
+
+"Who?" said Louie. The name seemed familiar.
+
+"Billy Izzard. Know him?"
+
+"No," said Louie. But she remembered now where she had heard the name.
+
+"Jolly clever painter," said the model authoritatively. "Nice fellow
+too. Shall I call him?"
+
+"Thanks, but I must be getting on," said Louie. "Good-bye."
+
+"So long. Come and look me up some time, won't you? 25 Edith Grove."
+
+"Thank you. Good-bye."
+
+So that was Roy's friend! They had not gone down with the yacht that
+had lain under the hill at Rainham Parva. But she had only seen Mr.
+Izzard's back. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought of
+Roy; then the sum-total of a long sequence of reveries returned to her
+again.
+
+Or rather, the factors that made that total returned. In spite of her
+broodings late at night, when her letters were written and Jimmy's
+food prepared for the night, she was still unable to cast them up. Had
+she been asked to state her relation now to Mr. Jeffries her attempt
+would have been something like this:
+
+"It's perfectly absurd, of course. There is no relation--nothing that
+can properly be called a relation. How can there be, with a man I
+don't see--haven't seen since that queer party? I don't even know
+where he is or what he's doing; he may be a commissionaire again for
+all I know."
+
+"Yes, but," she now answered herself, as if it had been some form of a
+dialogue, "don't forget that other night, at Mortlake Road, after
+Kitty'd gone."
+
+She did not forget that night. She had told herself that night that it
+was nonsense that she should love Mr. Jeffries. Again she answered
+that critical objector within herself.
+
+"But it _is_ nonsense after all! How _can_ I? I suppose I mean that if
+things had been different I might have loved him. Moping about a man
+you never see is all very well for a schoolgirl for a week or two, but
+not for grown women, and mothers at that."
+
+"Then you mean he's just the same to you as Buck and Chaff?" the
+dialogue continued, as she walked.
+
+"All I mean is that he might have been more."
+
+"Well, suppose you were to hear now that he'd broken off with Kitty,
+and--you know--that other were to happen?"
+
+She did know what she meant by "that other." It was the most familiar
+of her thoughts. It was what in her heart she was stilly waiting
+for--to learn one day that Mr. Jeffries had broken off with Kitty and
+had become engaged to Evie Soames. And at that point she always tried
+to stop the dialogue. Beyond that point lay something that she vaguely
+apprehended might be horrible.
+
+She had no definite reason for supposing this horrible thing to exist.
+The horror, indeed, was that it might exist, and to entertain morbid
+thoughts about something that merely might exist was neither pleasant
+nor wise. But at times she could not forget the promise she had once
+made to herself--that if anything unaccountable ever happened to a
+certain young man she would know in what quarter to look for the
+likely cause of it. And something had happened. Part of what had
+happened she had had from Miss Cora; "A lethal chamber--the nasty
+little sewer-rat!" Miss Cora had said; and it had happened on the eve
+of his wedding to Evie Soames. To commit suicide had been the only
+thing to do.
+
+And of course he had committed suicide....
+
+Then that second voice within her tried to speak again. "Remember," it
+said, "that this Mr. Jeffries, of whom you can't help thinking when
+all's said and done, had suffered innumerable insults from him--you
+yourself were dragged into one of them----"
+
+"Quiet!" the other self commanded peremptorily.
+
+"--and as far as that girl you hate's concerned--Evie Soames--if the
+reason was good enough for suicide it was good enough for the other
+thing."
+
+"What other thing?" Louie, in spite of herself, could not help asking.
+
+"Oh--_you_ know!"
+
+"Do you know what you're saying?" This was an attempt to browbeat the
+other Louie.
+
+"Oh, perfectly well! _I_ know myself--you--us--Louie Causton--better
+than you do! And I know that lion better! Have you forgotten? Don't
+you remember what you thought of him, that if he set his mind on a
+thing he'd get it sooner or later, one way or another? Don't you
+remember what he said--'I wonder if anybody's ever beaten who doesn't
+deserve to be?' They are dangerous men who believe that! And the way's
+clear for him now, isn't it? Of course it is! Why, suppose you hear,
+first, that he's thrown Kitty Windus over; suppose you hear, next,
+that he's forging ahead in his business, whatever it is--you know he's
+as ambitious as Satan; then suppose you hear that he's engaged to Evie
+Soames--married to her. Suppose you hear all this?"
+
+"Oh, anybody can make up an _a priori_ tale like that!" the other
+scoffed.
+
+"Perhaps they can; but what _is_ a murder anyway? Whoever sees one
+committed? Don't they hang men on just such _a priori_ tales, as you
+call it? Suppose that, rather than let him marry that girl----"
+
+"Oh, stop, stop!" Louie positively shrieked within herself.
+
+She was white. This scene always turned her white. She quickened her
+pace, but her ghastly pallor remained unchanged. A hundred times she
+had argued it all before, and she knew the conclusion that would
+presently come.
+
+It came, the conclusion. That portion of herself that always seemed
+resolved to convict Mr. Jeffries of a hideous thing spoke, as it were,
+softly, seductively.
+
+"And what then, Louie? What then? Come, don't be afraid of yourself!
+You know it in your heart all the time! Roy--you remember--_you_ had
+to make the love there; and you want to be _made_ love to, not to make
+love. _You_ didn't find Mr. Jeffries a butt and a laughing-stock, you
+know. You envied that little chit of a milliner's hand--envied her and
+hated her. And she hates you, and always will, because you caught her
+in the dark with that other creature. Yes, yes, I know you were
+overstrung at that time, and didn't see yourself very clearly, but
+look at the thing now--you're calm now. When you saw his eyes, all
+full of perils and stratagems and deceits, all for her sake, you know
+you longed to have a man do all that for _you_! And when he did that
+mad thing with Kitty Windus, you know you wanted a man who would go
+even to those lengths for _you_! And you know that when he throws her
+over--brutally, heartlessly, without conscience--you'll want a man who'll
+be just as brutal and heartless and conscienceless for _you_! You all
+want it! You all love a ruthless man! You know it's the men who are the
+merciful sex when sex comes into the question; you're only merciful
+when it doesn't--just as those stupid men are merciless about the
+abstractions you don't care a straw about!... So suppose--suppose----"
+
+"Oh, stop!" Louie besought herself faintly.
+
+"--suppose it turns out as I say! Won't you immediately love him a
+little more when poor Kitty's sent about her business? And won't you
+love him a little more still when you hear he's engaged to Evie
+Soames? And won't you, when you learn that he's been willing to go all
+lengths--all lengths--for love, love him past all mending? You will,
+you will, you know you will!" The cry rang out almost exultantly.
+
+"But--but--those people--coroners' juries--are supposed to know all
+about these things."
+
+"Coroners' juries!... Do you remember his eyes?..."
+
+Beyond that point Louie never got. She usually rose quickly and went
+out to post the photographer's letters. There, then, were the elements
+of her sum. Sometimes some of them presented themselves, sometimes
+others; more and more she shrank from casting the total. And often, to
+shake off the hideous, fascinating obsession, she did the most trivial
+thing she could think of--went to a drawer and overhauled her
+dresses, selecting the one she would wear at the photographer's
+showroom on the morrow.
+
+It was in her to turn from the thought of a possible murder to the
+shaking out of a crumpled dress.
+
+But she never wore the oyster-grey at the showrooms in Bond Street.
+Nevertheless she shook it out frequently, putting it back into the
+drawer again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That day, at the Molyneux Arms, Buck was alternately at his fondest
+and at his most tyrannical. The fondness was for Louie and the boy,
+the tyranny for everybody else. As Louie entered the little private
+parlour (she was not allowed to set foot in the rest of the premises)
+she heard loud crowings; they came from Jimmy, and were for the
+Pilgrim of Love who held him up at arm's-length in the air; but the
+next moment Buck was scolding a barmaid who had had the temerity to
+borrow the current number of _Modern Society_ before Louie had seen
+it. "Not that I don't make 'em all read it," he said, "but at times
+and seasons, and in their proper places; what with all these Radicals
+and what not we don't want chayoss coming again! You bring it back
+this minute, miss!--'Oryn--thia my Beloved!"
+
+Buck kept his divided humour through tea; then there was another
+outburst. This time it was about a letter that had not been given to
+Louie immediately.
+
+"And how do _you_ know that it isn't important?" he broke out on his
+wife. "Not a word--not a word! I _know_ it is important--all letters
+addressed so are important, mind, for the future! Those letters aren't
+about the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, I'll have you
+know! Give it to her at once, and let Madermoselle hook up the back,
+or your next dress shall fasten down the front, I promise you!...
+What, little man! A granddad, eh? 'No re-(_h_)-est--but the
+gra-(_h_)-ave----'"
+
+For all Louie was able to guess from the signature, her letter might
+have been from butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, all three; the
+name--"hers to serve, Frank Hickley"--was unknown to her. But the
+single other name that the letter contained was known. It was that of
+Kitty Windus. She was laid up somewhere in Vauxhall, and wanted to see
+her.
+
+The next morning, in a shabby respectable street off the Vauxhall
+Bridge Road, Louie rang a bell beneath which, punched in a strip of
+aluminium, was the sign, "F. Hickley, Agent." F. Hickley himself
+opened the door. Later Louie learned that he was an agent for his
+wife's shopping, boot-cleaning and potato-peeling. Mrs. Hickley was
+Kitty's cousin, but the bit she had coming in was not enough to
+relieve her of the necessity of keeping a lodging-house. That it was a
+lodging-house Louie guessed from the number and variety of hats and
+coats that hung in the narrow yellow-painted hall. Mrs. Hickley
+appeared from somewhere below; Mr. Hickley, descending again, passed
+her on the stairs.
+
+"Are you Miss Causton?" Mrs. Hickley asked.
+
+"Yes. I've had a letter saying Miss Windus was here."
+
+"Will you come up? Don't take too much notice of her, what she says,
+especially about tracts; Uncle Arthur's side's liable to it. This
+way."
+
+"Is she ill?" Louie asked.
+
+"Not to call ill. She'll go to Margate in a week or two, for the air,
+though Margate's too strong for me; Littlehampton's my favourite. And
+Bognor. Mind the stair-rod--I must tell Frank to fasten it down."
+
+As Kitty had formerly found Louie, so Louie now found Kitty--in bed.
+Her muteness as long as Mrs. Hickley remained in the room seemed
+obstinate, _voulu_; the rapid speech into which she broke without
+preface when her cousin's step had ceased to sound on the stairs
+confirmed some vague impression of secretiveness. Louie was uneasy at
+the change in her.
+
+"You're not to talk about it," Kitty said, the words falling one over
+the other; "that's what the doctor meant, though of course he didn't
+know what it was. And Mr. Folliott too--the Reverend Mr. Folliott of
+St. Peters. He gave me the address in Cliftonville, quite the best end
+of the town; there's such a lot in a good address, don't you think?
+You know Margate?"
+
+"How are you, dear?" said Louie gently. "Yes, your cousin told me you
+were going away for a bit."
+
+"Right away," said Kitty. "I can, you see; I haven't got to work if I
+don't want to; though I'm not rich, of course. Neither is Annie, but I
+don't like to see men doing the housework like Cousin Frank for all
+that. I've told Frank so again and again. '_Be_ an agent,' I've said
+time after time; 'for typewriters, or mangles, or tea, or anything you
+like, but get out of the house; it isn't a man's place.' And it
+isn't.... You've heard?" she broke off suddenly to say.
+
+She blinked at Louie. Her neck above her nightgown was hardly more
+substantial than that of a chicken; her hands seemed to have become
+as veined as a skeleton leaf. Louie took one of them.
+
+"Always running errands and setting the table--it isn't a man's life,"
+Kitty continued. "'What does agent _mean_?' I said to him. 'Pull
+yourself together and _make_ it mean something, Frank!' I said.
+'You're not very big, but you're strong, and you've got your wits
+about you,' I said.... You've heard?" she demanded once more.
+
+"Well, tell me how you are," said Louie, patting the thin hand
+soothingly.
+
+"But have you heard the news? Glad tidings for all. 'Come unto Me, and
+I will give you rest'--that's what we all want--rest; though why they
+should print 'Come' in red and 'unto' in green and 'Me' in purple, and
+all the letters like twigs, I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear. And
+always Oxford frames. I must ask Mr. Folliott. 'Though your sins be as
+crimson----'"
+
+"You haven't asked how my little boy is, Kitty," said Louie.
+
+"'Suffer the little children, and forbid them not'--how is he?"
+
+But she did not wait for an answer. She was off again--the doctor, the
+Reverend Mr. Folliott, her approaching visit to Margate. And always
+she returned to the indignity of a man's doing women's work about the
+house. It was in this connection that she suddenly mentioned, in a way
+that gave Louie a slight start, the name of Mr. Jeffries.
+
+"I will at least say that for him," she prattled; "I shouldn't have
+got sick of the sight of him; out of the house at half-past nine he'd
+have been, and that would have been the end of him till six o'clock;
+not always bumping into you like Frank. I suppose you know Miss
+Levey's there too, at his Company? He's getting on there like
+anything. So's Mr. Mackie; you remember Mr. Mackie? He takes the
+auction himself now on Mondays and Thursdays; in Oxford Street;
+everybody stops as they walk past; he's a caution, is Mr. Mackie, I
+can tell you! But of course Jeff"--here she became mysterious, and
+nodded once or twice--"Jeff's on the way up--up. It's a different
+class of work from Mr. Mackie's; better, as you might say; he's in the
+Confidential Exchange Department, Miriam says----"
+
+"How is Miss Levey?" Louie asked, at a loss what else to say.
+
+"Oh, in the pink--but the soul's the chief thing; what shall it profit
+a man; and I don't know whether her soul's in the pink. Do you always
+_hold_ with the Church of England, Louie?" she asked earnestly.
+
+There was nothing to be made of her. She ran on weakly, irresponsibly,
+from trifle to trifle, and it was at Louie's own risk that she gave
+her talk any significance at all.... Suddenly she insisted that she
+herself had broken the engagement, not he. She spoke of his place in
+the Company--it was the Freight and Ballast Company; it appeared to be
+a "permanency." He was getting on--on; _he_ wouldn't polish brasses
+and take the lodgers' boots to be mended!... As she talked, Louie
+looked round the poor, neat little bedroom. It had framed texts and a
+picture of a lady shipwrecked in a nightgown; this was entitled
+"Simply to Thy Cross I cling." There was a good deal of muslin about,
+tied back with flyblown bows.
+
+But suddenly Kitty seemed to remember something. Louie was once more
+gently patting the hand on the counterpane when she gave a quick
+little clutch and sat up.
+
+"They wrote to you to come, didn't they?" she asked, looking hard at
+Louie.
+
+"Yes, dear. I'd have come sooner if I'd known. The letter was sent on
+from Mortlake Road. I came as soon as I got it."
+
+"That's all right," said Kitty, nodding mysteriously again. "I want to
+talk to you. Is the door shut?"
+
+"Yes; but don't talk. Let me talk to you instead."
+
+"No; there's something I want to say, and I shall forget it if I don't
+say it now.... You heard about it, didn't you? I don't mean the glad
+tidings for all----"
+
+"Lie down, dear." (Kitty was squatting up in bed.) "Tell me the next
+time I come. I'll come again."
+
+"No, I must tell you now. Though Jeff's sins be as scarlet. Of course
+you heard about Archie?"
+
+"Hush."
+
+"Of course you'd be down on him; quite right; so was Jeff. Jeff didn't
+half give him a talking to, I can tell you! 'Oh, I'll give him a
+dressing down,' he said; he was pretending it wasn't much, so as not
+to alarm me; but _I_ know him! 'Miss Causton and me?' he said. 'What a
+ridiculous idea!' And he made Archie apologise before the whole
+school. And now Archie's gone, and they said it was suicide; but what
+I can't understand is about Jeff's having that black eye, that very
+day. He'd fallen when he was drunk, he said, but Jeff never got drunk.
+He said he tripped on the step; but he never _got_ drunk, if you
+understand what I mean. Wine is a mocker, isn't it, Louie? But I'm
+sure Jeff wasn't drunk. He isn't that kind of man."
+
+Louie herself wondered why she should interpose as quickly and
+peremptorily as she did. She wondered, too, why she should do so in
+the words she used and in a voice so thin and harsh.
+
+"Oh--of _course_ he was drunk! My father keeps a public-house, so I
+ought to know. And they often get black eyes when they're drunk. Let's
+talk about something else."
+
+"Well," said Kitty, with her head on one side, "a public-house is as
+paying a business as there is, especially in a poor neighbourhood. But
+I'd rather have my little bit in tramways. People ought to be careful
+how they invest their money; dividends aren't everything; what shall
+it profit a man? So you think I needn't worry about Jeff's black eye?"
+
+All at once Louie felt an almost hysterical need to turn Kitty's weak
+wanderings into another direction--any other direction. Glibly she
+began to improvise.
+
+"It's horrid," she said, her voice a little raised. "I've seen them at
+my father's. They get drunk, and fall, and then they get black eyes
+quite easily. And," she ran on regardlessly, "they knock themselves
+about fearfully! I saw a man in the Harrow Road one night----"
+
+Feverishly she extemporised. To something she had once seen from the
+top of a bus she gave colour and circumstance. Kitty was impressed.
+"Dear me!" she said.
+
+Then, when the danger, whatever it was, seemed to be averted, Louie
+turned, though not much more calmly, to Margate. Kitty was perfectly
+docile; Margate or that dangerous other were all the same to her.
+Louie had never been to Margate, but she compared Margate with other
+places--Bournemouth, Ilfracombe, Scarboro.
+
+"I should like to go to Scarboro," Kitty mused--"Harrogate
+too--Harrogate's tremendously toney, isn't it?"
+
+"Very; all hotels and kursaals and pump rooms and things," averred
+Louie, who had never been to Harrogate either.
+
+Then, ten minutes later, she rose. She said good-bye. But even as she
+did so she received another start. Kitty had suddenly called in a
+sharp, loud voice.
+
+"Was that Annie at the door?"
+
+"No," said Louie, her nerves all on edge. "There's nobody."
+
+"Open the door and look!"
+
+Louie did so. There was nobody. She returned to the bed again. Kitty
+was once more squatting up. She still spoke sharply.
+
+"It's all very well to be so cocksure," she said, "but if Annie was to
+guess, or Miriam Levey or any of them, it would be all U P, I can tell
+you! Or Evie Soames either! I only told you because you're different
+and can hold your tongue! The tongue is a little member, so the best
+thing people can do is to shut up, you take my tip! And _I_ broke it
+off, mind you! There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,
+without girls making themselves cheap, and if he ever wants to know
+I'll tell him straight--no drunks and black eyes for me! Not that I
+don't forgive my enemies; I'm as good at that as the next one; but
+when I'm engaged again it'll be to somebody who's TT absolutely,
+though he does clean the knives!" Then, dropping her voice again, she
+said equably: "Good-bye, dear--you will come again, won't you? I
+sha'n't be going for a fortnight--the rooms aren't at liberty
+yet--there isn't a sea view, but it isn't a minute from the Ramsgate
+tram--you must come and stay with me----"
+
+Louie left her. Downstairs in the hall she had a few words with
+Kitty's cousin. She asked when the engagement with Mr. Jeffries had
+been broken off, and was told a year ago. Part of the time since then
+Kitty had spent with another cousin, Alf Windus, who lived in Kilburn
+and played the first fiddle at the Metropolitan in Edgware Road; part
+she had spent at Alf's sister-in-law's at Wealdstone; and for the rest
+of the time she had been at the Hickleys'. She was only a little
+flighty at times, and Mrs. Hickley was too busy, what with breakfasts
+at different hours and some liking one thing and some another, to pay
+much attention to her. She would have taken her for nothing if she
+could, but life was a struggle and business was business, and Mrs.
+Hickley had been lucky enough to let her room for the time she would
+be away at Margate. If Kitty really had anything to keep from her
+cousin, apparently (Louie concluded) she had kept it. Probably Kitty's
+condition (Mrs. Hickley added) was a result of the shock of Archie
+Merridew's suicide, coinciding with her rupture with Mr. Jeffries.
+Beyond that Mrs. Hickley minded her own business--plenty, too,----
+
+"Thank you for coming," she said, opening the door for Louie.
+
+"I shall come again if I may," Louie replied.
+
+Already she knew that she would go again--must go again--though it was
+only when she had left the house behind her that she began to ask
+herself why. Then followed another dialogue. The critical Louie began
+it.
+
+"Well, what did I tell you? His engagement's off, and he's getting on
+in his business. I'm right so far, eh?"
+
+"Too right," the other Louie muttered. "Let it rest."
+
+"Will it let you rest--that's the question! Well, what do you want
+next--his engagement to Evie Soames?"
+
+"I don't want anything. I've got my boy and my living to earn. That
+fills my life."
+
+"Then why are you going to see Kitty again? Come, don't shirk it. You
+know why you're going. You're going to----"
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+"You're going to protect him! If that poor creature thinks she
+guesses, you're going to tell her the notion's perfectly absurd!
+You're going to lie to her! If she has weak fancies, you're going to
+see that they're just as wide of the truth as they can be. Do you
+still deny what the truth is? After whatever the tale is he's been
+telling about drunkenness and a black eye? _Is_ he that kind of man?
+_Isn't_ that just as likely as not to be one of his blinds? A man has
+to be cunning, you know, to hoodwink a coroner's jury, but somehow he
+seems to have done it."
+
+"I don't know anything about it."
+
+"You mean you believe he hasn't done it? Then why are you going to see
+Kitty again? Oh, don't pretend to me! I tell you you're going to
+protect him. And why are you going to protect him? (Ah, I didn't think
+of that before, but I see it now!) You'll love him a little more still
+just for that! You'll love him because you have his safety in your
+hands. You'll keep it in your hands. Even if you have to take Kitty to
+live with you, so that you can watch her every spare moment, you'll
+take care she never, never knows. You're planning it now. You're
+going to have a right in that man no other woman on earth has, Evie
+Soames or anybody else. And you're going to take him from Evie Soames
+too, if you can!"
+
+The other attempted irony. "What, me? With my story?"
+
+"You only regret your story because it stands now in your way of
+getting him! Would you marry Roy now even if you could gain a kingdom
+by it? Why, you wouldn't before, let alone now! What are you going to
+see Kitty again for--to-morrow? We shall see! Your nerves are all
+a-jump at this moment; you don't feel it safe to leave here even for a
+few hours! And another thing. Miriam Levey seems to be at his place,
+wherever it is, and you're positively trembling about _that_! While
+you're trying to worm things out of Kitty on the one side, she'll be
+at the other--_you_ know what she is! So the first thing you'll do
+will be to find out exactly what Kitty's got into her head."
+
+But here the normal Louie temporarily triumphed. "What a tale you're
+making up!" she laughed. "These things simply do not happen. Actually,
+you're trying to force it on me that I love a man simply because he's
+committed a----"
+
+"Not simply because----"
+
+"Well, that I'm in love with a man who has committed one. Tell that to
+the world, and see how you're laughed at!... Oh no, it's too much.
+People don't do it, especially when it's guesswork, pure and
+simple----"
+
+So she triumphed. The other Louie held her peace.
+
+But for all that she went to see Kitty again on the morrow.
+
+
+II
+
+It was an error of judgment that caused Louie to leave the
+photographer's in Bond Street. The money she owed to Buck and Chaff
+was on her mind; she saw that Richenda Earle had been right; she was
+not yet out in the open. She sought to diminish her indebtedness by
+finding a better-paid post.
+
+The opportunity presented itself. She obtained, at a salary of three
+pounds a week, the coveted secretaryship. Never mind to whom she
+became secretary; he is now a renowned author; and Louie was with him
+for just a fortnight. At the end of that time he offered to double her
+salary. Louie's answer was to walk immediately out of his house. She
+had now no job at all.
+
+The story of the pinch shall be passed over lightly. The boy did not
+feel it; it was she who tightened her belt. Promising herself that it
+was for the last time, she borrowed of Buck, and then removed to Edith
+Grove, taking two small rooms in the same house as Myrtle Morris, the
+model. But Myrtle had gone for the Christmas season into pantomime,
+and as Louie was out all day, and asleep when Myrtle returned at
+night, she saw little of her. She would have gone into pantomime too,
+but she was too late, and still hoped for something better. Of
+necessity Celeste remained with her; Celeste kept the place going with
+her needle. This was at the beginning of 1898. February found her
+again in a cash-desk, this time at Slater's. The desk had a mirrored
+panel in the front of it that extended from the narrow counter to the
+floor, and at first Louie wondered why clerks and shop-assistants put
+down their money, stood back from the desk, and grinned. Then one
+day, when somebody else was inside the box, she noticed the illusion.
+The head and shoulders of the girl in the cage appeared to be
+continued downwards by the trousers of a man. As she could not afford
+to throw up her job, she continued to bear the grins disdainfully.
+After her day's work she acquired from Celeste the art of crochet. Her
+mats and table-centres and borders for teacloths went in with
+Celeste's own work.
+
+Her improved French enabled her to pass, in April, from the cash-desk
+at Slater's to one at a foreign restaurant in Soho. She still lived in
+Edith Grove. For several weeks that summer she was again at Earls
+Court, but with the reopening of the theatres she obtained a place in
+the ladies' cloakroom at His Majesty's. One night she helped Miss
+Elwell, the daughter of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, off with her
+cloak. She was unrecognised. She wondered how B. Minor was getting on.
+
+She was still at His Majesty's at Christmas 1898; but the New Year saw
+her at still another place--a Ladies' Turkish Baths, in St. James's.
+Buck, angry and disapproving of the whole course of her life, liked
+this least of all; massage somehow brought it home to him. But there
+was a worse shock still in store for Buck. In the spring of '99 Louie
+became an artist's model.
+
+Myrtle Morris introduced her to the profession and to Roy's friend,
+Billy Izzard, at the same time. This also was in Edith Grove. Billy
+Izzard, whose large, boyish face and loose, shambling figure somehow
+gave Louie the impression that he had either grown too quickly or else
+not yet filled out, was telling Miss Morris, with a candour entirely
+disarming, that for some purpose or other her own form was no good at
+all; and Miss Morris asked him why he didn't try the Models' Club. He
+snorted.
+
+"Try it? I have tried it; tried everything. Fact of the matter is,
+it's like going to a Registry Office for servants; you find the rich
+people have snapped up all the best before they get there. Old Henson
+gets 'em. He's got the very girl I want; Miss Gale; but I can't pay
+what Henson pays. And the rest of you are like that egg--good in
+parts."
+
+Louie wondered whether Billy had ever heard her name before; she found
+a way of making sure. The talk turned to holiday-places for the coming
+summer, and Louie contrived to mention the Somerset coast and the
+Bristol Channel. The unsuspecting Billy told her that he had once been
+yachting there with a fellow and had had a smash-up. It was amusing.
+According to Billy, the other fellow had rather fancied himself as a
+patcher-up of broken centre-boards and suchlike, had put in at some
+place or other, and had said he'd made the centre-board all right; and
+he'd come pretty near drowning the pair of them off a place called
+Combe Martin. Luckily they'd been spied by the coastguard, and a boat
+had been put out to them. "Rottenest piece of navigation in England,"
+Billy grumbled on; "there's a place called the Boiling Pot----" He
+described it....
+
+Louie felt a little gush of gratitude towards Roy. He had not
+chattered. But of course he would not----
+
+She did not offer at once to sit to Billy; it was a fortnight later
+that she screwed up her courage to do so. During that time she thought
+the matter out. Perhaps the stark simplicity of the thing attracted
+her. No acquirement she was ever likely to possess would greatly
+improve her circumstances; it would probably be the same to the end of
+the chapter--cash-desk, waitress, Earls Court--Earls Court, mannequin,
+and a private secretaryship with an offer of double wages. At two
+colleges she had learned little or nothing; she lacked application;
+but here was something that quietly brushed acquirements
+aside--something that went flagrantly by favour. It was femininity
+reduced to its simplest statement. She had no fear of Billy Izzard.
+She guessed that to him she would be little more than a more complex
+whitewashed cube or cone or pyramid.
+
+She did not even colour when she made her proposal to him....
+
+"But I expect you'll go off to old Henson or some other swell
+presently," he sighed, as she stood before him....
+
+And of course Chaff, barring her face that was best suited with a
+large shady hat, had given her her testimonial long before.
+
+Buck was furious. The original, genuine Pilgrim of Love had reason
+enough to know what happened in studios. Young women of high birth (in
+Louie's case it would probably be a young man) began to take their
+lunches there, and one day burst into jealous unhappy tears, and after
+that the Pilgrimage began. But Louie only laughed at him. She reminded
+him that she had reason to regard herself as a pilgrim too. At that
+Buck looked hard at her.
+
+"Little woman," he said slowly, "d'you mean--that there is somebody?"
+Louie laughed again, but more consciously.
+
+"Once or twice lately," Buck continued, still looking hard at her,
+"I've wondered whether there might be----"
+
+"How can there be, daddy?"
+
+"Well, the other isn't befitting," said Buck, shaking his head and
+returning to the original point.
+
+"My daddy did it."
+
+"Ah, men's different. For high ladies it--it isn't befitting."
+
+"I'm not a young girl, daddy."
+
+"No." Buck sighed. If he had only known her when she was a young girl!
+But the whims of the Scarisbricks were still the Scarisbricks' whims,
+and as such above his judgment. "But I want to see this Mr. Izzard,"
+he added grimly.
+
+"That you certainly sha'n't," Louie replied promptly. "Fancy your
+taking me round everywhere I go!"
+
+"Everywhere?" Buck repeated, alarmed anew.
+
+"Of course. If it's a business it's a business. Why, Mr. Izzard alone
+would be--dreadful! It's no good, daddy; you can't change my mind."
+
+He saw that he could not, but he still tried. It only delayed a little
+her carrying of her point. In the end--well, she was her mother's
+daughter. There was no more to be said.
+
+So she began to make the round of the Chelsea studios, and presently
+moved, with Celeste and the boy, to more comfortable quarters in
+Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction. This took her farther from her work
+in Chelsea, but brought her nearer to the Lambeth and Westminster
+Schools of Art, where also she obtained sittings, sometimes during
+the day, sometimes in the evenings also. She sat for Billy when Billy
+could afford to pay her. "No, no--no tick, Billy," she told him once;
+"I don't do this for amusement." Of the boy Billy knew nothing....
+Buck, still strongly averse from the whole proceeding, at first
+refused to hear her gossip of the day's work; but, as his silence did
+not alter matters, little by little he began to come round. Soon they
+exchanged experiences quite freely. He told her what Sopley had said
+about his deltoid, Henson about his thigh. "You vain old daddy!" she
+said, stroking his cheek, "I believe for two pins you'd do it again!"
+She took a pleasure in fondly shocking him in the same sort. Sometimes
+he mused long. You will admit that it was something to muse over. And
+so--well, so Louie, throwing acquirements aside with her clothes,
+became, by virtue of her peculiar commodity, economically emancipated.
+As female models, women are eminently better than men.
+
+She did fairly well at it. So well did she do that from the three
+rooms in Lavender Hill (the third one Celeste's) piece by piece her
+landlady's furniture began to disappear. Her own took its place. She
+intended, when she had enough of her own, to save the difference in
+rent between furnished and unfurnished quarters by taking a small
+flat. So her two chests of drawers and her wardrobe were her own; so
+were much of her cutlery and bed and table linen; and so, of course,
+were Jimmy's various paraphernalia. But she was not ready to leave
+yet. The summer of 1900, she thought, would be early enough.
+
+And in one particular at least she was now able to hold up her head.
+She still owed money both to Buck and Chaff, but she knew as much
+about the struggle for a livelihood as Richenda Earle herself. And
+she had not grizzled. Life had not knocked her out. She was her
+father's daughter after all.
+
+And yet, once more, she felt herself her mother's daughter too. The
+reason, which was not very far to seek, was this:
+
+The earlier stages of that furtive romance that in the end had left
+her former husband no Rest but the Grave were known only to Mrs.
+Chaffinger herself. Henson had not guessed them; Lord Moone had seen
+only the resultant scandal of them. But Louie understood a little now.
+She could at least guess what had happened to her mother between her
+first setting eyes on the splendid Buck and that final petulant,
+pathetic cry: "Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me!" By
+sympathy she was able now to divine the sighs, the half-acknowledged
+longings, the half-shamed daydreams, the revulsions, the sinkings back
+again. For Louie now knew something of these things within herself.
+
+Not that there was not harder stuff in Louie. There was. There was,
+for example, that sense of proportion which is humour. How could her
+thoughts of Mr. Jeffries not be rather preposterous? She found it
+difficult sometimes to remember even his personal appearance; she had
+well-nigh forgotten his voice; many idle repetitions had dulled the
+memory of that odd little thrill she had felt when her hand had lain
+in his. True, she remembered these things in a way. She remembered the
+tawny bulk of him, the lion's eyes, the gloss of his hair, the
+modeless fashion of his speech; but these were mere noted facts, no
+more hers than everybody else's. Yet what (she asked herself) had
+become of her sense of humour that she should want something of him
+that nobody else had? What had happened to her sense of proportion
+that she did not forget him as she had forgotten scores of people of
+whom she had seen far, far more? And how had it come about that, for
+one thought she cast on Roy, Mr. Jeffries had twenty? And why this new
+and curious understanding of her mother?
+
+She asked herself these questions behind the grilles of her
+cash-desks, behind the counters of her Earls Court stalls, posing or
+crocheting on her model thrones, riding backwards and forwards to her
+sittings or what not on the tops of omnibuses. Usually she answered
+herself more or less like this:
+
+"It looks very much as if I was making of him what he seems to have
+made of that Soames girl--a sort of _idee fixe_; if I were to fall
+really in love now, I suppose I shouldn't think any more about him.
+Luckily it doesn't matter; it's my own affair. Good gracious, suppose
+he knew! He'd think me as imbecile as I am!--There I go again!" (This
+probably, some minutes later.) "Suppose I _had_ met him earlier, and
+things _had_ been different--what about it? What's the good of
+remembering all that now? Well, it puts the time on down this beastly
+Kennington Lane.... Thank goodness I'm not likely to come across him;
+I can't help thinking something would happen if I did.... Poor
+mother!" she usually ended inconsequentially, "I suppose she'd be
+about my age. I'm turned thirty--thirty-one in fact--shall have to
+stop counting soon. Time you stopped counting when it occurs to you
+that your mother had dreams just as silly as yours----"
+
+And so, whether this Mr. Jeffries meant much or little to her, he did
+not mean so much but that any trivial near occurrence--a cold of young
+Jimmy's, a cold of her own that prevented her from sitting for a day
+or two, or a fall in the crochet-market--put Mr. Jeffries and the wild
+and tangled ideas that seemed to cloak his image temporarily quite out
+of her thoughts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When early in the year 1900 she got regular sittings for a time with
+an artist who lived in St. John's Wood, she never went up or down
+Tottenham Court Road in the Victoria bus without half expecting to run
+across Evie Soames, who lived in Woburn Place. Because she did not
+meet her, she concluded that very likely she lived there no longer.
+But, late on a windy afternoon in March, at about the time when the
+street lamps were being lighted, she did meet her.
+
+It was opposite the Adam and Eve, in Euston Road, and on either of the
+two women's parts there was a curious momentary hesitation. If Evie
+Soames still lived in Woburn Place and was going home, the first bus
+that came would do for her, and Louie had already seen her glance as
+it approached; but as it happened, that bus was the Victoria bus for
+which Louie herself was waiting. Louie spoke; it seemed to her that
+not to speak would be to apologise, by silence, for that episode in
+her career that had brought Kitty Windus in haste to the Nursing Home
+in Mortlake Road. A large parcel she was carrying gave her an excuse
+not to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do?" she said.
+
+Something, she could not have told what, had instantly drawn her eyes
+to the girl's attire. Evie Soames was wearing a black jacket and black
+fur cap, but the wind, turning the jacket aside, showed the narrow
+black and white stripes of the blouse beneath.
+
+"Oh--fancy meeting you!" Evie said, turning her dark eyes as if she
+had only that moment seen Louie. There was something in her manner
+that Louie interpreted as meaning, "Very well, if I've got to be
+cordial I'll _be_ cordial!" "Are you going by this bus?" she added.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh! Where are you living now--Putney?"
+
+It may be that Louie met any slight the last word might have conveyed
+half-way and more. She replied, a little shortly: "No, Lavender Hill;
+I change at Victoria. After you----"
+
+"Oh no--after you!"
+
+Louie ascended; they couldn't stand on the kerb discussing points of
+precedence. "Let's go in front," Evie said, "and then men won't smoke
+on us," and they settled down.
+
+"Well," Evie said, adjusting the apron, "and how are _you_?"
+
+"Thank you," said Louie, "perfectly well."
+
+"There's room for your parcel here. Such ages since we met! Let me
+see, when was it?"
+
+They discussed when it was, and then, "And have you seen Kitty Windus
+lately?" Evie asked.
+
+Since her first visit to the Hickleys' Louie had seen Kitty perhaps
+half-a-dozen times in all, not oftener. Kitty had been to Margate,
+thence to Whetstone, and after that to Alf Windus the violinist's.
+Louie had simply not been able to see her oftener; she had had far too
+much to do. And, after all, nothing (the nothing of Louie's fears and
+fancies) seemed to have happened. Except to herself (Louie guessed)
+Kitty made no mysterious allusions to black eyes. She was merely
+puzzled, pathetic, harmless. She had not that perilous thing, a
+preconceived theory into which events had a fulfilling way of dropping
+of themselves. So Louie replied to Evie Soames in a tone as casual as
+her own:
+
+"Oh yes, I've seen her several times. Of course you heard that her
+engagement to Mr. Jeffries was broken off?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Evie, looking straight in front of her.
+
+"Have you seen her, then?"
+
+"Oh no. But of course Mr. Jeffries himself would know, wouldn't
+he?--that is, if you call it breaking off when a person just
+disappears without saying where she is or anything about it. Don't
+bother to unbutton; I have some pennies----"
+
+But Louie also had pennies. "Any more fares?" the conductor called,
+and then went downstairs again. The two women fell into a silence. The
+early lamplight came and went on their faces as the bus jogged on.
+
+Presently the silence seemed to have taken almost the character of a
+contest as to who should speak next, with either resolved that it
+should not be herself. Louie knew perfectly well what was the matter.
+Miss Soames might speak glancingly of Mortlake Road and offer to pay
+her bus fares, but really she hated Louie because of Louie's discovery
+in the old ledger-room on that examination day that now seemed so long
+ago. The girl seemed to be still in some sort of half mourning--but
+Louie did not want to think much of that and all that it might mean.
+Rather desperately, she strove to forget that she had ever had a
+theory about what might have driven Evie Soames into black and of
+what might happen when she went into colours again. She must, she told
+herself sharply, have a hideous mind ever to have thought these
+things. Indeed, she was so short with herself about it that,
+relinquishing the contest of silence, she again made the small
+immediate thing banish the large shadowy one behind.
+
+"Do you ever see Miriam Levey nowadays?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No," Evie replied. At any rate she had not been the first to speak.
+
+"Oh? But aren't she and Mr. Jeffries at the same place now?"
+
+"Yes, I believe they are--in fact, I know they are. I suppose Kitty
+told you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Poor Kitty! But let me see: was Miriam at the office when Kitty came
+to Mortlake Road? I thought it was after that she went."
+
+"I've seen Kitty more than once," said Louie, compressing her lips.
+The bus was slowing down opposite the Oxford.
+
+"Ah, yes, you said so. Well, remember me to her when you see her
+again, won't you? I get down here. I hope you'll get your parcel home
+all right; it's rather a large one, isn't it? Good-bye."
+
+As Evie Soames's figure was lost in the crowd that jostled in the
+lights of the Horse Shoe Louie did not look round. She was too angry.
+"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "the insupportable little creature!
+Why, I never looked at one of my mother's housemaids so! _De haut en
+bas_--her to me! But I did catch you that day, Miss Polly Ross, and
+you know it!"
+
+But as the bus moved southwards again, she was trying once more to
+forget that white stripe in Evie Soames's dress. She did not want to
+think that anything had suddenly seemed to come a stride nearer. And
+she would now rather not have been told, what apparently was the fact,
+that, whether frequently or not, Evie Soames did see Mr. Jeffries.
+
+The parcel she was taking home contained a dress; she had been sitting
+in it; but it was not the oyster-grey. The old oyster-grey, too,
+served to bring her nearer to her mother and that weak flicker of
+romance long ago in Henson's studio. Not for worlds would she have had
+Celeste see the idiotic looks she sometimes gave that dress in which
+she had danced with Mr. Jeffries. And sometimes she would suddenly
+toss it aside, roughly, anyhow. She was not seventeen (she would tell
+herself), to moon over a flower a man had given her or a dance
+programme on which he had scrawled his name. She was a woman of turned
+thirty-one (she rubbed it in), with her living to earn and an
+illegitimate son to provide for.... But sometimes she was very wistful
+too. She had never (she sighed) really been a girl of seventeen at
+all; looking back, she saw that she had missed that. She blamed
+nobody; no doubt she had been unruly, ill-conditioned, unmanageable;
+still, she had missed that. The thought always sent her off into her
+reveries again; and then, how differently, how much more admirably,
+she was able to plan everything to herself! Over and over again she
+built it all up, unbuilt it again, rearranged it, played with it. Had
+she, as a girl of seventeen, met Mr. Jeffries--had this circumstance
+been different, that particular not been the same--had she nursed no
+grudge against her mother--had it been Mr. Jeffries, not Roy, with
+whom she had kicked her long legs during the vacations at Mallard
+Bois--had she, in a word, had the arranging of the world herself and
+the choosing of the places she and he were to occupy in it----
+
+"Bosh!" she usually cut herself abruptly off. "I shall be afraid of
+turning a corner soon for fear of walking into the gentleman! What
+shall I take in for supper?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She did not know yet--indeed it was only some months later that she
+learned it, but it is set down here--that already, at a Langham
+Exhibition, Billy Izzard had one day seen a big stranger standing
+before one of his sketches, had gone up and spoken to him, and had
+liked the fellow--had liked his hewn slab of a face with the yellow
+eyes in it so much that presently, having an old sketch he was never
+likely to sell, he had given it to him. But Billy would at any time
+rather give away a sketch to somebody he liked than sell one to
+somebody he didn't like, and he still set, moreover, less than their
+real value on those paintings of flowers that he "knocked off" in a
+couple of keen and nervous hours. One of these sketches, by the way,
+Louie herself coveted--a straggle of violets, a few white ones among
+them, in a lustre bowl; and she offered a certain number of sittings
+in exchange for it--another elementary example of the transaction in
+kind. But Billy shook his head. He wanted that for a wedding present
+for a fellow, he said. He'd give Louie another some time--after he'd
+found another studio. He was sick of Chelsea; when a fellow got to
+know the cracks in the flagstones it was time he moved. He thought of
+going up north somewhere, Camden Town or Hampstead or St. John's
+Wood--better air. So Louie could make up her mind to the bus-rides,
+or else move too. He wasn't going to let Henson get hold of her.
+
+But Louie still delayed to move from Lavender Hill.
+
+
+III
+
+Louie's adventures, as she continued to sit, would fill a book: but
+not this book. Her sittings were the accidents of her life; her real
+life she reckoned from Sunday to Sunday. Sundays were the blest days
+she devoted to Jimmy.
+
+He was now nearly four years old, and (as Celeste continued
+delightedly to exult) "existed" and "manifested" indeed. Louie herself
+gave him her bath before she set out of a morning; she did so in a
+waterproof and little else--why, the splashed condition of the
+wall-paper in the poky little bathroom explained. It was the same old
+waterproof she had worn at Rainham Parva. Buck's admiration of the
+boy's chest and limbs was merely fatuous; he himself was teaching him
+to swim at the Public Baths. He had announced to Louie, with a great
+show of harshness, that the money she was fool enough to refuse, the
+boy would have the benefit of; that at least was something she
+couldn't prevent, he informed her, and though Louie scolded fondly
+back, it was a weight off her mind. Chaff, the other grandfather, came
+occasionally on Sundays; he came, for example, on the Sunday after the
+opening of the Royal Academy. He brought a catalogue with him, and,
+taking Louie into a corner, desired her to mark the numbers for which
+she had sat. Whether the poor old fellow meditated the buying of them
+all up, or what else, there was no telling. Her sittings, too, were
+"just like Mops." Perhaps that was more than some of the pictures
+were.
+
+But it is not true, as has been reported, that for Henson's last
+picture, "Resurgam," Buck Causton and his daughter posed together.
+Buck never posed after his first marriage. Louie only posed for Henson
+once, and that was in wet drapery. She caught a pretty cold in
+consequence. She exulted in that cold; it gave her three whole days
+with little Jimmy. They played with tops and balls and soldiers on the
+floor. The boy wanted an ensign's uniform, like that of the fourth
+Lord Moone in the miniature, and Chaff bought him a dragoon's helmet
+and cuirass. Buck laughed because the cuirass was already too small;
+and then he sighed. Perhaps he remembered the suit of armour of Big
+Hugo at Mallard Bois.
+
+Well, if a little money was all that was necessary, the boy could be
+put into the army by-an-by.
+
+And so things might have gone on had they been destined to do so; but
+into Louie's life of busy sitting and foolish dreaming and Sunday's
+rompings with her boy, there came a disruptive force. Kitty Windus
+brought it on a Sunday morning in early June.
+
+Celeste was reading a story to Jimmy when she walked in; Louie was
+putting the last touches to a piece of crochet; and all three were
+awaiting Buck's arrival with the trap--he was going to take them to
+Hampton Court. She entered unannounced, and, to Louie's way of
+thinking, would have been better in bed. Her face seemed unusually
+small and thin; she spoke in a high, painful voice.
+
+"Louie, I want to see you--quick----"
+
+It was as if Louie too caught an instant alarm. Hurriedly she dropped
+her just-finished crochet and rose.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Come into my bedroom."
+
+In the quite prettily furnished little bedroom Kitty began to walk
+rapidly to and fro. Once or twice she turned her looks to the
+brown-papered walls, as if she expected to find texts there; for the
+rest the blinking little eyes roved ceaselessly at about knee-height
+from the floor. Then she stopped before Louie.
+
+"They're getting married in a fortnight," she cried harshly,
+accusingly.
+
+There is no need for Louie to ask who, nor did she know what instinct
+again, as before, bade her take up a definite attitude without a
+moment's delay. She only felt in her very bones that delay would be
+perilous, and that not the shade of an expression must cross her face
+that was not natural and unsurprised.
+
+"Yes, of course; didn't you know?" she said quietly. "Mr. Jeffries and
+Evie Soames, you mean?"
+
+Again Kitty made that painful little sound--_a bouche fermee_. "You
+knew?" she cried.
+
+A simple lie would not have availed; this was so obvious that Louie
+lied deliberately, circumstantially and at length.
+
+"Yes, of course I knew. Of course I did. Do you mean to say you
+didn't? I made certain you did; I was going to write to you. In about
+a fortnight, isn't it? I'm--I'm giving them a wedding present;
+it's--it's that piece of crochet you saw me doing. It isn't much, but
+these things don't go by value; it's the intention. What are you going
+to give them?"
+
+She almost blushed for the lameness of it. As a matter of fact, she
+had intended that piece of crochet for the new flat, when she should
+take it; but to soothe Kitty now was of more importance than crochet
+for new flats. She watched her covertly, anxiously.
+
+"How did you know?" Kitty flashed out, again stopping in her walk.
+
+"Sit down, dear; sit on the edge of my bed; I'm sure you're tired. How
+did I know? Why, I saw Evie herself. I saw her on a bus one day in
+Tottenham Court Road. It was near the Adam and Eve. And--I say,
+Kitty"--dropping her voice confidentially, she made an appeal to
+Kitty's hunger for gossip--anything for a diversion--"I doubt if
+they'll have too much to live on--it takes a tidy bit to get married
+on--and I don't suppose she has any shares to sell."
+
+But Kitty did not seem to hear. She flashed out again.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"My _dear_! I made sure you'd heard it from Miriam Levey. And I wasn't
+sure where you were; you move about so, you know. I wonder what Miriam
+will give them! Something far more expensive than mine, I expect. And
+you ought to give them something too, Kitty. What's done's done, you
+know, and after all, lots of engagements are----"
+
+But once more Kitty flashed out. "Oh, _I_ shall give him a bottle of
+arnica, or whatever it is, for black eyes!"
+
+Louie laughed almost hysterically at the joke. The tension was getting
+almost too much for her. "Oh, come, he isn't a wife-beater yet!" she
+protested.
+
+"But he will be, that man!" Kitty cried aloud with frightening
+vehemence. "He'd do anything--anything--much he cares! Did you know I
+got lost the other night? In Lincolns Inn Fields; policemen coming up
+to me, if you please, and asking me where I lived! Much he cares! I
+believe it was her all the time--he never wanted me at all, and as
+soon as Archie's out of the way he goes and marries her! Miriam Levey
+herself says she can't help thinking it's funny--and I can't think
+what _your_ game is either, to be going on as if it wasn't! I'll tell
+you what _I_ think, if you want to know----"
+
+"Hush, hush, hush!" came from Louie. She had her arms about Kitty.
+"Perhaps you're right, dear; he was cruel to you! And"--she rushed
+into another extemporisation--"I don't know that I would give him a
+present, after all. If one can't forgive an injury one can't, and it's
+no good pretending. He did wrong you, and perhaps he oughtn't to be
+let off, after all. I won't send him one either."
+
+She said it because it was better to confine Kitty to her own wrongs
+than to allow her to approach a number of frightening unknown
+possibilities that began with black eyes. And apparently she
+succeeded. Kitty fell back on her own injury, and became a little
+calmer.
+
+"Oh," she said cunningly, "but you'd have to send yours, and Miriam
+Levey'd have to send hers too--then, don't you see, I should be the
+only one who didn't, and he'd notice it! I just hope he does notice
+it. Serve him right. I wasn't as hard up for a fellow as all that--I
+carried on with a fellow at that breaking-up party. I did--you ask Mr.
+Mackie.... You _do_ think Jeff never intended to marry me at all,
+don't you, Louie?" She peered curiously at Louie.
+
+Well, better that, Louie thought. "I don't think he meant to for a
+single moment," she replied.
+
+"Oh, the _rotter_. Come on, let's send your present now. We'll show
+him!..."
+
+She was quite eager about it; but Louie kept her in the bedroom a
+little longer. Kitty began to speak of texts again. Again she wondered
+why "Come" was written in green and "Unto" in red and "Me" in purple,
+and why all texts had Oxford frames. "You haven't any, I see," she
+said, glancing again round the brown-papered walls. "You ought to have
+'Remember thy Creator,' you know, Louie; it always reminds you, you
+see. What's this?"
+
+It was one of Billy Izzard's etchings. Kitty examined it with her head
+a little on one side.
+
+"It's very nice, whatever it is," she conceded; "but where's the other
+one? I always think pictures look better in pairs. But you can get odd
+ones cheap sometimes; Mr. Mackie had a great sale of Art Engravings
+one day in one of those Oxford Street places--you can hear his voice
+right across the street--and _he_ said they were cheap because they
+weren't pairs, but they'd do splendidly for the middle of anywhere,
+like over a mantelpiece. And what a nice looking-glass! Really, you're
+quite comfortable here!"
+
+She seemed to have forgotten all about Mr. Jeffries again. She walked
+round Louie's bedroom, bestowing encomiums and preening herself on her
+own pound a week.
+
+At midday Buck came, but Louie did not join the party; she sent
+Celeste and Jimmy, and herself stayed with Kitty. She hoped Kitty
+would not stay long; she wanted to lie down and think--think. Nor did
+Kitty stay very long; but before she went she returned to the subject
+of the crochet. She wanted the article--it was a teacloth--sent
+immediately; she would run out and post it herself, she said; and
+_then_, when he got presents from Miriam and Louie and none from
+herself, _that_ would be rather a nasty one for Mr. Jeffries!
+
+"Do pack it up. _I'll_ show him I'm not to be trampled on like the
+dirt under his feet!" she persisted vindictively; and another approach
+to the subject of black eyes caused Louie to yield hurriedly. She
+folded the cloth and found a piece of brown paper; Kitty did not
+notice that she enclosed no message.
+
+But suddenly Louie had an odd little hesitation. She knew it to be
+ridiculous and a sentimentality, but while she did not want to send a
+particular message, she yet did not want to send the teacloth entirely
+without one. The opportunity for the little secret luxury would
+probably not occur again.... Kitty was condescendingly appraising her
+furniture again; on the mantelpiece lay a piece of blank card; it
+seemed to be there almost for a purpose, and furtively Louie took it.
+She scrawled an "L" upon it and slipped it into the parcel.
+
+A few minutes later Kitty left, taking the wedding present with her.
+
+Left at last alone, Louie once more went into her bedroom and threw
+herself on her bed. She lay with her hands clasped behind her head,
+her gaze now resting on Billy's etching, now straying idly over the
+brown-papered walls.
+
+So they were to be married. And after that?
+
+Well, she thought that on the whole she was glad. The curtain was
+about to fall on that drama that had begun at the Business School in
+Holborn, and so there would be an end of _that_.... What now? What
+about those fancy pictures with which she had beguiled herself as she
+had ridden on buses and trams and worked at her crochet during the
+rests? What about those half-whispered, nonsensical conversations?
+What about those drowsy, secret quarters of an hour out of which she
+had come with slight starts to smile at herself? They were to be
+married. What next?
+
+The answer came as if for months it had been merely awaiting her
+pleasure. It was as plain as day that she could now have as much of
+these as ever she pleased. For what it was worth, the freedom of her
+cuckoo-cloud-land was about to be definitely made over to her. Because
+nothing else was hers, that was all the more hers.... Kitty's tidings
+brought it so sharply home to her that she forgot that those sweet
+hours of licence were no new thing. She forgot that it was no new
+thing to walk, in fancy, the woods of Mallard Bois and the lanes of
+Rainham Parva with him by her side, no new thing to call his name down
+the remembered glades--"Jim!" (not, as others called him, "Jeff"). She
+forgot that it was old and outworn already; she saw in it only newness
+and liberty and delight. A Jim of sorts was now hers, ineluctably and
+for ever--a Jim who did not fool predestined spinsters--a Jim who
+would know better than blunder into a blind and stupid marriage--a Jim
+whose relentless hand had not--had not--had not----
+
+But here, as she paused, the colour that had made her cheeks rosy
+ebbed as if a brush loaded with white had been passed over them. His
+ruthless hand had--had--almost certainly had----
+
+It was as if, in her fancy, a prison bell had tolled and a black flag
+had been run up in the morning breeze----
+
+He was certainly a murderer; over the threshold of that hideous fact
+she must step before she could enter her palace of insubstantial
+delights. Stained she must take even the phantom of his hand, or not
+at all. Suppose the joy were to leave her, but the horror to remain?
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+But she opened them again. She faced it. Say he was--that; what then?
+The joy and the horror were fatally one. A man capable of
+all--all--even of that--and her lover! Oh, the moment the shudder had
+passed the worst was over! He had killed; yes, but for a cause! He had
+been horribly to be feared; yes, but without the dread of him too she
+would not have had the whole of him, and she wanted the whole of him.
+_Not_ kill, with such a reason? Withhold death, with something
+approaching that was worse than death? Oh, Louie knew all about that;
+Miss Cora had told her....
+
+A murder? There were things by the side of which a murder, once you
+had made up your mind to it, was a trifle!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are women so? Is it so that they will place their soft hands, like
+willow-leaves, in those other hands that may be black with dreadful
+work, red with destruction, yet, seeing less than man and more than
+man, they care not? Is it so that they will set their lips, as if for
+a kiss, against the mouth of war itself with its ten thousand deaths?
+It seems to be so. Their loved ones, when they die, do not do so of
+fevers and shattered tissues, but of their own clear and trusted
+heroism. "Go," they say to the next one, even to the little Jimmy,
+"go--and come back if you may--and, though wooden props keep you
+together, you shall be beautiful to the mother who bore you--to the
+wife whose task it must be to take you to pieces and put you together
+again--to the woman who, because of her own heavenly dreaming, cannot
+think of the fiend you were in that hour when the call sounded and you
+dropped the point of your lance to the charge."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But one thing was clear: her dreams must remain dreams. If she would
+keep what was left her, she must never, never, never see him now!
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+THE CONSOLIDATION
+
+
+I
+
+The habit of sitting for artists leaves its mark on a woman. This mark
+is the lack of mystery--the "looked at" appearance. But it has its
+compensations. Chief of these are a physical unconsciousness, an
+absence of coquetry, and a liberation of the mind so complete that a
+sudden recall has all the effects of shock. Thus, a model posing for a
+whole class of men has been known to faint because she has been seen
+through the skylight by a "man" who mended the roof.
+
+In some such state of liberation Louie, on an afternoon late in the
+June of 1900, posed for Billy Izzard. It was in Billy's new studio, a
+large upper room in Camden Town, opposite the Cobden Statue. The place
+was so light that Billy had actually had to cut some of the light off.
+The upper part of the far window, that towards which Louie's face was
+turned, was darkened by a linen blind; the lower part of it was
+shrouded with tissue paper. The whole corner was enclosed by a screen.
+It was there that Billy did his etching. Behind another screen was
+Billy's bed. At present Louie's clothes lay on it.
+
+It was half-past five, but the best light of a changeable day. They
+had had tea; the tray with the tea-things lay on the floor; and,
+except that he grunted occasionally, "Raise your hand a bit," or "Head
+a bit more round," Billy's absorption in his work was complete. He had
+even worked through the short rests. During these intervals Louie had
+crocheted. The crochet, only a little whiter than the foot near it,
+lay on the throne now.
+
+Louie was not thinking; you can hardly call it thought when any trifle
+on which your eyes rest gives your mind its cue. Louie's eyes, the
+only parts of her that moved, had rested on the crochet, and that had
+brought Celeste into her mind. Celeste was leaving her; it had
+something to do with phylloxera and a brother's vines; Celeste,
+between two loves, must leave the boy and return to Provence. Then
+Louie's eyes fell on the chair in which Billy etched, and presently
+Kitty occupied her--Kitty, who liked her etchings in pairs, but
+surmised that odd ones came cheaper. Louie had really no choice but to
+do what she was going to do about Kitty. Jimmy must have somebody
+during the day, and Louie, moreover, must have ten shillings a week
+from somewhere. As a matter of fact, Kitty had agreed to pay her
+fifteen shillings, and, in the intervals of looking after Jimmy,
+proposed to type. Then, as her eyes moved to the screen round the bed,
+she remembered that her boots must be resoled. They would carry
+another sole, and it had been raining off and on during the greater
+part of the day. And then something else brought little Jimmy into her
+mind again.
+
+For a wonder, she had not thought of a bigger Jimmy all the afternoon.
+But on other afternoons she had. Billy sometimes remarked on a passing
+tender colour; she always had to restrain a smile at that. Her tender
+colour? There was not a particle of that looked-at superficies of hers
+that, often and often, did not answer to a secret thought.... Perhaps
+Billy, plain common-sense man, could have told her what those secret
+thoughts really meant. Perhaps Billy, sensitive painter, could have
+told her how sweet and pale and charming things must shun comparison
+with the robuster stuff. As, in some delicate pastoral or _fete
+galante_, art might turn its happy eyes inward on itself, so that the
+putting on of a slipper and the nymph's hand trembling in a silken
+fold and the promised favour of a smiling look hardly die because they
+hardly live, so Louie too turned her eyes inwards. What she found
+within herself still sufficed her.
+
+"Better rest a bit," said Billy, looking up as he began to scrub in a
+background.
+
+Louie stepped down from the throne, cast a wrap about her shoulders,
+and began to crochet again.
+
+Again she hoped she was not doing an unwise thing in having Kitty to
+come and live with her. But the flat was at last taken. It was a top
+one in the New King's Road. A Board School now blocks out the pretty
+view that Louie presently had at night, of the distant cupful of light
+that was Earls Court, with the illuminated advertisement of the Big
+Wheel appearing and disappearing as the structure slowly turned. Well,
+Kitty's fifteen shillings would pay the rent, and the experiment would
+be a good thing for Kitty also. Louie had furniture enough--in fact,
+it would be a very good thing--all round.
+
+"Come along--time," Billy grunted. "And I say, can you stop a bit
+later to-night? I've got to go out, but if I don't finish this thing
+to-day I never shall----"
+
+Louie mounted the throne again, and again the silence was broken only
+by Billy's stepping back from his canvas and forward again.
+
+The light began to fail, and Billy began to work the more furiously.
+"Give me just another ten minutes," he muttered, a brush between his
+teeth; "this'll make some of 'em sit up, I think; it's _painting_,
+this is!... But I don't know, perhaps I'd better let it go as it is;
+it's a job, anyway. All right, Louie, thanks.... Right-o, Jeffries; I
+didn't think it was so late."
+
+The last words were spoken to the man who had knocked at the door and,
+without waiting for a reply, walked in.
+
+Louie had heard the steps on the stairs; perhaps--she could not
+tell--she had already thought it unusual that the steps had not
+stopped at the water-tap on the landing below that was the supply for
+the two upper floors. Billy used that tap when he washed his brushes;
+he was looking for his palette-knife now.
+
+But Louie neither saw Billy nor heard his grumblings because the knife
+was not to hand. She was looking past Billy, past the easel with the
+study upon it, at the man who had entered. For one moment she was
+wondering that she had not always known, not only that he would come
+some day, but that he would come that day; the next moment she had
+told herself that she had always known that.
+
+Of her whole body, from the foot near the crochet to the last brown
+hair of her head, her lips were the only portion that did not receive
+him with a lightsome, quiet, fair, trusting smile.
+
+Absurd ever to have supposed that they would never meet! Wise to have
+known so perfectly what would happen when they did!
+
+What had happened? Oh, every particle of her seemed to sing to every
+other particle what had happened! Those pittings of her profession?
+Oh, there they went, washed out, all out, in the baptism of a look!
+Her fancies--those idle promises to pay drawn on a non-existent bank?
+Oh, they had gone, and here was payment itself, the solid, actual
+cash! She was suddenly rich. As she stood there, rich in seeing him,
+rich in being seen by him, every one of those worthless bills was
+honoured in full. She could have laughed at her past poverty. She
+could have cried aloud: "Jim, I'm here--look at me--no, not my eyes
+only----"
+
+And he too seemed to be as she had always known he would be--singled
+out, down to his very manner of wearing his clothes--among men.
+Stupid, that of all those times she had thought of him she had never
+once thought of him as in evening-dress! But that, in all this
+perfection, was only one more reciprocated perfection: she so--he
+so----
+
+"Oh, Jim--_not_ my eyes only!" she well-nigh cried again.
+
+But the lion's eyes never moved from her own grey ones.
+
+"Right, Louie, I've finished," said Billy, looking up from his
+palette-scraping.
+
+And within herself she wailed: "Oh, _so_ soon? Must it be over
+already? Must I sit for men all these days, and then, when _my_ man
+comes----? Oh, a moment!... Well, he shall see me move--and I won't
+look at him--I'll tell myself--oh, just one more fancy!--that he isn't
+here."
+
+She descended from the throne and passed behind the screen.
+
+Was it strange that already, as she dressed in Billy's studio, she
+knew that she would never dress in an artist's studio again, and made
+of her fastening of hooks and strings a grave little
+ceremonial?--(There! With that fastening yet another chapter was
+closed; oh, trust her, there should be no reopening of it!)--Or that
+she should have a little shiver, at the thought that he might not have
+come? Suppose he had knocked at the door, and Billy had cried:
+"Half-a-moment--slide, Louie--come in!" Suppose--but the tremor
+passed. She had always known he would come; she had known it just as
+she had known everything else about him. Again every fibre of her was
+joyous. She was here on the earth--she, Louie Causton, daughter of a
+pugilist and of a Scarisbrick, gardener, typist, artists' model, and
+all else she might ever be--that she might know all about this man. To
+have ever doubted it would have been not to deserve him. And here he
+was, in the same room with her--he, beyond the screen, she behind
+it--only the two of them, for Billy had gone down to the tap to wash
+his brushes.
+
+_Now_ what should she do?
+
+No, she would not go out and join him; not as she now was; not a skirt
+and blouse, after that fairness. Nor yet would she speak. Surely it
+was for him to speak now! She had been speaking to him, singing to
+him, all music to his eyes; there does come a point (she told herself)
+when the woman ceases to do everything; he must speak now. She knew he
+would speak. So she stood, upright, close to the screen, waiting.
+
+He did speak, and like smoke another flock of fancies fled for ever.
+They were the fancies in which she had tried to remember his voice. It
+came, henceforth unforgettable, pure rest after her strivings. He too
+seemed to be near the screen; only a screen between them; but the
+phrases that were breaking their long silence were merely automatic.
+He was saying something about seeing her presently; she heard him
+pronounce the word "Piccadilly," and the most familiar image of
+Piccadilly sprang up in her mind. "Swan and Edgar's," she was
+whispering back over the screen.
+
+"No, no." This came quickly, protestingly.
+
+"At half-past ten," she whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then the dialogue was at an end. Billy had returned. Some moments
+later she heard more words, a laugh, and the closing of a door. She
+realised that he had gone.
+
+Only then did she come out from behind the screen.
+
+Billy was wriggling into his overcoat and muttering something about
+being late. "Got to go and keep that chap's wife company," he said.
+"Regular little Philistine, she is; I suppose that's why I go; can't
+stand these blessed artists. I say, he'd no idea I'd a model, you
+know--sorry."
+
+"All right, Billy," said Louie demurely.... "Sorry!" So was not she!
+
+"And I say, I'm afraid I shall have to pay you next time. I'm cleaned
+out."
+
+"It doesn't matter. Send me a steak in as you go out; I'll have my
+dinner here."
+
+"Right. Odd-looking chap that, isn't he? A good sort though. I picked
+him up at the Langham one night. I took this place from him when he
+got married."
+
+"He lived here?" (What, another wonder?)
+
+"Yes. Well, I'll send your steak in. Good-bye." Billy bolted.
+
+He had lived there too! How ex--how entirely to have been expected!
+Louie walked round the room, looking at the walls, the ceiling, out of
+the windows, anew. He had lived there: read, eaten, slept there; what
+a coinci--what a perfectly natural circumstance! Then, leaning against
+the wall, she found Billy's study. Her eyes devoured it. She set it
+against the throne, and then walked to where he had stood when he had
+entered. She gave a rich, low laugh; she told herself what a fool she
+was; but folly so lovely made life. Again she looked at the wet
+painting. She had looked so to him----
+
+She put the study back against the wall, but in another place. "That
+study's mine, Billy," she muttered; "mine, not yours or anybody
+else's, do you understand? You gave him my violets; he's welcome to
+them; this belongs to me. Jim! Jim!" she murmured.
+
+"Well, I suppose it's crochet now," she went on by-and-by. "Do you
+realise, Louie Causton, that you've sat your last? And have you any
+idea of what you're going to do instead? It looks as though Kitty's
+fifteen shillings would come in useful after all."
+
+As if otherwise she might have forgotten it, she repeated to herself,
+over and over again, that she was to meet him at Swan and Edgar's at
+half-past ten. At one of the repetitions--it was as she was cooking
+her steak over the little gas-ring that, perhaps, had once been
+his--it occurred to her why he had muttered that quick "No, no," when
+she had proposed that meeting-place. She glowed, she laughed through a
+sheen of tender tears. "Dear, dear one! _You_ don't think that corner
+good enough for us, my sweet little outcast and me. Well, we won't
+thank you; we won't belittle him by thanking him, will we, Jimmy?----"
+
+But she did not promise not to look her thanks when she met him at
+Swan and Edgar's at half-past ten.
+
+Presently she pushed her plate away; she could not eat. She had felt
+her bosom rise once more. It had risen as it had never risen for
+anything or anybody save for the little Jimmy, and it rose, it seemed
+to her, for a similar reason. For in her hands even his physical
+safety lay. He was to be mothered too. Her unfelt arms were to be
+about him, the milk of her protection to be his life. By his strength
+he had thought to give himself to somebody else, but by his need he
+was still hers. A gladness richer than she had ever, ever known
+swelled within her. He, the great weakling--she, the strong one, to
+cherish and support----
+
+"Jim!" she murmured, smiling, uplifted, lost. It was as if his weary,
+tawny head was on her breast.
+
+And she was going to hear his voice again, at Swan and Edgar's, at
+half-past ten.
+
+She feared that her own emotion might have exhausted her ere ever the
+hour came.
+
+
+II
+
+"Your hat will be spoiled if you don't take your share of the
+umbrella," she said. It was a silk hat, and she supposed that silk
+hats cost money. A fine, persistent rain was falling.
+
+She thought that he answered that it didn't matter.
+
+"Then you might at least turn your trousers up." Her own shabby old
+grey coat didn't matter, but his trousers----
+
+He seemed to be on the point of replying that they didn't matter
+either, but changed his mind. He stooped and turned them up. She held
+the umbrella while he did so, and then gave it to him again,
+replacing her right hand where it had been--on his left forearm.
+
+It was on these mere externals of him--his hat, his coat, his
+trousers, his boots--that she had hardly for a moment ceased to feed
+her eyes. Anything else might wait; for the present the stuff of his
+sleeve was more to her than the stuff of his soul. She luxuriated
+shamelessly in the smallest actualities of his presence; why, even
+mirth stood but a remove away. His overcoat, for example: it was not
+that old tawny one that had made him so much like a lion, but it was
+an old one for all that; was she _never_ to see her man in a new
+overcoat? Jim and his overcoats! But the rest of him was beyond
+criticism. Certainly he must be making money. She wished she could
+have called money to him with a wand, conjured it to him, as much as
+ever he wanted. Had it not been that she would have had to take her
+hand from his sleeve, she would have liked to step back to look at his
+great church-door of a back again. Of his face she could see little,
+but that did not prevent her looking until it would hardly have
+surprised her had he flushed and said, "Don't gloat over me like
+that." His hat was tilted down, the large peaks of his overcoat collar
+projected like wings.
+
+No, she did not want to know what he thought or felt; bother all that
+part of him! When her thirsty senses had drunk their full, then would
+be time enough for the other things.
+
+They were walking somewhere behind the Horse Guards. Stretching before
+them was the long, empty avenue of the Mall. She was looking at the
+perspective of lamps and trees and drizzle, when suddenly he spoke.
+Instantly all her faculties seemed to become one overgrown faculty,
+that of hearing. Not that he was saying anything; he was, as a matter
+of fact, only asking her whether she was warm; and she replied,
+"Quite." She was almost amused that he should ask. His nearness warmed
+her more than did her garments. Her hand thrilled deliciously on his
+sleeve again....
+
+Oh, the satisfaction of that, just that, after all her past
+inquisitions into his soul!
+
+But come to speech they must, and that very soon; and perhaps that
+curious magnification of trifles made it easier. Indeed, half the
+formidableness of the single question she wanted to ask him had
+vanished already. To say to him, now or in a few moments: "Did you
+kill Archie Merridew?" seemed somehow not very much more unusual than
+asking him the time. Now that she came to think of it, even that
+question seemed less important than another one: "Can you kill
+somebody and still be happy?" She hoped in her heart that he could. It
+would be his justification. Had it been an unrighteous killing, that
+would have been another matter; as it was, she would have had him
+unhappy only had he not killed. And, as he showed no sign of breaking
+silence, she might as well ask him that now.
+
+So, reluctantly turning her eyes from his face and looking ahead into
+the haze of the rain, she suddenly said: "Are you happy?"
+
+She wasn't surprised that he didn't reply at once. Of course men
+didn't. They had their usual formalities to go through, of "Why do you
+ask?" and so forth--a sort of routine before they could answer a plain
+question. As he began to go through it now she made a little impatient
+movement. She didn't want all that. Then he deigned to reply to her
+inferior intelligence. Yes, he was happy.
+
+"You _are_?" she said, with an exultant little leap.
+
+Yes, he was; but again, apparently, he couldn't say a thing and leave
+it. In the middle of more stupid, logical, masculine things (he seemed
+to be qualifying his statement with something or other about his
+conduct to Kitty Windus) she cut him short.
+
+"Tell me," she said, repeating the little impatient gesture, "you
+killed that boy, didn't you?"
+
+They had been following the railings that divided the Mall from St.
+James's Park, but she had stopped to ask her question. And she was
+looking full at him now. But she could not see him very well; a lamp
+and a plane-tree made all an obscurity of vague shadows and wet
+reflections. But then he stepped slowly back, taking her umbrella with
+him, and twice, as he held the umbrella unsteadily, the light came and
+went on his cheek and chin; and then, as he took a step farther back
+still, the umbrella bobbed on the railings, from the points of it came
+little bright slivers of drops, and she found herself searching under
+a lamplit sector of alpaca for his eyes.
+
+The danger of asking, actually, a question you have asked, but not
+actually, a hundred times before, is that your own mere familiarity
+with it throws you out in your calculation. Now she found herself
+suddenly hoping that what she felt to be working beyond the umbrella
+edge--for she felt it rather than saw it--was not fear.
+
+For, of course, she had miscalculated a little--had been stupid to
+think that it was all as old a story to him as it was to her.
+Obviously it would not at once occur to him that there had been
+nothing to find out, but that instead the whole thing had been merely
+enacted before her eyes; he was sure to be thinking that on some
+point of evidence he had been betrayed. What sort of point that could
+be, unless it had something to do with the black eyes that seemed to
+haunt Kitty, he might know, but she could not guess; and all at once
+she had a purely physical shrinking. She would rather not know. She
+could string herself up to the thought of murder, but the bestial
+details--no, not those. Those were his affairs. They were to be taken
+for granted as things necessarily involved. And already she was on the
+point of feeling herself a little disappointed in him. For in the
+shadow of the umbrella her eyes had now found his; his head was a
+little turned, and she saw the whites of them.
+
+It _was_ fear. She, it seemed, could contemplate unafraid a sacrifice
+that he quaked to have carried out.
+
+But as, with another little falling of drops from the umbrella, he
+steadied himself and stepped forward from the railings again,
+additional light came to her. It was fear, but not that fear, that
+haunted the amber eyes. The fear was of herself. He feared, not the
+information she possessed, but her whole understanding and
+condemnation. He feared lest she also should say: "It was murder; you
+are here to be judged; me too, with all the world, you must account
+against you; I set my mark too upon your brow."
+
+And as he appeared sorrowfully to acquiesce in that also, nothing
+could have seemed lonelier nor more touching than the quietly spoken
+words with which he held the umbrella over her again:
+
+"You're getting wet."
+
+It was as though he told her that though he went outcast she must not
+get wet.
+
+Her answer was to put her hand under his sleeve again. They walked on.
+
+But he had not answered her question. Perhaps he thought he had: to
+all intents and purposes he had; but she wanted, not so much the word,
+as that he should not withhold the word. He was walking slowly,
+heavily, like a tower by her side; she had the sense of his fearful
+overweight; she would give him time. They continued to walk, their
+mingled shadow on the pavement as they passed each lamp creeping away
+before them as if the beam of some lighthouse had had the sinister
+property of obscurity.
+
+Then, within a little distance of Buckingham Palace, she stopped
+again. Again their eyes met under the wet, black mushroom of the
+umbrella.
+
+"You did kill that boy, didn't you?"
+
+He had a slight start. It seemed to her that he even apologised for
+having kept her waiting for the answer. Formerly she had seen
+stratagems in his eyes; now, as he dipped the umbrella for a moment
+and stood full in the light of another lamp, she looked only into
+grave, candid depths.
+
+"Yes," he said. "You know I killed him."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Again her hand slid, as if of itself, back into its place. Again they
+walked on. The next thing that came to her was another ridiculous yet
+oddly precious trifle. She wore kid gloves; before, when she had
+danced with him in an old frock of oyster-grey, she had worn white
+ones; must she (she wondered) always wear gloves with him, as he
+always wore old overcoats? She longed to take one glove off; yet
+she--she, who had met Roy by the stile at night--for very bashfulness
+dared not. The circumstance struck her; how was that? Gifts of
+understanding for her he had: had he that gift too, the gift of her
+own bashfulness back again? Up went her spirit on wings....
+
+Yes, it was that--or for a night at least she would have it so. As
+impossibilities are reconciled in a dream, so he seemed, by his mere
+towerlike presence, to resolve in one large atonement, her own life as
+it had been and the sweet and virginal and dear smiling thing that it
+might have been. In no less a miracle than that she seemed to herself
+to be walking. He could not only have kissed her; he could have had
+her first kiss. He could not only have turned, as he did turn, leaning
+against the pillar-box by the Equerries' entrance of the Palace, to
+look at her again, but he could have received in return--did receive
+in return--such a look as she knew he also could hardly have had the
+like of before. And it made no difference--as in a dream such a thing
+might make no difference--that he had a wife, she a son. Let him have
+his wife, she her son; she could find room for wives and sons too.
+To-morrow, perhaps, it would not be so; to-morrow might be like
+yesterday again; but to-night--to-night--oh, the first garden was not
+less trodden than these rainy streets, the Barracks, Gorringes', and
+Grosvenor Road! Her hand moving again on his sleeve was telling him
+even now, if he would but listen, that though man may not know that it
+is not good for him to be alone, woman knows it, and maybe still
+remembers it out of her knowledge of the place whence she came later
+than he.
+
+And he too understood now, for she was not so rapt but that she
+remembered that he asked her, somewhere between a sandbin and a street
+lamp, whether she was happy too, and that, looking up at him, she
+smilingly whispered: "Yes, now." And she was not so rapt but that she
+remembered telling him, flatly and with another happy and laughing and
+triumphant look: "You can't prevent it!" But she was so rapt that of
+much else that he and she said she had no very clear recollection.
+Words that seemed unforgettable when they came had eluded her almost
+in their own echo. But she knew that she gave him the liberty of
+herself with no more reserve than she had claimed that of him. She
+knew that because, later, but she did not know when, he muttered, in
+some street or other, she did not know where: "God bless your boy."
+
+Well, if she forgot things now, there would be many days to come in
+which she would remember them.
+
+Merely because it must be very late--she had no idea what time it
+was--she grudged the going of the moments almost angrily. Already she
+was becoming as hungry again as if she had not broken that long, long
+fast. But she admitted that it was not unnatural that he should think
+of his own concerns a little too, and want to ask her questions. She
+began to answer the questions hurriedly, to get them over.--Kitty
+Windus? Oh (she told him) he might leave Kitty to her; she'd answer
+for Kitty!--His wife and her complete ignorance? (His wife's ignorance
+appeared to be complete.)--Miriam Levey? (Oh, why would he not be
+quick, and she so hungry!)--And then back to his wife again; what
+about her? (he wanted to know). Louie wondered a little that he should
+consider her to be his wife's keeper also, but she answered his
+questions. That, she told him, was his private affair; but, if he
+really wanted to know what Louie thought about it, Louie could not
+conceive of a marriage with so huge a secret in it continuing
+undisclosed. _Voila_; there he had it; and _now_ might she please be
+permitted to enter into her own happiness again?
+
+She was back into it, bathing in it again, almost before she was
+aware. A minute before she had not known what street they were in; now
+she saw the Chelsea Hospital on the other side of the road. On this
+side was a row of houses; she knew one of them; a painter for whom she
+had sat lived there; his studio was in the yard at the back. The
+thought of a studio was all that was needed. She thrilled again.
+
+No more studios! So poignantly did she burn that she could hardly
+imagine that her glowing did not communicate itself. Studios, after
+that beautiful, beautiful sketch of Billy's? Good gracious, no! She
+was going to Billy's to fetch that sketch on the morrow; she would
+like to see Billy deny it to her! And that poor, poor old oyster-grey!
+Just because he had seen her in it once she had mooned over it, smiled
+over it, sighed over it; but it could go now--she had a richer
+memory!... Furtively during the last few minutes she had been working
+off her right glove; it slipped from her hand to the pavement; but she
+was afraid to stop. Let it stay; somebody would turn it over with the
+point of a walking-stick in the morning and perhaps wonder who had
+lost it.... She stole another look at him; her hand crept along his
+sleeve; the tips of her fingers were on his wrist; her lips shaped his
+name: "Jim!"
+
+Then, unexpectedly, it rushed upon her in full measure. She knew these
+streets familiarly; they were in Swan Walk now; and the thing happened
+all in a moment. Again, during those anxious questions of his about
+Kitty Windus, Miriam Levey, his wife, she had that sense of his
+terrible overweight: now, passing a doorway, he suddenly reeled. He
+began to sink....
+
+In an instant her arms were about him. Not the unfelt, immaterial arms
+of her mothering vision in Billy's studio, not that other breast,
+offered but impressed, sustained him; she held him within her two arms
+of flesh and blood, upon that firm, warm bosom that changed its shape
+to his weight upon it--the bosom he had seen yesterday, white hives,
+all their honey his.... She bent and kissed the shoulder of his coat.
+Oh, if he might but faint, quite, that she might carry him somewhere,
+or, if she could not carry him, stay with him where he was--she cared
+not--rest by his side through an endless night! Her heart, yes, her
+lips too, called him; a whisper might not reach him; she called him
+aloud:
+
+"Oh, come, come! Come, come!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Afterwards she thought of it as a hail from a ship to another ship
+across a stretch of water so narrow that it was all but a stepping
+aboard. How could such a hail be a farewell also? They were not
+passing; as they glided side by side together, either seemed
+stationary. Other things, the whole offing of Life, were in motion;
+these slipped past, as it were sky, shore, shipping; but for a space
+he and she spoke from bridge to bridge. And he heard the hail too, for
+he opened his eyes. Though they never looked on her again they did so
+now, relinquishing all to her. Was there anything she had not known?
+There was nothing she might not know--now----
+
+By-and-by she had helped him to a seat on the Embankment and had made
+him sit down. She took off his tie and collar; she smiled as he
+thanked her. "That was absurd," he said.
+
+Then he asked her where she lived.
+
+It was over.
+
+Well, perhaps more would have been more than she could have borne.
+
+But when she sat at last alone in the hansom he had called, conscious
+that she was wet to the skin and that her boots needed to be resoled,
+she still had the image of the ships before her eyes, gliding together
+side by side, with all else in quiet, relentless motion behind them.
+She held fast to it. She could not have endured to think that of that
+night's long wandering all that would remain on the morrow would be
+yet another dream and a wet glove left behind in an empty Chelsea
+street.
+
+
+III
+
+Louie Causton would have been more than human had she not frequently
+thought, as her life became a moving from pillar to post again, that
+there was an exasperating proportion of absence in her heart's story.
+But at first she was not petulant. Some absences are brimful, as other
+presences are mere vacancy, and, now that she no longer sat, she had
+other things, plenty of them, to think of.
+
+There was little money in the sale of crochet; there was not much more
+in sitting in costumes hired from the Models' Club. From both these
+things she quickly turned. Perhaps she turned from them the more
+quickly because of Kitty Windus--for Kitty was now with her in the
+flat in the New Kings Road, and the way in which Kitty, without
+spoken words, paid over her weekly fifteen shillings, was in itself a
+spur. Not that Kitty always spared her the words either. Two words at
+least that she did not always spare her were "rise" and "permanency."
+Often Louie felt all the amazement, and now quite without any leaven
+of amusement, that she had felt when first she had entered the
+Business School in Holborn; but she was not keeping Kitty (or Kitty
+keeping her) either for love of Kitty or her own mere necessity. To
+keep Kitty was part and parcel of that absence she was already
+beginning to resent. It was merely safer to keep Kitty than to have
+anybody else keep her. Besides, as long as she kept Kitty, she had
+only to write a note, justifying it afterwards as best she could, and
+two ships (so to speak) would come together again. She delayed to
+write the note; none the less it was in her power to do so.
+
+So (to turn for a moment to that moving background of Life in the
+offing) the September of 1900 found her answering the advertisement of
+a Bayswater seedsman and discovering the precise market value of her
+old Rainham Parva training. But by the end of the same month she was
+temporarily installed at the clerk's table of an exhibition of French
+paintings at a Mayfair gallery, and glad of the job. Say (the question
+is hardly worth going into) that it was the influence of the paintings
+themselves that once more caused a manager to propose that Louie's
+wages should be substantially increased, for a consideration; it
+didn't matter; Louie, who did not now throw away jobs for nothing,
+merely told the man not to be silly--than which, as it happened, she
+could have done no better thing, for at the close of the exhibition
+the manager, now looking upon her almost as a dear daughter, found her
+another place, this time at a gallery academic both artistically and
+morally, warned her against dangerous young men, and kissed Louie on
+both her laughing cheeks. After that her French again served her turn,
+for she entered the office of an illustrated weekly; or if it was not
+entirely the French that did it, so much the luckier Louie to possess
+even yet a frock that was a rest to the proprietor's eyes after a
+succession of applicants in walking skirts and white muslin blouses.
+This job Louie actually kept till June 1901; then an amalgamation took
+place that threw her out of work again. Three weeks later, after a
+severe trial of her temper by Kitty, she was a "carpet designer"--that
+is to say, she coloured, in an upper room near St. Paul's Churchyard,
+pieces of paper so minutely chequered that sometimes for an hour or
+two she could not get the flicker out of her eyes. She made a grace of
+retiring from this occupation as soon as she saw that if she did not
+do so her employer would retire from the office of paymaster. After
+that she was reduced to sitting again, in costume. Nothing else
+offered. Jimmy must eat, Kitty's fifteen shillings be covered. The
+female figure in "The Two-stringed Bow," which caused such a
+(journalistic) sensation in the Academy of the following year, is
+Louie. Chaff did not recognise it. Billy Izzard, who had seen the
+costume at the Models' Club, did. He persecuted Louie to sit for him
+again as before.
+
+Of the Models' Club she was still a member, and she got on well with
+the girls. Once she took Kitty Windus there, but only once; a
+black-and-white man, knowing nothing of Kitty's pound a week, asked
+her to sit to him as Miss Tox, in "Dombey and Son"; and Kitty,
+presently reading the book, treated Louie for some days with marked
+superciliousness. That came of making yourself cheap, her manner
+seemed to say; and she reported Miriam Levey, whom she met near
+Piccadilly Circus one day, as having said, "Vell, vat do you expect?"
+Louie did not much like this meeting with Miriam Levey. She remembered
+the Jewess's pertinacity and curiosity for curiosity's sake. Many such
+meetings between Kitty and Miriam Levey might easily complicate her
+own life.
+
+There were two bedrooms in the flat in the New Kings Road. In the
+larger one, that at the back that Louie shared with Jimmy, there hung
+at first the sketch she had begged ("stolen" was Billy's word) after
+she had ceased to sit. When Louie took this down one day and put it
+out of sight, she told herself that she did so on Jimmy's account; but
+perhaps those absences that she had to convert into presences as best
+she could had something to do with it too. Perhaps, if she did not see
+the thing for a time, its first freshness would return.
+
+Sometimes she thought these absences really too bad; she began to
+think so with increasing frequency as Kitty's fits of patronage became
+no rarer. Really it didn't seem fair that she should be asked to bear
+them. The least Jim could have done, since she bore them for him,
+would have been to let her know that he still existed. She did not
+much mind looking after Kitty, but it was a little too much that on
+his part _all_ should be absence!
+
+And that was why, with Kitty always at hand for her excuse, she did
+not write to him.
+
+In a word, the joy of bearing for him was becoming fainter in
+proportion as the burden itself increased.
+
+Then a piece of news with which Kitty came home one night added its
+trifle to her smart. She was alone in the flat that night; Jimmy had
+been in bed two hours and more, and Louie, after having folded his
+clothes, cleared up his litter of toys from the floor, and tried to
+read a newspaper, had turned low the gas, drawn up a chair to one of
+the three windows that looked down on the New Kings Road, and sat
+gazing out over the trees and houses and scattered lights that
+stretched away to Earls Court. It happened that that night the
+Exhibition was closing for the season; a firework demonstration was in
+progress; and out of the little pool of orange light rockets rose from
+time to time, falling again in slow showers of red and green and
+white. If no cart was passing she could just hear the muffled
+detonations.
+
+She knew that if an impossibility could have happened, and Jim could
+have walked into the room, sat down by her, and watched the white and
+green and red rockets with her, that slight constant smart at her
+heart would have gone; but now she told herself that it was not as if
+she was young, with unlimited time before her. She was thirty-two, and
+too much absence is not sustenance enough for thirty-two. But that,
+she supposed, meant nothing to a man. Men did not appear to get old in
+quite the same way. The man who had tried to make love to her at the
+French picture exhibition was sixty if he was a day; sixty, and still
+fiery; and apparently he had found her still desirable also. But it
+was not for much longer. Women died with their beauty. Of course she
+had her little darling asleep there; men had the comfortable theory
+that women wanted nothing more than to "live again" (as they called
+it) in their children; well, all that Louie could say was that she did
+not agree with them. She knew one woman who wanted more. It might be
+wicked and unnatural to endow Jimmy, as she had done, with a sort of
+vicarious father, but Roy was gone out of her life--gone; to have
+married him would have made more mischief than it would have cured;
+and Louie saw no reason for not telling herself the truth about
+herself. But a vicarious father who stayed away was altogether too
+vicarious....
+
+Well, well, she supposed that if a woman would have a man at all she
+must put up with a selfish one.
+
+He, of course, knew exactly what he wanted, and had got it; nor could
+she say that he had not earned it--grimly. But now that he had got it,
+what about somebody else who was helping him to keep it--somebody
+called Louie Causton, who stepped in when she was wanted, took half
+the burden off his back, and was presently sent about her business
+again? (For she had remembered now the quite personal, preoccupied
+questions, about Kitty and Miriam and his wife, that he had put to her
+on the night of their long walk.) Oh, no doubt she would be there when
+she was next wanted, to share with him the thing another woman ought
+to have shared (but thank goodness the other woman had not!). It had
+not in the least surprised Louie that his wife knew nothing. It would
+have surprised her very much indeed if she had known anything. Jim
+might humbug himself as he liked, but at the bottom of his heart (she
+now saw) he knew better than to tell her. She was not the kind; it was
+Louie who was that kind, and he knew it too. But there: she was
+pretty, and men asked no further; give them hair and eyes and an
+unlined brow and the rest could go hang. Heart and vision--no; courage
+and devotion and the strength to bear--no; but twenty years, a curving
+eyelash, and a bloom more quickly gone than the falling rockets
+yonder, and ah, how they ran! But they didn't trust them. No, the
+other sort was sent for then. And it was the business of the other
+sort to be, always, as strong as they sometimes thought themselves.
+
+The last rocket fell; the lights of the big wheel began to make
+quicker revolutions; and Louie left the window and turned up the gas
+again.
+
+As she did so the electric bell in the kitchen rang. It rang again,
+and then Louie remembered that the street door four floors below would
+be closed for the night. She passed out on to the landing and
+descended the stairs. It was Kitty. She had forgotten her key. Kitty
+panted as they ascended again.
+
+"How long have you been in?" she demanded, as she took off her hat and
+coat in the little hall.
+
+"All the evening," said Louie. "Have you had supper?"
+
+"No, I haven't," said Kitty shortly, and then came her grumble. Why
+hadn't Louie had the gas lighted? Fireworks indeed! And there Kitty
+had been waiting for twenty minutes and more, thinking nobody was
+in--anybody might forget their key once in a while, mightn't they?
+Hadn't Louie forgotten hers not a week ago, and that not the only
+time? Kitty had a right to forget her key sometimes. And there had
+Louie been in all the time, watching fireworks! Well, what was there
+for supper? And the fire almost out too; really, if Kitty paid for the
+coals, Louie might at least keep the fire in!
+
+Louie mended the fire and got Kitty's supper. When Kitty had finished
+she cleared the little round table again, and by the time Kitty had
+put on a pair of red bedroom slippers and turned up her skirt to the
+blaze she deigned to relent a little. She admitted that it wasn't as
+if Louie had known she was waiting in the street, but all the same it
+was annoying.
+
+"And now I've got a piece of news for you," she said, warming her
+hands. "It's a dead secret, but I don't suppose Miriam would mind my
+telling you. She's in for no end of a good job in a few weeks! But she
+always gets good jobs. She has determination, Miriam has, you see."
+
+Louie was standing by the end of the mantelpiece, stirring a cup of
+cocoa. She only said "Oh?" Her own lack of determination was now an
+old reproach.
+
+"Ra-_ther_! Have you heard me speak of a Mr. Pepper ever? But no, you
+won't have; you're always a bit sniffy about Miriam, you see, and that
+doesn't encourage people to talk. Well, she's his confidential clerk
+at the Freight and Ballast Company, but he's chucking that, and who do
+you think with?--James Jeffries!"
+
+She paused to see the effect on Louie, and then continued.
+
+"Yes, James Jeffries! What do you think of _that_? They're going to
+start on their own, in no end of a swell way, and Miriam's going over
+with them. It's Mr. Pepper's doing, of course, and as Mr. Pepper isn't
+exactly a nobody even where he is, you may bet your boots he won't
+change for the worse! Oh, James Jeffries knows the kind of person to
+hang on to! He's to be a partner, if you please, as good as Mr. Pepper
+himself; how's that for greasing in? Friends of the mammon of
+unrighteousness, I _don't_ think!"
+
+Kitty had this way now of speaking of her former _fiance_. Sometimes
+she so extended his name that it became "Mister James Herbert
+Jeffries." And however Jim now "got on," his advancement would still
+be, to Kitty, a magnification of her own superiority in those days
+when she had had a pound a week and he nothing. She began to take out
+hairpins and went on.
+
+"Oh dear, I wish my brushes were here!" (Louie fetched them.) "What
+was I saying? Oh yes, about Miriam. She's to have an office to
+herself, perhaps, or at any rate she's not going to sit with the other
+girls; and when I tell you it's in Pall Mall, you can judge for
+yourself--not just a couple of offices rented, but a whole
+building--what ho! The stone that the builders rejected if you like!
+And she'll have her own extending-bracket telephone, the very latest,
+and arms to her chair to put her elbows on, not like the typists! And
+Mr. Pepper's most friendly with her--she takes down his conversations
+with no end of swells! And I say, Evie Jeffries won't be half set up
+over it all, oh no! Even _his_ office--James Herbert's, Miriam
+says--is going to be perfectly scrumptious!"
+
+Her head was on one side; her short hair, as she brushed it, hardly
+reached farther than the sharp point of her shoulder; and Louie was
+thinking of that spurious engagement again. And suddenly--this had
+happened before, but never before with so keen a stab--the thought set
+her raging.... She herself had been so near!... Her elbow caught her
+cup of cocoa; it spilt, and ran in a little stream from the corner of
+the mantelpiece.... So near! And once again she cried to herself that
+_she_ would have known how to keep him, Roy or no Roy!... Kitty? What
+could his courtship of Kitty and her bones have been? _She_ would
+have shown him the difference! To have been so near and then--Mortlake
+Road, Putney!
+
+Suddenly there seemed to her to be a great deal to be said for
+conventional morality after all.
+
+For a moment her heart was full of hate--hate of Kitty, hate of Evie
+Jeffries, hate of Roy, hate of herself. To have been so near!
+
+But the sharpness of it died down to a sullen ache. In his affairs he
+seemed to be going up, up; she had always known he would; and less
+than ever might she expect to hear from him now. And he would take his
+common little wife up with him. He might go anywhere, meet anybody;
+but sourly she wondered what sort of a figure he supposed his Evie
+would cut up there--would have cut at Trant or Mallard Bois? Oh, Louie
+would dearly have liked to see her there, to have pointed to her, and
+to have told Jim to his face that whatever ability he might have
+seemed to be yoked with an unimaginable stupidity, since he had not
+known instantly the one woman for him.
+
+Well, there was simply no accounting for these things.
+
+But if he was going up, Louie did not very much like the channel by
+which she had received the information. She had known that Kitty saw
+Miriam Levey; now she seemed to hear her thick voice again, "I _vill_
+find out!" She was aware, too, that there was little love lost between
+Miriam Levey and herself. She herself had encouraged Kitty in her
+present attitude of "Mister Jeffries," but it only needed the Jewess
+to propose the contrary attitude and in all probability there would be
+a struggle between them for the possession of Kitty. She detested
+Kitty; yet in order that Evie Jeffries might make an exhibition of
+herself among the people whose equal Louie was, Louie had to put up
+with her, bones and chilblains and all! Much he left her, didn't he?
+Good gracious, yes! And it was about time he was told that flesh and
+blood women weren't made like that!
+
+Kitty, remarking that it was a shame to leave the now glowing fire,
+had passed out of the room for a minute; she now returned, in her
+slippers and nightgown. Her feet, she said, were still cold with
+waiting on the pavement; she would say her prayers with them turned to
+the fire. She knelt by a wicker chair, and set the red slippers on the
+low kerb, their worn soles to the fire. Louie, still from the end of
+the mantelpiece, watched her. At a slight sound she made Kitty turned
+her head for a moment; then she put it on the cushion of the chair
+again.
+
+Yes, certainly Louie must have a wicked heart, or she would not have
+looked on the kneeling woman as she did. She wondered what, texts
+apart, Kitty could have to say to God. To pray--with her feet in a
+warm place! Why, Louie mortified herself more for an absent man than
+Kitty seemed to do before her Maker!... And even when she had stifled
+the thought she still had no more than a negative compassion for
+Kitty. She was not unsorry for her and her weakheadedness; beyond that
+Kitty was not, or ought not to have been, her affair. What was her
+affair was herself and what little remained of her youth. Kitty was
+hardly more than a year or two older than she, but she looked a dozen
+years older; Louie wondered whether her shoulder blades too would soon
+resemble the set-squares in Billy's studio, whether her waist also
+would seem a broken thing within empty looking folds....
+
+Kitty continued to pray and to warm her feet. Louie, wondering what
+her next snappishness would be when she rose from her knees again,
+continued to watch her.
+
+Then Kitty rose. She turned to Louie.
+
+"By the way, did you brush that blue skirt of mine?" she said. "Oh,
+very well, it doesn't matter now; perhaps I oughtn't to have asked
+you; thank you; I can do it myself in the morning. Sorry I spoke."
+
+Louie turned away.
+
+These were the times when she could hardly tell what had possessed her
+ever to have supposed that she would be able to keep watch and ward
+over Kitty at all. Kitty was perfectly free to meet Miriam Levey or
+anybody else she had a mind to meet. And why, she asked herself at
+these times, should she not meet her? Where, hanging and such
+moonshine apart, was the risk to Jim? Indeed, it seemed to Louie that
+that story that seemed so to weigh on Jim was quickly becoming
+altogether beside the mark. The whole venue of his difficulties was
+rapidly shifting. What he had done had not been discovered and
+probably never would be discovered; what he wanted now was, not to be
+protected from remote and shadowy and nonsensical dangers, but to be
+told how he was to be happy with the wife whom he had seen fit, in the
+great heap of his wisdom, to keep in ignorance. Of course the remoter
+danger need not be entirely forgotten, but this, or else Louie was
+greatly mistaken, was what those scarce-heard questions on the night
+of that long walk had really meant.
+
+And, in that case, what the devil was she, Louie Causton, doing in
+this gallery at all, with nothing of Jim but silence and absence, and
+nothing but peevishness and petty tyranny from Kitty? Roy, it might
+be, was still ready to marry her; Buck never ceased to importune,
+sulk and implore; Jimmy, one way or another, would be to provide for;
+and she knew now how little she could do for him alone. Even her
+desire to "show" Richenda Earle had now passed. She wanted,
+desperately wanted, all the things she persisted in rejecting. Why was
+she becoming morose, disillusioned, devil-may-care? It was a familiar
+question now, but as she undressed that night she asked herself again
+what it all meant.
+
+She answered herself that there was no mystery about it. She supposed
+it happened to every woman. It meant, of course, the passing of her
+youth.
+
+But, her head on her pillow, she had her compensating hour. No need to
+re-describe its kind; there was now added again that forced and
+desperate illusion, of the unity of herself, her boy, and the man she
+would have had his father. She knew she merely abused her fancy and
+must suffer for it afterwards, but no matter; if it was a drug it was
+a sweet one, and that it might stay with her a little longer she chose
+uncomfortable positions that would keep her awake. She could hear
+Jimmy's breathing across the dark room. Jim, Jimmy and herself----
+
+It was against her own will that, at two o'clock in the morning, she
+slept.
+
+
+IV
+
+It was his voice over the telephone of the Models' Club that broke the
+long silence. Ten chances to one but the bell had rung in an empty
+room, for, save for a woman who was washing the hall floor, Louie was
+alone in the place. She unhooked the receiver. "Hallo!" she
+called.... "Yes, this is the Models' Club.... This is Miss
+Causton...."
+
+At last!
+
+He did not say why he wanted to see her; he only said that he wanted
+to do so at once. His minimised voice, with its suggestion of
+distance, seemed to her curiously symbolic of their whole relation. A
+telephone was supposed to bring voices near, but far more than that
+the smallness and the distance struck her.
+
+"No, I'm afraid not," she continued to speak into the instrument, "but
+I can give you dinner here. You know the address?... Yes, at seven....
+All right...."
+
+Seek him? No, she certainly would not seek him. He must come to her.
+She could give him tea and chops. As she hung up the receiver again
+she glanced at the clock over the little service counter. Eleven.
+Eight hours.... She had waited for months, now she must wait another
+eight hours. She could have faced the months again with more
+composure.
+
+Only to look at the advertisements in the papers had she come to the
+Club that morning at all. Well, she was not going to answer that
+clairvoyant's announcement she had seen in _The Telegraph_ now. Kitty
+would ask her that evening whether she had been looking for work, and
+would hold up Miriam Levey and her determination as an example; let
+her; Louie couldn't be bothered with clairvoyants and their
+advertisements to-day.
+
+And Kitty little dreamed how near Louie had more than once been to
+showing herself as determined even as Miriam. Miriam was not the only
+one who might be "taken on" at this new Consolidation of Mr. Pepper's
+and Jim's, whatever it was. There is such a thing, when a man doesn't
+come to you, as a miserable, ignoble yielding to the ache to go to
+him. There is such a thing as the willingness even to keep a door all
+day for the sake of seeing him go through it just once. After a
+certain time pride becomes a poor staff, and--but he was coming, in
+eight hours. That was why she had refused to dine with him. Your pride
+stiffens again when you have just been on the point of throwing it
+aside.
+
+She knew that she would be good for nothing for the rest of the day;
+in that case she might as well go and see her father. She had money
+enough for her bus fares; half-past one found her at the Molyneux
+Arms.
+
+Buck was in high feather. His name had been proposed, in the interests
+of Church and State, as a candidate for the Borough Council; and the
+chief plank of the platform which Buck occupied during the whole of
+that afternoon, descending from it with the greatest reluctance only
+when Louie vowed that she could not stay another moment, was that as
+long as England had Queensberrys to make her P.R. Rules it didn't
+matter what Radicals tried to make of her laws. Louie fondled his
+silver hair; dear old dad! Then she made him drive her back to
+Chelsea.
+
+(Buck, by the way, was returned at the head of the poll, a few weeks
+later, amid acclamations that might well have rendered him deaf in his
+other ear also.)
+
+Back in the Club once more, Louie set aside the best chop, and made a
+tour of the place in search of the narrowest table. The one she chose
+was so narrow that the backs of the two chairs she turned up against
+it almost touched. Lightheartedly she rebuked Myrtle Morris, who asked
+her whether she was expecting "a boy"; and she laughed as Myrtle went
+off to tell another girl that "Causton was on the warpath." Her
+warpaint consisted of a white blouse, low and perfectly plain at the
+neck, and a navy blue skirt. She was waiting at the window for Jim
+twenty minutes before he came.
+
+She had schooled herself to a rigorous composure. She opened the door
+for him and told him to mind the hall lamp, within an inch of which
+his hat reached; and the hand she gave him was not gloved this time.
+But she barely touched his hand; had she not two whole hours before
+her? He put aside a cheap hanging of rustling beads for her to pass,
+and then followed her into the large room on the left of the hall,
+empty save for a piano and a few chairs, that was used for parties and
+tableaux. Myrtle and another girl appeared for a moment in the
+doorway; the minxes appeared to be waltzing, but they had come to see
+who "Causton's boy" was; and as they sat down she asked him, as if
+daring him to find any but the plainer meaning in it, how Billy Izzard
+was. She exulted that she could say these things and he could not.
+Then she was told that their chops were ready. They passed into the
+next room.
+
+The table--it was a flimsy card-table covered with a cheap traycloth
+stiff with starch--accounted for all awkwardnesses and proximities;
+again she found it secretly delicious to murmur a demure apology for
+its smallness. She lingered over the eating of her chop merely because
+her plate was edge to edge with his; she would manage badly if she
+could not keep him at least two hours! Then, when she could linger out
+her eating no longer, she asked him for a cigarette and a light--for
+in the studios she had learned to smoke. He gave them to her. Her lids
+hovered as he held the match; she wondered whether she should look
+straight into his eyes or keep her lids downcast. In the end she did
+both, looking at him first, then down. Whether he looked at her at all
+she did not know; the first at any rate was a miss. She did not ask
+for a second match (she had, she told herself, some shame); instead,
+she put her elbows on the table and said, without further delay:
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+She nodded as he began to tell her; it seemed to be pretty much what
+she had expected. She listened, or half listened; she would not have
+sworn, had he challenged her, that her attention did not wander a
+little. Her thoughts were ahead of his, but a little patience--he
+would catch up; he would see presently that what his wife might think
+or what she might not think (for that was what he was talking about)
+was of less practical importance than he supposed. Naturally his wife
+must be thinking this and that; marriage that left such a thing as
+a--call it a private execution--out of the calculation might even turn
+out to be a little difficult; but she might as well hear what he had
+to say about it. She waited for the cropping up of the names of Miriam
+Levey and Kitty Windus; they duly appeared. Mrs. Jeffries, it seemed,
+wanted to see Kitty, and Miriam Levey wanted her to do so. Why they
+wanted these things was not very clear, but possibly, if Louie was
+giving him only half her attention, Jim was not saying all he knew
+either. He still considered that aspect of the affair to be wholly and
+solely the problem: but no doubt he would wake up by-and-by.
+
+Suddenly she asked him whether he and his wife had quarrelled. He
+shook his head that apparently, in spite of its stupidity, she must
+still love.
+
+"No--oh no."
+
+"Well----"
+
+And on he went again, still quite a number of leagues behind--the
+complication of his former engagement to Kitty, Evie's sense of
+unexplained things, Miriam Levey, her voracious curiosity, her
+presence at this new Consolidation.
+
+But here she interrupted him. "One moment. When do you start--this
+Consolidation?"
+
+He was toying with a knife; the little reflection passed over his
+massive face as he turned the blade. "In a few weeks. Why?"
+
+"You don't intend to take Miriam Levey over with you?"
+
+He put the knife down with a little slap. "I do not," he said. Louie
+had thought as much. So, no doubt, in spite of what she seemed to have
+said to Kitty, had Miriam Levey.
+
+"Well, go on; I interrupted you," she said.
+
+He went on. It seemed to her that if nothing had actually happened his
+overcarefulness was the one way likely to bring it to pass. Then, she
+supposed, he would ring her up on the telephone again.
+
+By this time she was thinking far more of Miriam Levey's empty chair
+at the new Consolidation than she was of things unaccounted for
+between her guest and his wife.
+
+And as for those unexplained things (Louie neither knew nor cared what
+they might be), she could only tell him now what she had told him that
+night when they had walked together, that wives must either be wives
+or not, must be told things or else be something less than wives.
+Perhaps she had not put it quite so plainly to him as that before,
+but that was what it had amounted to. Men with secrets ought to marry
+the right women.... She stole a daring look at him across the table.
+He was mumbling and twiddling a spoon now. His shoulders, bigger than
+Buck's, were clothed in an exquisite iron-grey cloth; she wondered
+whether he knew that she had kissed one of them that night in a
+Chelsea doorway.... And then, as he paused and looked up, she spoke.
+She did so almost curtly. If not telling hadn't answered, she said,
+she could only suggest, once more, telling. As for Kitty, he might put
+her entirely on one side; as long as she remained with Louie, Louie
+would answer for her.
+
+Then, for the first time, he seemed to show a gleam of interest in her
+affairs. He asked her how she got her living, now.... Her pulse
+quickened. Billy had told him, then; by "now" he meant now that she no
+longer sat; and his eyes avoided hers. He coloured; apparently he
+thought he was doing her an honour in wiping out all memory of that
+discovery in Billy's studio. An honour! She could have laughed at him.
+He little knew how she longed to tell him more--to tell him about the
+oyster-grey too--to tell him that for her it was as long ago as that.
+But no, he had seen the pearl----
+
+And it appeared that his talk really had an object now; but, as usual,
+she had seen the drift of it before he had. He was thinking of Miss
+Levey's place, if his absurd delicacies would only allow him to get it
+out.
+
+"Would you accept it?" he managed at last to ask, sounding her
+earnestly with his eyes.
+
+"Steady, silly woman," she whispered to herself, brightly flushing....
+
+But, glancing at him, she suddenly winced. Twice before men had
+offered her posts, at more than their market value, and there had been
+no colour in her cheeks as she had refused them; had she coloured now
+at the quick thought that if _he_ had made such an offer she might
+perhaps...? If so, there was mortification and despite in her colour.
+Why did he offer her Miss Levey's place? Was it his wife again--always
+his ninny of a wife? If that was so, so much the worse for him; it was
+time he learned that if he got into a mess he must make shift to get
+out of it again. There was a new little twang in her voice as,
+suddenly looking into his eyes, she said: "You've no right to expect
+that of me!"
+
+And as soon as the words were spoken, she saw too where she herself
+stood, and to what point beyond she was prepared to go. She knew now
+that she would have taken his job, not at added wages, but without
+wages at all. But to the humiliating thought that he imagined himself
+to be doing her a kindness was now superadded that of his entire
+ignorance that she might be making an attack upon his faithfulness at
+all. Suddenly she saw herself merely wonderful to him--_she_
+wonderful!--she, who had thought she could spend all her life up in
+the clouds, be content to be magnanimous for magnanimity's sake,
+virtuous for the mere love of virtue! Oh, if that was all, he needn't
+think _that_ any longer! Wonderful?... What she wanted was not
+wonderful at all, oh dear, no: merely something common, coarse,
+filling; nothing more wonderful than that.... Wise mother, to have
+known that that was the end of it all, and to have taken, long ago, in
+Henson's studio, the short cut! She did not even try to check a wild
+little exclamation....
+
+And he evidently saw something too, though what, as he blundered
+deeper, she did not stop to inquire. He gave a groan. "Poor woman!" he
+said compassionately.
+
+He might just as well have set a spark to a fuse. There broke from her
+a peremptory cry.
+
+"Not that, Jim--that's the one thing I will _not_ bear--I will _not_
+be called 'poor woman'----"
+
+And the rest now had to follow. It was the sum of her broodings,
+resentments, hatreds, dreams, desire, despair. Evie, him, herself--oh,
+it was not her fault if he didn't see now how the three of them stood.
+He knew only too well what he wanted: what Louie wanted she also knew
+only too well. Except to offer her a job that would save him even the
+trouble of ringing her up on the telephone when her help was required,
+had he ever, until this moment, looked at the thing from her point of
+view? He had not. She would help him still; but if their ships must
+part like this, at least no false tidings should pass from bridge to
+bridge: he should know exactly what it was he asked, and why she gave
+it! She began to speak rapidly, uncertainly, but sparing him nothing.
+Perhaps, after all, she said, his wife would understand; he had only
+to tell her that her husband made away with her sweetheart; perhaps
+she could bear it; if she couldn't well--he knew what was his for the
+holding up of a finger....
+
+Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped. Her voice dropped.
+"I've had no luck," she said, with quiet bitterness. "I'm out of it,
+and there's no more to say. Give me a match."
+
+And then she rose. He might sit there if he liked.
+
+He rose too, and they walked down the room in silence together. The
+bead screen of the hall parted and tinkled together again behind the
+great church-door of his back. Without a word he took down his coat
+and, under the coloured hall lamp, hoisted himself into it. And then
+he looked at her.
+
+Already in her heart she knew that that look was the end. Her offer
+had been rejected. Whatever else might happen, she, Louie Causton,
+would never come between him and his wife. The woman who had those
+eyes would keep their looks; had it been Louie's fortune to have them,
+she would have kept their looks. He was a plotter, but not of amours;
+a carrier through too, but not of intrigues. So grave an innocence was
+his that probably he didn't know that his look told her all this; if
+so, it was final indeed.
+
+So she took her dismissal, and then, with her hand on the letter-box
+of the door, stood gazing meditatively on the ground. She had wanted
+to be wooed; failing that, she had once more brought herself to woo;
+and this Joseph had gravely repelled her.
+
+At last she looked up.
+
+"About what you were saying--I mean that place of Miss Levey's," she
+said. "I don't think it would do--not now."
+
+The man who could plan a murder but not an affair looked humbly up.
+
+"Why not?" he murmured. It was as if he said: "I don't remember that
+meetings of ours in Billy's studio; I forget this too. You see how it
+is. Your taking the job would make no difference."
+
+Slowly she shook her head. "I should be seeing you," she said. "It
+wouldn't do. Good-night."
+
+She saw that she had missed even more than she had imagined.
+
+And yet, before Christmas came, she was at that self-same
+Consolidation. In October a lofty refusal; in December a creeping back
+again with her tail between her legs. Where, she asked herself, was
+her pride now?
+
+The answer was that that had been in October, and this was December.
+
+When she told Kitty that she was succeeding to Miss Levey's place
+Kitty had certain things to say about treachery and broken
+friendships. She said them at some length, and then remarked that
+after that of course Louie could hardly expect her to stay with her.
+
+"You never liked her," she said, as if not to like Miss Levey was an
+offence in itself. "And I know you tried to keep me from seeing her.
+Oh, you think I don't notice things, but you never made a greater
+mistake; I could tell you things that would surprise you! You and
+James Jeffries have got some game on; don't tell me he didn't give her
+the push; Evie and Miriam both say so; oh, you're a deep one, Louie
+Causton! First you come between me and Miriam; and then that day your
+father came and I was asking him about black eyes and he told me you
+could have one _without_ having one till you came to blow your
+nose--oh, _I_ watched you! And then to go worming about till you got
+Miriam fired and then bag her job yourself! Thank goodness, some
+people have better ideas of friendship than that! I have, for one.
+Never mind the bit you owe me; you can pay Carter Paterson with it and
+we'll call it quits. Perhaps it wouldn't be troubling you too much to
+ask you if you knew where the luggage labels are?"
+
+So Louie let her go. The tract she received by post on the following
+day: "God's Eye Everywhere, or No Sins Secret," she dropped into the
+fire. Even if Kitty really was groping blindfold on the track of that
+stale old private execution, Archie Merridew didn't matter now. The
+question had already entered the stage of blank fatality.
+
+
+V
+
+Louie did not succeed to Miss Levey's chair at once. Somebody else got
+that, who made room for somebody else, who made room for Louie. And
+her arrival at the Consolidation appeared to be the signal for Jim's
+almost immediate departure from it--that is to say, she saw him for
+three weeks, then missed him for some days, asked (in another week or
+so) a question, and was told that a fall of some sort, supervening on
+many weeks of concentrated work, had necessitated a trip to Egypt. She
+hinted that she would like to know what his fall had been, but nobody
+seemed able to tell her. As a matter of fact, she never knew. It was
+merely an act of spite on the part of the stars against herself.
+
+The ordeal by absence began again.
+
+This time she was able, somehow, to endure it. She always remembered
+him when she passed a shipping company's office, with a model of a
+liner in the window and pictures of palms and pyramids and a sphinx
+not altogether unlike himself looming up out of the tawny sand; but at
+other times she well-nigh forgot him for whole days together. She
+could hardly question her immediate superior, a Mr. Whitlock, about
+him, and probably Mr. Whitlock could not question Sir Julius
+Pepper--for Mr. Pepper was made a knight in the new year. Sir Julius
+had altogether too much _nous_ and urbanity to be questioned; he
+asked, not answered, questions. Such an indiscretion would have
+stamped Mr. Whitlock himself as a man of a barbarous mind.
+
+The place itself, its plate glass and marble, its gilded lifts and
+high galleries and lofty central dome, its floes of desks and counters
+and the tessellated floors over which rubber-tyred trollies ran to the
+strong-room every night--astonished Louie. What had been consolidated,
+who the men had been who had reconciled interests so great that the
+mere overcoming of their mass and inertia must have been accounted a
+wonder, she never really knew. Perhaps nobody really knew; perhaps not
+so much men as forces had accomplished that task. In some of its
+aspects the concern was a huge amalgamation of mercantile companies,
+mostly railway and shipping; in others it more nearly resembled a
+Government Department. But she knew that Jim knew all about it. Jim,
+Mr. Stonor (Mr. Whitlock's junior) told her, and Sir Julius, had
+planned the whole enterprise. Acting alone, Mr. Stonor said, Jim might
+have done the work and then have been shouldered out of the rewards by
+such bustling men as Robson, of the Board of Trade, George Hastie and
+Sir Peregrine Campbell, and others to whom Louie had lifted up her
+eyes when she had kept the appointment-books for the photographer in
+Bond Street; but Sir Julius had seen to that--trust Sir Julius! Sir
+Julius could cut a throat smiling with the best of them; if Jim was
+the genius, Sir Julius was the impresario of the enterprise. And
+by-and-by, from the frequency with which Sir Julius and other
+potentates said, when puzzled: "What d'you suppose Jeffries would do?"
+or "Why the deuce isn't Jeffries here?" Louie came to much the same
+conclusion.
+
+At first she was set to work with twenty other girls who, each sitting
+under a porcelain-shaded incandescent that burned all day long, tapped
+typewriters in the back part of the building that looked down on the
+white-tiled well; and for some weeks it was a question whether she
+kept her job or not. For she was dreadfully inefficient, and daily
+expected a reduction to the level of the girls who, with rigid
+"dolly-caps" clamped round their heads, manipulated the rubber worms
+of the big telephone switchboard. But again her improved French served
+her turn. Miss Lingard, who sat in Miss Levey's chair behind a screen
+twenty yards away, was absent one day; Mr. Stonor haled Louie off to
+Sir Julius's room; and Louie, following Sir Julius and a Frenchman
+from one to another of the spring-roller maps with which the room was
+lined, took down in English short-hand a conversation in French about
+the boundaries of some concession or other. It was a badly botched
+job, but it was initialled and passed; and Sir Julius, who did not so
+much open doors and place chairs as allow it to be discovered that
+doors were opened and chairs placed exactly when they should have
+been, looked at Louie, thanked her, and presently sent for her again.
+One night she had to wait on him after dinner at an hotel, to make
+notes of certain conversations; and perhaps Sir Julius noted the
+little dipping of Louie's mouth when she was summoned from the
+ante-room where she had been kept waiting. She wondered whether he had
+expected she would turn up in a dolly-cap. A little after that he
+asked her out to dinner, without any business excuse at all. Presently
+she was wondering whether she would have to walk out of the
+Consolidation or else to tell Sir Julius Pepper not to be a fool.
+
+It never came to that; exactly how near it was to doing so, Louie
+never knew. It was her Uncle Augustus of all people who saved the
+situation. His name came up; Louie could not restrain a sour little
+smile; and "Do you know Lord Moone?" Sir Julius asked. "Oh yes," Louie
+replied. That was all. Sir Julius's charming smile never varied. But
+the case was altered. Amanuenses of sorts are one thing, ladies with
+private information about the peerage another. Perhaps Sir Julius was
+a little of a snob. At any rate, he did not allow his little
+gallantries to interfere with business.
+
+So Louie became a quite superior writer of Pitman's shorthand. The
+weeks passed. Jim still remained away.
+
+Nor had she any news of Kitty Windus, of Miriam Levey, nor yet of Evie
+Jeffries. She still, however, remained good friends with Billy Izzard.
+It was from Billy that she heard, one night in April, something that
+filled her with a vague and ineffectual trouble.
+
+She had gone up to his place in Camden Town, intending to spend an
+hour or so with him; but five minutes was all the time Billy had to
+spare for her. He was just off to Victoria to meet a fellow, he said;
+if she was going that way they could go together; and she needn't
+think he was going to leave her in the studio to steal his sketches.
+"One of our heroes just come back from South Africa, a fellow called
+Lovenant-Smith," he said. "Coming?"
+
+"I'll go with you as far as Charing Cross," said Louie.
+
+Before she left Billy at Charing Cross she had learned quite a lot
+about his friend, Mr. Lovenant-Smith. There was nothing especially
+heroic about Roy's homecoming; no doubt his work had been useful, but
+it had not been fighting; for a year and a half he had not left Cape
+Town. He had now come into money, and was handing in his papers; he
+would hunt and manage his estate somewhere down in Shropshire. "I
+shall go and stop with him," said Billy. "I only hope his horses are
+better than that old yacht he nearly drowned the pair of us in." And
+at Charing Cross he left Louie.
+
+Roy was back home, then.
+
+Well, it made not one atom of difference. Jim away was all to her, Roy
+in England nothing. No doubt it was wicked.
+
+So much the worse for Louie.
+
+Then, not a week later, Jim returned from Egypt.
+
+But he returned only to go away once more, this time to Scotland. She
+saw him, for just one moment, coming out of Sir Julius's room. He was
+very brown, but much thinner, and he had a new overcoat. He went
+straight on to Scotland that day. Mr. Stonor said that he intended to
+stay there for the rest of the summer. "Overwork, of course," said Mr.
+Stonor.
+
+So yet another absence in her story of absences began.
+
+She filled it chiefly with work. She rarely got home before ten, and,
+save on Saturdays and Sundays, had to leave Jimmy entirely to the
+young woman who had succeeded Celeste. Billy had left town, and had
+probably gone to stay with Roy in Shropshire. Of Councillor Causton
+she now saw little. She wished she could save more money. Jimmy was
+now five and a half years old.
+
+Then, in October, Jim returned from Scotland. Louie half expected that
+it would be she who would have to leave now, but this did not happen.
+Not that she saw much of him; he did not come until eleven, and went
+home again for tea. Sometimes, after he had left, she or Mr. Stonor
+had to ring him up at his house in Well Walk, Hampstead; for the rest,
+he remained in high seclusion. She was glad it was so. A half absence
+such as this had not all absence's pangs, nor was his half presence
+too much perturbation; she could take a command with calmness, and she
+had nothing but commands to take. She knew by this time that he had a
+second child, a little girl, and that seemed definitely to close and
+bar the door against any wild and lawless hopes she might ever have
+entertained. And so things went on until early in December.
+
+The thing that entirely changed their course may have seemed an
+accident to Jim, but a little reflection made it plain enough to
+Louie. She had not seen Evie Jeffries since that afternoon when they
+had met at the step of the bus opposite the Adam and Eve; and Evie's
+whole face and manner gave the lie to the story she told when, at a
+little after three o'clock one afternoon, Louie came upon her in the
+counting-house of the Consolidation itself. Near the table with the
+calculating machines Louie heard a clerk whisper: "Mrs. Jeffries!"
+Forty pairs of eyes were furtively watching her over desk-rails and
+glass screens. Some of the clerks even made errands in order to get a
+better view of her. If she wanted her husband she had only to ask to
+be taken to his room at once, but she stood, a slender figure in new
+black furs, by a waiting-room door. Then, seeing Louie, she almost ran
+to her.
+
+"Oh, how are you?" she cried, in an acquired voice, touching Louie's
+hand then dropping it again. "Really, this place almost terrifies me!
+I came to fetch my husband home to tea--the car's outside--but of
+course I know I'm early. I'd such a lot of shopping to do, but I got
+through it quicker than I thought. Well, how are you?"
+
+It seemed to Louie that she did not do it very well; the manner of the
+_grande dame_ was the last thing she ought to have attempted. As Evie
+put up her hand as if it held an invisible quizzing-glass, Louie
+wondered whether she had come primarily to see her husband at all.
+
+"Really, this is stupendous!" she said. "I wonder if you could show me
+round--that is, unless I'm interfering with your duties? Do tell me
+what these things are!"
+
+They were the mechanical calculators; her comment on them was: "How
+quaint!" Followed by eyes, Louie took her to the lifts; she said they
+must have one like that put into the new house they had taken in
+Iddesleigh Gate. "It used to belong to Baron Stillhausen--you've heard
+of Baron Stillhausen, the famous diplomat?" she said. From the lifts
+Louie took her to the department where the girls in dolly-caps pulled
+at the snaky telephone plugs. "Oh," she exclaimed, "so _this_ is where
+you talk to my husband in the evenings from, is it?"... Louie had a
+little start.... She answered, however, that the private line was in
+another place, and led the way. No, Evie Jeffries oughtn't to attempt
+this kind of thing; her touch was too heavy. She told more about
+herself than she ascertained about anybody else. As they left the
+private line Louie somehow had the impression that Evie Jeffries was
+counting the paces from Louie's chair to her husband's room.
+
+She returned to her own place slowly. She wished Evie Jeffries had not
+come. Her coming seemed all at once to have diminished Louie's
+composure; it was as if a closed question had been clumsily opened
+again. "Where do you live? I should like to come and see you," Evie
+had said, as they had parted at the door of Jim's room; and that was
+odd, since for quite a number of years Evie Jeffries, had given no
+sign that she wanted to visit her. Kitty Windus, yes; Miriam Levey,
+yes; but she had not wanted to see Louie Causton. But she wanted to
+see Louie now, and had come that afternoon, Louie was now convinced,
+expressly to see her. Why? Had Jim been talking? Had Kitty and Miriam
+Levey been talking? Louie did not know. She only knew that she had
+been settled and at peace and was now so no longer.
+
+And through it all shone an unquenchable recollection--the recollection
+of how she had once stumbled upon Evie Soames, not in wonderful furs,
+asking for her lordly husband, but dressed in a skirt and blouse,
+cheek to cheek in a dark back room with a fancy-stationer's son.
+
+Evie would never forgive her that discovery.
+
+With all the elasticity gone out of her, she resumed the work she had
+left half-an-hour before.
+
+But as she lay in bed that night in her little flat, Louie ate her
+heart out again. She hated Evie Jeffries. She had remembered, too, an
+old, old slander--the slander to know the truth about which Kitty
+Windus had come to the Nursing Home in Mortlake Road. Was it that that
+had brought Mrs. Jeffries to the Consolidation now?
+
+Louie tossed and tossed. Oh, she cried vindictively, if it only _had_
+been so.... But to have to submit to the indignity of Evie's jealousy
+and not to be able to give her grounds for it! And Mrs. Jeffries
+wanted to see her flat! Well, she should be welcome. Louie would
+hardly be at the trouble to lie about things, but every stick of
+furniture in this place in which Jim had never set foot might
+silently lie for her if they would! Would that be to drag Jim in?
+Well, let him be dragged in; a woman with a husband like Jim, to be
+jealous! Why, with Louie ready and glad to lose her soul for him, he
+was the very egotist of faithfulness! He could not be virtuous without
+damning Louie with his grave and candid looks! She could almost have
+laughed at him. When all was said, such virtue was a byword, and the
+story of Joseph a thing for a quiet smile! Then Louie's laugh became a
+cry aloud, that woke Jimmy. Jimmy went to sleep again, but she was no
+calmer.
+
+Bitter as spurge was that old story of hers now, and bitterer still
+the only moral lesson it now appeared to her to have. Oh, no doubt
+there was a deal to say for their conventional morality, but a pretty
+moral lesson it was, after all, that you repented of a history with
+one man only when it forbade a second history with another! And she
+swore again that that first history should not have stood in her way;
+more, far more than that was his own headstrong virtue, and perhaps
+that was not all either. She had been born for him, she knew it; he
+had had never a secret from her save those large open secrets that
+scarce a woman shared with a man yet; his hands, that could take life
+for love, were made to hold her. She knew it in her soul.... But huge
+as it was, he didn't see it. He allowed a pretty face to blind him to
+it all. "Oh, come, come!" she had called to him on the only night, of
+all those nights, when he and she had walked together; and his answer
+had been to take himself away. When she had kissed his shoulder she
+had merely kissed the spot where another woman's head had lain.
+
+Oh, if that slander _could_ only have been true!
+
+She looked at, and almost tossed aside unread, a letter that came for
+her in the morning. Not for a single moment had she slept, and she
+wanted no letter from Roy--for it was from Roy. Still she might as
+well read it. She did so.
+
+Billy Izzard was with him; it had come out that Billy knew her, and he
+wanted to see her. "I've come back for you," the letter said, "and I'm
+not going to let you go this time. Do write when I can come and see
+you. Off out now, but do write." She threw it into the fire. Marry
+Roy? She would far rather commit another sin than such a reparation.
+The trouble was that she could not commit the sin.
+
+That morning she was sent for by Jim. As she turned the handle of his
+door she was ready to make a bet with herself about what he wanted her
+for. She was not mistaken. He wanted to thank her for showing his wife
+round the day before.
+
+His wife--always and for ever his wife.
+
+"If you feel that you must----" she said, biting her lip with
+humiliation and passion.
+
+"It's merely----" he rumbled heavily on....
+
+As if she needed to be told what it "merely" was! If he cared to hear
+it _she_ could tell _him_ what was "merely" the matter with his wife!
+
+"Oh, must you?" she said, quivering under the torture. He was playing
+nervously with a pen. "Must I what?" he said, not looking up.
+
+"Must you do this?"
+
+He looked up. "Shut the door," he said. "Now----"
+
+She listened to him almost scornfully. Again harping on that informal
+execution, as if he had been right and not right, and as if it now
+mattered one straw whether he "told his wife" or not! He was saying
+something about a doctor; the doctor, Louie gathered, had said she
+mustn't have another shock; what had Louie--always and for ever
+Louie--to say to _that_? Louie clutched at her skirt with both hands.
+
+"Don't you know?" she said, clenching the skirt hard.
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Then ask me again and I'll tell you," she threatened him.
+
+"I do ask you."
+
+Well, if he would have it.... "She's jealous," said Louie.
+
+The smile that stole slowly over his face set her almost beside
+herself. Even Potiphar's wife was probably not smiled at. Louie cut
+short the easy words that accompanied the smile.
+
+"Then if she isn't, why does she want to come and see me at my home?"
+she demanded.
+
+With quite remarkable clumsiness he pretended he had known his wife
+wanted this, and smiled again. She stamped on the ground.
+
+"My good man----" she broke out wildly....
+
+What she said she did not remember very clearly afterwards. It was
+spoken less to him than to ease her own breast. With nothing to give
+her, he still could not hold his tongue nor restrain that smile when
+she told him his wife was jealous. Jealous?...
+
+Yes, and with a jealousy that could now never pass away! For, out of
+absences, silences, refusals, virtues, smiles, everything, Louie had,
+after all, secured something that all the smiling in the world could
+not take away. She _had_ the secret he had feared to share with his
+wife. She _had_ the answer to every riddle in his riddle-haunted
+eyes. His wife _had_ grounds for her jealousy, after all, had she but
+wit enough to know where to look for them. But she too was hopelessly
+behind. She too was smelling at cold scents--telephones and visits to
+flats. She suspected a gross infidelity, and never dreamed of the
+existence of one so fatally searching that the other would have been a
+mere incident by comparison with it. Little dullard, how should she?
+Her conception even of jealousy was as limited as everything else
+about her; a call or two on the private wire at night, and she was
+found asking questions at the Consolidation the next day.
+
+And suddenly Louie saw--fool that she had been not to see it
+before!--why Evie Jeffries wanted to come to her flat. It was not to
+see the place and its furniture. It was to see Jimmy.
+
+Oh, if her boy could only have had eyes like a young lion!
+
+
+VI
+
+When Kitty Windus had come to Mortlake Road and had refused to sit
+down until Louie had told her the truth about the wanton slander that
+had linked her name with Jim's, Louie had dismissed the matter with
+amused contempt. But now there seemed something rather terrible in it.
+Its author's stamping-out notwithstanding, for Evie Jeffries it
+appeared still to live. What had brought it up anew Louie could not as
+much as guess, but there it seemed to be.
+
+"So that's it?" she muttered to herself. "In that case I may certainly
+expect to see you again soon. You won't say anything to your husband;
+he'd only smile and disbelieve his eyes and ears if you did--his
+powers that way are really tremendous; but you'll probably go to
+Miriam Levey, who's rather a gift for these things, and Kitty'll back
+her up, and you'll make out your case one way or another. Very well.
+When the water's troubled there's the best fishing. _I'm_ not above
+certain things now; good gracious, no! I'll find a reason for ringing
+him up to-night, and if you go to the telephone yourself so much the
+better. And you'll be round to see me at my flat before very long."
+
+Evie delayed to come, but Louie knew the reason for that. Jim was
+moving into his great new place in Iddesleigh Gate. That would take a
+little time. Well, there was no hurry. When she did come Louie would
+be ready for her.
+
+Did she still hope, if those waters could be sufficiently troubled,
+for a catch? Was she in her heart now as resolved to wreck the peace
+of Jim's household as formerly she had been to preserve it? She could
+hardly have answered the questions herself. It was Evie, not she (she
+told herself), who was going the right way to make a mess of things;
+nevertheless, she had only to remember Jim's smile to feel the tigress
+stretch itself within her. The loved fool! Could he go all lengths for
+love without thinking that a woman might do the same? Louie could not
+kill, as he could, smoothly burying the consequences afterwards, but
+she could do other things; and she was not sure that she couldn't kill
+too. Ten words, it appeared, would do it. Jim, who did not fear
+murder, feared those ten words; well, men feared one thing, women
+another, that was all. She had only to open her mouth where Jim kept
+his shut.
+
+The only thing was that it did not seem a very sporting thing to do.
+Jim had taken his risks; she would be taking none. It was not much,
+perhaps, but it was enough to give her pause.
+
+In the meantime she continued to ring Jim up frequently on the private
+telephone.
+
+It was on the second Saturday afternoon in April that Evie at last
+paid her visit. Louie had sent out Rhoda, Jimmy's nurse, for the
+afternoon, and was herself setting out with the boy for one of their
+precious jaunts. They were half-way down the four flights of stairs
+when she heard somebody ascending. She and Evie Jeffries met on the
+second landing, where the charwoman ceased to whiten the edges of the
+stairs.
+
+It seemed to Louie that Evie Jeffries must have a sort of lucky-bag of
+greetings into which to dip. She could hardly have been surprised to
+meet Louie on Louie's staircase, but she drew a wrong one for all
+that.
+
+"Well, this is a sur--a pleasure!" she cried. "You see, I promised to
+come, and here I am! Don't tell me you're just going out!"
+
+"No; we were only going to the South Kensington Museum, and I was in
+two minds about it. Come up, won't you?" Louie replied.
+
+At first Evie wouldn't hear of it, but even as she spoke she had
+ascended another step. They went upstairs again, and Louie put her key
+into the lock. "You'll excuse me a moment, won't you?" she said, as
+Evie entered. "In there's my sitting-room."
+
+And she herself, turning along the passage, entered her bedroom and
+took that old study of Billy Izzard's from its paper wrappings. She
+hung it up on its old nail. If Evie Jeffries wished to see her flat
+she should see her flat. Then she returned to the front room that
+looked away over the trees and houses to Earls Court.
+
+"So this," said Evie, as she entered, "is your little boy!"
+
+"Yes, that's Jim. Won't you sit down? I'll put the kettle on and we'll
+have tea."
+
+She went into the kitchen, filled the tin kettle, and set it on the
+gas-ring.
+
+Evie was dressed in an exquisite coat and skirt and an expensive and
+wrong hat; silk linings made whispers whenever she moved; but Louie,
+who kept her good clothes for the Consolidation, wore the battered old
+grey felt hat and long grey coat in which she had passed from studio
+to studio. But she knew that Evie envied her her distinction of
+motion. Evie's figure was pretty and "stock," charming but with no
+surprise--that of a demonstrable beauty. And the acquired tones had
+come into her voice again.
+
+"How ripping up here!" she approved. "Such a splendid--view! I wish we
+had a view like it in Iddesleigh Gate; but as I told my husband, even
+money can't buy a view in London. Delightful! Have you the morning
+sun?"
+
+"That's in my bedroom," said Louie. "How did you come--by car?"
+
+"No; I felt that I needed the walk. Really people will be forgetting
+how to walk soon. Well, at all events, he's a beautiful boy!"
+
+Louie saw no reason why she should not say, in the simple French which
+may more or less be assumed to go with large houses and cars, that she
+preferred that the boy himself should not be told so; and then she
+went into the kitchen again to smile. She remembered Burnett Minor:
+"Voo affectay feele!" she murmured softly. Then she made tea.
+
+"I suppose you're not quite settled yet?" she said, returning with the
+tray.
+
+"Settled! Why, it will take us months!" Evie purred.
+
+"Of course. It seems very odd to talk over the telephone, though, to a
+place you've never seen. Sugar? Is this place at all like what you
+imagined?"
+
+Again came the ready-made answer: "Oh, it's really quite too
+delightful!" It was a pity, Louie thought, that Mrs. Jeffries had not
+had the advantage of a few minutes' talk with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
+before coming to see her. The Lady-in-Charge at Rainham Parva might
+have warned her.
+
+But Louie knew that already her very chairs and mats and brown-papered
+walls were silently whispering to Evie Jeffries. She might talk of
+Iddesleigh Gate, but she was thinking of nothing less than of
+Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she had been reassured in the matter of
+Jimmy's eyes, which were as blue as Roy's, but her own eyes were
+taking in everything for all that. Let them. Louie wondered whether,
+did she turn her back for a few minutes, her visitor would question
+the child.
+
+"The Amaranth Room?" she presently interrupted Evie's flow to say.
+"Have you really a room called that? How lovely it sounds!"
+
+"Nearly fifty feet long, my husband says; why, it has to have three
+large fireplaces, as well as the radiators, but of course there's
+steam-heat all through the house. It's delicious, not to walk into
+cold patches all of a sudden. And all the windows on one side are
+double, so that the place is perfectly quiet. You must come some time.
+Of course," she took herself up, "our other house was quite a poky
+place; my husband never really settled there; but at Iddesleigh Gate,
+he says, he can really stretch himself."
+
+Louie meditated for a moment. Then: "What's really been the matter
+with him?" she asked. She knew that Evie would probably not believe
+she didn't know; for that reason it was better to ask.
+
+But she got no information. It was overstrain, Evie replied lightly,
+and then on the top of that he'd slipped one night and caught his head
+on the corner of a fender. He'd slipped because he'd been really
+fagged out, what with starting the Consolidation and one thing and
+another. "But he looks all right now, don't you think?" Evie asked.
+
+"Perfectly, I should say, from the little I see of him."
+
+"Of course you mostly do Sir Julius's work, don't you?"
+
+"Mostly."
+
+"It must be great fun for you, being taken out by Sir Julius
+sometimes. My husband told me that."
+
+"Quite amusing."
+
+"Miss Levey was never taken out like that!"
+
+"No? Have you seen her lately?"
+
+But again Louie got little information. Included in what she did get,
+however, was a lie. Evie reported that Miss Levey, now at some Women's
+Emancipation League or other with Kitty Windus, had actually been
+going to write to Louie to suggest that she, Louie, should apply for
+her old place. Louie gave a little nod. Of course Miriam Levey, rather
+than own to defeat, would pretend that she had left the Consolidation
+of her own accord. Louie rose.
+
+"But perhaps you'd like to see my place?" she said. "Not that I think
+you'll find it very amusing. But you can see it if you like."
+
+"I should love it! Is Jimmy coming? Do you know, Jimmy, I've got a
+little boy like you, but not nearly as big?"
+
+"Has he got a helmet like mine?" Jimmy demanded.
+
+"No; but I think I shall have to get him one."
+
+"You stay here, Jimmy," said his mother; and she led the way to the
+kitchen.
+
+Evie praised the kitchen and its meagre appointments, and was then
+shown the bathroom. "It hasn't a crystal bath," Louie said, "but it
+does to wash in." She lingered in the bathroom a little; she was
+thinking of another bath and certain old jokes about brown-paper
+parcels. Then, first showing Evie the bedroom that had been Kitty's,
+she passed to her own room at the back.
+
+Against the wall on the left lay Jimmy's bed; her own was across the
+room, with its head under the break of the mansard roof. The little
+built-out window, from the glass sides of which rows of chimney-pots
+could be seen, faced the door, and over the fireplace on the right,
+full in the light, hung Billy's study. It was the second thing on
+which Evie's eyes rested. Louie was careful not to look at it.
+
+For in that place at any rate she was going to strike; the rest might
+fall out afterwards as it would. As she turned away to pat Jimmy's
+pillow she was suddenly fighting white; the little creature had come
+for it and should have it. And she should have it swiftly and without
+warning. Even as Louie had turned her back her heart had given a
+leap....
+
+For up to that moment it had been always possible that Jim had not
+spoken of his intrusion into Billy's studio that evening; but there
+was no doubt now! Jim--or perhaps Billy Izzard--had told her. Probably
+Billy. Probably Billy first, and then, seeing she already knew, Jim.
+All at once there rushed upon Louie, as she passed from Jimmy's bed to
+her own and smoothed the coverlet of that also, what had happened
+later that same evening, when her arms had supported a collapsing Jim
+in a Swan Walk doorway and she had passionately called him: "Come,
+come! Come, come!"
+
+She spoke quietly; quietness was so much more destructive.
+
+"This is where I get the morning sun. But it's very windy. The wind
+blew that picture you're looking at down the other day." Then, without
+either pause or change of tone: "By the way, that's what you came to
+see, isn't it--that and my boy?"
+
+Simultaneously with her blow she was commenting to herself: "That's
+good-bye to you, Sir Julius; she'll see I don't come back to the
+Consolidation after that; will you have Miss Levey back again, or will
+you try her friend Miss Windus? I don't think you'll offer Miss Windus
+an--er--increase of wages. As for me, I suppose I can sit again;
+nothing matters now. Or there's a plainer way still----"
+
+The next moment she had called sharply: "Go away, Jimmy, till I call
+for you! Go and look out of the window for Rhoda!"
+
+Then she turned and faced the woman who had taken two quick, running
+steps towards her. Insolently she smiled into her eyes.
+
+"That was it, wasn't it?" she said.
+
+Mrs. Jeffries did not fight white. The blood had thronged to her head
+until her very lips seemed swollen; Miss Levey could hardly have
+spoken more thickly. She spoke, too, in a passionate ellipsis than
+which Louie's own five words did not go more straight to the heart of
+the matter.
+
+"Oh, you would if you could--I've known that a long time!" she cried.
+"Wouldn't you just--rather! You'd do it if it was only to give _me_
+one for myself! _I_ know you."
+
+Louie thought she rather liked her for making a fight of it. She still
+smiled. "Then that was it?" she said.
+
+Evie flushed even more deeply. "You didn't suppose I didn't know all
+about that absurd meeting, did you?" she said, with a still darker
+flush.
+
+"Dear me, no. I've known for weeks that you 'knew'--if we mean the
+same thing. Perhaps we don't, though. Anyway, I can quite understand
+your wanting to see for yourself. Miss Levey can't tell you
+everything."
+
+Evie's inability to speak for mere fury was so evident that Louie,
+after watching her for a moment, continued:
+
+"As for that picture, naturally I wanted to keep it. I'm sure you'll
+see that for yourself."
+
+Here Evie flamed. "'Naturally!'" she broke out. Louie gave an almost
+humorous shrug.
+
+"Well, surely it's natural?"
+
+"Natural!... As if his coming in wasn't the merest accident!"
+
+"Oh, I know that; but what _are_ you here for then? And now that you
+_have_ been and seen, what can you possibly do about it?"
+
+Evie's lips seemed as thick as if a bee had stung them. She broke out
+again.
+
+"'It!'--I like your 'it,' Miss Causton or Mrs. Causton or whatever you
+call yourself!"
+
+Louie coolly smoothed the folds of her blouse. "By 'it,' I mean, of
+course, my loving your husband," she said. "As you guessed, I knew
+that you knew about that picture. But it's really a much older thing
+than that! I don't quite know how old; while you were still engaged to
+somebody else--as old as that anyhow. And as it's purely my affair,
+and even he can't stop it, I wonder what _you_ can possibly do!--I'm
+'Miss' Causton, by the way."
+
+Louie had almost a genius for these last words that could be taken up;
+she smiled again as Evie, taking them up, said: "Oh, _are_ you!"
+
+"Well, I don't think I need be longer than I like, but that's neither
+here nor there. The important thing at present is whether you were
+wise to come to-day or not. I wonder whether you'd let me give you a
+piece of advice?"
+
+And that, as Evie still stood speechless with rage, might be described
+as the end of the first round. There was a long pause during which the
+two women stood looking at one another. Then the second round began,
+with a rapid exchange of half sentences.
+
+"Advice! Thanking you very much for your kindness----"
+
+"Oh, please don't raise your voice; they aren't double windows here."
+
+"Advice is cheap."
+
+"Far from it, believe me."
+
+"You common----"
+
+"Sssh, ssh, ssh! Your husband wasn't above asking my advice----"
+
+"I'll take very good care----"
+
+"Please--there are other people in these flats."
+
+"Well, is noise anything new here?" said Evie grossly.
+
+"Oh, you really shouldn't say those things!"
+
+And again they fell back, as it were, for breath. It was Louie who
+presently resumed.
+
+"I don't in the least know why I should want to advise you," she went
+on. "I'd no intention of doing so when you came into this room, and to
+be frank I still half hope you won't take the advice. But you'll
+please yourself about that. It's this. Don't be a little fool. Go
+home, and don't tell your husband you've seen me at all. If you do
+you'll make a sad mistake. You say advice is cheap; well, this isn't;
+it's fearfully dear. It's not the first time I've tried to help you,
+and I really haven't strength to do it any more. No, don't try to
+think of fresh names to call me either; already you've called me
+common and told me that the tenants here are used to hearing angry
+wives, and one can have too much of that. So go home, and say nothing
+to your husband about where you've been. Believe me, it'll be quite
+the best."
+
+It did in truth cost her more, far more, than she had intended to pay.
+The greater fool she, she told herself, but--she gave a quick, defiant
+glance round the bedroom, as if her eyes sought somebody who dared to
+meddle in her affairs. She would be a fool if she wished; who should
+stop her? This jealous little scold had fair warning now; let her take
+it and go while there was yet time. Louie had all but spoken her
+former _fiance's_ name once; with much more provocation she might
+forget herself and involve Jim too in a catastrophe of ten little
+words; and she wanted to do the sporting thing after all. Let Jim's
+wife take her fill of that canvas of Billy's, then, and go. Her eyes
+were glued to it now. As she looked Louie exulted; it _had_ been
+so--precisely so; not all Evie Jeffries's looking could alter that
+fact....
+
+But suddenly, as if even in this gratification and triumph lurked a
+peril best avoided, Louie strode to the canvas, took it from its nail,
+and set it on the floor by the little fireplace with its face to the
+wall. She had felt the tigress stretch again. To put that thing out of
+sight was the safest thing to do. She turned to Evie again.
+
+"Please go," she said. ("Yes, mother's coming in a minute, Jimmy.) You
+see, he's calling me. Forgive my turning you out like this, but do, do
+go, and don't tell your husband where you've been. Good-bye."
+
+But Evie Jeffries seemed to suspect that Louie was merely "coming it
+over her" with something indefinable, essential, not to be acquired.
+After all it was she, this shabby, grey-eyed woman, who wrote
+shorthand for a weekly wage, and herself, Mrs. James Herbert Jeffries,
+who lived in the mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she felt herself
+challenged; at any rate she plunged her hand into her lucky-bag once
+more.
+
+"Oh, there's no need for such a hurry," she said frigidly. "For one
+thing, I'm a little particular about who I take my advice from. You
+needn't think I don't see you're just shutting me up?"
+
+Louie was almost hushing, soothing. "Then let me shut you up. You've
+seen all you came to see; if there's anything else you want to know,
+ask me, quite quickly----"
+
+And Louie, in her eagerness to get rid of her and to remove herself
+from danger, almost gladly submitted to what Evie said next.
+
+"Oh, of course, if you've--an appointment," she said, with a toss.
+
+"Yes, I've an appointment--you understand," she answered, with a
+little shepherding movement of her hands.
+
+But the next moment that too had turned into something else.
+
+"Oh, you little fool!" Louie broke out, suddenly seeing. "You don't
+suppose I'm trying to get you out of the way so that I can meet _him_,
+do you? Good gracious, woman, he's never set foot in this place in his
+life, and I'll see he never does! Perhaps I wanted you to think he
+had--I don't know what I thought--with one and another of you I'm
+getting almost past thinking--but that's the truth anyway! _Now_ are
+you satisfied? Or have you got the idea so thoroughly into your stupid
+little head that nothing will shake it? If you're going to spend your
+Saturday afternoons going round to every place you think might
+possibly----"
+
+But the denial counted for nothing. Evie turned haughtily.
+
+"Who's making the noise now? And why should I believe you? I knew
+before I came you'd say that----"
+
+"Oh, how you try me!... I _do_ say that. There's nothing else to say.
+Do you think if it was any other way I shouldn't boast of it, to you
+or anybody else? Why, how _can_ you know so little of him--not to
+speak of myself----"
+
+"You needn't talk as if you hadn't already had the cheek to tell me
+you loved him!"
+
+"Did I? Upon my soul, I sometimes don't know whether I do or not! Say
+I don't--say I lied--say I sometimes almost hate him as much as I do
+you and you me."
+
+"Oh, very likely, the grapes being sour," Evie scoffed.
+
+"Then if they're sour----? What more do you want? Isn't that enough?
+And isn't it more than enough that I let you stand there and tell me
+so? Oh, I'm doing my best to warn you--you'll make a great mistake if
+you make me _try_ to get him!" She stamped. "_Won't_ you go?"
+
+Evie too stamped. "Oh yes, I'll go, and so will you, I promise
+you--from Pall Mall----"
+
+"Anything you like--only go----"
+
+But as Evie took a step towards the door a little accident turned
+Louie suddenly as white as paper. Billy's study leaned against the
+wall; Evie's skirt or foot caught it as she passed; and the canvas
+fell. Evie gave a short laugh and pushed it with her shoe.
+
+The dear symbol, nay, the very evidence of so many dreamings, that
+poor thing of wasted smiles and sighs and tears, the pearl from the
+heart of the oyster-grey----
+
+A kick of her rival's shoe was treatment good enough for it----
+
+It was as if the hives of her own breasts and the heart beneath them
+had been trodden on.
+
+Louie stepped slowly forward. "No, stop," she said.
+
+She stood for a moment looking down at the picture; then she spoke
+slowly.
+
+"You were quite right to come," she said. "You have reason to be
+jealous."
+
+Evie affected not to hear, but she heard. Louie continued:
+
+"A moment ago I told you not to tell him you'd been here. Now I want
+you to tell him. He may even be expecting it. You see we have spoken
+of it, he and I."
+
+Evie Jeffries seemed about to say something, but "Just one moment,"
+said Louie quietly----
+
+She placed the picture against the wall again, face outwards. She did
+not display it as a taunt now; it had served its turn. As if Evie's
+looks had cheapened it, she no longer wanted it. She stood looking at
+it.
+
+"It was the last time I sat," she murmured to herself.
+
+Even that pale shadow of a bridal was to be taken from her.
+
+Well, let it go.
+
+This time it was her own foot that kicked the canvas aside; then like
+a flash she turned--Louie at her deadliest.
+
+"I suppose you're aware you've lost him, whether he knows it yet or
+not?" she demanded truculently.
+
+Again she was grateful to Evie that she stiffened up against her. Evie
+smiled.
+
+"Oh, that way--'whether he knows it or not'--nobody minds _that_ kind
+of losing! _That_ wasn't what you were trying to make me believe a few
+minutes ago. Thank you very much for the tea, not forgetting the
+advice," she went on, "and if I might return the compliment, I should
+like to give you a piece of advice too. You say you could get married
+if you like; I'd jump at that if I were you! You see, there's your
+boy. Quite a well-behaved little fellow he seems--quite a superior
+child--and now that I've seen for myself, I'm perfectly satisfied,
+thank you!"
+
+"Then," said Louie, advancing, "I'm going to spoil your satisfaction.
+Listen to me." Her eyes were like saucers of ice. "You've lost your
+husband. I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll tell you how you can
+find out. You can tell him what he wouldn't believe when I told
+him--that you're jealous. You've reason; ask him what it is. If he
+doesn't tell you, he daren't; if he does--ck!--it's all up between
+you. Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that _you're_ the kind of
+woman men tell things to? You, who can neither trust him nor be
+trusted by him? You, who spy on him when his back's turned? You, who
+listen while a miserable little Jewess makes mischief for you--for I
+guess Miriam Levey sent you here? _You_ think you love him? Look at
+me, I say"--she rapped out the words like a command--"listen, and I'll
+tell you _my_ idea of loving a man! I've messed my life; if you were
+anything but what you are you'd know that if you wanted to hurt me
+your way wouldn't be to point at my little boy and look round my
+bedroom as if you expected to find pipes and overcoats there! Oh,
+that's not the way! The way would be to let me see what a perfect
+marriage could be; there might be tears in my eyes then! But what's
+this you show me instead? Oh, I know what your marriage is without
+telling. It would take you and a woman to make a wife for a man! And
+what would mine have been if I hadn't thrown my chance away? What
+should I have said if I'd seen what you think you've seen? Listen! I
+should have said: 'Go, if you like; find a woman if you can whose
+love's like mine; search the earth for her; I give you leave, and I
+shall be waiting for you, just the same, when you come back and say
+there isn't one!' But had _you_ thought of that? Not you! At a word
+you're off, asking whether this and that's true, because you don't
+trust him; and so he gives his trust to somebody else! That's what
+you've lost--and you don't even miss it, you know so little of love!"
+
+Evie had fallen back against the wall, a little intimidated by her
+vehemence. She did not understand, but she seemed to apprehend that
+there was something she did not understand. Louie broke out anew.
+
+"_You_ know love! And when and how did you learn it, pray? As you
+learned your shorthand and things (oh, you're trying hard to forget
+you ever knew them!) at that place in Holborn? Why, you failed in your
+petty little examinations there; do you think love's easier? Something
+you get out of a text-book and answer a paper on? Your husband might
+know if you don't! _He_ knew just what those other lessons were worth,
+but he doesn't seem to know that loving has a genius too--that one in
+a million has it as a gift and the others mimic it as you're mimicking
+people in your dress and talk now! And you call _me_ common--me, who
+told your husband long ago what his only, only chance was! Oh, I
+mustn't say any more or I shall say everything! And you toss your head
+and say: 'Nobody minds that kind of losing!' That's your idea; that's
+what you really think! Why, your mind wants a window as badly as that
+little dark back room at your Business College.... Oh, it maddens me,
+the sheer waste! A necklace of love--pearls--and good gracious, a bit
+of cheap glass in the middle of it! Yes, I mean you."
+
+She was walking rapidly up and down; she struck the rail of Jimmy's
+cot with her hand as she passed. Evie, cowed, watched her from the
+wall. Louie stopped before her.
+
+"What do you _do_ for him?" she said bitterly. "What do you _give_
+him? What do you _bear_ for him, suffer for him? Don't whimper--tell
+me--you've made pretty free with me--put that handkerchief away and
+tell me----"
+
+But instead of putting the handkerchief away, Evie burst into loud
+sobs. Louie watched her remorselessly. Tears, of course--no doubt that
+was the way she managed Jim----
+
+"That's no good with me," she said harshly. "I want to know what you
+do for your husband besides following him about and asking questions
+about him."
+
+Evie's hand moved as if for a chair. There was none. She lifted her
+head, walked across the room, and fell across Louie's bed. Louie still
+watched her unmoved.
+
+"Well?" she demanded again, after a quarter of a minute.
+
+Muffled in the bedclothes, Evie's voice came.
+
+"I give him all--all I--have. You talk as if--as if--I'd no right--to
+be on the earth at all."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, you do--you do! How--how can I give him more--than I've got? Oh,
+you think you know, but you don't--you don't know what I've gone
+through--you've never had that horrible morning--when I was to have
+been married--and I never expected Jeff to propose, but he did----"
+
+"Oh, for goodness' sake, get up!" Louie cried.
+
+"He did--one day--and I said No at first, but he caught hold of me....
+And even then I was jealous about Kitty--I know I'm jealous--but he
+told me afterwards that I needn't be jealous of poor Kitty because
+he'd only done it because he thought he couldn't have me--I know I'm
+jealous--it hurts sometimes so that I can only cry and cry----"
+
+Louie hadn't wanted this at all. Again she cried: "Oh, get up!" but
+Evie continued to sob.
+
+"And then when Jeff saw you--that night--at Billy's--it was worse than
+ever, but I kept it from him. I'm not like you, Louie--it's no good my
+telling myself I don't mind--even though I knew it was all an accident
+it was like a knife----"
+
+"Oh, don't lie there like that!" Louie muttered.
+
+"And then Miriam Levey reminded me of that thing Archie had said--but
+he's dead now--and I know it was absurd, but I did think he liked you.
+You've--such ways, you see--I expect you've been a governess or
+something in swell houses--I've got to learn them too, now, but Jeff
+says I'm really very quick at it----"
+
+Louie was pacing the floor now, but more slowly and with downhung
+head. This was the very last thing she had wanted. More than ever she
+hated this unresisting piece of pulp; but strike again she could not;
+no, not with Evie's soul as it were a naked picture for her to set her
+foot upon. And unless she did strike it was now quite, quite final. To
+take it lying down! Gladly she would have goaded her into a fresh show
+of resistance; contemptuously she would have told her to stand up and
+fight; but the child--Louie felt her to be a child, and herself a
+faded woman--was merely beyond all decency exposed. Louie only wanted
+to cover her up again as quickly as possible--her confessions, her
+abjectness, her appalling artlessnesses, her humiliating appeals. She
+was beginning to sob once more.
+
+"Oh, don't go on like that; do get up and pull yourself together!"
+Louie snapped.
+
+"I do love him--I haven't anything else to give him--except my
+life--he could have that--you couldn't give him more than that----"
+
+"I could stop blubbering for him," said Louie curtly, resuming her
+walk.
+
+Yes, it was final. Evie had overcome; Louie now backed out of the
+whole affair. If Jim liked to tell her of his own accord, well and
+good; it still seemed the only way out; but what was the good even
+then? Evie Jeffries would no more acquire love as Louie understood it
+than she would ever acquire the _nous_ to preside without betrayals at
+Jim's table at Iddesleigh Gate. And if Evie had lost Jim, so had
+Louie. By her silence she was relinquishing him now. She saw his image
+recede, slowly, slowly, as if it had been indeed that ship of her
+fancy, outward bound, her own vessel already condemned for breaking
+up. Yes, the ship was drawing away. The eyes of her spirit tired of
+watching it; surely now she might turn them elsewhere; but no--there
+it was still, very small, leaning, no doubt, to a brisk breeze, but
+hardly appearing to move.... No, it was not gone even yet; that sudden
+anguished searching for it was but a trick of the eyes; it was still
+there--a speck----
+
+And it had only needed six words: "James Herbert Jeffries killed
+Archie Merridew."
+
+Suddenly Louie herself sank to the floor by Jimmy's cot. Evie heard
+her sinking. She rose from the bed and ran to her. But Louie cried
+aloud and put up her hand.
+
+"For God's sake don't touch me--go now--and say nothing."
+
+The touch of Evie Jeffries would have been more than she could have
+borne.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mother, there _is_ a gentleman!"
+
+It was Jimmy's voice outside the door.
+
+Slowly Louie rose to her feet. "Very well," she called shakily; "talk
+to him till I come. Please go at once," she added to Evie.
+
+Evie began: "I'm sorry I said----"
+
+"Oh, do you want me to strike you?"
+
+"Can't I--do anything--for you?"
+
+"_Go!_"
+
+She heard the outer door close behind Evie Jeffries. By that time her
+eyes were straining at a wide and empty horizon....
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Sec._a_
+
+What followed when, after a few minutes during which Louie bathed her
+face in the bathroom, she entered her sitting-room again, fell
+mercifully flat. Any visit would have been an anti-climax; a visit now
+from Roy--it was Roy--was even welcome for that reason. If she must
+see him, best get it over.
+
+He was sitting on a rush-seated chair with Jimmy between his knees.
+Jimmy was playing with his watch. Save that the rims of his stolid
+porcelain-blue eyes were pinkish, as if with suppressed tears, he had
+not greatly changed. He wore a braided morning-coat; his silk hat,
+stick and gloves lay on another chair. His watch slipped from his
+boy's hand and dangled by its chain as he rose. His voice carried
+Louie instantly back to the carpenter's shed at Rainham Parva.
+
+"It's me, you see, Louie; here I am, like a bad penny, always turning
+up."
+
+Louie spoke listlessly. "How are you? I'll get you some tea."
+
+A minute later, with a "May I come in here?" he had followed her into
+the kitchen. He merely got in her way, if she could be said, in her
+complete exhaustion, to have a way at all. She was cutting bread and
+butter.
+
+"Louie, old girl," he said piteously over the bread-board, "why didn't
+you--tell a fellow?"
+
+Louie did not answer. Then Roy chirped up a little, as if something
+might now, past all discussion, be taken for granted.
+
+"Well, this settles it," he said. "Clinches it entirely. You know what
+I mean."
+
+Louie did know. "Just take the kettle off, will you?" she said.
+
+"So you see that's settled--clinched," said Roy, quite bustling.
+"Right you are. The only question now is; how soon can you pack up."
+
+"We'll talk about it presently, if there's anything to say. There
+isn't, though. Will you carry the tray in?"
+
+Jimmy ran straight to his knee again. "May I give him some jam?" said
+Roy; and then he added to the boy: "Oh, come, don't mess yourself up
+with it like that!" Louie remembered his account of the accident with
+the centre-board: "Jam and all the lot!" but she did not smile.
+
+"Rhoda will be here in a few minutes, then I'll have a short walk with
+you," she said. "I've nothing to say, though."
+
+Presently Rhoda did come in, and Louie put on her hat and old grey
+coat. They went out and walked slowly across Eelbrook Common towards
+Walham Green. There she told Roy that his return could make no
+difference whatever. "Don't talk such stuff, Louie," he said; "sit
+down." They sat down on a bench on the side of the common past which
+the District Railway runs and talked.
+
+The air rang with the shouts of poorly clad children at their Saturday
+afternoon play; the common was a-crawl with urchins. Into Roy's
+honest, statue-like eyes tears had come; none came into Louie's. She
+only shook her head.
+
+"You're only lacerating me," she said.
+
+"But, Louie----"
+
+"You want to lacerate me?"
+
+"But--the little chap----" Roy said presently, with a gulp. "Will you
+tell a fellow how you manage?"
+
+That Louie did not mind doing, more or less. "And now I must go back,"
+she said, rising.
+
+"I'll walk back a bit of the way with you. I'm not going to let you go
+like this."
+
+At the little drinking-fountain she stopped. "Don't make it harder,"
+she said. He had been indicating the rabble of children.
+
+"But look at 'em, poor little beggars!" he said. "Dash it all, I'm not
+just blowing off--I _could_ do such lots for him--he could ride--and
+shoot--and fish--and I've a corking little pony at grass now." He
+mentioned these things one after the other, slowly, as they occurred
+to him.
+
+Louie groaned inwardly, but aloud she said: "Please don't come any
+farther. Good-bye."
+
+"But I may come again? You see, I jolly well know I could persuade
+you."
+
+"N-o----"
+
+"I shall, though--you bet," Roy announced.
+
+She left him, wondering whether it would have made any difference at
+all had he, in asking her to marry him, told her once, even once, that
+he loved her.
+
+But she did not return home. Instead, she walked past the block of
+flats, crossed Putney Bridge, and sought her old Nursing Home in
+Mortlake Road. As a drunkard might pant for a drink, so now in her
+extremity she wanted to hear gaiety and laughter and talk. Though she
+paid for it in prostration afterwards, she felt that without some such
+intermission she could never get through the night. And to-morrow was
+that dead day, Sunday. Further than that she did not see; beyond the
+anodyne of an ordinary human laugh she did not inquire. It seemed to
+her a matter of the last moment to herself that Miss Dot and Miss Cora
+should be at home; if they were not, she felt that she must walk
+straight into a public-house, as a man might, and get herself
+something to drink.
+
+But Miss Cora and Miss Dot were at home; they had just come in from a
+matinee. They made an onslaught on Louie. Had she seen the piece? Oh,
+the funniest thing! They really had had some luck at the theatre at
+last! The last time it had been a slum piece, all heartstrings and
+gutter-snipes; and the time before that--would Louie believe it!--just
+when they had expected to see frocks and dancing and suchlike, the
+curtain had gone up on a dentist's parlour! Two half-crowns for seats
+in the pit for that! It was almost like paying money to go and see
+another Nursing Home!
+
+"But give the poor girl some tea--what are we thinking of!" said Miss
+Cora.
+
+"No, thanks--I've given two people tea this afternoon already," said
+Louie. "Tell me about the play."
+
+And, both speaking at once, they told her about the play--_such_ a
+frock as Ellaline Terriss had worn!--an e-_nor_-mous pink hat, pink
+like a rabbit's ear, and a frock, chiffon over pink satin.
+
+Ah! That was better!
+
+"But where's my bonnie boy?" Miss Cora demanded.
+
+"Oh, let's show her the new one, the little Crowley baby!"
+
+The little Crowley baby was brought in....
+
+"May I invite myself to supper?" Louie asked by-and-by.
+
+"Oh, do stop!"
+
+"Then give me some stout or something. I'm not sleeping very well."
+
+"Oh, we'll see that's all right----"
+
+And when, at ten o'clock, Louie left, it was with a sleeping
+preparation in her pocket. She took it in bed. It did its work. Half
+Sunday had passed when next she awoke.
+
+On the Sunday afternoon she went with Jimmy and Rhoda to Bishops Park;
+then, packing them off home, she crossed the bridge again and took the
+bus to Buck's. At Buck's she again stayed until ten, and she smiled
+as, on the way home again, she remembered the little party to which
+Chaff had once taken her, pigtail and all. If Chaff had had a little
+party that night she would have invited herself to it; it would have
+been something to do. Although it was half-past eleven when she
+reached her own door she was not in the least tired; had she not slept
+until well after midday? She walked back to Putney Bridge again. There
+a man spoke to her. She wondered what he would have said had she
+stopped; it would have been amusing to know. She felt that she had not
+had enough amusement. She wished she could have gone back to the
+Business School in Holborn again. That had been amusing. Mr. Mackie
+had been very amusing. One of his songs, he had said, that about the
+Gorgonzola Cheese, never failed to create merriment.
+
+She hummed as much as she could remember of the air of it as she
+walked, and took two more of Miss Cora's sleeping-tablets before going
+to bed.
+
+She found, too, an entirely unexpected amount of amusement at the
+Consolidation on the Monday morning. Not that everything was not much
+as usual; the routine was the same; but a quite comic spirit seemed to
+pervade the whole place. Lacking a Mr. Mackie, Sir Julius, dapper and
+perfect in his aplomb, who had thought of asking her to be his
+mistress but had found a more profitable use to put her to, seemed
+somehow as funny as needs be; she wondered she had not noticed it
+before. It happened that Mr. Stonor had to rebuke one of the telephone
+girls that morning; there was diversion in the way in which the girl
+tossed her dolly-capped head and told him that she would talk to her
+"boys" if she liked. Quite right; that was the way to take things, as
+a joke. And Mr. Whitlock was portentously funny over a nought or so
+that had strayed into a pile of figures; and the glazed screen that
+marked Louie's superiority to the other girls in the same room seemed
+inanimately funny, and Jim himself was funny, when you came to think
+of it, sitting invisible there in his room with people coming and
+going all the time, as if the earth would have ceased to revolve on
+her axis or the sun have omitted to rise if Jim had not rung bells and
+jotted his initials on his bits of paper. And funnier than everything
+else was the fact that Louie should be there at all. She laughed
+outright when, at nine o'clock that night (she had been kept on
+account of some urgent joke or other), she stepped from the
+upholstered lift and out into Pall Mall.
+
+Again she wished that Chaff had had a little party somewhere. Jim, she
+understood from Mr. Stonor, was giving a party presently, not a little
+one, but a large, probably a screamingly funny, one. But its humour
+would probably be lost on Jim. Jim did not always see jokes; that was
+where Jim had made the mistake; he needed somebody to point them out
+to him. His wife, being part of the comedy herself, naturally could
+not do so; she cried when she should have laughed; she had no "kick,"
+no "buck," in her. It was a pity, for Jim needed these things, and
+ought to have married a woman who had them. Well, it was rather late,
+but not too late for Louie to go into a shilling gallery somewhere.
+To-morrow, if she could get away early, she would go up to Camden Town
+and see Billy. Billy was a joke too, spending whole, real days in
+making artificial coloured shapes on canvases or solemnly scratching
+his copper plates. One of the best things Billy had ever done a woman
+had humorously kicked aside with her foot. That showed what these
+things were worth in the big, big world. Of course a sense of humour
+was really a sense of proportion. The dreadful lack of it showed when
+people magnified trifles so. Yes, she would go and see Billy
+to-morrow. To-night, the theatre gallery.
+
+She found Billy on the following evening, still etching, the humorous
+fellow, but amusingly grave too. Perhaps he had heard, or guessed,
+something from Roy. He was dissolving the ground from a plate; Louie
+wondered what the curiously sweet-smelling fluid he was using was;
+and then she remembered. She had smelt that same smell when Jimmy had
+been born--which event also, by the way, had been the consequence of a
+lark. She remembered, too, the wonderful, releasing sleep that
+heavy-smelling stuff had given her. It might be rather a useful thing
+to know where to find that stuff; it was necessary to Louie's
+enjoyment of the world and its humour that she should sleep at night.
+It struck her as a very happy chance that chloroform should be used in
+the practice of etching. She admitted that it was rather a shame to
+steal from Billy again, but she felt that she now needed that
+wonderful, releasing sleep even more than when Jimmy had been born.
+
+An hour later she left Billy's with the ribbed blue bottle in her
+pocket.
+
+The remainder of the week also was gay; so was the next week, though
+perhaps with a slightly diminishing gaiety. But the level was restored
+again when Roy once more turned up at her flat, again on a Saturday
+afternoon. Really she could have laughed, as they say, fit to split.
+Roy, who seemed to think that you could ask a woman to marry you
+without the--formality, call it--of telling her you loved her! It was
+not for Louie to spoil the sport by pointing out the inessential
+omission. Not that she hesitated at all now; she had only to think of
+how it might have read in the paper: "At Saint So-and-So's, on such
+and such a date, by a Reverend Statue, assisted by another Reverend
+Effigy, a Tanagra Figure, to a trodden-on Painting by Billy Izzard,"
+etc., etc. Oh no. That wasn't loving----
+
+There was no doubt that Roy loved Jimmy, however; and that was perhaps
+a little more serious. He had handed in his papers; he could provide
+for Jimmy; there was riding, and shooting, and fishing, and the
+corking little pony; but ... it was impossible, of course. Jimmy was
+Louie's and nobody else's. If Jimmy must play on Saturday afternoons
+with the rabble on Eelbrook Common, well, he must; Louie would do all
+for him that she could. It was a pity--especially about the pony. It
+disturbed Louie a little. It disturbed her, in fact, so much that that
+night she remembered something she had forgotten about for ten days
+and more--the blue ribbed bottle she had stolen from Billy. But as she
+had left it in her drawer at the Consolidation she had to sleep as
+best she could without it. Perhaps it was just as well. It was not a
+good habit. She wondered whether Billy had missed the bottle; she
+would go up again and see, taking that old painting with her. That
+would square accounts a little. Certainly it was a shame to loot Billy
+like that.
+
+She went up to Billy's with the study. Billy received it absently. And
+she was glad that Billy had a code, for he was grave again, and seemed
+all but on the point of talking seriously to her, code or none. But it
+blew over. He asked her whether she'd noticed him with a bottle of
+chloroform one night; he'd lost one; stupid thing to be careless
+about; must be somewhere; had Louie seen him with it, cleaning a
+plate?----
+
+"No," said Louie.
+
+"Well, it may turn up. Thanks for the canvas. To tell you the truth I
+rather wanted it. Merely as painting it's--_knuk_!" Billy made a
+delectable little foreign gesture.
+
+"I'm no judge of things as painting," said Louie. "And--I
+say--Billy----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't know that I haven't changed my mind about not sitting--if you
+asked me very nicely----"
+
+But Billy looked gravely at her again. "Oh, it doesn't matter. I'd
+rather you didn't. I think I can manage. You'd do far better----"
+
+He looked hard at her, but the code held.
+
+"To do what?" said Louie.
+
+"Well, not to sit," said Billy, turning away.
+
+Louie felt ridiculously touched; nevertheless, much as she liked his
+loyalty, she wasn't going to talk about Roy. "Thanks, Bill," she said
+simply. "You're a good sort." And there the matter dropped. Neither
+for Billy nor for anybody else did she ever sit again.
+
+It seemed strange that so slight a thing as an indisposition of Mr.
+Stonor should obscure the mock-sun of Louie's gaiety as if a vapour
+had crept across it; but so it was. Occasionally urgent messages were
+taken to Iddesleigh Gate at night; usually Mr. Stonor took them; but
+one day Mr. Stonor left at lunch-time and did not come back that day.
+Sir Julius himself, who had had dinner sent in that night from a
+restaurant, sent for Louie and gave her certain papers and
+instructions. As soon as she learned the errand she asked whether
+nobody else could go instead. She invented an improbable engagement.
+
+"I'm sorry," Sir Julius said, "but I want Whitlock--I shall have to
+wait here myself till you come back. If you could go, and give them to
+Mr. Jeffries himself--nobody else----" That was as near as Sir Julius
+ever came to a direct command.
+
+So, as Evie Jeffries had seen Louie's home, Louie was now to see hers.
+
+She went reluctantly, by bus, changing at the bottom of Park Lane.
+For days she had not seen Jim; she did not want to see him now.
+Therefore, though go she must, she would not sit down; she would not
+lift her veil; she would be in and out of his house again as quickly
+as ever she could. She passed the Marble Arch, and at Lancaster Gate
+got down and walked. She reached Jim's vast and tomblike house.
+
+At the word "Consolidation" the man who opened the door said: "This
+way, please," and led her along a low-lighted hall, round a staircase
+the outspread double wings of which resembled some huge alighting
+architectural bird, and along a narrower passage to the library. At
+the touch of a switch the room broke into a softly masked glow of
+light. "Please to sit down," said the servant; but Louie stood by the
+great writing-table, looking towards the door. Evie had taken stock of
+her dwelling; Louie looked only towards the door of Jim's library.
+
+Then, as the door was opened, she pushed up her veil after all. Jim
+came in.
+
+He placed a chair for her; she still refused to sit. She continued to
+stand even when it appeared that the papers she had brought would
+require some examination. As she stood, a bell, not unlike that of a
+muffled telephone, sounded for a moment and then ceased. It was
+followed by a tap on the door.
+
+"Come in," said Jim, without looking up.
+
+Evie Jeffries entered, dressed as if for a State ball.
+
+Even had Louie not seen her face, the touch of her hand would have
+told her what had happened. Evie was back again exactly where she had
+been; the only difference was that she now hated Louie the more that
+she had abased herself before her. Many times on that other Saturday
+afternoon Louie had begged Evie to go; now she longed to fly herself.
+After another minute Jim put it into her power to do so. He rose and
+returned the signed papers.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and added, turning to Evie, "I don't know
+whether Miss Causton's had supper?"
+
+Evie's face lighted up as artificially as if there too a switch had
+turned up masked lights.
+
+"Yes; won't you let me have them lay a tray for you, 'Miss' Causton?
+It won't be any trouble," she said.
+
+"No, thank you," said Louie. "Please don't come to the door, Mr.
+Jeffries."
+
+He came, however.
+
+"Good-night," he said, as the door was held open for her to pass out.
+
+"Good-night," said Louie.
+
+She remembered afterwards that she noticed, out in Oxford Street
+again, a sandwichman bearing an illuminated board with the
+announcement of some concert or entertainment upon it. Pasted across
+the device was a strip of paper with the words "To night" upon it. The
+date was the sixteenth of May. At midday on the day following, Louie,
+coming out of Mr. Whitlock's room, saw Jim advancing as if to come in.
+He saw her, stared hard at her for a moment, paused irresolutely, and
+then turned abruptly and walked away again. She watched his back,
+shaped like a church-door, but bowed as if with a load too great for
+him, disappear in the direction of his own room. He had made no
+attempt to conceal the deliberate avoidance. She half expected, though
+she knew not why, that he would send for her presently. He did not.
+She was infinitely glad. Something, she was perfectly sure, had
+happened between him and his wife. It was the first time he had not
+sought her aid. Had he, now that it was too late, told her? Had he
+realised that it was too late to tell her? Had he, realising this,
+determined to take his last risk and to tell her nevertheless? Or had
+something happened that had at last unsealed his eyes so that he now
+saw with a clearness as merciless as that of Louie herself?
+
+Louie could not tell. She only saw his face again, the face of a man
+suddenly old as he realised his defeat, and his disappearing back,
+hunched under a burden that was crushing him at the last.
+
+
+Sec._b_
+
+"If I were you, Miss Causton, I should leave early to-night," said Mr.
+Whitlock that afternoon.
+
+Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.
+
+"Oh, if you _want_ to make it a matter of conscience! But Mr. Jeffries
+is giving a party to-night, and both Sir Julius and I will be leaving
+early."
+
+He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left her. Louie
+resumed her work.
+
+It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been worked over
+before and needed little attention; or at all events it got little. At
+five o'clock Louie gathered the sheets together and put them into the
+drawer of her table. As she did so some object at the back of the
+drawer knocked. She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of
+chloroform.
+
+"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.
+
+"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you put me a little
+beside myself for a day or two. Much better not to have things like
+that lying about; to have 'em's sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it
+away now."
+
+But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought her a cup of
+tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer again. The girl began to
+talk. She was Ivy Warner, the operator who would talk to her "boys"
+over the telephone if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always
+admired the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a word
+would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be carrying on a
+flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under the eye of Mr. Stonor
+himself.
+
+"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her cup of tea.
+
+"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three winners to-day, one
+at thirty to one, a gift; like to see him? He's coming up this
+evening," Miss Warner replied. "I'd a chin with him a quarter of an
+hour ago; dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and
+a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's bringing a
+friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost afraid to introduce
+him; and Daisy says she really must give her steady a show to-night.
+Know anybody?"
+
+Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had never done before.
+She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again she had the hunger to go
+somewhere, to see lights, hear music, smell the cigarettes of men.
+
+"Do you care to take me?" she said.
+
+Ivy was surprised. "You?"
+
+"Oh, not if I should spoil sport----"
+
+"Rather not! Do come! What a lark! I'll get on to Harold again now.
+You really mean it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good egg!" cried Ivy, glad to make up her party and to improve her
+relations with her business superior at the same time. "I didn't
+really want Daisy, you see. Of course they do talk loud at the Troc,
+but Daisy's just a _ti_ny bit ... well, a perfect stranger had the
+cheek to come up to our table and speak to her the last time----"
+
+Ivy ran jubilantly off to ring up Harold again.
+
+Louie told herself it was a stupid thing to do; she was getting into
+the habit of loitering about late at night, heedless of Jimmy. But she
+had promised, and would go. If she didn't she would only be mopishly
+thinking, and, after all, she would be no more out of place with
+Harold's dashing friend than Evie Jeffries would be in another place
+much about the same time. Perhaps the dasher for Evie and Jim's guests
+for herself would have been more fitting, but no matter. She would be
+a dasher too. She wondered how Ivy was describing her dashing self to
+Harold over the telephone.
+
+At seven o'clock she made herself ready and left the Consolidation
+with Ivy.
+
+She retained no very clear recollection afterwards of the gaieties of
+that evening, but the little she did remember arrested her a little.
+She had a confused impression of the lights and tables and pilastered
+walls of the Trocadero as of a bright beckoning vista, stretching
+before her as the white road stretches before the knapsacked and
+stout-booted walker. She knew that many girls went that way.... The
+air was heavy with the smell of coffee, smoke, dishes, scent; Harold's
+friend was a Hebrew "killer," and reminded her of Miss Levey; noisily
+he claimed the privilege, which Harold noisily disputed, of paying for
+everything; and the waiter contemptuously accepted a tip of a
+sovereign from him. Perhaps he was the same cavalier who had resented
+Daisy's loudness; at all events he appeared to find in Louie's
+quietness another--or perhaps the same--meaning; and Louie had to move
+her chair and to change her attitude at the table. Afterwards they
+went to the Alhambra; it was Ivy who cried out at the sight of two
+cabs and refused to go unless they all went together. At the Alhambra
+Louie was afraid she was rather a wet blanket; she declined to "take a
+walk round" and remained seated in her stall; but Harold's friend was
+fickle as well as dashing, for by-and-by she had a glimpse of him with
+another lady, who had not dined with them at the Trocadero. She
+wondered how Evie Jeffries had got on--or "got off," to use an
+expression of Kitty Windus's.
+
+Suddenly--perhaps it was this thought of Evie elsewhere that did
+it--she got up, sought the cloakroom, and walked out of the place. She
+went home, once more quietly and steadily thinking of that vista of
+lights and cigar smoke and laughing mouths and gilded pilasters--the
+way so many girls went.
+
+The row she expected with Ivy in the morning was not a moment delayed.
+It began in the lift in which they both happened to ascend together.
+
+"Good-morning," said Ivy stiffly. "I hope you got home in good time
+last night."
+
+Louie waited until the liftman had clashed the doors to behind them;
+then, "I'd a headache," she said.
+
+"Well, perhaps it's better than having one in the morning," said Ivy,
+more icily still. "All the same, there is such a thing as playing the
+game when you go out with people."
+
+"I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have come," said Louie, walking with the
+angry girl to the telephone exchange, where the lights on the great
+switchboard came and went like the sparks at the back of a gate. They
+were coming and going with great rapidity that morning.
+
+"Oh, _much_ obliged for your company, I'm sure," Ivy broke out,
+"but----"
+
+"Sssh!" came from a girl who stretched the rubber worms.
+
+"Sssh yourself, Daisy Dawson--time you knew how to speak into a phone
+by this time!" snapped Ivy.
+
+But another and a louder "Sssh!" came from another girl, and suddenly
+Mr. Stonor's head appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Quiet there!" he rapped out, and withdrew his head again.
+
+"Sssh, Ivy--haven't you heard?" Daisy Dawson said softly.
+
+Ivy's own voice dropped. "What?" she asked quickly.
+
+"About Mr. Jeffries."
+
+"No--what?"
+
+Mr. Stonor came in again--but not before Louie had heard Daisy whisper
+the word "dead."
+
+Suddenly she remembered the face of the liftman. She clutched Mr.
+Stonor's arm. He looked at her. There was no need to ask.
+
+Dead!
+
+Slowly she walked to her own table behind the screen.
+
+The place was at once busier and more hushed than usual. Presently Mr.
+Whitlock passed. Mr. Whitlock was thirty-five; he looked fifty. Louie
+only asked him a single question: "Is it in the papers?" He nodded and
+passed on. She sought a messenger.
+
+It was on the right-hand middle page. It had happened at one o'clock
+in the morning; cerebral haemorrhage. That very evening he had given a
+dinner-party; followed a short interview with Sir Peregrine Campbell,
+one of the guests; but Mr. Robson, of the Board of Trade, had declined
+to be seen. There would be no inquest. Heartfelt sympathy was extended
+to his widow. Half-a-column of "career" closed the announcement. The
+early edition of the evening paper for which she sent out had it all
+over again.
+
+Dead!
+
+Another absence!
+
+Slowly she turned the paper and began at the beginning again.
+
+Jim dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Louie fetched Jimmy from his cot into her own bed. It was
+not, she felt, for comfort for herself; she had a strange feeling that
+she ought to be comforting Jimmy. Jimmy slept, but, her eyes
+alternately very widely open and very tightly closed in the dark, she
+whispered to him.
+
+"Well, we've got to look after ourselves now," she whispered to the
+sleeping child. "I don't think we care to go and see him, do we? I
+daresay she wouldn't refuse it, but we won't go. That was his wife,
+who said she'd a little boy like you, and of course we're all very
+sorry for her. She did give him all she had; she said she'd die for
+him; but of course that's only a way people have of speaking when they
+mean they love somebody very much. Nobody wants her to die for him
+really; that would only be two dead instead of one; and she won't
+actually die.... And she'd a sad thing happen once before. Nobody ever
+knew about that really except me and him; she didn't know; if she did
+she might die really then. People have to be careful, they say, when
+they've once had a terrible shock. It's rather funny though, Jimmy,
+that mother shouldn't feel very much of a shock. Of course I didn't
+expect it, but as soon as it happened it seemed as if it had been
+bound to happen. That's queer--and I don't know that I wouldn't have
+preferred the shock."
+
+She continued her curious consolation of the sleeping boy:
+
+"Poor Jimmy--poor mother! He looked beaten yesterday--done--but I
+didn't think.... One never does think till afterwards.... Ah, but
+mother did, once, a long time ago! Mother danced with him once, and
+knew then--and the next time she saw him Jimmy was quite a big boy. If
+she could only have seen him a few times in between, she doesn't know
+what she could have done, but she would have done something, and then
+by-and-by he would have blessed her for it--she's sure, quite sure he
+would.... And there she was, with some terrible people at a music
+hall----"
+
+She choked a little.
+
+Even had it been proposed to her, she did not think she would have
+gone to see Jim. That was another woman's affair; Louie's part in him
+had nothing to do with what remained now. Not that she was so absurd
+as to tell herself she had lost nothing; even when it is only yours to
+look at, or perhaps to put your arms about just once, a body counts
+for something; but the other woman had had nothing but that. "Nothing
+but" was perhaps a queer way of putting it; for that "nothing but"
+Louie might perhaps have given all the rest; but all the same it was
+not very much her business now. Her business now, like the other
+woman's, was to jog on just the same, the one in her empty mansion,
+the other one it didn't much matter where. Again she whispered to
+Jimmy.
+
+"How thankful I am that I didn't tell her--something! Oh, I don't
+think I could bear her to die for him as she said she would! And I do
+hope he's not been so foolish as to--leave anything about; anything
+that might tell her, I mean; she can't bear what I can bear. But he
+wouldn't. He wouldn't cover it all up so cleverly to go and uncover it
+himself. I always knew it would happen if that insect got in his way;
+Jim wouldn't think twice about it, except how to make himself safe....
+Was it Kitty Windus who told me that about him--about his father
+having been an English merchant captain and his mother a Corsican
+woman he found dancing in a sailors' cafe in Marseilles? If it wasn't
+Kitty I dreamed it; mother's done a most foolish lot of dreaming; but
+it must have been Kitty. They say they do that kind of thing in
+Corsica. I shall never know.... Well, it doesn't matter.... Poor
+little Jimmy...."
+
+She deliberately tried herself, to see whether she was capable of
+emotion about him. She seemed to be quite incapable. "I'm simply
+callous," she thought.... She tried several days later, on the day of
+his funeral; the words she repeated to herself had no meaning for her;
+"gone," was merely a thing of four letters, "never" one of five. The
+word "absence" she quite failed to understand. She heard that Mrs.
+Jeffries was prostrated, but quite as well as could be expected in the
+circumstances. Perhaps Mrs. Jeffries too was repeating the words
+"gone" and "never." Louie wondered whether she would marry again. It
+would not surprise her.
+
+Well, if Evie Jeffries could live, Louie could live.
+
+A piece of news, however, which she had from Billy Izzard one
+night--this was three weeks later, but her stony insensibility had not
+changed--filled her, she could not have told why, with a quite
+different disquietude. It appeared that Billy had felt himself
+permitted to call on Mrs. Jeffries, and had found her (so he told
+Louie) busy with her husband's private papers. Sir Julius also had
+been there, to advise if advice was necessary; and Sir Julius had been
+of opinion that the painful task would be more quickly over if Mrs.
+Jeffries would have a number of papers that were written in shorthand
+transcribed by a clerk, if a trustworthy one could be found. "In fact,
+he mentioned your name," said Billy. But it appeared that Mrs.
+Jeffries knew some shorthand, had other reasons, and so forth. She had
+refused to have the papers transcribed. Naturally they had not said
+much with Billy there, who, indeed, had not stayed many minutes; but
+he had gathered that the papers formed some sort of a journal.
+
+Louie felt her flesh grow queerly crisp. This, by the way, was in a
+little restaurant not far from the Palace Theatre. Louie had had three
+consecutive nights at home, and felt that a fourth would kill her. She
+and Billy were going to the Palace afterwards.
+
+"A journal?" she said slowly.
+
+"Well, Pepper rather thought a novel of some sort; I'd a talk with him
+afterwards; but I suppose he only knows what Mrs. Jeffries tells him.
+It wouldn't surprise me in the least that poor old Jeff dabbled a bit
+in that sort of thing. I'm quite sure he'd have made a painter. One of
+the big sort he was, the Titian, Leonardo, Cellini sort--the big men,
+who can take an art or so in their stride."
+
+"What made Sir Julius think it might be a novel?" Louie hoped that her
+new agitation did not show.
+
+"My dear girl, you know as much about it as I do."
+
+"And it was in shorthand?" she demanded.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"His own?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't say. It was in his desk though. Why?"
+
+"And you say Mrs. Jeffries is reading it herself?"
+
+"Well, when Pepper suggested you--and a Miss Levey, I remember,
+whoever she is----"
+
+"Miriam Levey? Yes?" Louie said, with a jerk.
+
+Billy looked hard at her. "What's the matter?" he said abruptly.
+"You're as queer as Mrs. Jeffries herself was about it."
+
+"She was queer? How, queer?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. How can one describe things like that--just
+impressions one gets?"
+
+"Did she strike you as queer because she'd perhaps read some of it?"
+
+"Well, I understand it was private----"
+
+"You mean she _must_ have read some of it to find that out?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Again Louie had that curious crawling of her flesh. She hesitated for
+a moment; then, slowly:
+
+"What sort of terms are you on with Mrs. Jeffries, Billy?"
+
+Billy stared. "Oh, quite all right--I don't understand----"
+
+"Have you any influence over her?"
+
+"What sort of influence?"
+
+Louie hesitated again. After all, it might be only a fear. She went
+on. "Say influence enough to advise her about reading that journal, or
+novel, or whatever it is?"
+
+"Lord, no!" said Billy. "I was his friend, hardly hers, you see."
+
+"Well, if it could be put as a matter of friendship with him?" Louie
+was speaking almost feverishly now.
+
+"I wish I knew exactly what you meant," said Billy.
+
+"Order me another cup of coffee. That's what I can't tell you, because
+I don't know myself. But let me ask another question. Do you happen to
+know whether there are any real names in this thing, whatever it is?"
+
+"Really, I----"
+
+"Just a moment. I'll tell you why I asked. If this is a journal, and
+has names of people in it, the chances are mine's there."
+
+Billy was quick enough. He nodded. "I see; at least I think I see. You
+mean about his coming in that night and Mrs. Jeffries possibly not
+liking it? Well, to tell the truth I don't think she did much. I could
+have bitten my tongue out when I'd told her; but I suppose everybody
+doesn't look on these things quite as we do. You mean in a
+word--excuse me for putting it rather stupidly--that she's jealous and
+thinks she can find out the truth? Supposing there was any 'truth' to
+find out, I mean?"
+
+"That's the idea. Of course there was no 'truth.'"
+
+"Well? Why not let her discover that and make her happy, poor thing?
+You see, he was her husband."
+
+Louie winced, but continued. "That's all right as far as it goes; but
+if there's one name there are probably others."
+
+Billy looked sharply at her. "Other women? Jeffries? Don't you believe
+it!"
+
+"I didn't say women."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"I can't tell you. And perhaps I'm altogether wrong. But if I'm not
+wrong, Billy," she said earnestly, "and you've any interest in Mrs.
+Jeffries at all--say interest enough to want to spare her a shock--she
+oughtn't to be allowed to read that journal--always supposing it is a
+journal."
+
+Billy gave a short laugh. "Really, Louie! Is this the Surrey or
+Sadlers Wells?... You're not serious, are you? Of course it's bound to
+be painful for her at the best, but she's getting on very well--better
+than we could have hoped."
+
+Louie made a little despairing gesture. "Well, I can't tell you any
+more."
+
+"Well, if it's as important as all that, why don't _you_ tell her?"
+
+"I couldn't do that either. Look here, Billy, couldn't you find out
+about this for me?"
+
+"Oh, dash it all--how can I?"
+
+The saucer of Louie's coffee cup was full of ashes; she added another
+butt and reached for Billy's case. She looked Billy full in the eyes
+as he struck a match for her.
+
+"Do you go much to Iddlesleigh Gate?"
+
+"Well, just at present, you see----"
+
+"I mean, _could_ you go? Where does all this take place? In that
+library? (Yes, I've been once.)"
+
+"Yes. At least that's where we were that night."
+
+Still Louie looked steadily into his eyes. "Now this really _is_
+Surrey and Sadlers Wells," she said. "Could you get those papers out
+of her way--anyhow--so that she doesn't read them?"
+
+Billy twinkled a little. "It takes a woman to do these things, Louie."
+
+"Suppose without asking any questions, if you did I'd--marry Roy?"
+After all, to marry Roy would be no worse than anything else now.
+
+The twinkle disappeared. Billy was grave again.
+
+"I'd like you to marry Roy, Louie."
+
+"Well ... is it a bet?"
+
+But Billy only shook his head. This was all very well at the Surrey
+and Sadlers Wells, but----
+
+"It's a physical impossibility," he said. "And if it wasn't, I
+wouldn't."
+
+"That's final?" said Louie, looking into his eyes for the last time.
+
+"My dear girl----"
+
+Louie rose. "All right. Then we may as well get across to the Palace
+and see Marie Lloyd."
+
+Could she have said more? She did not see that she could. The chance
+loomed tremendously large now that Jim _had_ been fool enough to write
+things after all, and perhaps his wife was reading that journal, if it
+was a journal, even then----
+
+Louie could not stop her--no power on earth could stop her. What Jim
+had evidently not told her during his life she would read for herself
+now that he had gone.
+
+He would have done better to tell her.
+
+But there: perhaps it was not a journal----
+
+
+
+
+ENVOI
+
+
+"Er--Miss Causton," Sir Julius called--"can you stay for an hour or
+so? No, a private affair; I hope it's not inconvenient; thanks."
+
+He was sickly white and tired-looking; Louie's feet dragged, and her
+brain was as stupid as clay. She was sorry for Sir Julius; _he_ had
+had no preparation; as for Louie, it seemed to her now that she had
+been passing from preparation to preparation for such things for the
+whole of her life. This of the morning paper was only the latest of
+her fulfilments. The prophets, she thought dully, must have been very
+weary men.... But on second thoughts perhaps Sir Julius ought to have
+been sorry for _her_. Even shock is better than foreknowledge.
+
+For of course Sir Julius wanted her to stay in connection with this of
+Mrs. Jeffries.
+
+She had put on her hat and coat for departure; as if she walked in her
+sleep, she passed out of Sir Julius's room and removed them again. She
+bathed her face, but felt little fresher; then she returned.
+
+It was about Mrs. Jeffries. It was about them both. Then Louie seemed
+to remember that Sir Julius had said something about an article on his
+deceased colleague for a Review. She supposed that was why he wanted
+her to take down his words in shorthand. Unless it was for the
+inquest. Gas-taps turned on, doors and windows sealed, and so forth
+usually meant an inquest; and they would not have far to look for her
+motive--suicide through natural grief. It was only that morning, but
+it seemed an old, old story already.
+
+"'_Tragic Death of a Lady_,'" Sir Julius read out from a newspaper....
+
+Well, he wouldn't want that part taken down; indeed, if he had only
+known what Louie knew, he would not have asked her to take anything
+down at all. But her notebook was on her knee and her pencil
+sharpened, and when Sir Julius had finished reading her hand began to
+write, purely functionally, of itself. It was no trouble to Louie
+whatever; nay, her hand was hardly called upon more than her mind; the
+pencil itself did it. After all, foreseeing minds could be put to
+better uses than the mere recording of things after the event.... "Sad
+business, sad business," Sir Julius was saying; and "Sad business, sad
+business," the obedient pencil wrote. But Louie wondered whether it
+was so sad after all. Evie Jeffries had had a sort of foreknowledge
+too; "I could die for him; you couldn't do more," Louie remembered she
+had once said; yet it was doubtful whether she had died for love of
+him after all. Call it gas-taps, or the shock of discovering that Jim
+had been her lover's executioner....
+
+Still, she had died, from whatever reason, and she had been quite
+right in saying that Louie could have done no more.
+
+It was strange the way the pencil wrote of itself. "A page of notes in
+her husband's shorthand has been found under one of the pillars of the
+writing-table," it wrote, and it omitted, as if it had been endowed
+with Louie's own intelligence, Sir Julius's interpolated remark, "I've
+got that page of notes, by the way." Mr. Whitlock had described to
+Louie one day a contrivance called a tele-writer; a pen dipped itself
+into a bottle of ink and wrote, unassisted, a telegraphed message;
+they were new, and they hadn't got them at the Consolidation yet; but
+they were putting them into some of the post offices, Mr. Whitlock had
+said. Her pencil moved like the pen of a tele-writer. She watched it,
+fascinated. It was writing as Sir Julius talked, about Jim now.
+
+"--lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there
+weren't many things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of a
+murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been
+tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him,
+but the others wouldn't have much chance----"
+
+Very little chance, Louie thought. That, in a sense, had been the
+tragedy of it all. Louie knew more about that than Sir Julius; Louie
+had once said, "Come, come!" to him, in tones that might have brought
+angels from above and devils from below running for love, but it had
+not made a ha'p'orth of difference to Jim. Sir Julius seemed to be
+praising him for it; Louie was not sure that she could exactly do
+that; she could almost as soon have mocked him for it; but you neither
+mock nor praise a blind man merely because he is blind. It was funny
+that Sir Julius, with not very much to boast about himself, should set
+up an idol of faithfulness; and not just for somebody else to worship
+either; that was the funny part; men did that kind of thing; sinned,
+and yet worshipped, and called it "the maintenance of an ideal." They
+honoured Joseph, and winked when his back was turned. Perhaps they
+made much of him because of his rarity. Well, it was all the same to
+Potiphar's wife....
+
+But all at once something seemed to have happened to the pencil. It
+was tele-writing very furiously. Sir Julius was reading from another
+piece of paper; Louie fancied, somehow, that it might be the piece
+that had got wafted under the pillar of Jim's desk.
+
+   "_--show him that red thing on the floor and that curved thing on
+   the door._"
+
+   _But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had
+   turned suddenly white. But an habitual pertness still persisted
+   in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to
+   the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in.
+   I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you
+   can," that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered
+   quickly...._
+
+   "_Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow
+   morning--or----_"
+
+   "_Shall I?" he bragged falteringly...._
+
+He seemed to have hanged him, then; "that curved thing on the door"
+evidently meant a hook. That was rather revolting; these were the
+things about murder that Louie had not wanted to know.
+
+"Sort of grim tale he would write," said Sir Julius to the pencil;
+"and of course--_de mortuis_ and so on--but he did marry the wrong
+woman. I suppose they're together again now."
+
+Suddenly Louie put down her notebook and pencil. Her voice, too, as
+she spoke, seemed to her a sort of tele-voice.
+
+"Will you excuse me just a moment?" she said. "I'm thirsty."
+
+She went out. When she returned, three or four minutes later, Sir
+Julius sniffed once or twice and asked her if she had a toothache. She
+took up the pencil and notebook again. Sir Julius resumed.
+
+"What was I saying? Oh yes, about his marrying the wrong woman.... But
+he was a mass of contradictions, and one of 'em was that he merely
+idealised her. Pretty, of course, but poor Jeffries could have done
+better for himself than that. She never could bear me...."
+
+Louie felt no difference yet; she did not know how long these things
+took. For a moment she wondered what would happen after ... and then
+it struck her as foolish to wonder about a thing she would know so
+soon. She fastened her eyes on the pencil again. It went on writing,
+and Louie was thinking of her loved little Jimmy now.... She could not
+have done very much for him; he might even have grown up to bear her
+some sort of a grudge; Roy would adopt him; he would be far, far
+better with Roy. There was a pony out at grass for him now; he would
+ride and shoot and fish, and his father would send him into the army;
+and perhaps there was already a baby girl somewhere in the world who
+would one day be his wife--the right wife. "Was die Mutter traeumt, das
+vollbringt der Sohn...."
+
+It was far, far better....
+
+"Well," the pencil wrote, "there's nothing to be said now, poor
+creatures.... Funny smell in here, Miss Causton; I'll smoke if you
+don't mind."
+
+Sir Julius lighted a cigar. Its penetrating odour mingled with that of
+the sweet, releasing stuff.
+
+Ah! It was coming! The pencil wrote no less quickly, but it looked a
+little smaller and farther away.
+
+"But sometimes it made me almost angry that he hadn't married the
+woman he ought...."
+
+Louie felt her head sinking.... Yes, the woman he ought....
+
+That had been the real fatality....
+
+Her lids dropped for a moment, and then heavily lifted again; but she
+could still see the pencil--mistily--dreamily--as if endued with a
+life not her own--flying on.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Louie, by Oliver Onions
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