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diff --git a/old/60331-0.txt b/old/60331-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index eba86c4..0000000 --- a/old/60331-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7017 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Man on the Other Side, by Ada Barnett - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Man on the Other Side - - -Author: Ada Barnett - - - -Release Date: September 19, 2019 [eBook #60331] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN ON THE OTHER SIDE*** - - -E-text prepared by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading -Team (http://www.pgdp.net)from page images generously made available by -the Google Books Library Project (https://books.google.com) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - the Google Books Library Project. See - https://books.google.com/books?id=R7QhAAAAMAAJ&hl=en - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - - - - - -THE MAN ON THE OTHER SIDE - -by - -ADA BARNETT - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -New York -Dodd, Mead and Company -1922 - -Copyright, 1922 -by Dodd, Mead and Company. Inc. - -Printed in U. S. A. - - - - - DEDICATED - TO HIM - - - - - “_Oh, I would siege the golden coasts - Of space, and climb high Heaven’s dome, - So I might see those million ghosts - Come home._” - _Stella Benson_ - - - - - CONTENTS - - CHAPTER I - CHAPTER II - CHAPTER III - CHAPTER IV - CHAPTER V - CHAPTER VI - CHAPTER VII - CHAPTER VIII - CHAPTER IX - CHAPTER X - CHAPTER XI - CHAPTER XII - - - - - The Man on the Other Side - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -Ruth Courthope Seer stood on her own doorstep and was content. She -looked across the garden and the four-acre field with the white may -hedge boundary. It was all hers. Her eyes slowly followed the way of the -sun. Another field, lush and green, sloped to a stream, where, if the -agents had spoken truth, dwelt trout in dim pools beneath the willows. -Field and stream, they too were hers. Good fields they were, clover -thick, worthy fields for feed for those five Shorthorns, bought -yesterday at Uckfield market. - -The love of the land, the joy of possession, the magic of the spring, -they swept through her being like great clean winds. She was over forty; -she had worked hard all her life. Fate had denied her almost -everything—father or mother, brother or sister, husband or children. She -had never had a home of her own. And now fate had given her enough money -to buy Thorpe Farm. The gift was immense, still almost unbelievable. - -“You perfectly exquisite, delicious, duck of a place,” she said, and -kissed her hand to it. - -The house stood high, and she could see on the one hand the dust-white -road winding for the whole mile to Mentmore station; on the other, green -fields and good brown earth, woodland, valley, and hill, stretching to -the wide spaces of the downs, beyond which lay the sea. In 1919, the -year of the Great Peace, spring had come late, but in added and -surpassing beauty. The great yearly miracle of creation was at its -height, and behold, it was very good. - -In front of her sat Sarah and Selina. The day’s work was over. They had -watched seeds planted and seeds watered. They had assisted at the -staking of sweet-peas and the two-hourly feeding of small chicken. Now -they demanded, as their habit was, in short sharp barks of a distinctly -irritating nature, that they should be taken for a walk. - -Sarah and Selina were the sole extravagance of Ruth’s forty years of -life. They had been unwanted in a hard world. Aberdeens were out of -fashion, and their sex, like Ruth’s own in the struggle for existence, -had been against them. So bare pennies which Ruth could ill afford had -gone to the keep of Sarah and Selina, and in return they loved her as -only a dog can love. - -Sarah was a rather large lady, usually of admirable manners and -behaviour. Only once had she seriously fallen from grace, and, to Ruth’s -horror, had presented her with five black and white puppies of a -description unknown before in heaven or earth. Moreover, she was quite -absurdly pleased with herself, and Selina was, equally absurdly, quite -unbearably jealous. - -Selina had never been a lady, either in manners or behaviour. She was -younger and smaller than Sarah, and of infinite wickedness both in -design and execution. - -Ruth looked at them as they sat side by side before her. - -“To the stile and back,” she said, “and you may have ten minutes’ hunt -in the wood.” - -The pathway to the stile led through a field of buttercups, the stile -into the station road. That field puzzled Ruth. It was radiantly -beautiful, but it was bad farming. Also it was the only bit of bad -farming on the whole place. Every other inch of ground was utilized to -the best advantage, cultivated up to the hilt, well-fed, infinitely -cared for. - -Ruth was not curious, and had asked no questions concerning the late -owner of Thorpe, nor was any one of this time left on the farm. The war -had swept them away. But after two months’ possession of the place, she -had begun to realize the extraordinary amount of love and care that had -been bestowed on it by some one. In a subtle way the late owner had -materialized for her. She had begun to wonder why he had done this or -that. Once or twice she had caught herself wishing she could ask his -advice over some possible improvement. - -So she looked at the buttercups and wondered, and by the stile she -noticed a hole in the hedge on the left-hand side, and wondered again. -It was the only hole she had found in those well-kept hedges. - -She sat on the stile and sniffed the spring scents luxuriously, while -Sarah and Selina had their hunt. The may, and the wild geranium, and the -clover. Heavens, how good it all was! The white road wandered down the -hill, but no one came. She had the whole beautiful world to herself. And -then a small streak came moving slowly along the centre of the road. -Presently it resolved itself into a dog. Tired, sore-footed, by the way -it ran, covered with dust, but running steadily. A dog with a purpose. -Sarah and Selina, scenting another of their kind, emerged hot foot and -giving tongue from the centre of the wood. The dog—Ruth could see now it -was a Gordon Setter in haste about his business—slipped through the hole -in the hedge, and went, trotting wearily but without pause, across the -buttercup field towards the house. To Ruth’s amazement, Sarah and Selina -made no attempt to follow. Instead they sat down side by side in front -of her and proceeded to explain. - -Ruth looked at the hole, wondering. “He must have belonged here once, of -course,” she said, “I wonder how far he has come, the poor dear.” She -hurried up the slope, and reached the house in time to hear Miss McCox’s -piercing wail rend the air from the kitchen. - -“And into every room has he been like greased lightning before I could -hinder, and covered with dust and dirt, and me that have enough to do to -keep things clean as it is, with those two dirty beasts that Mistress -Seer sets such store by. But it’s encouraging such things she is, caring -for the brutes that perish more than for Christian men and women with -mortal souls——” - -Red of face, shrewish of tongue, but most excellent as a cook, Miss -McCox paused for breath. - -“She do be wonderful set on animals,” said the slow Sussex voice of the -cowman. He settled his folded arms on the kitchen window-sill. A chat -about the new mistress of Thorpe never failed in interest. “But ’tis all -right so long as we understand one another.” - -Ruth passed his broad back, politely blind to Miss McCox’s facial -efforts to inform him of her appearance in the background. - -The dog was now coming up the garden path between apple-trees still -thickest with blossom. A drooping dejected dog, a dog sick at heart with -disappointment, a dog who could not understand. A dusty forlorn thing -wholly out of keeping with the jubilant spring world. - -Ruth called to him, and he came, politely and patiently. - -“Oh, my dear,” she said. “You have come to look for some one and he is -not here, and I cannot help you.” - -She did what she could. Fetched some water, which he drank eagerly, and -food, which he would not look at. She bathed his sore feet and brushed -the dust from his silky black and tan coat, until he stood revealed as a -singularly beautiful dog. So beautiful that even Miss McCox expressed -unwilling admiration. - -Sarah and Selina behaved with the utmost decorum. This was unusual when -a stranger entered their domain. Ruth wondered while she brushed. It -seemed they acknowledged some greater right. Perhaps he had belonged to -the man who had so loved and cared for Thorpe before she came. And he -had left all—and the dog. - -Presently the dog lay down in a chosen place from which he could command -a view of both the front drive and the road from the station. He lay -with his nose between his paws and watched. - -After supper Ruth Seer went and sat with him. The stars looked down with -clear bright eyes. The night wind brought the scent of a thousand -flowers. An immense peace and beauty filled the heavens. Yet, as she -sat, she fancied she heard again the low monotonous boom from the -Channel to which people had grown so accustomed through the long war -years. She knew it could not really be; it was just fancy. But suddenly -her eyes were full of tears. She had lost no one out there—she had no -one to lose. But she was an English woman. They were all her men. And -there were so many white roads, from as many stations. - -The next morning the stranger dog had vanished, after, so Miss McCox -reported bitterly at 6 A. M., a night spent on the spare-room bed. It -was a perfect wonder of a morning. Even on that first morning when the -stars sang together it could not have been more wonderful, thought Ruth -Seer, looking, as she never tired of looking, at the farm that was hers. -The five Shorthorns chewed the cud in the four-acre field. The verdict -of Miss McCox, the cowman and the boy, upon them was favourable. -To-morrow morning Ruth would have her first lesson in milking. The -Berkshire sow, bought also at Uckfield market, had produced during the -night, somewhat unexpectedly, but very successfully, thirteen small -black pigs, shining like satin and wholly delectable. - -The only blot on the perfection of the day was the behaviour of Selina. -At 11 A. M. she was detected by Miss McCox, in full pursuit of the last -hatched brood of chicken. Caught, or to be fair to Selina, cornered, by -the entire staff, at 11.30, she was well and handsomely whipped, and -crept, an apparently chastened dog, into the shelter of the house. -There, however, so soon as the clang of the big bell proclaimed the busy -dinner hour, she had proceeded to the room sacred to the slumbers of -Miss McCox and, undisturbed, had diligently made a hole in the pillow on -which Miss McCox’s head nightly reposed, extracting therefrom the -feathers of many chickens. These she spread lavishly, and without -favouritism, over the surface of the entire carpet, and, well content, -withdrew silently and discreetly from the precincts of Thorpe Farm. - -At tea time she was still missing, and Sarah alone, stiff with conscious -rectitude, sat in front of Ruth and ate a double portion of cake and -bread-and-butter. Visions of rabbit holes, steel traps, of angry -gamekeepers with guns, had begun to form in Ruth’s mind. Her well-earned -appetite for tea vanished. Full forgiveness and an undeservedly warm -welcome awaited Selina whenever she might choose to put in an -appearance. - -Even Miss McCox, when she cleared away the tea, withdrew the notice -given in the heat of discovery, and suggested that Selina might be -hunting along the stream. She had seen the strange dog down there no -longer than an hour ago. - -It seemed to Ruth a hopeful suggestion. Also she loved to wander by the -stream. In all her dreams of a domain of her own always there had been -running water. And now that too was hers. One of the slow Sussex streams -moving steadily and very quietly between flowered banks, under -overhanging branches. So quietly that you did not at first realize its -strength. So quietly that you did not at first hear its song. - -It was that strange and wonderful hour which comes before sunset after a -cloudless day of May sunshine, when it is as if the world had laughed, -rejoiced, and sung itself to rest in the everlasting arms. There is a -sudden hush, a peace falls, a strange silence—if you listen. - -Ruth ceased to worry about Selina. She drifted along the path down the -stream, and love of the whole world folded her in a great content. A -sense of oneness with all that moved and breathed, with the little -brethren in hole and hedge, with the flowers’ lavish gift of scent and -colour, with the warmth of the sun, a oneness that fused her being with -theirs as into one perfect flame. Dear God, how good it all was, how -wonderful! The marshy ground where the kingcups and the lady smocks were -just now in all their gold and silver glory, the wild cherry, lover of -water, still in this late season blossoming among its leaves, the pool -where the kingfishers lived among the willows and river palms. - -And, dreaming, she came to a greensward place where lay the stranger -dog. A dog well content, who waved a lazy tail as she came. His nose -between his paws, he watched no longer a lonely road. He watched a man. -A man in a brown suit who lay full length on the grass. Ruth could not -see his face, only the back of a curly head propped by a lean brown -hand; and he too was watching something. His absolute stillness made -Ruth draw her breath and remain motionless where she stood. No -proprietor’s fury against trespassers touched her. Perhaps because she -had walked so long on the highway, looking over walls and barred -gateways at other people’s preserves. She crept very softly forward so -that she too could see what so engrossed him. A pair of kingfishers -teaching their brood to fly. - -Two had already made the great adventure and sat side by side on a -branch stretching across the pool. Even as Ruth looked, surrounded by a -flashing escort, the third joined them, and there sat all three, very -close together for courage, and distinctly puffed with pride. - -The parent birds with even greater pride skimmed the surface of the -stream, wheeled and came back, like radiant jewels in the sunlight. Ruth -watched entranced. Hardly she dared to breathe. All was very still. - -And then suddenly the scream of a motor siren cleft the silence like a -sword. Ruth started and turned round. When she looked again all were -gone. Man, dog and birds. Wiped out as it were in a moment. The birds’ -swift flight, even the dog’s, was natural enough, but how had the -slower-moving human being so swiftly vanished? Ruth looked and, puzzled, -looked again, but the man had disappeared as completely as the -kingfishers. Then she caught sight of the dog. Saw him run across the -only visible corner of the lower field, and disappear in the direction -of the front gate. Towards the front gate also sped a small two-seated -car, down the long hill from the main road which led to the pleasant -town of Fairbridge. - -Ruth felt suddenly caught up in some sequence of events outside her -consciousness. Something, she knew not what, filled her also with a -desire to reach the front gate. She ran across the plank which bridged -the stream at that point, and, taking a short cut, arrived -simultaneously with the car and the dog. And lo and behold! beside the -driver, very stiff and proud, sat Selina; the strange dog had hurled -himself into the driver’s arms, while, mysteriously sprung from -somewhere, Sarah whirled round the entire group, barking furiously. - -Ruth laughed. The events were moving with extraordinary rapidity. - -“Larry will have already explained my sudden appearance,” said the -driver, looking at her with a pair of humorous tired eyes over the top -of the dog’s head. - -“Oh, is his name Larry?” gasped Ruth, breathless from Selina’s sudden -arrival in her arms after a scramble over the man and a takeoff from the -side of the car; “I did so want to know. Be quiet, Selina; you are a bad -dog.” - -“I must explain,” said the driver gravely, “that I have not kidnapped -Selina. We stopped to water the car at Mentmore, and she got in and -refused to get out. She seemed to know what she wanted, so I brought her -along.” - -“I am ever so grateful,” said Ruth; “she has been missing since twelve -o’clock, and I have been really worried.” - -He nodded sympathetically. - -“One never knows, does one? Larry, you rascal, let me get out. I have -been worried about Larry too. I only came home two hours ago and found -he had been missing since yesterday morning. May I introduce myself? My -name is Roger North.” - -“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth, involuntarily. - -It was a name world-famous in science and literature. - -“Yes, _the_ Roger North! It is quite all right. People always say ‘Oh,’ -like that when I introduce myself. And you are the new owner of Thorpe.” - -“I am that enormously lucky person,” said Ruth. “Do come in, won’t you? -And won’t you have some tea—or something? That sounds rather vague, but -I haven’t a notion as to time.” - -“Capital! Is that a usual habit of yours, or only this once?” asked this -somewhat strange person who was _the_ Roger North. “I don’t know if -you’ve noticed it, but most people seem to spend their days wondering -what time it is! And I can drink tea at any moment, thanks very much. -Take care of the car, Larry.” - -Larry jumped on the seat, stretched himself at full length and became a -dog of stone. - -“The car belonged to his master,” explained Roger North, as they went up -the garden path. “Larry and the car both came to me when he went to -France, and though the old dog has often run over here and had a hunt -round, this is the first time he has not come straight back to me.” - -“He arrived here about six o’clock last evening,” said Ruth. “He hunted -everywhere, as you say, and then lay down and watched. I gather he spent -the night in the spare room, but this morning he had disappeared, and I -only found him again half an hour ago down by the stream. Quite happy -apparently with a man. I don’t know who the man is. He was lying by the -stream watching some kingfishers, and then your car startled us all, and -I can’t think where he disappeared to.” - -North shook his head. - -“I don’t know who it could have been. All the men Larry knew here left -long ago, and he doesn’t make friends readily.” - -The path to the house was a real cottage-garden path, bordered thickly -with old-fashioned flowers, flowers which must have grown undisturbed -for many a long year, only thinned out, or added to, with the -forethought born of love. Memories thronged North’s mind as he looked. -He wondered what demon had induced him to come in, to accept tea. It was -unlike him. But to his relief the new owner of Thorpe made no attempt at -small talk. Indeed, she left his side, and gathered a bunch of the -pinks, whose fragrance went up like evening incense to Heaven, leaving -him to walk alone. - -For Ruth Seer sensed the shadow of a great grief. It fell like a chill -across the sunlight. A sense of pity filled her. Fearing the tongue of -Miss McCox, which ceased not nor spared, she fetched the tea herself, -out on to the red-bricked pathway, facing south, and proudly called the -terrace. - -Sarah and Selina had somehow crowded into the visitor’s chair and fought -for the largest space. - -“I won’t apologize,” said Ruth. “That means you are a real dog lover.” - -He laughed. “My wife says because they cannot answer me! How did the -little ladies take Larry’s intrusion?” - -“They seemed to know he had the greater right.” - -North dropped a light kiss on each black head. - -“Bless you!” he said. - -He drank his tea and fed the dogs shamelessly, for the most part in -silence, and Ruth watched him in the comfortable certainty that he was -quite oblivious of her scrutiny. He interested her, this man of a -world-wide fame, not because of that fame, but because her instinct told -her that between him and the late owner of Thorpe there had been a great -love. When she no longer met the glance of the humorous, tired eyes, and -the pleasant voice, talking lightly, was silent, she could see the weary -soul of the man in his face. A tragic face, tragic because it was both -powerful and hopeless. He turned to her presently and asked, “May I -light a pipe, and have a mouch round?” - -Ruth nodded. She felt a sense of comradeship already between them. - -“You will find me here when you come back,” she said. “This is my hour -for the newspaper.” - -But though she unfolded it and spread it out, crumpling its pages in the -effort, after the fashion of women, she was not reading of “The Railway -Deadlock,” of “The Victory March of the Guards,” or of “The 1,000–Mile -Flight by British Airship,” all spread temptingly before her; she was -thinking of the man who had owned Thorpe Farm, the man whom Larry and -Roger North had loved, the man who lived for her, who had never known -him, in the woods and fields that had been his. - -The first evening shadows began to fall softly; a flight of rooks cawed -home across the sky. The sounds of waking life about the farm died out -one by one. - -Presently Roger North came back and sat down again, pulling hard at his -pipe. His strong dark face was full of shadows too. - -“I am glad you have this place,” he said abruptly. “He would have been -glad too.” - -And suddenly emboldened, Ruth asked the question that had been trembling -on her lips ever since he had come. - -“Will you tell me something about him?” she said. “Lately I have so -wanted to know. It isn’t idle curiosity. I would not dare to ask you if -it were. And it would be only some one who cared that can tell me what I -want to know. Because—I don’t quite know how to explain—but I seem to -have got into touch, as it were, with the mind of the man who made and -loved this place. At first it was only that I kept wondering why he had -done this or that, if he would approve of what I was doing. But lately I -have—oh, how can I explain it?—I have a sense of awareness of him. I -_know_ in some sort of odd way, what he would do if he were still here. -And when I have carried a thing out, made some change or improvement, I -know if he is pleased. Of course I expect it sounds quite mad to you. It -isn’t even as if I had known him——” - -She looked at North apologetically. - -“My dear lady,” said North gently, “it is quite easily explained. You -love the place very much, that is easily seen, and you realized at once -that the previous owner had loved it too. There was evidences of that on -every hand. And it was quite natural when you were making improvements -to wonder what he would have done. It only wants a little imagination to -carry that to feeling that he was pleased when your improvements were a -success.” - -Ruth smiled. - -“Yes, I know. It sounds very natural as you put it. But, Mr. North, it -is more than that. How shall I explain it? My mind is in touch somehow -with another mind. It is like a conscious and quiet effortless -telepathy. Thoughts, feelings, they pass between us without any words -being necessary. It is another mind than mine which thinks, ‘It will be -better to put that field down in lucerne this year,’ when I had been -thinking of oats. But I catch the thought, and might not he catch mine? -In the same way I feel when he is pleased; that is the most certain of -all.” - -Roger North shook his head. - -“Such telepathy might be possible if he were alive,” he said. “We have -much to learn on those lines. But there was no doubt as to his fate. He -was killed instantaneously at Albert.” - -“You do not think any communication possible after death?” - -There was a pause before North answered. - -“Science has no evidence of it.” - -“I could not help wondering,” said Ruth diffidently, and feeling as it -were for her words, “whether this method by which what he thinks or -wishes about Thorpe seems to come to me might not possibly be the method -used for communication on some other plane in the place of speech. Words -are by no means a very good medium for expressing our thoughts, do you -think?” - -“Very inadequate indeed,” agreed North. He got up as he spoke, and -passed behind her, ostensibly to knock the ashes out of his pipe against -the window-sill. When he came back to his chair he did not continue the -line of conversation. - -“You asked me to tell you something of my friend, Dick Carey,” he said -as he sat down. “And at any rate what you have told me gives you, I -feel, the right to ask. There isn’t much to tell. We were at school and -college together. Charterhouse and Trinity. And we knocked about the -world a good bit together till I married. Then he took Thorpe and -settled down to farming. He loved the place, as you have discovered. And -he loved all beasts and birds. A wonderful chap with horses, clever too -on other lines, which isn’t always the case. A great reader and a bit of -a musician. He went to France with Kitchener’s first hundred thousand, -and he lived through two years of that hell. He wasn’t decorated, or -mentioned in dispatches, but I saw the men he commanded, and cared for, -and fought with. They knew. They knew what one of them called ‘the -splendid best’ of him. Oh well! I suppose he was like many another we -lost out there, but for me, when he died, it was as if a light had gone -out and all the world was a darker place.” - -“Thank you,” said Ruth quite simply, yet the words said much. - -There was a little pause, then he added: - -“He became engaged to my daughter just before he was killed.” - -“Ah!” The little exclamation held a world of pain and pity. - -He felt glad she did not add the usual “poor thing,” and possibly that -was why he volunteered further. “She has married since, but I doubt if -she has got over it.” - -It was some time before either spoke again. Then Ruth said, almost -shyly, “There is just one thing more. The buttercup field? I can’t quite -understand it. It is bad farming, that field. The only bit of bad -farming on the place.” - -“You did not guess?” - -“No.” Ruth looked at him, her head a little on one side, her brow drawn, -puzzled. - -“He kept it for its beauty,” said North. “It is a wonderful bit of -colour you know, that sheeted gold,” he added almost apologetically, -when for a moment Ruth did not answer. - -But she was mentally kicking herself. - -“Of course!” she exclaimed. “How utterly stupid of me. I ought to have -understood. How utterly and completely stupid of me. I have never -thought of what he would wish from that point of view. I have been -simply trying to farm well. And I love that field for its beauty too. -Look at it in the western sunlight against the may hedge.” - -“It was the same with the may hedges,” said North. “A fellow who came -here to buy pigs said they ought to be grubbed up, they were waste of -land. He wanted railings. He thought old Dick mad when he said he got -his value out of them to look at, and good value too.” - -“I didn’t know about the hedges wasting land,” said Ruth. “But I might -have grubbed up the buttercups.” - -She looked so genuinely distressed that North laughed. - -“Don’t let this idea of yours get on your nerves,” he said kindly. -“Believe me it is really only what I said, and don’t worry about it. I -am glad though that you love the place so much. It would have hurt to -have it spoilt or neglected, or with some one living here who—jarred. -Indeed, to own the truth, I have been afraid to come here; I could not -face it. But now”—he paused, then ended the sentence deliberately—“I am -glad.” - -“Thank you,” she said again, in that quiet simple way of hers, and for a -while they sat on in silence. The warmth was still great, the stillness -perfect, save for the occasional sleepy twitter of a bird in its nest. - -Never since Dick Carey had been killed had he felt so at rest. The -burden of pain seemed to drop away. The bitterness and resentment faded. -He felt as so often in the old days, when he had come from some worry or -fret or care in the outer world or in his own home, to the peace of the -farm, to Dick’s smile, to Dick’s understanding. Almost it seemed that he -was not dead, had never gone away. And he thought of his friend, for the -first time since that telegram had come, without an anguish of pain or -longing, thought of him as he used to, when the morrow, or the next week -at least, meant the clasp of his hand, his “Hullo, old Roger,” and the -content which belongs to the mere presence only of some one or two -people alone in our journey through life. - -He wisely made no attempt to analyse the why and wherefore. He -remembered with thankfulness that he had left word at home that he might -be late, and just sat on and on while peace and healing came dropping -down like dew. - -And this quite marvellous woman never tried to make conversation, or -fussed about, moving things. She just sat there looking out at the -spring world as a child looks at a play that enthralls. - -She had no beauty and could never have had, either of feature or -colouring, only a slender length of limb, a certain poise, small head -and hands and feet, and a light that shone behind her steady eyes. A -soul that wonders and worships shines even in our darkness. She gave the -impression of strength and of tranquillity. Her very stillness roused -him at length, and he turned to look at her. - -She met the look with one of very pure friendliness. - -“I hope now I have made the plunge you will let me come over here -sometimes,” he said; “somehow I think we are going to be friends.” - -“I think we are friends already,” she said, smiling, “and I am very -glad. One or two of the neighbours have called and asked me to tea -parties. But I have lived such a different life. Except for those who -farm or garden we haven’t much in common.” - -“You have always lived on the land?” he asked. - -“Oh _no_!” she laughed, looking at him with amusement. “I lived all my -life until I was seventeen at Parson’s Green, and after that in a little -street at the back of Tottenham Court Road, until the outbreak of war. -And then I was for four years in Belgium and Northern France, cooking.” - -“Good heavens! And all the time this was what you wanted!” - -“Yes, this was what I wanted. I didn’t know. But this was it. And think -of the luck of getting it!” She looked at him triumphantly. “The amazing -wonderful luck! I feel as if I ought to be on my knees, figuratively, -all the time, giving thanks.” - -“Of course,” said Roger North slowly. “That _is_ your mental attitude. -No wonder you are so unusual a person. And how about the years that have -gone before?” - -“I sometimes wonder,” she said, thinking, “since I have come here of -course, whether every part of our lives isn’t arranged definitely, with -a purpose, to prepare us for the next part. It would help a bit through -the bad times as well as the good, if one knew it was so, don’t you -think?” - -“I daresay,” Roger North answered vaguely, as was his fashion, Ruth soon -discovered, if questioned on such things. “I wish you would tell me -something of yourself. What line you came up along would really interest -me quite a lot. And it isn’t idle curiosity either.” - -There was a little silence. - -“I should like to tell you,” she said at length. - -But she was conscious at the back of her mind that some one else was -interested too, and it was that some one else whom she wanted most of -all to tell. - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -Ruth Seer’s father had been a clergyman of the Church of England, and -had spent a short life in doing, in the eyes of his family—a widowed -mother and an elderly sister—incredibly foolish things. - -To begin with he openly professed what were then considered extreme -views, and thereby hopelessly alienated the patron of the comfortable -living on which his mother’s eye had been fixed when she encouraged his -desire to take Holy Orders. - -“As if lighted candles, and flowers on the altar, and that sort of -thing, mattered two brass farthings when £800 a year was at stake,” -wailed Mrs. Seer, to a sympathizing friend. - -Paul Seer then proceeded to fall in love, and with great promptitude -married the music mistress at the local High School for Girls. She was -adorably pretty, with the temper of an angel, and they succeeded in -being what Mrs. Seer described as “wickedly happy” in a state of -semi-starvation on his curate’s pay of £120 a year. - -They had three children with the greatest possible speed. - -That two died at birth Mrs. Seer looked upon as a direct sign of a -Merciful Providence. - -Poor lady, she had struggled for so many years on a minute income, an -income barely sufficient for one which had to provide for three, to say -nothing of getting the boy educated by charity, that it was small wonder -if a heart and mind, narrow to start with, had become entirely ruled by -the consideration of ways and means. - -And, the world being so arranged that ways and means do bulk -iniquitously large in most people’s lives, obliterating, even against -their will, almost everything else by comparison, perhaps it was also a -Merciful Providence which took the boyish curate and his small wife to -Itself within a week of each other, during the first influenza epidemic. -You cannot work very hard, and not get enough food or warmth, and at the -same time hold your own against the Influenza Fiend when he means -business. So, at the age of three, the Benevolent Clergy’s Orphanage, -Parson’s Green, London, S.E., swallowed Ruth Courthope Seer. A very -minute figure all in coal black, in what seemed to her a coal-black -world. For many a long year, in times of depression, that sense of an -all pervading blackness would swallow Ruth up, struggle she never so -fiercely. - -Asked, long after she had left it, what the Orphanage was like, she -answered instantly and without thought: - -“It was an ugly place.” - -That was the adjective which covered to her everything in it, and the -life she led there. It was ugly. - -The Matron was the widow of a Low Church parson. A worthy woman who -looked on life as a vale of tears, on human beings as miserable sinners, -and on joy and beauty as a distinct mark of the Beast. - -She did her duty by the orphans according to the light she possessed. -They were sufficiently fed, and kept warm and clean. They learnt the -three R’s, sewing and housework. Also to play “a piece” on the piano, -and a smattering of British French. The Orphanage still in these days -considered that only three professions were open to “ladies by birth.” -They must be either a governess, a companion, or a hospital nurse. - -The Matron inculcated the virtues of gratitude, obedience and -contentment, and two great precepts, “You must bow to the Will of God” -and “You must behave like a lady.” - -“The Will of God” seemed to typify every unpleasant thing that could -possibly happen to you; and Ruth, in the beginnings of dawning thought, -always pictured It as a large purple-black storm-cloud, which descended -on all and sundry at the most unexpected moments, and before which the -dust blew and the trees were bent double, and human beings were -scattered as with a flail. And in Ruth’s mind the storm-cloud was -peculiarly terrible because unaccompanied by rain. - -With regard to the second precept, when thought progressed still -farther, and she began to reason things out, she one day electrified the -whole Orphanage when rebuked for unladylike behaviour, by standing up -and saying, firmly but politely, “If you please, Matron, I don’t want to -be a lady. I want to be a little girl.” - -But for the most part she was a silent child and gave little trouble. - -Twice a year a severe lady, known as “your Grandmother,” and a younger -less severe lady, known as “your Aunt Amelia,” came to see her, and they -always hoped she “was a good girl.” - -Then Aunt Amelia ceased to come, for she had gone out to India to be -married, and “your Grandmother” came alone. And then Grandmother died -and went to heaven, and nobody came to see Ruth any more. Only a parcel -came, an event hitherto unknown in Ruth’s drab little existence, and of -stupendous interest. It contained a baby’s first shoe, a curl of gold -hair in a tiny envelope, labelled “Paul, aged 2,” in a pointed writing, -a letter in straggling round hand beginning “My dear Mamma,” another -letter in neat copper plate beginning “My dear Mother,” and a highly -coloured picture of St. George attacking the dragon, signed “Paul -Courthope Seer,” with the date added in the pointed writing. - -It was many years later that Ruth first understood the pathos of that -parcel. - -When she was seventeen the Committee found a situation for her as -companion to a lady. The Matron recommended her as suitable for the -position, and the Committee informed her, on the solemn occasion when -she appeared before them to receive their parting valediction, delivered -by the Chairman, that she was extremely lucky to secure a situation in a -Christian household where she would not only have every comfort, but -even Every Luxury. - -So Ruth departed to a large and heavily furnished house, where the -windows were only opened for a half an hour each day while the servants -did the rooms, and which consequently smelt of the bodies of the people -who lived in it. Every day, except Sunday, she went for a drive with an -old lady in a brougham with both windows closed. On fine warm days she -walked out with an old lady leaning on her arm. Every morning she read -the newspaper aloud. At other times she picked up dropped stitches in -knitting, played Halma, or read a novel aloud, by such authors as Rhoda -Broughton or Mrs. Hungerford. - -Any book less calculated to have salutary effect on a young girl who -never spoke to any man under fifty, and that but rarely, can hardly be -imagined. - -If there had been an animal in the house, or a garden round it, Ruth -might have struggled longer. As it was, at the end of three months she -proved to be one of the Orphanage’s few failures and, without even -consulting the Committee, gave notice, and took a place as shop -assistant to a second-hand bookseller in a small back street off the -Tottenham Court Road. And here Ruth stayed and worked for the space of -seventeen years—to be exact, until the year of the Great War, 1914. - -The Committee ceased to take an interest in her, and her Aunt Amelia, -still in India, ceased to write at Christmas, and Ruth’s last frail -links with the world of her father were broken. - -It was a strange life for a girl in the little bookshop, but at any rate -she had achieved some measure of freedom, she had got rid of the burden -of her ladyhood, and in some notable directions her starved intelligence -was fed. - -Her master, Raphael Goltz, came of the most despised of all race -combinations; he was a German Jew, and he possessed the combined -brain-power of both races. - -He had the head of one of Michael Angelo’s apostles, on the curious -beetle-shaped body of the typical Jew. He was incredibly mean, and -rather incredibly dirty, and he had three passions—books, music, and -food. - -When he discovered in his new assistant a fellow lover of the two first, -and an intelligence considerably above the average, he taught her how -and what to read, and to play and sing great music not unworthily. With -regard to the third, he taught her, in his own interest, to be a cook of -supreme excellence. - -And on the whole Ruth was not unhappy. Sometimes she looked her -loneliness in the face, and the long years struck at her like stones. -Sometimes her dying, slowly dying, youth called to her in the night -watches, and she counted the hours of the grey past years, hours and -hours with nothing of youth’s meed of joy and love in them. But for the -most part she strangled these thoughts with firm hands. There was -nothing to be gained by them, for there was nothing to be done. An -untrained woman, without money or people, must take what she can get and -be thankful. - -She read a great many both of the wisest and of the most beautiful books -in the world, she listened to music played by the master hand, and her -skilled cooking interested her. As the years went on, old Goltz left the -business more and more to her, spending his time in his little back -parlour surrounded by his beloved first editions, which he knew better -by now than to offer for sale, drawing the music of the spheres from his -wonderful Bluthner piano, and steadily smoking. He gave Ruth a -sitting-room of her own upstairs, and allowed her to take in the two -little dogs Sarah and Selina. On Saturday afternoons and Sundays she -would take train into the country, and tramp along miles with them in -the world she loved. - -And then, when it seemed as if life were going on like that for ever and -ever, came the breathless days before August 4, 1914, those days when -the whole world stood as it were on tiptoe, waiting for the trumpet -signal. - -Ah well! there was something of the wonder and glory of war, of which we -had read, about it then—before we knew—yes, before we knew! The bugle -call—the tramp of armed men—the glamour of victory and great deeds—and -of sacrifice too,—of sacrifice too. The love of one’s country suddenly -made concrete as it were. Just for that while, at any rate, no one -thinking of himself, or personal profit. Personal glory, perhaps, which -is a better matter. Every one standing ready. “Send me.” - -The world felt cleaner, purer. - -It was a wonderful time. Too wonderful to last perhaps. But the marks -last. At any rate we have known. We have seen white presences upon the -hills. We have heard the voices of the Eternal Gods. - -The greatest crime in history. Yes. But we were touched to finer issues -in those first days. - -And then Raphael Goltz woke up too. He talked to Ruth in the hot August -evenings instead of sleeping. Even she was astonished at what the old -man knew. He had studied foreign politics for years. He knew that the -cause of the war lay farther back, much farther back than men realized. -He saw things from a wide standpoint. He was a German Jew by blood and -in intellect, Jew by nature, but England had always been his home. That -he loved her well Ruth never had any doubt after those evenings. - -He never thought, though, that it would come to war. It seemed to him -impossible. “It would be infamy,” he said. - -And then it came. Came with a shock, and yet with a strange sense of -exhilaration about it. Men who had stood behind counters, and sat on -office stools since boyhood, stretched themselves, as the blood of -fighting forefathers stirred in their veins. They were still the sons of -men who had gone voyaging with Drake and Frobisher, of men who had -sailed the seven seas, and fought great fights, and found strange lands, -and died brave deaths, in the days when a Great Adventure was possible -for all. For them too had, almost inconceivably, come the chance to get -away from greyly monotonous days which seemed like “yesterday come -back”; for them too was the Great Adventure possible. The lad who, under -Ruth’s supervision, took down shutters, cleaned boots, knives and -windows, swept the floors and ran errands, was among the first to go, -falsifying his age by two years, and it was old Raphael Goltz, German -Jew, who even in those first days knew the war as the crime of all the -ages. - -Ruth was the next, and he helped her too; while the authorities turned -skilled workers down, and threw cold water in buckets on the men and -women standing shoulder to shoulder ready for any sacrifice in those -first days, old Raphael Goltz, knowing the value of Ruth’s cooking and -physical soundness, found her the money to offer her services free—old -Raphael Goltz, who through so many years had been so incredibly mean. He -disliked dogs cordially, yet he undertook the care of Sarah and Selina -in her absence. To Ruth’s further amazement, he also gave her -introductions of value to leading authorities in Paris who welcomed her -gladly and sent her forthwith into an estaminet behind the lines in -Northern France. - -Something of her childhood in the Orphanage, and of the long years with -Raphael Goltz, Ruth told North, as they sat together in the warmth and -stillness of the May evening, but of the years in France she spoke -little. She had seen unspeakable things there. The memory of them was -almost unbearable. They were things she held away from thought. -Beautiful and wonderful things there were too, belonging to those years. -But they were still more impossible to speak of. She carried the mark of -them both, the terrible and the beautiful, in her steady eyes. Besides, -some one else, who was interested too, who was surely—the consciousness -was not to be ignored—interested too, knew all about that. And suddenly -she realized how that common knowledge of life and death at their height -was also a bond, as well as love of Thorpe, and she paused in her tale, -and sat very still. - -“And then?” said North, after a while. - -“I was out there for two years, without coming home, the first time. -There seemed nothing for me to come home for, and I didn’t want to -leave. There was always so much to be done, and one felt of use. It was -selfish of me really, but I never realized somehow that Raphael Goltz -cared. Then I had bad news from him. You remember the time when the mobs -wrecked the shops with German names? Well, his was one of them. So I got -leave and came back to him. It was very sad. The old shop was broken to -pieces, his books had been thrown into the street and many burnt, and -the piano, his beautiful piano, smashed past all repair. I found him up -in the back attic, with Sarah and Selina. He had saved them for me -somehow. He cried when I came. He was very old, you see, and he had felt -the war as much as any of us.” - -Her eyes were full of tears, and she stopped for a moment to steady her -voice. “He bore no malice, and three days after I got back he died, -babbling the old cry, ‘We ought to have been friends.’ - -“It was always that, ‘We ought to have been friends,’ and once he said, -‘Together we could have regenerated the world.’ He left everything he -had to me, over £60,000. It is to him I owe Thorpe.” Her eyes shone -through the tears in them. - -“Come! and let me show you,” she said, and so almost seemed to help him -out of his chair, and then, still holding his hand, led him through the -door behind them, along the passage into the front hall. Here he -stopped, and undoubtedly but for the compelling hand would have gone no -farther. But the soft firm grip held, and something with it, some force -outside both of them, drew him after her into the room that once was his -friend’s. A spacious friendly room, with wide windows looking south and -west, and filled just now with the light of a cloudless sunset. - -And the dreaded moment held nothing to fear. Nothing was changed. -Nothing was spoilt. He had expected something, which to him, -unreasonably perhaps, but uncontrollably, would have seemed like -sacrilege; instead he found it was sanctuary. Sanctuary for that, to -him, annihilated personality which had been the companion of the best -years of his life. - -Dick might have come back at any moment and found his room waiting for -him, as it had waited on many a spring evening just like this. His -capacious armchair was still by the window. The big untidy -writing-table, with its many drawers and pigeon-holes, in its place. The -piano where he used to sit and strum odd bits of music by ear. - -“But it is all just the same,” he said, standing like a man in a dream -when Ruth dropped his hand inside the threshold. - -“I was offered the furniture with the house,” she said, “and when I saw -this room I felt I wanted it just as it is. Before that I had all sorts -of ideas in my head as to how I would furnish! But this appealed to me. -There is an air of space and comfort and peace about the room that I -could not bear to disturb. And now I am very glad, because I feel he is -pleased. Of course, his more personal things have gone, and I have added -a few things of my own. Look, this is what I brought you to see.” - -She pointed towards the west window, where stood an exquisitely carved -and gilded table of foreign workmanship which was new to him, and on it -burnt a burnished bronze lamp, its flame clear and bright even in the -fierce glow of the setting sun. Beside the lamp stood a glass vase, very -beautiful in shape and clarity, filled with white pinks. - -North crossed the room and examined the lamp with interest. - -“What does it mean?” he asked. - -“It is a custom of the orthodox Jews. When anyone belonging to them -dies, they keep a lamp burning for a year. The flame is never allowed to -go out. It is a symbol. A symbol of the Life Eternal. All the years of -the war Raphael Goltz kept this lamp burning for the men who went West. -You see it is in the west window. And now I keep it burning for him. You -don’t think _he_ would mind, although my poor old master _was_ a German -Jew, racially?” - -She looked up at North anxiously, as they stood side by side before the -lamp. - -“Not Dick—certainly not Dick!” said North. Ruth heaved a sigh of relief. - -“You see, I don’t really know anything about him except what I feel -about the farm, and I did want the lamp here.” - -“No, Dick wouldn’t mind. But you are mad, you know, quite mad!” - -For all that his eyes were very kindly as he looked down at her. - -“I expect it is being so much alone,” she said tranquilly, stooping to -smell the pinks. - -“Was Goltz an orthodox Jew then?” asked North. - -“Oh no, very far from it. He wasn’t anything in the least orthodox. If -you could have known him!” Ruth laughed a little. “But he had some queer -religion of his own. He believed in Beauty, and that it was a revelation -of something very great and wonderful, beyond the wildest dreams of a -crassly ignorant and blind humanity. That glass vase was his. Have you -noticed the wonderful shape of it? And look now with the light shining -through. Do you think it is a shame to put flowers in it? But their -scent is the incense on the altar.” - -“Oh, that’s the idea, is it?” said North. He spoke very gently, as one -would to a child showing you its treasures. - -“This place is full of altars,” said Ruth, her eyes looking west. “Do -you know the drive in the little spinney? All one broad blue path of -hyacinths, and white may trees on either side.” - -“Oh, that’s the idea, is it?” said North. He in his voice—“you mean -Dick’s ‘Pathway to Heaven’!” - -“Did he call it that?” - -“He said it was so blue it must be.” - -“Yes, and it seems to vanish into space between the trees.” - -“As I must,” said North. “I have paid you an unwarrantable visitation, -and I shall only just get home now before lighting-up time.” - -“You will come again?” said Ruth as they went down the garden. “I want -to show you the site for my cottages. I _think_ it is the right one.” - -“Cottages?” - -“Yes, I am going to build three. My lawyer tells me it is economically -an unsound investment. My conscience tells me it has got to be done, if -I am to enjoy Thorpe properly. Two couples are waiting to be married -until the cottages are ready, and one man is working here and his wife -living in London because there is no possible place for them. I am -giving him a room here at present.” - -North raised his eyebrows. - -“Do you take in anybody promiscuously who comes along?” he asked. - -“Well, this man went through four years of the war. Was a sergeant, and -holds the Mons Medal and the D.C.M. He is a painter by trade, and worked -for Baxter, who is putting up a billiard-room and a garage at Mentmore -Court.” - -“Mentmore Court?” North looked across at the big white house on the -hill. “Why, there is a billiard-room and a garage there already.” - -“I believe they are turning the existing billiard-room into a winter -garden, or something of that sort. And they have six cars, so the -present garage is not big enough.” - -“Your cottages will probably be of more use to the country,” said North. -“I hear he made his money in leather, and his name is Pithey. Do you -know him?” - -“Well, he took a ‘fancy’ to my Shorthorns, and walked in last week to -ask if I’d sell. Price was no object. He fancied them. Then he took a -fancy to some of the furniture and offered to buy that, and finally he -said if I was open to take ‘a profit on my deal’ over the farm, he was -prepared to go to a fancy price for it.” - -North stopped and looked at her. - -“Are you making it up?” he asked. - -Ruth bubbled over into an irrepressible laugh. - -“When he went away he told me not to worry. Mrs. Pithey _was_ coming to -call, but she had been so busy, and now those lazy dogs of workmen -couldn’t be out of the place for another month at least.” - -“And my wife is worrying me to call on him,” groaned North. “Halloo, -where is Larry?” - -“He was there a moment ago; I saw him just before you stopped, but I -never saw him jump out.” - -North called in vain until he gave a peculiar whistle, which brought a -plainly reluctant Larry to view. - -“He doesn’t want to come with me,” said North. “Get in, Larry.” And -Larry obeyed the peremptory command, while Ruth checked an impulse to -suggest that she should keep him. - -As the car started slowly up the hill he turned, laying his black and -tan velvet muzzle on the back of the hood. Long after they had vanished, -Ruth was haunted by the wistful amber eyes looking at her from a cloud -of dust. - -Slowly she went up home through the scented evening. It had been a -wonderful day. And she had made a friend. It was not such an event as it -would have been before she went to France, but it was sufficiently -uplifting even now. She sang to herself as she went. And then quite -suddenly she thought of the man in the brown suit. “I wonder who he was, -and where he disappeared to,” she said to herself, as she answered Miss -McCox’s injured summons to supper. - - - - - CHAPTER III - - -“My dear Roger,” said Mrs. North, with that peculiar guinea-hen quality -in her voice which it was her privilege and pleasure to keep especially -for her husband, “have you nothing of interest to tell us? No one has -seen you since four o’clock yesterday afternoon. At any rate, not to -speak to.” - -North looked across the beautifully appointed lunch-table at the -ill-chosen partner of his joys and sorrows, while the silence, which -usually followed one of her direct attacks on him, fell upon the party -surrounding it. - -“I see you brought Larry back with you, and conclude you found him at -Thorpe,” continued Mrs. North, “and I suppose you saw Miss Seer. As it -is a moot point whether we call on her or not, you might rouse yourself -so far as to tell us what you thought of her. I am sure Arthur would -like to hear too.” - -“Very much! Very much!” said the fair, cherubic-looking little man -sitting on her right hand. “Thorpe was such a pleasant house in poor -dear Carey’s time. It would be a serious loss if the new owner were -impossible. I look upon the changes in the neighbourhood very seriously, -very seriously indeed. I was only thinking yesterday that of our old -circle only poor old Mentmore, the Condors, and ourselves are left. The -Court and Whitemead both bought by newly rich people, whom I really -dread inspecting.” - -“The St. Ubes may be all right,” interpolated Mrs. North. “I hear they -made their money doing something with shipping, and St. Ubes does not -sound a bad name.” - -“No,” allowed Mr. Fothersley. “No. Yet I do not remember to have heard -it before. It has a Cornish sound. We must inquire. They have not -arrived yet, I gather, as the new servants’ wing is not ready. But the -people at the Grange, I fear, are not only Jews, but German Jews! What a -_milieu_! And we were such a happy little set before the war, very -happy—yes.” - -“At any rate,” said the fourth member of the lunch party, a very -beautiful young woman, the only child and married daughter of the house, -“they have all an amazing amount of money, which I have no doubt they -are prepared to spend, and the German Jews I conclude you will not take -up. As for Thorpe, it is disgusting that anyone should have it. What -_is_ the woman like, father?” - -“Oh, all right,” said North. “She is looking after the place well, and -hasn’t been seized with the present mania for building billiard-rooms -and winter gardens and lordly garages.” - -“But what is she _like_?” asked Mrs. North. - -“Is she a lady, or isn’t she? You can’t call on a woman because she -hasn’t built a winter garden.” - -“Why not?” returned her husband, in his most irritating fashion. - -“By the way,” interposed Mr. Fothersley adroitly, “I hear Miss Seer -intends building cottages. A thing I do not consider at all desirable.” - -“Why not?” asked his host again. - -“We want nothing of that sort in Mentmore,” said Fothersley decisively. -“It is, in its way, the most perfect specimen of an English village in -the country—I might say in England. Building new cottages is only the -thin end of the wedge.” - -“They appear to be wanted,” said North, pushing the cigars towards his -guest. - -“That is the Government’s business,” answered Mr. Fothersley, making a -careful selection. “And we may at least hope they will put them up in -suitable places. Thank Heaven the price of land here is prohibitive. -There, however, is the danger of these newly rich people. They must -spend their money somehow. However, it may not be true. I only heard it -this morning.” - -“Did she say anything about it, Roger?” asked Mrs. North. - -“Yes she mentioned it,” answered North curtly. - -Mrs. North made an exaggerated gesture of despair as she struggled with -a cigarette. She had never succeeded in mastering the art of smoking. - -“Are you going to tell us what we want to know or not?” she asked, with -ominous calmness. “Do you advise calling on the woman, or don’t you?” - -Here Violet Riversley broke in. - -“When will you learn to put things quite plainly to father?” she asked. -“You know he can’t understand our euphuisms. I suppose it’s one of the -defects of a scientific brain.” - -She helped herself to a cigarette and held it out to North for a light. - -“What we want to know, father, is just this. Do you think Miss Seer is -likely to subscribe to the Hunt and various other things we are -interested in? If to this she adds the desire to entertain us, so much -the better, but the subscriptions are the primary things.” - -“No, no, my dear!” exclaimed Mr. Fothersley, deeply pained. “That is -just what I complain about in you young people of the present day. You -have not the social sense—you——” - -“Dear Arthur,” Violet cut him short ruthlessly, “don’t be a humbug with -me. Your Violet has known you since she was two years old. Let us in our -family circle be honest. Lord Mentmore and the Condors called on the -Pithey people because Mr. Pithey has subscribed liberally to the Hunt, -and you and mother have called because they did. Incidentally they will -probably give us excellent dinners. All I can say is, I hope you will -draw the line at the German Jews, however much money they have.” - -“Well, Roger,” said Mrs. North, who had kept her eyes fixed on her -husband during her daughter’s diversion, “shall I call or not? Surely -you are the proper person to advise me, as you have met Miss Seer.” - -North frowned irritably. - -“No, I certainly should not call,” he said, rising from the table. “She -_is_ a lady, but you would have nothing in common, and I should not -think she has enough money to make it worth while from the point of view -Vi has put so delicately before us. That all right, Vi?” - -His daughter rose too, and slipped her arm through his. - -“Quite good for you!” she said. “And now come and smoke your cigar with -me in the garden. Arthur will excuse you.” - -“Certainly! Certainly!” said Mr. Fothersley, who sincerely liked both -husband and wife apart, and inwardly deplored the necessity that they -should ever be together. He recognized the lack of fine feeling in the -wife which so constantly irritated the husband, but which did not -alienate Fothersley himself because his own mind moved really on the -same plane, in that he cherished no finer ideals. He recognized, too, -the corresponding irritation North’s total lack of the social instinct -was to a woman of his wife’s particular type. Pretty, vivacious, with a -passionate love of dress, show, and amusement, Mrs. North would have -liked to go to a party of some sort, or give one, every day in the year. -She was an admirable and successful hostess, and Mr. Fothersley was wont -to declare that Mentmore would be lost without Mrs. North. - -They were great friends. Mr. Fothersley had never seen his way to embark -on matrimony. At the same time he enjoyed the society of women. As a -matter of fact he was on terms of platonic, genuinely platonic, -friendship, with every attractive woman within reasonable reach of -Mentmore. Undoubtedly, however, Mrs. North held the first place. For one -thing the Norths were his tenants, occupying the Dower House on his -estate. It was always easy to run across to Westwood, hot foot with any -little bit of exciting gossip. They both took a lively interest in their -neighbours’ private affairs. Violet Riversley had once said that if -there was nothing scandalous to talk about, they evolved something, -after the fashion of the newspapers in the silly season. They both -loved, not money, but the things which money means. To give a perfect -little dinner, rich with all the delicacies of the season, was to them -both a keen delight. He was nearly as fond of pretty clothes as she was, -and liked to escort her to the parties, where she was always the centre -of the liveliest group and from which North shrank in utter boredom. -They agreed on all points on matters of the day, both social and -political; he gathered his opinions from _The Times_ and she from the -_Daily Mail_. He looked upon her as an extremely clever and intelligent -woman. Also he was in entire sympathy with her intense and permanent -resentment against her husband because he had persisted in devoting to -further chemical research the very large sums of money which his -scientific discoveries had brought him in from time to time. The fact -that, in addition to these sums, he derived a considerable income from a -flourishing margarine factory started by his late father’s energy and -enterprise, of which income she certainly spent by far the larger -portion, consoled her not at all. She spent much, but she could very -easily have spent more. She too could have done with four or five cars, -she too could have enlarged and expanded in various expensive -directions, even as these new _nouveaux riches_. Fothersley, who -devoutly held the doctrine that not only whatsoever a man earned, but -whatsoever he inherited, was for his own and his family’s benefit and -spending, with a reasonable contribution to local charities, or any -exceptional collection in time of stress authorized by the Mayor, felt -that Mrs. North’s resentment was wholly natural. A yearly contribution -of, say, twenty-five guineas, to research would have amply covered any -possible claim on even a scientist’s philanthropy in this direction, and -he had even told North so. - -Therefore it was only natural for Mrs. North to turn to him, even more -than to her other friends, for sympathy and understanding. - -“There now!” she exclaimed as her husband left the room. “Can you -imagine any man being so disagreeable and surly? Just because he was -asked a perfectly natural question. And I shall certainly call on the -woman.” - -“I believe she is quite possible from all I have heard,” said Mr. -Fothersley, adroitly lighting Mrs. North’s cigarette, which had gone -out. “As you know, I mean to call myself, if you would prefer to wait -for my report.” - -“Thank you. But may as well come with you. I shall probably be a help, -and you see Roger says she is a lady, and, funnily enough, he really -knows. I expect she is as dull as ditchwater; I hear she was something -in the nature of a companion before she came into some money. But -anything must be better than the Pitheys.” - -She shuddered as she replenished Mr. Fothersley’s wineglass. - -“They appear from all accounts to be very bad,” sighed Mr. Fothersley. - -“I could bear their commonness,” said Mrs. North, “one has got used to -it these days, when one meets everyone everywhere, but it is the man’s -self-satisfaction that is so overpowering. However, I am depending on -you to look after him this afternoon. Roger won’t, and Violet is nearly -as bad. I don’t know if you have noticed it, but Violet is getting -Roger’s nasty sarcastic way of saying things, and she always seems to -back him up now against me.” - -Her pretty eyes were tearful, and Mr. Fothersley looked distressed. - -“Dear Violet has never been the same since poor Carey’s death,” he said. - -Mrs. North agreed. “And yet, as you know,” she added, “I never really -approved of the engagement. Poor Dick was a dear—no one could help -liking him; but, after all, there was no getting away from the fact that -he was old enough to be her father, and besides he was not very well -off, and owing to Roger’s folly, wasting his money as he has, we could -not have made Violet a big allowance. Really, you know, Fred is a much -better match for her in every way.” - -“Quite, quite,” assented Mr. Fothersley. “But there is no doubt she felt -Carey’s death very much at the time. I certainly have noticed a -difference in her since, which her marriage has not dispelled. But -indeed all the young people seem altered since this terrible war—there -is—how shall I put it?—a want of reticence—of respect for the -conventions.” Mr. Fothersley shook his head. “I regret it very much—very -much.” - -In the meantime North and his daughter had wandered out into the shade -of the great beech-tree which was the crowning glory of an exquisite -lawn. The garden was in full perfection this wonderful May, and the -gardeners were busy putting the finishing touches before the afternoon’s -party. Not a weed or stray leaf was to be seen. Every edge was clipped -to perfection. The three tennis courts were newly marked out, their nets -strung to the exact height, while six new balls were neatly arranged on -each service line. Presently Mrs. North would come out and say exactly -where each chair and table should go. - -Violet Riversley looked at the pretty friendly scene with her beautiful -gold brown eyes, and the misery in them was like a devouring fire. She -was one of the tragedies of the war. She could neither endure nor -forget. With her mother’s good looks, pleasure-loving temperament, and -quick temper, she had much of her father’s ability. Spoilt from her -cradle, she had gone her own way and taken greedily of the good things -of this world with both hands, until Dick Carey’s death had smitten her -life into ruins. - -She was twenty-four, and she had never before known pain, sorrow or -trouble. Always she had had everything she wanted. Other people’s griefs -passed her by. She simply had no understanding of them. She was not -generous, because she never realized what it was to go without. And yet -everyone liked and many loved her. She was so gay and glad and beautiful -a thing. - -When she said good-bye to Dick Carey, she was simply unable to grasp -that he could be taken from her, and when the news of his death came she -had passionately and vehemently fought against the agony and pain and -desolation that came with it. She had genuinely and really loved him, -and nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed left. There was no pleasure any -more in anything. That was what she could not understand, could not cope -with. Her conventional faith fell from her, and she let it go without a -struggle. But her happiness she refused to let go. She clung to it, or -to the mirage of it, savagely, desperately. Dick was dead, yes, and she -wanted him with a devouring hunger. But all the other things were left. -Things she had loved. Things that had made her happy. She would not let -them go. - -After a brief space, in which the devils of bitterness and resentment -and impotent wrath rent her in pieces, she took up her old life again, -with apparently added zest. Her friends said “Violet was very plucky,” -and no one was astonished when after a year she accepted and married -Fred Riversley. It was altogether a more suitable match than one with -poor Dick Carey. Riversley was of more suitable age, rich, devoted, and -a good fellow, and as North said to her best friends, “Violet was never -suited for the wife of a poor man.” Only Roger North watched her -anxiously at times. She had been her mother’s child before, but since -Dick’s death she had turned more and more to her father. Something of -his dogged patient strength of mind seemed to become clear to her. -Something of the courage with which he faced life. - -She remembered a saying of his one day when her mother had been -flagrantly unjust and bitter to him on some matter of expenditure, so -that even she had felt ashamed. Whatever her father’s faults, his -generosity was past question. She had gone into the study and striven to -make amends, and he had looked at her with those tired humorous eyes of -his and said: - -“My dear, nothing can hurt you if you don’t let it.” - -She seized on that as some sort of creed amid the welter of all she had -ever thought she believed. - -She would not let things hurt her, She plunged more eagerly than ever -into the amusements of her world. After her marriage she started and ran -a smart officers’ hospital in London. Mrs. Riversley’s name was on many -committees. She was a noted giver of the then fashionable boy and girl -dances. A celebrated personage said she reminded him of a human fire. -There seemed a fever in her body, a restlessness which never left her. -Since the cessation of hostilities this restlessness had increased, or -possibly now that others were ceasing their activities it was more -noticeable. - -While North sat smoking his cigar she fetched a racquet and began to -practice her service on the court nearest him. She served over-hand a -swift hard service, and North watched the long slim line of her figure, -her exquisite poise, as she swung her racquet above her head and drove -the ball home. It was typical somehow of the driving force that seemed -behind her restlessness. - -Presently she stopped, and came and sat down close beside him, and when -he looked at her he saw that her mask was down and the tormented soul of -her for a moment bare. - -“It all looks just the same as ever, doesn’t it!” she said. “And we’ve -got to get through it somehow to the very end. - -“My dear,” began her father, and stopped. A blank hideous horror of -emptiness possessed him. He shivered in the hot sunshine. There was -nothing to say. He had no comfort to give her. - -“Heaven knows I’ve done my best,” she said. “I swore I wouldn’t let -Dick’s death spoil my life. I married Fred because he could give me -everything else—everything but what was impossible, and he’s a good -fellow.” She paused, then went on again, her voice very low and thin. -“There’s only one thing would do me any good—if I could hurt those -who’ve hurt me. That God, who let all this happen. I’m not the only one. -That God they teach us is almighty, and this is the best he can do for -us. You don’t believe He’s there at all, father—oh no, you don’t—I’m not -a fool! But I do, and I see Him watching it all happening, _letting_ it -all happen, according to plan, as those damned Germans used to say. If -only I could hurt them—hurt them myself. If they had only one neck that -I could wring—with my own two hands—slowly—very slowly—I think that -would do me good.” - -North pulled himself together. - -“How long have you been feeling like this, Vi?” he asked. - -“Ever since they killed Dick,” she said dully, as if the fire had -smouldered down, after a sudden sheet of flame. “I think I am made up of -hate, father. It’s the strongest thing in me. It’s so strong that I -can’t love any more. I don’t think I love Dick now. And Fred, sometimes -I hate Fred, and he’s a good fellow, you know.” - -The words filled North with a vague uncanny horror. He struggled after -normal, everyday words, but for a moment none came. He knew the girl was -overwrought, suffering from strain, but what was it that had looked at -him out of those vehement, passionate eyes? - -“Look here, Vi,” he said at length, striving to speak naturally, “you -are just imagining things. Can’t you take a pull on yourself and go easy -for a bit? You’re overdoing it, you know, and these sort of ideas are -the result.” - -“I’m sorry, father.” - -She bent sideways, letting her head rest against his shoulder, and -seeking his hand, held it close. Such a demonstration was foreign to her -with him. When she was small, some queer form of jealousy on her -mother’s part had come between them. He felt shy and awkward. - -“I don’t know what made me break out like that,” she went on. “I think -it must have been coming back here and seeing everything just the same -as it used to be before the war came. Until to-day, when I’ve been down -it’s been so quiet and different, with no parties, and nothing going on. -Now it’s gone back like everything else is going back—only I cannot.” - -“Nothing goes back, dear,” answered North. “It’s not the same for anyone -really. Not even for the quiet young people who’ll come and play here -without a trouble as you used to. But there’s always the interest of -going forward. If we’ve suffered, at least we’ve gained experience from -it, which is knowledge. And there’s always some work to be done for -every season that could not be done sooner or later. That helps, I -think.” - -“Dear old father,” she said softly. “We used not to be really great -friends in the old days. But now somehow you’re the only person I find -any comfort in. I think perhaps it is because we are both putting up a -hard fight.” - -“Don’t forget the spice of life is battle, Vi, as Stevenson has it. I’m -inclined to think, though”—he spoke slowly as one envolving a thought -new to him—“I’m inclined to think we sometimes confuse bitterness and -rebellion with it. That’s not clean fighting. My dear, put that hate you -speak of away from you, if you can—and have nothing to do with -bitterness—they are forces which can only make for evil.” - -There was a little pause. - -“I don’t think I can, father. It’s part of me. Sometimes I think it’s -all me, and sometimes I’m frightened.” - -“Look here, Vi,” said North, struggling with a disinclination to make -the proposition that was in his mind, a disinclination that he felt was -ridiculous, “I wish you would go over to Thorpe and get to know Miss -Seer.” - -Violet sat up and looked at him with wide-open eyes. - -“But why? I should hate it!” she exclaimed. “It would remind me—oh, of -so many things! It would make me feel even worse——” - -“Well, so I thought,” said North. “I can tell you I dreaded going. But -the old place is full of a—a strange sort of rest. I didn’t realize how -full of bitterness and resentment I had been until sitting there it all -dropped away from me. It was as if a stone had been rolled away. I -hadn’t realized how it was hurting until it left off.” - -He spoke disjointedly, and as if almost against his will. He was glad -when the sound of his wife’s and Mr. Fothersley’s approaching voices -made Violet release his hand and stand up. - -“You think Thorpe would lay my devils too?” she asked, looking down at -him. - -“I think,” he said gravely, “it is worth trying.” - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - -Mrs. North’s tennis party pursued its usual successful career in the -brilliant sunshine, which, as Mr. Fothersley remembered, always favoured -her. Fred Riversley had brought an unexpected carload of R. A. F. boys -down from London with him. This made a tournament possible, as Mrs. -North saw at once. They drew partners with much fun and laughter. Mr. -Fothersley telephoned to Fairbridge for a selection of prizes to be sent -out by the 4.30 bus. It was one of the charming sort of things which Mr. -Fothersley did. It was more particularly nice of him on this particular -afternoon than usual, because, so far as Mr. Fothersley was concerned, -Mr. Pithey was making it almost unbearable. - -He was a large, flat, pale yellow gentleman, with a peculiarly -penetrating metallic voice. He had a very long nose, with a broad tip -curving upwards, and small keen eyes which darted everywhere. Without -the slightest hesitation he took the place which from time immemorial -belonged to Mr. Fothersley at all Mentmore parties. Under the -beech-tree, where by all the rights of precedence Mr. Fothersley should -have led the conversation, Mr. Pithey’s metallic voice held sway and -drove all before it. In the usual walk round the garden, always -personally conducted by Mr. Fothersley and his hostess, Mr. Pithey laid -down the correct lines on which to bed out, to grow carnations, to keep -down weeds, or anything else that cropped up. When Mr. Fothersley drew -attention to the fact that on any of the courts the final of the -hard-fought set was in progress, it was Mr. Pithey’s voice that drowned -all others as he shouted “Well played!” and gave advice to all -concerned. In fact, Mr. Pithey dominated the party. - -Mrs. Pithy, a small blue-faced lady, very expensively dressed, sat in a -comfortable basket chair with her feet on a stool and, unless actually -asked a question, she spoke to no one except her husband, whom she -always addressed by name. Bertie when she remembered, ’Erb when she -forgot. - -Even the arrival of Lady Condor, undoubtedly the personage of the place, -made no impression on this strange couple’s evident conviction that they -were people of supreme importance in the universe. Lady Condor could -have put the Old Gentleman himself in his place if the mood were on her, -but on this occasion, as it happened, she was frankly and evidently -entertained by the Pitheys. Mr. Fothersley regretted it. Seldom had he -looked out more anxiously for the arrival of her wheeled chair -surrounded by its usual escort of five white West Highlanders. Lady -Condor always used her chair, in preference to her car, for short -journeys, so that her dogs also might have an outing. Seldom had he been -more disappointed in her, and Lady Condor was given to amazing -surprises. This was certainly one of them. Solemnly, and as far as was -possible in his manner conveying the honour being conferred on him, Mr. -Fothersley led Mr. Pithey to Lady Condor’s chair, so soon as she had -been ensconced by her hostess in a comfortable and shady spot near the -tea-tables and with a good view of the tennis. Not that she ever looked -at it for more than a second at a time, she was always too busy talking, -but it was _de rigueur_ that she should have the best place at any -entertainment. - -Mrs. Pithey, for the moment, it was impossible to introduce, as it would -plainly not occur to her to leave her chair until she had finished her -tea for anybody, except, possibly, Mr. Pithey. - -Mr. Fothersley effected Mr. Pithey’s introduction admirably. The -delicate shade of deference in his own manner left nothing to be -desired. - -“May I be allowed to present Mr. Pithey, dear Lady Condor?” he asked, -deftly bringing that gentleman’s large pale presence into her line of -vision. - -“Ah—how-d’ye-do? No, don’t trouble to shake hands.” She waved away a -large approach. “You can’t get at me for the dogs. And where are my -glasses? Arthur, I have dropped them somewhere. Could it have been in -the drive? No, I had them since. What! on my lap? Oh yes—thank you very -much.” - -She put them on and looked at Mr. Pithey, and Mr. Pithey looked at her. - -“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Do you always take a pack of dogs about -with you?” Plainly Mr. Pithey disapproved. Jock and Jinny, father and -mother of the family, were moving in an unfriendly manner round his -feet. “Just call them off, will you?” - -Mr. Fothersley awaited the swift and complete annihilation of Mr. -Pithey. It was a matter of doubt if even Lady Condor could have -accomplished it; at any rate, she made no attempt. She continued to look -at him with what might almost be described as appreciation in her shrewd -eyes under their heavy lids. Only she did not call the dogs off. - -And then, to an amazed company of the Mentmore élite, she gave Mr. -Pithey her whole and undivided attention for the space of nearly half an -hour. - -Mr. Pithey gave his opinion as it was always apparently his pride and -pleasure to do, on many and various things. - -“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,” might have served for -the text of Mr. Pithey’s conversation. - -“Who’s been at the head of affairs in this village _I_ don’t know,” he -said largely, “but more rotten management, more want of enterprise, more -lack of ordinary sense, I’ve never come across. Why, you see it -everywhere! Here’s the whole place without any light, unless you call -lamps and candles light, and a stream running through the place. Water -power at your doors, by Jingo! And money in it too, or I shouldn’t be -taking it up. Ever been in Germany?” He gulped down his third cup of -tea, and looked around at his now more or less interested audience. - -“Well, they’ve got electric light in every potty little village you go -to, got it there still at this minute, and”—Mr. Pithey laid a large -yellow hand on Lady Condor’s knee—“_cheaper_ than you can get it over -here.” - -“One really can’t believe it!” exclaimed Mrs. North. “Surely it’s not -possible!” - -“Everything is possible,” said Lady Condor, curiously examining Mr. -Pithey’s hand through her glasses. - -“I was over there, staying near Cologne on business last week,” returned -Mr. Pithey impressively. “So I ought to know. And when you know me -better, Mrs. North”—Mr. Fothersley’s shudder was almost audible—“you’ll -know I don’t talk without my book. I got nails over there—metal, mind -you—cheaper than you can get ’em here. P’rhaps you won’t credit that!” - -He helped himself to more cake, and started afresh. - -“Now look at the farming round about here. Rotten, that’s what it is, -rotten! Never went in for it myself before, but I know when a concern’s -run as it should be or not. There’s only one farm in this district -that’s real tip-top, and that’s Thorpe. It’s a little bit of a place, -but it’s well run. Run by a woman too! But she’s a fool. If you’ll -believe me, I offered her a twenty-five per cent. profit on whatever the -price she gave for that little place, and she wouldn’t take it. Just -have suited me to play with. And there’s one or two things there I’d -like up at the Court. By the way, any gentleman or lady here got some of -those old lead water tanks they’d like a fancy price for, because I’m a -buyer.” - -By this time the assembly under the beech-tree was more or less -paralysed, and Mrs. North was wondering what madness had possessed her -to be the first to ask Mr. Pithey to meet Lady Condor. But Lady Condor -continued to beam; not only to beam, but every now and then to break -into a chuckle. And yet this was not at all the sort of thing one would -have expected to amuse her. - -“Old lead water tanks!” she repeated, thoughtfully. “Dear Arthur, would -you mind putting Jock on my lap? Thank you so much. And now Jinny! -There, darlings! Don’t be nervous, Mr. Pithey. They never really _bite_ -unless you come too close. Let me see, where were we? Oh—yes—tanks! No, -I am afraid I have none for sale just now.” - -“You see,” said Mr. Pithey confidentially, “if I get the stuff off some -of you old inhabitants I know it’s the right sort, and I don’t mind what -I pay.” - -“If you go on talking much longer, Bertie, you’ll be late for seeing the -man who’s coming about the butler’s place,” said Mrs. Pithey, suddenly, -from her chair. She had just finished her tea, and swept many crumbs -from her lap as she spoke. - -“Quite right, my dear! Quite right!” Mr. Pithey rose as he spoke. “I’m -never late for an appointment, Mrs. North. Matter of conscience with me, -never mind who it’s with, butler or duke.” It was characteristic of Mr. -Pithey that he put the butler first. “Well, good-by to you all.” Mr. -Pithey shook hands largely all round, followed by Mrs. Pithey. “Pleased -to have met your Ladyship. Sorry not to have seen your good husband, -Mrs. North. _The_ man in this place, I reckon. That margarine business -of his is one of the best managed in Leicester, and we don’t let flies -walk on us there, anyhow. He goes in for a bit of science and writing as -well, doesn’t he? Good all round man, eh?” - -And, conscious of having been generally pleasant, Mr. Pithey removed his -large pale presence to where his Rolls-Royce car awaited him in the -front drive. - -“I know you will forgive me, dear lady,” said Mr. Fothersley, his voice -trembling with emotion, “if I do not see them off.” - -“Indeed, yes!” exclaimed Mrs. North. The allusion to the margarine -factory had made her hot all over. “What perfectly hateful people! He -did nothing but talk, and she did nothing but eat!” - -Lady Condor arose briskly from her chair, scattering West Highlanders -around her. - -“Where is Roger?” she demanded. “I am going to be really clever if I can -only concentrate sufficiently to say what I mean. Don’t distract my -thoughts, any of you! But I must have Roger! He is the only really -brainy one among us—at least, I mean he is the only one who’s used his -brains. I have naturally a very good brain, but it is rusty from want of -use. All our brains are rusty. But what is it I want? Oh yes—Roger. In -his study, my dear? Let us all go—yes. Where are my glasses, and my -gloves? Please put them in your pocket until I go, Arthur. I cannot -afford to lose them as I used to do. Down, children! down!” - -She took Mrs. North’s arm, and with Mr. Fothersley on her other hand and -the dogs in full chorus, started across the lawn toward the house. - -“Well played, Violet! well played! The child’s as good as ever at it. -But where were we going? Oh yes—I must have Roger. We will surprise him -through the window. He will be very cross, but he won’t say anything -because it’s me. Ah—but there he is——” - -North’s long figure came out into the sunlight, and as he approached the -group he had much the air of a big schoolboy who had been playing -truant. - -“I apologize profusely,” he said. “My intentions were of the very best. -I intended to come out to tea, but I happened on Mr. Pithey in the hall, -where he was endeavouring to purchase Mansfield——” - -There was a chorus of exclamations. - -“Well, he was asking Mansfield to recommend him a good butler for a -gentleman’s establishment. Salary no object, if man satisfactory. I -confess I ran away. Lady Condor, if you will drink another cup of tea I -should love to fetch it for you, but it is plainly not my fault if you -will encourage my wife to entertain these people.” - -“You would never entertain anybody if you had your own way,” said his -wife. - -“I would always entertain Lady Condor. Or rather, I am always sure Lady -Condor will entertain me.” - -“Well, I am delighted with Mr. Pithey,” announced Lady Condor, -reoccupying her chair, and enjoying the sensation she created. “Yes. In -Mr. Pithey I see our—now what is the word I want?—oh yes—our avenger! -The people have dethroned Us. They are taxing Us out of existence. -Condor told me this morning he must put the Cleve estate into the -market. I shall be lucky if I keep my diamonds, and poor Hawkhurst will -be lucky if he and his wife don’t end in the workhouse. But where was I? -I had got it all in my head just now. If only I could write it all down -directly I think of it, I could make my fortune as a writer of leaders -in a daily paper. Yes. They have dethroned Us, and they will get -Pitheys, dozens of Pitheys, instead. We shall be ruined, obsolete, -extinct, but we shall be revenged. They will get Pitheys in our place. -Heaven be praised! The old _nouveaux riches_ were bearable. They had -reverence, they recognized their limitations, they were prepared to be -taught. Look at you dear people, of course we have all known about the -margarine. And you, dear Nita, yours was wine—or was it mineral -water?—something to drink, wasn’t it? We needn’t hide anything now, -because the Pitheys will strip everything bare. If you dear things had -come here with 2½d. a year, and lived in a villa, we should never have -known you. And yet—yes, now I have it—yet really and truly, Roger was -the real aristocracy. The aristocracy of brains. The margarine and wine -didn’t matter, nor did the money—at least, I mean it ought not to have. -I’m getting terribly muddled! And where is my scarf? Did I drop it when -I got up? Oh, here it is. You see, We made the aristocracy of wealth. We -couldn’t resist the shoots in Scotland for the boys, and the balls for -the girls, and the snug directorships on big companies. Yes—we smirched -our position—our grandfathers and grandmothers would never have done it. -And now here we are positively being patronized—yes, dear -Arthur—patronized by Pitheys. I think I have gone off on to another -tack. It was losing my scarf! But I am delighted with Pithey. He will -avenge Us on the masses—Pithey the Avenger—yes. But I should have put it -much better if I could have said it while he was here. Arthur, do look -more cheerful! Think of Pithey as the avenger. It makes him so bearable. -And I will have that cup of tea, Roger!” - -“I cannot laugh,” said Mr. Fothersley. His voice, even though addressing -Lady Condor, held a word of rebuke. “We should never have called! It -enrages me to think that we should have submitted to such—such——” - -Words failed him. “However,” he added, “we have reason to be thankful we -did not call on the St. Ubes. I gathered to-day that the name, which -might easily have misled us, was originally _Stubbs_. I shall _not_ -call. These Pithey people——” - -Again words failed him, and Lady Condor chuckled. - -“Mrs. Pithey disapproves of me,” she announced. “She is probably telling -Mr. Pithey that I paint. I must own it is very badly done to-day; -Mullins was in a temper. She always makes me up badly when she is in a -temper. Now do let us enjoy ourselves! Let us forget the Pithian -invasion. Thank you—and some cake—yes. And some one else must have some -tea to keep me company. Dear Nita—yes. The poor hostess never gets -enough tea. Now this is cosy. And where are my glasses? I have not -_looked_ at the tennis yet. And I know it is very good. And I have not -spoken to dear Violet, or to Fred. And there, why surely they are -playing together. Did they draw together? How strange! The child is -lovelier than ever. And now they have finished. Bring them to have tea -with me. What is Fred now? A major! Isn’t it too ridiculous? And I -suppose those little boys you have brought with you in R.A.F. uniforms -are Brigadier-Generals. And have you won the tournament, my dears?” - -“No,” said Fred Riversley. He and Violet had shaken hands and had waited -till Lady Condor stopped for breath. “No. I played very badly. Even Vi -couldn’t pull me through.” - -He was a fair heavily-built young man, and while the ladies talked, all -three seemingly at once, for Lady Condor rarely ceased, he sat down on -the grass and was at once the centre of attraction for the five dogs. -When a momentary pause occurred, he asked, “How’s Dudley?” - -“Dudley,” said Lady Condor, “has got his aluminium leg. It is really too -wonderful. You’d never guess it wasn’t a real live leg—unless he tries -to run, which of course he mustn’t do. But everything else. And John, we -had letters from only yesterday. Russia—yes—and Heaven knows when we’ll -get him back. And where is your Harry? Why, it seems only yesterday he -was retrieving tennis balls in a sailor suit!” - -“Harry is stuck at Marseilles,” said Riversley, “on his way to Egypt. -Doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him till Peace is signed.” - -The little group fell on a sudden silence, a silence that the steady -thud of the tennis balls, the call of the scores, the applause, did not -touch. A shadow seemed to cross the sunbathed lawns and brilliant -flower-beds. There were others whom they all remembered, of whom no one -would ever ask for news again. - -Riversley got up and carried the empty cups back to the tea-table. Then -he stood and watched the tennis for a little space. - -His mind moved heavily, but he was conscious that, in spite of all the -momentum given by a great reaction, it would not be so easy as of old to -make a business of pleasure. - -Presently he slipped away to the peace and seclusion of his -father-in-law’s study. It was a long low room, lined from floor to -ceiling with books. North’s writing-table stood in one window, the other -opened on to the lawn, while a further means of escape was afforded by a -second door at the end of the room opening into his laboratory. In the -great armchair guarding the hearth slept respectively Larry and -Victoria, the little lady fox-terrier who owned Roger North. Between Vic -and Larry there existed a curious compact, immovable apparently as the -laws of the Medes and Persians. Each had a share of the room on which -the other never encroached, and Larry possessed certain privileges, -plainly conceded by Victoria, with regard to North, beyond which he -never went. In all other matters the two were fast friends, and had been -so long before Larry came to live at Westwood. Lady Condor’s West -Highlanders they tolerated in the garden, but never in the house. Both -dogs greeted Riversley with effusion, and the heavy, silent young man -sat with Victoria on his knee and Larry at his feet, surrounding himself -with clouds of smoke and stroking the little sleek head against his arm. - -Presently North joined him. “You are staying the night?” he asked, -accepting a proffered cigar. - -“No.” Riversley emptied his pipe of ashes and began to refill it. - -“I’ve made the excuse of business in London,” he went on after that -little pause. “I think Vi wants a change from—everything.” - -There was another pause, but still North did not speak. He understood -this stolid and apparently rather ordinary young man better than most -people did. He knew the difficulty with which he spoke of things that -touched him deeply, things that really mattered. So he lit his cigar and -passed the light in silence, and presently Riversley went on again. - -“You see, I still think Vi did the best thing she could, under the -circumstances, when she married me,” he said, “but even so it has not -been the success I hoped it would have been. There’s something wrong. -Something more than having to put up with me instead of a chap like old -Dick. It was a knock-down blow losing him, but Vi was damned plucky over -that, and it doesn’t account for——” - -“What?” asked North, sharply this time, when the usual pause came. - -“I don’t know,” answered Riversley, stolid as ever. “That’s what worries -me. I can’t put a name to it. But there’s something wrong. Vi’s altered, -and it isn’t for the better.” - -“Altered?” - -“Well, she looks at things differently—she’s lost—oh, I don’t know.” - -“My dear fellow, can’t you be a little more explicit?” - -“No. I’m a stupid sort of a fellow, or perhaps I’d understand better -what’s wrong. The only thing definite that I can lay hold of is, that -she gets sudden spasms of hatred, and it’s—well, it’s like looking into -a red-hot hell. I don’t know how else to describe it. She always had a -bit of a temper, you know, but this is different. And”—his voice dropped -a little and lost its steadiness for a moment—“the animals won’t go near -her sometimes.” - -There was a queer strange silence for a minute across which the laughter -outside broke like a jangling wire. - -“I expect she’s treated them unjustly,” said North, conscious even as he -spoke of the futility of his reason. - -“Dogs never resent where they care,” said Riversley briefly. “It’s not -that. They—they are afraid of her for some reason, and it’s horribly -uncanny sometimes. I thought perhaps if she came down here without me, -had a rest from me you know, it would help her a bit.” - -North nodded. “I think you are wise. I hope it’s only a passing phase. -She’s been through a stiff time, and we are none of us yet quite normal, -I fancy.” - -“It isn’t as if she’d care for me,” Riversley went on steadily. “I took -my risk, and I’d take it again, and I’m not blaming her, mind you. And -I’m only telling you about it because she seems to hang on to you, and -you’ll be able to help her better if you know.” - -“Yes, I understand that,” returned North. He felt, as a matter of fact, -particularly helpless. What Riversley had just told him, coupled with -Violet’s outburst to himself that afternoon, worried and disturbed him -not a little. He remembered those words of hers: “Sometimes I am -frightened.” The words overwrought, hysterical, long-strained, jumbled -in his mind and brought no comfort. Then suddenly, like a hand stretched -out to a stumbling man, came the thought of Thorpe, its radiant peace, -the steady eyes of Ruth Seer. And with that came the thought of Dick -Carey. He looked across at Riversley. - -“There’s one thing I’d like to tell you,” he said, “and that is, Dick -wished Violet had chosen you instead of himself. He felt somehow that -you were really better suited to her.” - -Riversley’s eyes met his in blank amazement. “Dick thought that?” - -“He always felt he was too old for Vi. But she was desperately in love -with him, and he knew it, and you know old Dick. Besides, Vi could twist -almost any man round her little finger. But that he would have been glad -if her choice had fallen on you instead of himself, I have no doubt -whatever.” - -Riversley stood up, filling his chest with a long breath. “Thank you for -telling me,” he said. “It’s a help.” - -“There’s one other thing I’d like to say,” North went on, speaking -rather hurriedly, “and that is, see that you and Vi don’t get like -myself and her mother. Vi is like her in some ways, and though no doubt -I’ve been in fault too, and we were always wholly unsuited, yet we began -under better conditions than you have. And now we’ve got on each other’s -nerves so much that everything she says or does irritates me, and vice -versa. We _can’t_ get right now if we would. She thinks she’s fond of me -still, because it’s the correct thing to be fond of your husband, but -it’s far nearer hatred than love. And I—have no delusions. And for God’s -sake, my boy, keep clear of following in our footsteps.” - -“We come of a different generation, sir,” said Riversley simply. “If we -can’t hit it off, we shall part. Only if there is trouble ahead for her, -and I am afraid there is, I’m right there.” - -North looked at him with kindly eyes, but he sighed. He knew only too -well how the long years of misunderstanding, and irritability, and want -of give and take, can wear out what at first seemed such a wonderful and -indestructible thing. - -“Roger! Roger!” shrilled his wife’s voice from the lawn. “Everyone is -going. Aren’t you coming to say good-bye?” - -She flashed on their vision as she called, her face flushed with -indignation under her beflowered hat, her hands full of small boxes, -tissue paper and cotton wool. - -“I really do think you might help a little! It looks so odd, and all my -friends think you peculiar enough already.” - -Brought back with a shock to the deadly importance of the ordinary -routine, North became flippant. “You don’t mean to say they tell you -so?” he asked. - -“It’s easy enough to guess what they must think, without any telling,” -retorted his wife. “At any rate, if you can’t behave with common -civility yourself, you might let Fred come and help me. Fred, I have -arranged for cold supper at 8.30. Will you come at once and look after -the friends you brought down, while Violet and I change. And don’t, I -beg you, for Violet’s sake, get into the same ways as her father.” - -Riversley followed her meekly across the lawn. “I’m really awfully -sorry,” he apologized. “Is there anything else I can do?” - -Then he stopped. His mother-in-law was immersed in a group of her guests -saying good-bye, and his eyes had found the figure they always sought. -Outside the front door, Lady Condor, her scarves, gloves, and glasses, -were all being packed carefully into her bath-chair, and a little way -down the drive was his wife. In front of her, just out of arm’s length, -were the little pack of West Highlanders, barking furiously. She stooped -down, coaxing them to come and be petted. - -He progressed across the lawn towards her in his usual rather ponderous -fashion, and stood watching. All the light of the sun seemed for him to -centre round that slim white figure. It touched the smooth dark silk of -her hair with a crown of glory, and found no flaw in the clear pale -skin, the rose-red mouth. Those slender hands held out to the dogs, he -would have followed them to the end of the earth. He loved all of her, -with every thing he had or was. - -Presently she gave up her hopeless efforts, and, standing to her full -height, looked at him across the still barking dogs. - -“They have forgotten me, the little pigs!” she said. “They won’t even -let me pat them.” - -But Riversley knew, even as dogs do not resent where they love, neither -do they forget. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - -“If I were not a farmer, I would like to be a master mason,” said Ruth -Seer very firmly. - -She was sitting by the roadside, watching the workmen lay the foundation -for her first cottage. The process interested her enormously. The master -mason at intervals paused in his work and instructed her as to its -purport. She was learning the use and meaning of the square, the level, -and the plumb-rule. She was also enjoying herself quite a lot. - -Across her knees lay Bertram Aurelius. He guggled cheerfully in answer, -and bit her forefinger vigorously with such teeth as he possessed. - -Bertram Aurelius had come into the world without benefit of clergy. His -father belonged to the B.E.F., his mother was a between-maid, and in the -ordinary course of events he should have gone to his own place. But -values had shifted considerably during the years of the Great War, and -in the year of Peace both male babies, even though unauthorized, and -between-maids, had come to be recognized as very distinctly valuable -assets. - -Gladys Bone, Bertram Aurelius’s mother, aged eighteen, was pathetically -anxious to please, a trait which had probably assisted in her undoing, -and took the good advice meekly, except where Bertram Aurelius was -concerned. Here the good ladies, who had with great difficulty scraped -together the money to start a rescue home for unmarried mothers in -Fairbridge, reasoned with her in vain. She insisted on his certainly -somewhat startling combination of names and persisted in calling him by -both. She was perfectly unashamed of the fact that he had no authentic -father. - -“Ain’t he beautiful?” seemed to appear to her quite a sufficient answer -to those who endeavoured to present the subject in its proper light. -And, worst of all, she absolutely refused to be separated from him. - -The little grey-haired, pink-cheeked spinster, who practically settled -such matters, was in despair. In her inmost heart she sympathized with -Gladys, Bertram Aurelius being an infant of considerable charm. At the -same time she realized that it was almost impossible to find anyone mad -enough to engage a housemaid, or even a between-maid, with a baby thrown -in. - -One day, however, when Bertram Aurelius had reached the adorable age of -ten months, the unexpected happened. Little Miss Luce travelled from -London in the same carriage with Ruth Seer, and getting into -conversation, told her the story of Gladys and Bertram Aurelius Bone. At -the moment Ruth was meditating the possibility of getting a girl to help -Miss McCox without permanently destroying the peace of Thorpe Farm. -Gladys Bone seemed the possibility. Never having lived, save for her -brief three months’ companionship, in a well-regulated family, the -accompanying baby did not strike her as an impossibility, but rather as -a solution. - -Then and there on arriving at Fairbridge did Miss Luce carry her off to -see them both. - -Bertram Aurelius had eyes the colour of a delphinium, a head of red -down, and a skin like strawberries and cream. He had little hands that -held you tight and pink toes which he curled and uncurled. He crowed at -Ruth and promptly put her finger in his mouth. - -“Ain’t he beautiful?” said his small mother. - -“She is really an excellent worker,” said little Miss Luce, when Gladys -and Bertram Aurelius had been dismissed. “And she will do anything for -anyone who is good to the baby. If you think you _could_ manage with -him, possibly——?” - -She looked at Ruth anxiously. - -Ruth laughed. “My dear lady,” she said, “I have just discovered that the -one thing wanted to make Thorpe perfect is a baby.” - -“But you have other servants,” suggested Miss Luce. “I fear you may find -them a difficulty.” - -Certainly Miss McCox’s attitude towards the situation was more than -doubtful, but Ruth had learnt that a distinctly soft kernel existed -somewhere under the hard shell of an unattractive personality. She -thought of Bertram Aurelius’s blue eyes and soft red head. - -“I think you must send Gladys out to Thorpe to apply for the situation -_with_ Bertram Aurelius,” she said. - -They looked at each other, and Miss Luce nodded comprehensively. “He is -a very attractive baby,” she murmured. - -It was the next morning, while Ruth was revelling in the arrival of -delicious fluffy yellow things in her fifty-egg incubator, that Miss -McCox emerged from the house, evidently the bearer of news of -importance. - -As always, she was spotlessly clean and almost unbearably neat, and her -clothes appeared to be uncomfortably tight. Her collar was fastened by a -huge amber brooch, her waist-belt by a still larger glittering metal -buckle, both presents from the young man to whom she had been engaged in -her distant youth, and who had died of what Miss McCox described as a -declining consumption. Out of the corner of Ruth’s eye she looked -distinctly uncompromising. - -“There’s a young woman come to apply for the situation,” she announced. - -“Does she seem likely to be any good?” asked Ruth, still busy with the -incubator. - -“She’s got a baby,” said Miss McCox, who always came to the point. “And -she wants to keep it.” - -“A baby?” - -“A baby,” repeated Miss McCox firmly. “A baby as didn’t ought to have -come, but it’s there.” - -“Oh!” said Ruth weakly. “Well, what do you think about it?” - -Miss McCox fingered the amber brooch. This Ruth knew to be a distinct -sign of weakness. - -“The young woman’s civil spoken, and I reckon there’s worse about _with_ -their ring on,” she said darkly. “I’m willin’ to try her, if you are.” - -Ruth hid a smile among the yellow chicks. The charm of Bertram Aurelius -had worked. - -“But the baby?” she asked. “Can we possibly manage with the baby?” - -“Why not?” returned Miss McCox sharply. “Babies aren’t much trouble, God -knows! It’s the grown-ups make _me_ sick!” - -So Bertram Aurelius came to live at Thorpe, and was rapidly absorbed -into the life on the farm. He was a good and cheerful infant, and anyone -could take charge of him. He was equally contented, whether viewing the -world over Ruth’s shoulder while she inspected the farm, or in his -cradle in the corner of the kitchen listening to curious noises called -singing, which Miss McCox, to the amazement of the whole establishment, -produced for his benefit. He would lie among the hay in a manger, even -as the Babe of all time, while Ruth and the cowman milked, or on his -crawler on the terrace, guarded by Sarah and Selina, who took to him -much as if he had been one of those weird black and white puppies of -Sarah’s youthful indiscretion. And Gladys, his mother, worked cheerfully -and indefatigably to please, sitting at Miss McCox’s feet for -instructions, and the peace and comfort of Thorpe deepened and broadened -day by day. - -It was now near mid-June, and the fine weather still held. Day after day -broke to unclouded sunshine, a world full of flowers and the rhythmic -life of growing things. The seeds and baby plants cried for rain, the -hay and fruit crops would suffer, but Ruth, her heart torn both ways, -could not regret. It was all so beautiful, and when the rain came, who -could tell? It might be all the real summer weather of the year, this -wonderful May and June. - -To-day, little ever-so-soft white clouds broke the clear blue of the -sky, but there was still no sign of change. The wild roses and the broom -were in perfection, and everywhere was the honey and almond scent of -gorse; the buttercup glory was over but the ox-eyed daisies were all -out, turning their sweet moon faces to the sun. - -From where she sat Ruth could see the rose-red roofs of Thorpe with the -white pigeons drowsing in the heat. Her cottages were to be equally -beautiful on a smaller scale. She dreamt, as she sat in the warmth and -the sweetness, with Bertram Aurelius cooing softly in her lap, -visualizing pictures such as were growing in the minds of many in the -great year of Peace, seeing beautiful homes where the strong man and the -mother, with sturdy round-limbed children, should live, where the big -sons and comely daughters should come in and out, in the peace of plenty -and to the sound of laughter. It might all be so wonderful, for the -wherewithal is ours, is here with us. The good brown earth, the sun and -the rain, fire and water, all the teeming life of nature, all ours to -mould into a life of beauty for ourselves and our children. - -Dreams? Yes. But such dreams are the seeds of the beautiful, which -shall, if they find soil, blossom into beauty in the time to come, for -the little children lying on our knees, clutching at our hearts. - -Presently there intruded into Ruth’s dreams the large presence of Mr. -Pithey, and she discovered him standing in the white dust of the road in -front of her. Disapproval and curiosity both appeared together in his -little sharp eyes. According to Mr. Pithey’s ideas it was distinctly -unseemly for a person in Ruth’s position to sit by the roadside “like a -common tramp,” as he expressed it to Mrs. Pithey later on. To his mind, -somehow, the baby in her lap accentuated the unseemliness, and it made -the thing worse that she was both hatless and gloveless. Had she been -properly dressed for the roads, the rest might have been an accident. - -“I should think you’d get a sunstroke, sitting by the road like that -without your hat,” he said. - -Mr. Pithey himself was expensively dressed in pale grey with a white -waistcoat and spats. On his head he wore a five-guinea panama, and his -general appearance forcibly reminded Ruth of an immaculately groomed -large, pale yellow pig. Her grey eyes smiled at him out of her -sun-browned face. She had a disarming smile. - -“I believe I was nearly asleep,” she said, and dug her knuckles into her -eyes much as a child does. - -Mr. Pithey softened. “What on earth are you sitting there for?” he -asked. - -“Just dreaming. But you mustn’t think I’m an idler, Mr. Pithey. Even Pan -sleeps at this hour.” - -Her smile deepened, and Mr. Pithey softened still more. He stepped out -of the dust into the grass, passing as he did so into a more friendly -attitude. - -“Pan?—that’s a queer name for a baby!” he said. - -The smile became just the softest thing in laughs. “Well, his proper -name is Bertram Aurelius. But Pan——” She held Bertram Aurelius up the -while he chuckled at her, striving to fit his hand into his mouth. “Look -at his blue eyes, and his little pointed ears, and his head of red down. -Really Pan suits him much better.” - -“Um,” said Mr. Pithey. “Bertram is a good sensible name for a boy, like -my own, and not too common. Better stick to that. So you’ve started your -cottages. Well, you remember what I told you. Don’t you think they’re -going to pay, because they won’t.” - -“Oh yes, they’ll pay,” said Ruth. “Why, of course they’ll pay!” There -was mischief in her eye. - -“Now look here,” said Mr. Pithey heavily. “It’s no good talking to a -woman; it’s in at one ear and out of the other. But if you’ll walk up to -the house with me, I’ll put it down in black and white. The return -you’ll get for your money——” - -“Oh, money!” interrupted Ruth. “I wasn’t thinking of money.” - -Mr. Pithey heeled over, as it were, like a ship brought up when sailing -full before the wind. - -“If it’s damned rotten sentiment you’re after,” he exclaimed, “well you -can take my word for it _that_ doesn’t pay either!” - -Ruth looked up at him as he stood over her, a very wrathfully indignant -immaculate, pale yellow pig indeed. She thought of his millions, and the -power they wielded and then of the power they might wield if backed by -any imagination. - -“Mr. Pithey,” she said, and her voice was very low, and it had in it the -sound of many waters which had gone over her soul, “I have seen our dead -men lie in rows, many hundreds, through the dark night, waiting till the -dawn for burial; they did not ask if it paid.” - -Mr. Pithey shuffled with his big feet in the grass. “That’s different,” -he said, but his little sharp eyes fell. “I should have gone myself, but -my business was of national importance, as of course you know. Yes, -that’s different. That’s different.” He seemed to find satisfaction in -the words. He eyed Ruth again with equanimity. “Of course you ladies -don’t understand, but you can’t bring sentiment into business.” - -He puffed himself out. Again the phrase pleased. - -Ruth rose to her feet. Even to her broad charity he had become -oppressively obnoxious. - -“How much did you offer me for Thorpe?” she asked suddenly. - -Mr. Pithey’s eyes snapped. “Twenty-five per cent. on your money,” he -said, “or I might even go a bit higher as you’re a lady.” - -Ruth tossed Bertram Aurelius over her shoulder, laughing. - -“Do you know what has made Thorpe the gem it is?” she asked. “Why, -sentiment! Unless you have some to spend on it, it wouldn’t pay you to -buy.” - -She nodded a farewell and left him with a strangled “damn” on his lips. -He yearned after Thorpe. As a pleasure farm for himself it left little -to be desired. - -He expressed his feelings to Mrs. Pithey, who, coming along presently in -her Rolls-Royce, with the two elder children in their best clothes, -picked him out of the dust and took him home to tea. - -“Why, it must have been her I passed just now!” she exclaimed. “There -now, if I didn’t think it was just a common woman, and never bowed!” - -“A good thing too!” said Mr. Pithey majestically. And he said to Mrs. -Pithey all the things he would have said to Miss Seer if she had given -him a chance. - -Undisturbed by the omission, Ruth went home across the flowered fields, -but Mr. Pithey himself oppressed her. It seemed grossly unfit, somehow, -that the life sacrifice of those dead boys should result in benefit, -material benefit at any rate, to the Pitheys of the world; it shocked -even one’s sense of decency. - -But Bertram Aurelius’s head was very soft against her throat as he -dropped into sleep. The sun was very warm, the almond and honey scent of -gorse was very sweet. Presently she unruffled, and began to sing the -song which seemed to her to belong especially to Thorpe: - - “When I have reached my journey’s end - And I am dead and free, - I pray that God will let me go - Along the flowered fields I know - That look towards the sea.” - -So she came to the stile which led to the buttercup field, crimson and -white now with sorrel and ox-eyed daisies. And standing among the -flowers was a slim figure, the figure of a woman dressed all in white. -Ruth stopped on the stile to look. It was so beautiful in poise and -outline, it gave her that little delightful shock of joy which only -beauty gives. Backed by the blue sky, bathed in the broad afternoon -sunlight, it was worthy even of her flower fields. Very still the figure -stood, gazing across those fields that “looked towards the sea,” and -just as still, in a breathless pause, Ruth stood and watched and -wondered. - -For gradually she became aware of a strange appearance as of fire -surrounding the slim figure. It was of oval shape, vivid scarlet in -colour, deepening at the base. Other colours there were in the oval, but -the fiery glow of the red drowned them into insignificance. Ruth shaded -her eyes with her disengaged hand, suspecting some illusion of light, -but the oval held its shape under the steady scrutiny, and with a little -gasp she realized that she was looking at that which the ordinary -physical sight does not reveal. Vague memories of things read in old -books out of Raphael Goltz’s library, descriptions of the coloured auric -egg which, invisible to the human eye, surrounds all living forms, raced -hurriedly through her mind, but she had read of them more with curiosity -than with any thought that they would ever come within the boundary of -her own consciousness. As she realized what the phenomenon was, a -growing shrinking from it, a sense of horror, a feeling that there was -something sinister, threatening, in the fiery implacable red of the -appearance, came over her like a wave. She was glad of Bertram -Aurelius’s warm little body against her own, and found she was fighting -a desire to turn back and retrace her steps. A desire so wholly absurd -on the face of it, that she shook herself together and resolutely moved -forward. As she did so, the white figure moved too, coming down the -slope of the field to meet her, and as it came the scarlet oval faded, -flickered, and, so far as Ruth was concerned, seemed to go out. The -ordinary everyday things of life came back with a curious dislocating -jerk, and she found herself looking into a very wonderful pair of -golden-brown eyes set in short, but oddly thick, black lashes, and a -light high voice spoke, a voice with sudden bell-like cadences in it, so -often heard in the voice of French women. It was as attractive as all -the rest of Violet Riversley’s physical equipment. - -“Is it Miss Seer? May I introduce myself? I expect as Roger North’s -daughter will be simplest,” she said, holding out her hand “Father -dropped me here on his way to Fairbridge with Lady Condor. They are both -calling here later to see you and pick me up, also hoping for tea, -father told me to say. Your maid told me I should find you if I came -down this way. Do you mind that I have picked some of your moon daisies? -There are none fine as grow in this field.” - -“No, no, of course not,” Ruth half stammered, realizing for the first -time that she carried a sheaf of daisies in the bend of her arm. Why, -everything would have been hers but for the chance of war. This was the -woman who was to have married Dick Carey. And somehow, all at once, Ruth -knew that this meeting was not the ordinary everyday occurrence such -meetings mostly are. It had a meaning, a purpose of its own. She felt a -sudden shrinking of some inner sense, even as she had just now felt a -physical shrinking. She wanted to back out of something, she knew not -what, just as she had had that ridiculous desire just now to turn round -and go the other way. And yet, standing staring at her in this stupid -dumb way, she did not dislike Violet Riversley; far from it. She was -distinctly attracted by her, and her beauty drew Ruth like a charm. - -It seemed quite a long time before she heard her own voice saying, -“Please pick—take—anything you like.” - -“Thanks ever so much,” said Mrs. Riversley. She had turned to walk up -the path. “I’m just like a child. I always want to pick flowers when I -see them, and they seem to grow here better than anywhere else I know. -Mr. Carey used to say he had squared the Flower Elementals.” - -She spoke the name quite simply and casually, while Ruth was conscious -of a ridiculous feeling of shyness. - -“I think it quite likely,” she answered. “Look at the wisteria.” They -had reached the ridge of the slope and could see where the flowered -fields merged into the garden proper. “All along the top of the wall, -against the blue. I have never seen any so wonderful.” - -It was amazingly wonderful, but Mrs. Riversley looked at it without any -apparent pleasure. - -“It is ever so good of you to let me come and invade you in this -informal way,” she said, with her little gracious social manner. “Father -said he was sure you would not mind. And you won’t let me interrupt you, -will you? You work on the farm yourself, don’t you? It is not just a -pretence of farming with you.” - -“I was just going to milk,” said Ruth, smiling. “We are one hand short -to-day, so if you won’t mind my leaving you till teatime, and you will -just do exactly what you like, and pick anything you like——” - -Then Violet Riversley did, for her, an unusual thing. She slipped her -hand into Ruth’s, as a shy, rather lonely child might have done. It was -one of the moments when she was irresistible. - -“Let me come with you and watch,” she said. “And why do you carry that -big baby about? Is it a good work?” - -“He’s the farm baby,” said Ruth, her eyes twinkling. “And we found him -under a gooseberry-bush.” - -They had reached the terrace, and the pigeons, just awake from their -midday slumber on the sun-baked roof, came tumbling down, fluttering -round Ruth, searching the big pockets of her overall for corn, while -Bertram Aurelius vainly strove to catch a wing or tail. - -Mrs. Riversley stood at a little distance. “My goodness, they are tame,” -she exclaimed, as the pretty chase for the hidden food went on. “Just as -tame as they were with——” She stopped and looked round her. “It is -extraordinary how little the place has changed—and it’s not pretending -either—it really is just the same here. The same old comfortable at-home -feeling. Did you know Mr. Carey by any chance? No, I suppose not. But -it’s funny—I have something the same feeling with you I always had with -him, and with no one else ever in the world. You rest me—you do me -good—you are something cool on a hot day. You know, father felt it too, -and he is not given to feelings. Do get rid of that great fat lump. Put -him back under his gooseberry-tree. Then we will go milking.” She -advanced on Bertram Aurelius threateningly. “Where _does_ he go?” - -Ruth broke into laughter. “He will go in the manger on the hay, or -anywhere else that comes handy. Or—but wait a minute—here come the -dogs.” - -Sarah and Selina were proceeding decorously up the path from the front -gate. To all appearances they had been taking a little gentle exercise. -There was an air of meekness, an engaging innocence, about them which, -to those who knew them, told its own tale. They had undoubtedly been up -to mischief. - -“The dogs?” queried Mrs. Riversley. - -“They will look after him,” explained Ruth. - -She went into the house and brought out a small wooden cradle on -rockers. In this she arranged Bertram Aurelius, who took the change with -his usual philosophy, waved his bare pink legs with vigour, and strove -to catch the sunbeams flickering through the jasmine leaves. The little -dogs sat side by side, very alert and full of responsibility. - -It was a picture full of charm, but Mrs. Riversley held herself aloof, -though she watched the swift neat movement of Ruth’s work-worn hands -with interest until she joined her. - -Then she became for the next half-hour an entirely delightful companion, -talking gaily in her pretty cadenced voice, flitting here and there like -some white bird about the big fragrant cowshed, eager with the impulsive -eagerness of a child to show that she too knew how to milk. Dick had -taught her. She spoke of him frequently and without self-consciousness. -She told Ruth many things that interested her to know. And gradually the -curious shell of hardness, that apparent want of sympathy with all the -beautiful teeming life of the farm disappeared. She milked, to Ruth’s -astonishment, well and deftly. She understood much about chicken and -pigs. She held the down-soft yellow ducklings in her shapely hands, and -broke into open enthusiasm over the little white kid who ran with the -herd. - -“I wonder,” she said, when the milking was over and Ruth suggested tea, -“I wonder if by any chance our ‘house on the wall’ is still there?” - -“You mean where the kitchen garden wall is built out to meet the -beech-tree, and the branches are like three seats, the highest one in -the middle, and there are some shelves?” - -“Yes—yes! and you can see all round and no one can see you. Dick built -it for us when we were children—Fred, and I, and the Condor boys. We -were always here. We played at keeping house up there, and Dick used to -tell us stories about all the animals—there was one about a mouse family -too—and about the Elementals. The Water Elementals, who took care of the -river, and who brought the rain, and the dew in the early summer -mornings; they were all like silver gossamer and white foam. And the -Earth Elementals, who looked after the flowers’ food; and the Elementals -of Fire.” - -She stopped suddenly and shivered. They were crossing a corner of the -orchard on their way to the kitchen garden, and, to Ruth’s astonishment, -she looked round her with something like fear in her eyes. - -“Did you feel it get colder, quite cold,” she said, “as we crossed the -footpath just there?” - -“I believe it did, now you say so,” said Ruth. “You get those funny -bands of colder air sometimes. The ground dips too, under those -apple-trees.” - -Violet shivered again. She looked at the apple trees and the odd look of -fear in her eyes deepened. “Has anyone ever spoken to you of a man -called von Schäde, a German, who used to stay here?” she asked. - -“No,” said Ruth, and wondered. - -“He asked me to marry him, just over there, under that biggest tree. It -was covered with blossom then, and there were white butterflies about. -Oh, he frightened me!” Her voice rose in a little cry. “He frightened -me. I hate to think of it even now. I felt as if he could make me do it, -whether I wanted to or no. He kissed me—like no one had ever kissed me -before—I could have killed him, I hated him so. But even then I was -afraid he might make me do it. I was afraid. I would not see him again -alone, and I never felt really safe till I was engaged to Dick, and even -then”—her voice dropped very low—“I was glad when Karl was killed. Do -you think it was very horrid of me? I couldn’t help it. Sometimes, even -now, I dream in the night that he has never died, that he has come back -and can make me do what he likes.” She shuddered. “I have to shake -myself quite wide awake before I know it is only a beastly dream. And I -haven’t Dick now any more.” - -She looked back over her shoulder and shivered again. - -“You are sure that cold feeling was just quite ordinary?” - -“Why, yes,” said Ruth. “What should it be?” - -“I don’t know. Let us get to the house on the wall.” - -She hurried on, and her slender feet in white went up the rough steps as -one at home. She stood for a few moments and looked round, while the old -memories of what seemed like another life came thronging back. Then she -climbed up into the middle seat, and sat there, gathering herself -together as a child does when it is concentrating deeply. In the -flickering shadow of the leaves above and around, her face looked wan, -mysterious almost, her strange golden eyes curiously alive, yet gazing, -it seemed, into another world. - -Her seat in the circle looked out across the great endless valley -stretching away to the west. Immediately below was the big hay field, -ready now for cutting. It fell in a gentle slope to the river, which, -diving under the roadway by the front gate, curved round the garden, and -broke out into a miniature pond at the bottom of the field, before it -vanished among the bracken where the territory of Thorpe ended and the -great beautiful forest of the Condor estate commenced. In the pond were -water-lilies, rose-coloured and white, and tall brown bulrushes, all in -their season of perfection. Most noticeable in the noble stretch of -landscape beyond was a clump of beech-trees on the ridge of the near -side of the valley, lifted up sheer against the height of the sky. They -had caught for many years the full blast of the winds coming up from the -north-east, and only the topmost branches survived, leaving their -straight exquisite trunks bare. To-day, standing high above the blue -distances, in the shimmering light and heat, they had about them more -than usual of majesty and mystery. - -Violet Riversley sat very still. The myriads of summer leaves rustled -softly; here and there a bird sang. Presently she began to speak, even -as another bird might have begun to sing. - -“And it takes a long time to get the water-lilies to grow, because they -won’t come anywhere until they are sure you really love them, not just -want them for show. It’s the same with the Madonna lilies. And they -never make mistakes. You’ve got really to love them. And the -water-lilies like bulrushes close at hand for a bodyguard, because the -water-lilies are of royal birth. The Water Elementals told Dick all -this. And so the lilies grew, and I loved the pink ones best, but he -loved the white. And the tops of the beech-trees with the long trunks -are where the Earth Elementals say their prayers; they choose trees like -that so that the Earth children cannot climb up and disturb them. If you -disturb them when they are saying their prayers they get cross, and then -the flowers come all wrong. Red roses with a green spike in their -hearts, and the lime flowers covered with black. And all that shimmery -heat is like it is in the desert, all like that and no green. Only here -and there water in a grove of palm-trees. And there is the wood where -the Winds live. They will all be at home to-day, resting.” - -Ruth held her breath while she listened, and then the voice fell very -softly into silence. And quite suddenly there came a sudden shower of -big soft tears. They made blurred marks on the lustrous white skin, and -she looked at Ruth with dim wet eyes like a child who had been naughty. - -Presently she got up and came and sat down on the top of the wall facing -the garden. - -“Come and sit here too,” she said, patting the bricks beside her. “It’s -quite comfy if you put your heels back into the steps. There’s just room -for two. We used to watch for Dick coming home from here—I and Fred and -the eldest Condor boy. He was killed at Messines—and little Teddy -Rawson, the Vicar’s son—he was afraid of almost everything—mice and -ferrets—just like a girl—and he died a hero’s death at Gallipoli. And -Sybil Rawson—she went as a nurse to Salonica, and was torpedoed coming -home, and drowned. Only Fred and I left, and the two youngest Condors.” - -Again she fell on silence, and again Ruth held her breath. She feared -that any word of hers might break the spell of this return to the past -days which were like another life. - -“The flowers grow for you too. They are just as wonderful as ever,” Mrs. -Riversley went on again, after a little while. “And you have got a blue -border. Delphinium, anchusa, love-in-the-mist, and the nemophila—all of -them. I wonder how you came to think of that?” - -“There were some of the plants still left, and I—somehow I think I -guessed.” - -“And the birds? Are they still as tame?” - -“They were shy at first, but they are beginning to come back.” - -“The robins used to fly in and out of the house. And even the swallow -and kingfishers used to come quite close to Dick. If I was with him I -had to be quite still for a long time before they would come.” - -Ruth’s face lighted with a sudden thought. “The kingfishers?” she said. - -“They are the shyest of all birds. I suppose we humans have always tried -to catch and kill them for their plumage. Dick hated that sort of -thing.” Her face grew hard and the strange fire burnt up again in her -eyes. “And then he was shot down himself—shot down as we shoot any bird -or beast.” - -She stopped suddenly, the words choked back in her throat, as the Condor -car came over the bridge and pulled up at the gate. - -Then she slipped down from the wall and stood looking up at Ruth. “Thank -you for letting me go round with you—and talk. It’s been good.” She -pushed up the heavy wave of hair from her forehead under her -wide-brimmed hat. “It’s taken me back for a little, to what life used to -be, from what I am to what I was. And now let us go and pick up all the -things Lady Condor will drop.” - -Lady Condor’s cheerful chatter was already with them. - -“Now have I got everything? Yes—no—where is my handkerchief? Did I put -it into the pocket? The parcels can all stay. No one will touch them. -Oh, there it is! Thank you, Roger.” - -She began to ascend the path, shedding a blue chiffon scarf, which North -retrieved as he followed her. - -“Oh, there you are, Violet! And this is Seer? An unpardonably late call, -but I have been taking the chair at a meeting to discuss the Women’s -Victory Memorial. We discussed for hours—the weirdest ideas! And the -heat! At the Town Hall? Yes. Why are town halls and hospitals always -hideous? There can’t be any necessity for it. Tea indoors, out of the -sun? How nice! I never do like tea out-of-doors myself really, though -sometimes I pretend to. And the dear old room—almost just like it used -to be. I am glad, though it makes me want to cry. Yes. But where was I? -Oh yes, the weirdest ideas. Even a crematorium was suggested. No, I am -not inventing, dear Violet. The good lady had lost her husband and was -obliged to take him all the way to Woking. Most trying, of course! I was -really sorry for her. But seemed so odd for a Victory Memorial. So we -settled on a maternity home, a quite excellent idea. Trenching on the -improper, of course. It brought the fact of babies coming into the world -into such a very concrete form as it were. But so necessary just now—and -that they should have every chance. So even the dear ladies who attend -St. Christopher’s Church agreed. We parted in the utmost harmony. So -pleasant—and so unusual!” - -“And have you settled on a War Memorial?” asked North, rescuing her -handkerchief from Selina’s clutches. - -“Not yet! And I see no prospect—we are still talking. We _shall_ until -some adventurous spirit among us says, ‘Well, something must be _done_.’ -Then we shall go the way of least resistance—always so safe and so -unoriginal. Another of those delightful sandwiches, please. Your own -Devonshire cream, of course. Why can’t my cook make Devonshire cream? -But where was I? Oh yes—the War Memorial. Then we shall erect an -artistically offensive monument. Who invented that word, I wonder. And -did the word come from the monstrosity, or after? But it is so -descriptive of what it is. Yes. And what is your idea of a good -memorial, Miss Seer?” - -“I have only one idea at present,” said Ruth, smiling. “And that is -cottages.” - -“Quite a good one too,” said North. “Why hasn’t anyone thought of it?” - -“Much too obvious, my dear,” exclaimed Lady Condor. “The people are -shrieking to be housed, so we shall build them a library—yes.” - -“And the Pithians will build themselves winter gardens and -billiard-rooms and marble swimming-baths,” said Mrs. Riversley. - -“Pithians!” exclaimed Lady Condor. “Who was it thanked someone else for -a word! Thank you, dear Violet. Did I invent it myself the other day? -How clever of me! Pithians—yes. Democracy will kill privilege as it did -in France, but the Pithians arise on our ashes—or should it be Phœnix? I -am getting dreadfully muddled—it comes from talking too much. Roger, why -don’t you talk, instead of letting me monopolize Miss Seer and all the -conversation?” - -“My dear lady, the Pithian glory is but for a moment. We are all -converging to the same heap of ashes with amazing velocity, and what -will arise from those ashes you must ask a wiser man than I.” - -“You think seriously of the outlook?” asked Ruth. - -North helped himself to more bread-and-butter. “I don’t think,” he said. -“It won’t bear thinking of—when you can do nothing.” - -Then Lady Condor, for once, put a straight question without -continuation. - -“What do you think of things?” she asked, looking at Ruth. - -The silence grew, in some odd way, tense, while they all waited for the -answer. It surprised North to find that he was waiting for it with -something which distinctly approached interest. - -Ruth Seer’s face looked troubled for a moment, and the colour came -sweeping into it like a flood, and left her very white. When she spoke -she felt as if the words came, dragged with difficulty, from some -unknown consciousness. And though the words she spoke, undoubtedly she -felt to be true, were a testimony of her own faith, yet she had only -that moment known the truth she was stating. - -“I believe,” she said slowly, haltingly, but with a strange intensity of -conviction, “I believe we are not alone. Things are in the hands of the -men who have given their lives so that things should be -different—better. Their influence is here—all about us. They, with added -knowledge—guide—through our darkness. It is their great reward.” - -There was another silence, and Ruth flushed again painfully, under the -scrutiny of three pairs of eyes. “Where did you get that idea from?” -asked Lady Condor. - -“I don’t know,” she answered, then amended her statement. “At least, I -am not sure. But I believe it is true.” - -“I like it,” announced her Ladyship. “I like it enormously—yes—quite -enormously. My poor dear Hartley! He was so keen on everything, so -interested in _this_ old world. He didn’t want rest in heaven—at -twenty-four. No—is it likely? And _les choses ne vont pas si vite_. It -isn’t in the nature of things they should. Nature hasn’t great big gaps -like that with no sense in them. I don’t know, my dear, if _I’m_ talking -sense, but I know what I mean, and I’m sure it’s right. Yes—I like your -idea.” - -“But that does not make it true. Some people can believe anything they -want to. I can’t.” Mrs. Riversley moved impatiently from her seat. “All -we know is, they are gone, so far as we are concerned; we cannot see or -touch or hold them any more. Why do you discuss and imagine? They are -gone.” - -Lady Condor shrank together at the words. The wonderful vitality which -enabled her to defy age and satiety failed for the moment. She looked -old and piteous. - -“Yes,” she said, “they are gone.” She looked at North. “And you can tell -us nothing—with all your learning—with all your discoveries. And the -parsons talk of faith and hope. Yes. But we have lost our first-borns.” - -North did not answer. He gathered her various belongings and put them in -her lap. “There are one or two things I have to do to the car,” he said. - -The door opened on to a clamour of dogs. Sarah and Selina, shrill with -welcome, barked in chorus around Larry, who appeared to have just -arrived. “Now what the devil——” muttered North to himself, while Larry -smote him with a feathered paw, and begged with wistful eyes for pardon. - -Ruth sat very late out on her terrace that night. The heavens were dark, -but full of stars. Their radiance filled all space. Who and what was it -had spoken those words this afternoon, for neither the thought nor the -words had been her own? She believed it was a true thought; something -deeper than brain or understanding knew it was true. And Ruth Seer sat -and prayed. Was she on the threshold of that Open Doorway, which in all -ages men have sought and sought in vain? Had she somehow stumbled on -something vast and beyond all measure valuable? She knew how valuable, -she had seen the dead men lie in thousands waiting burial, and heard -with her soul the tears of their women. Gone, as Violet Riversley said, -out of sight, or touch, or sound. And yet surely a communion deeper and -fuller than sight, or touch, or hold, had sprung up, was growing, -between herself and one of those dead men. A man unknown to her on this -physical plane. That was the crowning wonder of this wonderful thing -which was happening. How had it come about? What did it mean? And it was -no thing apart from this earthly life, from the little daily round. It -was no other world. - -The night deepened. A magic of starlight lay on the farm, on the dull -silver of the stream, over the violet distances. The little farm she -loved, with all its sleeping creatures, belonged to the wonderful whole, -the great space, the immensity of light, the glory and the mystery. - -The beauty of it all was like a draught of wine, was like a silver -sword, was like a harp of gold. - -And suddenly a nightingale began to sing. A small brown-feathered thing -with that wonder of sound in its tiny throat. And then it came. -Faith—Hope—they cannot pass the open door—only Love. And love not of one -to another, however deep, however true, but love of the universal whole, -that love which she and Dick Carey had in common, focused as it were on -Thorpe. That was the password, that the key, that the communion between -the living and the dead which she had found. - -And Larry, lying at her feet, for North had let him stay, waved a -slow-moving tail, and dreamed, content. - -Up above, on the hill, the lights of the great Pithian mansion, with all -it symbolized, went out one by one, and Ruth, who loved her England, was -not afraid. - -A deep sense of great responsibility remained. If that which she had -sensed was really so, and she had neither then nor at any later time any -doubt of it, what had They, with their wider knowledge, the great -advance in evolution which they who had made the supreme gift of all -they had on this physical plane must surely have attained, what had They -to build the new order with save those who were left? Living stones for -the Great New Temple never made with hands. - -The glory of it touched Ruth as with a sudden blaze of light. The -thought was like a bugle call. To work with for them still. She had only -herself to offer. One small stone to shape for use, to make as perfect -as might be. She offered it under the starlit heavens with all her -heart. Life took on a new and more beautiful meaning, any work of -service a deeper, fuller joy. It was still for, and with, Them. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - -It was a few days later that Mr. Fothersley, as was his frequent custom, -emerged from his front door at eleven o’clock, on his way to the post. -In his left hand he carried a sheaf of letters for the twelve o’clock -post out. As he often said, it made “an object for his morning stroll.” -Not that Mr. Fothersley ever really strolled. It would have been a -physical impossibility. His little plump legs always trotted. They -trotted now along the immaculate gravel drive which curved between two -wide strips of smooth mown sward. On the right hand the grass merged -into a magnificent grove of beech-trees, on the left it was fenced by a -neat iron railing, dividing it from what the house agent describes as -finely timbered park-land. Behind him, with all its sun-blinds down, the -grey old house slept serenely in the sunshine. The parterres were -brilliant with calceolaria, geranium, and heliotrope. Mr. Fothersley -rather prided himself on an early Victorian taste in gardening, and his -herbaceous borders, very lovely though they were, dwelt in the kitchen -garden region. - -Leigh Manor had belonged to Mr. Fothersley from the day of his birth, -which occurred two months after the death of his father. That gentleman -had married late in life for the sole and avowed purpose of providing -his estate with an heir, of which purpose his son most cordially -approved. At the same time he had never seen his way to go so far -himself. The Fothersleys were not a marrying family. His mother, a -colourless person, of irreproachable lineage, and a view of life which -contemplated only two aspects, the comfortable and the uncomfortable, -had lived long enough to see him well into the forties, by which time he -was as skillful as she had been in the management of an establishment. -Everything continued to run in the same perfect order, and Mr. -Fothersley felt no more inclined than during her lifetime to disturb the -smooth current of his pleasant life by embarking on the very uncertain -adventure of matrimony. On this particular morning he paused outside his -own gate to look at the view—almost the same view that was obtainable -from the “house on the wall” at Thorpe Farm. Ever since he was a small -child, Mr. Fothersley could remember taking visitors to see “our view,” -and he had, at an early age, esteemed it unfortunate that none so good -was to be obtained from the grounds of Leigh Manor. He looked out over -the quiet scene. The great beautiful valley, with the suggestion only of -the sea beyond, the dotted farmsteads, with here and there some noble -old mansion like his own secluded among its trees, and, at his feet, -little Mentmore village, with its grey church tower, half hidden in the -hollow. It was typical of all he held most dearly. A symbol of the -well-ordered ease and superiority of his position, of the things which -were indeed, though unconsciously, Mr. Fothersley’s religion. - -In the grey church his forbears had, like himself, sat with their peers, -in the front pews, while their dependents had herded discreetly at the -back behind the pillars. In these eminently picturesque cottages, of two -or three rooms, dwelt families who, he had always taken more or less for -granted, regarded him and his with a mixture of respect and reverence, -just touched—only touched—with awe. On the whole most worthy and -respectable people. Mr. Fothersley was generous to them out of his -superabundance. He was indeed attached to them; and although Mr. -Fothersley prided himself on moving with the times, it was plain that -any alteration in the admirable state of things existing in Mentmore -would not only be a mistake, but absolutely wrong. - -Therefore, on this fine June morning, Mr. Fothersley was perturbed. The -knowledge that Mr. Pithey dwelt in the noble grey stone house on the -opposite hill, in the place of his old friend, Helford Rose, spoilt “his -view” for him. And, for the first time, too, one of Ruth Seer’s new -cottages had become visible just below his own pasture fields. The -workmen were putting on the roof. It was to Mr. Fothersley an unseemly -sight in Mentmore. Ruth had done her best, she had spent both time and -money in securing material that would not spoil the harmony or character -of the little village, but as Mr. Fothersley had said, it was the thin -end of the wedge. - -What was to prevent Mr. Pithey from scattering some horrible epidemic of -hideous utilitarian domiciles broadcast over his wide estate? Mr. -Fothersley shuddered, and remembered with thankfulness that they were -not at present a paying proposition. - -Still, he wished Miss Seer had not these queer manias. Not that he -disliked her—far from it. Indeed, the little basket of his special early -strawberries, poised in his right hand, was on its way to her. And he -had even traced a distant cousinship with her on the Courthope side. -Since what was now familiarly known in his set as the Pithian Invasion -he considered her a distinct asset at Thorpe. - -“I would not have had old Dick’s place vulgarized for a good deal,” he -said to himself as he descended the hill. “And I know even he did talk -of building some cottages before the war, poor dear fellow.” - -All the same, he did not feel in his usual spirits, and presently, to -add to his discomfort, he passed the local sweep, window cleaner, and -generally handy man, who, instead of touching his hat as of old, nodded -a cheery, “Good-morning, Mr. Fothersley! Nice weather,” to him. - -Mr. Fothersley did not like it. Most distinctly it annoyed him! It had -been one thing to go and see Mankelow when he was wounded, and a patient -in the local V.A.D., and make a considerable fuss over him, but that, as -Mr. Pithey was fond of saying, “was different.” It was decidedly -presuming on it for Mankelow to treat him in that “Hail fellow, well -met” way. - -This brought to Mr. Fothersley’s mind the threatening strikes among the -miners, transport workers, and what Mr. Fothersley vaguely designated as -“those sort of people.” He wondered what would happen if all the sweeps -went on strike. It was a most dangerous thing to light fires with a -large accumulation of soot up the chimney—most dangerous. - -At this moment he nearly collided with Ruth Seer, as she came swiftly -round the Post Office corner. - -They both stopped, laughed, and apologized. - -“I was just on my way to you with some of our early strawberries,” said -Mr. Fothersley, exposing a corner of the contents of his basket. - -“How very good of you!” exclaimed Ruth. “And I do love them. Will you -wait for me one moment? I am going on my way to send a telegram to Mr. -North.” - -Now curiosity was the most prominent trait in Mr. Fothersley’s funny -little character, and it was the naked and unashamed curiosity of the -small child. It might almost be looked on as a virtue turned inside out, -so real and keen was his interest in his neighbors’ affairs, an interest -often followed by sympathy and help. - -“Telegraphing to North!” he exclaimed. “What about?” - -No inhabitant of any length of time would have been in the least -astonished, but Ruth, for a moment or two taken thoroughly aback, simply -stared at him. Then, somewhat late in the day, it began to dawn on her -that her telegram to Roger North might possibly demand an explanation, -and one she had no intentions of giving. - -“Telegraphing to North? What about?” repeated Mr. Fothersley, his little -pink face beaming with kindly interest. - -The whole truth being out of the question, there was nothing for it but -as much as possible. - -“I want to see him to ask his opinion on a matter of importance,” said -Ruth. - -Astonishment mingled with the curiosity on Mr. Fothersley’s speaking -countenance. Many things flashed through his mind in the minute while he -and Ruth again stared at each other, the most prominent being the tongue -of the Postmistress and Mrs. North’s fiery jealousy. - -Mr. Fothersley could remember terrible times, when it had been aroused -by lesser matters than this telegram, aroused to such an extent that all -Mentmore had become aware of it, and much unnecessary dirty linen washed -in public before the storm subsided. - -North himself on these occasions was, in Mr. Fothersley’s language, -difficult, most difficult. He either teased his wife unmercifully, or -lost his temper and used bad language. The whole affair was always, -again in Mr. Fothersley’s language, “regrettable, most regrettable,” -while the groundwork of the whole matter was, that women bored North far -more than they ever amused him, so that if he did talk to one it was -noticeable. - -It was quite evident to Mr. Fothersley that Miss Seer was wholly -unconscious of anything unusual in her action. This surprised him, for -he had understood she had been a companion, and a companion’s knowledge -of such things, as a rule, passes belief. - -Ruth made a movement to pass on, the fatal document in her hand. But it -was one of those moments when Mr. Fothersley was supreme. - -“My dear lady,” he exclaimed, “I am going to Westwood so soon as I have -deposited my little offering on your doorstep. Allow me to take the -message for you.” - -With a deft movement the paper was in his possession, was neatly folded -and placed in safety in his waistcoat pocket. His little plump figure -turned, plainly prepared to escort her back to Thorpe. - -“The telegram will explain itself?” he asked, “or shall I give any -message?” - -“I want to consult him about some happenings on the farm,” answered -Ruth. “Things I should like to talk over with him with as little delay -as possible. Mr. North has been very kind, and, I think takes a real -interest in Thorpe.” - -“No doubt. No doubt.” Mr. Fothersley acquiesced cordially. “He was poor -Carey’s most intimate friend. Though indeed we were all his friends. A -most lovable fellow. Indeed, he was almost too kind-hearted. Anyone -could take him in—and did!” added Mr. Fothersley, with warmth. “There -was a German fellow, very pleasant, I own, to meet, who used to stay -with him quite a lot at one time. I always felt how, if they had invaded -England, he would have known every inch of the country round here, for -no doubt he took notes of everything, as they always did. Funnily -enough, he was taken prisoner badly wounded by Dick’s own regiment, and -died at the clearing station, before they could get him to a hospital.” - -Ruth looked at the sunlit peace of the farm, for they had reached the -gate. She remembered what Violet Riversley had told her. And yet Dick -Carey had cared for this man. - -“And they had parted here as friends,” she said. - -“I believe Dick was quite cut up about it,” said Mr. Fothersley. “Very -odd. But poor dear Dick was odd! No sense of proportion, you know!” - -This was a favourite saying of both Mr. Fothersley’s and Mrs. North’s. -It is doubtful if either of them quite knew what they meant by it, but -it sounded well. - -Mr. Fothersley repeated it over again, leaning with his arms on the -gate. “No sense of proportion. A lovable fellow though, most lovable. -Many’s the time we’ve stood here, just as you and I are standing, -watching his birds. You have the bird pool still, I see.” Mr. Fothersley -fumbled for his glasses. “Yes, and those wretched little blue-tits -everywhere—the worst offenders in the garden. Even the blossom is not -safe from them. Madness to encourage them with coconuts and bacon-rind. -But as I said, poor Dick——” - -By this time Mr. Fothersley had his glasses firmly planted across the -bridge of his nose. He could see the pool plainly, and in addition to -several blue-tits, two round cherub faces, open-mouthed, very still, -hanging over the edge of the bank. - -“Good heavens! What are those?” he exclaimed. - -“Only two small visitors of mine,” said Ruth, smiling. “It is quite -wonderful how still they have learnt to be to watch the birds. They live -in Blackwall Tenements, and their only playground there is a strip of -pavement under a dust shoot.” - -“Oh!” said Mr. Fothersley dubiously. “Blackwall. That is somewhere in -the City.” - -He was interrupted by a shrill, excited, plainly female voice on its -topmost note. - -“Oh, Tommy! ’e’s caught a f’y!” - -The next moment every bird had gone, while the complete figures -belonging to the moon faces arose, as it were out of the ground. Both -wore knickers, both had short hair, but it was plainly the master male -who administered swift and primitive punishment. - -“There, you’ve done it again!” - -“I forgot—I——” Sobs, bitter and violent, stopped the lament. - -The boy pocketed his hands and moved off. - -“Jes’ like a woman,” he called over his shoulder. - -The other small figure followed him at a humble distance, wailing aloud -till both disappeared from view. - -Mr. Fothersley shuddered. - -“How can you bear it?” he asked, his little pink face really concerned. -“Even Dick——” - -“Stopped short at Germans,” Ruth ended for him. “Well, it has its -compensations. And after all, what _can_ one do? I know that playground -under the dust soot! And I have all this. One could not bear it, if one -didn’t have them down.” - -“How many?” asked Mr. Fothersley faintly. - -Ruth leant back against the gate and gave way to helpless laughter, -while Mr. Fothersley prodded holes in the bank with his stick and waited -with dignity till she should recover. He saw nothing to laugh at. - -“I beg your pardon,” said Ruth, hurriedly suppressing what she felt from -his manner was most unseemly mirth. “I only have two at a time,” she -added appeasingly. “And they are really very good on the whole.” - -“I should relegate them to the back garden,” said Mr. Fothersley -decisively. “I remember as a child even _I_ was never allowed to run -wild where I pleased. Good heavens! what is that noise?” He cocked an -attentive ear, as a sound, like nothing he had ever heard before, made -itself evident. - -At the same moment, over the crest of the lawn appeared a wonderful -procession. First came the small female figure in knickers, brandishing -in her right hand a crimson flag, while with the left she held a small -tin trumpet to her lips, with which at intervals she blew a breathless -note. The same which had attracted Mr. Fothersley’s attention. Then, -strapped into his go-cart, and positively smothered in flags and -flowers, came Bertram Aurelius. Finally, pushing the go-cart with -somewhat dangerous vigour, the small Lord of the Show. Around the -procession, leaping and barking, skirmished Sarah and Selina, while -beside the go-cart Larry padded sedately, snuffing the air delicately, -waving a stately tail. - -The procession circled the lawn at the full speed of the children’s -small legs, dropped over into the garden pathway and disappeared towards -the farmyard. - -Mr. Fothersley softened. The scene had been a pretty one. - -“Quite like one of the delightful illustrations in the children’s books -of to-day,” he said, smiling. “Please don’t think me unsympathetic, dear -lady. A love of children is one of the most beautiful traits in a -woman’s character, and philanthropy has also its due place. But do not -be carried away by too much enthusiasm. Do have, as I used to say to -poor Dick, a due sense of proportion. Otherwise you will only get -imposed upon, and do no good in the long run. Believe me, you have gone -quite far enough with these innovations, and do let it stop there before -you have cause for regret.” - -Mr. Fothersley paused and smiled, well pleased with the turning of his -phrases. Also he felt his advice was good. Ruth acquiesced with becoming -humility, aware only of a little running commentary which conveyed -nothing to her. Her mind was entirely absorbed with the fact that Larry -had accompanied the small procession which had so swiftly crossed their -line of vision and disappeared—Larry, who kept children severely in -their place as became a dignified gentleman of a certain age, and on -whom not even Selina’s wiliest enticement produced the smallest effect. - -“No good ever comes of moving people out of their natural surroundings,” -continued Mr. Fothersley, holding on his way with complete satisfaction. -“All men cannot be equal, and it only makes them discontented with the -state of life in which it has pleased God to place them. Personally I -believe also they are quite unable to appreciate better conditions. Why, -when——” - -And here, to the little man’s astonishment, Ruth suddenly, and very -vividly, turned on him, shaking a warning finger in front of his -startled nose. - -“Mr. Fothersley, if you tell me that old story about the chickens in the -bathroom, I warn you I am quite unable to bear it. I shall hold forth, -and either make you very cross with me or bore you to death. I have -lived amongst the very poor, and between your view of them and mine -there is a great gulf fixed. I know what you cannot know—their -sufferings, their endurance, their patience. I would have every child in -London down here if I could—so there! And they may love their squalor -and filth, as people here have said to me. It is all the home they have -ever known. It is the great indictment against our civilization.” - -Then she stopped and suddenly smiled at him, it was a smile that barred -offence. - -“There, you see! Don’t start me off, whatever you do!” - -Mr. Fothersley smiled back. “My dear lady, I admire your kindness of -heart. It is your lack of any sense of proportion——” - -It was at this moment that Mr. Pithey appeared, magnificent in a new -tweed knickerbocker suit of a tawny hue, with immaculate gaiters, brown -boots and gloves; a cap to match the suit, upon his head; the inevitable -cigar in his mouth; looking incongruous enough, between the wild rose -and honeysuckle hedges. - -To discover a couple of anything like marriageable age alone together, -in what he called “the lanes,” suggested one thing and one thing only to -Mr. Pithey’s mind. His manner assumed a terrible geniality. - -“Now don’t let me disturb you,” he said, waving a large newly gloved -hand. “Just a word with this lady, and I’m off.” He perpetrated a wink -that caused Mr. Fothersley to shut his eyes. “Two’s company and three’s -none, eh?” - -Mr. Fothersley opened his eyes and endeavoured to stare him down with -concentrated rage and disgust. But Mr. Pithey held on his way, -undisturbed. - -“Wonderful how you meet everybody in this little place! Just passed Lady -Condor. Jove! how that woman does cake her face with paint. At her age -too! What’s the use? Doesn’t worry me, but Mrs. Pithey disapproves of -that sort of thing root and branches.” - -If Mr. Fothersley could have called down fire from heaven and slain Mr. -Pithey at that moment, he would undoubtedly have done so; as it was, he -could only struggle impotently for words wherewith to convey to him some -sense of his insufferable impertinence. - -And words failed him. His little round face quivering with rage, he -stammered for a moment unintelligibly, making furious gestures with his -disengaged hand at the astonished Mr. Pithey. Finally he turned his back -and thrust the basket of strawberries into Ruth’s hand. - -“Please send the basket back at your convenience, Miss Seer,” he said. -Even in that moment he did not forget the importance of the return of -one of the Leigh Manor baskets. “Good-morning.” - -“Touching little brute,” remarked Mr. Pithey cheerfully, gazing after -him. “What’s upset him now? He’ll have an apoplectic fit if he walks at -that rate in this heat, a man of his built and a hearty eater too!” - -Indeed poor Mr. Fothersley, by the time he reached the Manor, between -rage and nervousness, for who could say what thoughts Mr. Pithey’s -egregious remarks might not have given rise to in Miss Seer’s mind, was -in a very sad state. - -It was impossible to risk driving to Westwood in an open car. He ordered -the landaulette, closed. - -It was necessary to go because he had Miss Seer’s telegram to deliver. -Also the desire was strong upon him for the people of his own little -world, those who felt things as he felt them, and saw things even as he -saw them. He wanted to talk over the various small happenings of the -morning with an understanding spirit; the sweep’s familiarity, Miss -Seer’s odd activities, and last, but not least, Mr. Pithey’s hateful -facetiousness. Above all, though he hardly knew it himself, he wanted to -get with people who were the same as people had been before the war, to -get away from this continual obtrusion of an undercurrent of difference, -of change, which so disquieted him, and he wanted, badly wanted, comfort -and sympathy. - -The Norths were by themselves, and proportionately glad to see him. -Violet had left, on a sudden impulse, that morning, and fresh visitors -were not expected till the following week. - -The very atmosphere of Nita North comforted the little man. The -atmosphere of the great commonplace, the unimaginative, the egotistic. -An atmosphere untouched by the war. Peace descended on his troubled -spirit as he unfolded his table napkin and watched the butler, in the -very best manner of the best butler lift the silver cover in front of -Mrs. North from the golden-brown veal cutlets, each with its dainty roll -of fat bacon, Mr. Fothersley’s favourite luncheon dish, while North, who -had his moments of insight, said: - -“Some of the Steinberg Cabinet for Mr. Fothersley, Mansfield.” - -Indeed, both the Norths saw at once that Mr. Fothersley was not quite -himself, that he had been upset. - -It was impossible to tell the chief causes of his annoyance before the -servants, though, in an interval, he commented on the familiar behaviour -of the sweep, and his views as to the results of “the new independence” -on the working classes, and the danger of strikes. - -“I have no patience with this pandering to the lower classes,” said Mrs. -North. “They must be taught.” - -North, who was genuinely fond of little Mr. Fothersley, did not ask -“How?” as he had an irritating habit of doing when he heard his wife -enunciate this formula. - -Mr. Fothersley agreed. “Certainly, they must be taught.” - -He was distinctly soothed. The Steinberg Cabinet had not altered, indeed -it had gained in its power to minister. The objectionable feeling that -the foundations on which his world was built were quivering and breaking -up subsided into the background, and by the time the coffee came, and -the servants departed, he was his usual genial kindly little self, and -could even give a risible turn to his account of Mr. Pithey’s -impertinence. - -“I lost my temper and, I am afraid, practically gibbered at him with -rage,” he owned. “I was hardly dignified. But that I should live to hear -that Marion Condor is disapproved of by Mrs. Pithey!” - -“Insolent brute!” said Mrs. North, all unconscious that her language was -Pithian. “Can nobody put him in his place?” - -“He must be taught,” suggested North wickedly. But, though his wife shot -a doubtful glance at him, Mr. Fothersley took the suggestion in good -faith. - -“I quite agree with you, Roger. The question is, How? Unfortunately we -have all called.” - -“We could all cut him,” suggested Mrs. North. - -“I don’t approve of cutting people, my dear Nita. In a small community -it makes things very unpleasant and leads to such uncomfortable -situations.” Indeed, Mr. Fothersley had more than once interposed in -almost a high-handed manner to prevent Mrs. North cutting ladies of whom -she thought she had reason to be jealous. “No, I sincerely wish we had -never called, but having called, and indeed invited these people to our -houses, received them as guests, I should deprecate cutting them. You -agree with me, Roger?” - -“Certainly. The Pitheys would not care if you did. Also he is the sort -of man who could worry you a good deal in the village if he took it into -his head to do so. Better keep good terms with him if you can.” - -“What did Miss Seer say?” asked Mrs. North. - -“I don’t remember her saying anything, but I was so agitated. I didn’t, -of course, even look at her. You don’t think his remarks will give rise -to any ideas——” Mr. Fothersley paused, looking from one to the other. - -“Good Lord, no!” said North. - -“How do you know?” asked his wife sharply. “I should certainly advise -Arthur to keep away for the future.” - -North shrugged his shoulders as he rose from the table. - -“I expect you will like your cigar in the garden with Nita,” he said, -pushing the box across the table to his guest. “I’ve got some letters to -write.” - -When he reached his study he took Ruth’s telegram out of his pocket-book -and, lighting a match, burned it very carefully to ashes. “Bless their -small minds,” he said. - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - -Ruth met North as he came up the garden path. - -“So you have come this afternoon! I did so hope you would.” - -“What is it?” he asked. “Nothing wrong with the farm?” - -“Wrong with the farm!” Ruth laughed. “Now just _feel_ it.” - -It was steeped in sunshine and the scent of violas. On the garden wall -the pigeons cooed sleepily. From the river came the lilt of a child’s -laugh. - -“It feels all right,” said North gravely. - -“Just as happy and sound and wholesome as can be,” she said. “I asked -you to come because something wonderful—I believe wonderful—has -happened. I felt I must tell you at once. And I want to ask you things, -want to ask you quite terribly badly. Come up and sit by the blue flower -border. I have the chairs there. It is at its very best.” - -“So you have kept that too,” said North, even as his daughter had said. - -“It is one of the many beautiful things I found here,” she answered. -“The place is full of thoughts just like that. I hope I have not lost -any, but if I have they will come back.” She stopped to lift up some of -the frail nemophilas. Just so North had seen women arrange their -children’s hair. - -“Are not the delphiniums in perfection? They always look to me as if -they were praying.” - -Now years ago, standing in just that selfsame spot, Dick Carey had said -that very same thing. It came back to North in a flash, and how he had -answered: - -“I should think those meek droopy white things look more like it.” - -For a moment he hesitated. Then he gave her the same answer. - -“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “To pray you must aspire. And they must be -blue.” - -Dick Carey had said, “Prayer is aspiration, not humility. Besides, -they’re not blue.” - -Again that sense of well-being which had belonged to the companionship -of his friend stole over North. Again the bitterness and pain seemed to -fade and melt. The present took on a new interest, a new understanding. -He gave himself up to it with a sigh of content as he dropped into the -chair by Ruth Seer’s side. The warmth of the June afternoon, the sleepy -murmur of the life of the farm, the hum of bees, that wonderful blue, it -was all part of it. - -“Now light your pipe and be very comfortable,” she said, and left him -alone while the peace and beauty soaked in. Left him alone for how long -he did not know. When you touch real rest, time ceases. - -Presently he re-lit the pipe which he had lighted and left to go out. - -“Now,” he said, “tell me. I am ready to be convinced of anything -wonderful, just here and now.” - -Ruth smiled. She was sitting very still, her elbow on her knee, her chin -in the hollow of her hand. A great content made her face beautiful. Her -grey eyes dwelt lovingly upon the little world, which held so many -worlds in its circle. The laughter of the children came again across the -field. Then she began to talk. - -“It is so wonderful,” she said. “I can hardly yet believe it can be -true, which is so foolish, because the truth undoubtedly _is_ wonderful -beyond our conceiving. We only see such little bits of it here, even the -wisest of us. And we will think it is the whole. When we do see the -whole, I think what will be the most wonderful thing about it will be -its amazing simplicity. We shall wonder how we ever groped about among -so many seeming complications, so much dirt and darkness.” - -She stopped for a few moments, and North waited. He felt he was -shrinking back into himself, away from whatever might be coming. Like -many very intellectual persons, he was inclined to resent what he could -not account for, and to be wholly unsympathetic, if not a little brutal, -towards it. - -Psychical investigation always had repelled him. Repelled him only less, -and in a different way, than the search for knowledge among the tortured -entrails of friendly dogs. With the great forces of nature he could -fight cleanly, and courageously, to harness them to the service of man. -They were enormously interesting, amazingly beautiful. Powerful enough -to protect themselves if necessary. One wrested their secrets from them -at one’s own peril. And the scientist who strives with the great forces -of nature has the mark of his craft branded into his very soul. Its name -is Truth. To that mark, if he be a true scientist, he is faithful -absolutely, unswervingly. Indeed it must be so. And, ever seeking the -truth, the true scientist knows that his discoveries are ever only -partial; that soon, even before his own little day here is ended, will -come new discoveries which shall modify the old. So that he will never -say “I know,” only “I am learning.” And now for the first time psychic -investigation was making its appeal to him, by the mouth of Ruth Seer, -in the name of Truth. - -“Very well, tell me,” he said, struggling with his dislike. “I will cast -from me, as far as possible all preconceived objections, and, possibly, -prejudices. I will bring an open mind.” - -Ruth turned, her whole face alight. “Ah, that is just what I want! Only -be as critical as you will. I want that too. That is why I wanted so -much to tell you, because you will bring a trained mind to bear on it -all. Because of that, and also because you are his friend, I can speak -about it to you. It would be very difficult to anyone else.” - -She stopped, gathering herself up as it were, before she started. - -“You remember the day you first came? To fetch Larry?” - -North nodded. - -“We all forgathered together at the gate, you and I and the dogs. I told -you about Larry, how he had come the night before, tired and miserable, -and hunted everywhere, and early in the morning he had gone again, so -far as I knew. And just before you came I had found him down by the -stream, quite happy apparently, with a man. I think I told you?” - -“Yes.” - -“The man was watching some kingfishers, and I stopped to watch them too. -Very still we all were. I had never seen the birds close. The man was -lying on the grass, but he looked a tall man. He wore a brown suit, -rather shabby. I could not see his face, only the back of his head -propped up on his hand. It was a long, thin hand, very sunburnt. A -well-shaped, sensitive hand. And he had dark hair with a strong wave in -it. Though it was cut very short, the waves showed quite plainly and -evenly.” - -North had taken his pipe out of his mouth now and was staring at it. - -“Then your motor siren startled us all, and the man vanished as swiftly, -it seemed, as the birds. I wondered just a little—when I thought of it -after, where he could have got to—but not for long. This morning I saw -the same man again. I was in the buttercup field, and he was standing in -the road in front of the new cottages, looking at them. Again I could -only see his back, and he is very tall. He had no hat on, and it was the -same dark wavy hair. You know the little pitch of hill that goes up to -the cottages? When I reached the bottom I could see him quite clearly. -He was pulling Larry towards him by a handkerchief lead, and then -letting him go suddenly—playing with him, you know. And I could hear -Larry snarling as a dog does in play. Then Larry caught sight of me and -stopped to look. And when he looked the man turned and looked at me -too——” - -She paused. The summer sounds of the farm sang on, but it seemed that -just around those two there was a tense silence. North broke it. - -“Well!” he said, his voice harsh and almost impatient. - -“He had a thin, very sunburnt face,” Ruth went on, “lined, but with the -lines that laughter makes. Very blue eyes, the blue eyes that look as if -they had a candle lit behind them. When he saw me he smiled. There was a -flash of very white teeth, and his smile was like a sudden bright -light.” - -North’s pipe dropped on to the flagged pathway with the little dull -click of falling wood. - -Ruth leant towards him; her voice dropped almost to a whisper. - -“Was Dick Carey like that?” she asked. - -“Yes.” North met her eyes for the first time since she had begun to tell -him. The suggestion of unwillingness to listen which had shown in his -manner from the first dropped from him. “What happened next?” - -“I don’t quite know how to describe it. He did not fade or vanish or -anything like that. He remained quite distinct, and that wonderful smile -still shone, but my sight failed. It seemed to grow more and more dim -until at last I could not see him at all. I hurried, I even tried to -call out to him, but it was no good.” - -“But you were not blind; you could see everything else?” - -“Yes, when I looked for them I could. I wish I could explain to you how -it was. The nearest I can get to it is, that his figure, while I saw it, -stood out more distinctly than anything else. All the rest seemed in the -background, indistinct by comparison. Ah, I know—like—have you ever -noticed on a bright sunny day, looking in a shop window, how suddenly -the things reflected are much clearer and more visible than the things -actually in the window? They seem to recede, and the reflection is -strong and clear. Well, it was something like that. As if one had two -sights and one for the moment overbore the other. I’m explaining badly, -but it’s difficult. At any rate he did not evaporate or fade as they say -these visions invariably do. It was the sight failed me.” - -“That is enormously interesting,” said North slowly. - -“You see,” said Ruth eagerly, “ever since I came here this—this being in -touch with Dick Carey has been growing. It is becoming a wonderful -experience; it seems to me of possibly enormous value, but I don’t want -to take it one step beyond where it can reasonably and legitimately be -taken. I want the truth about it. I want your brains, your intelligence, -to help me. I want you honestly and truly to tell me just what you think -of these happenings. And I want to know whether you yourself have had -any sense of his presence here, even ever so faint.” - -North recovered his pipe, re-lit it, and began to smoke again before he -answered. Indeed, he smoked in silence for quite a long time. - -“I cannot deny the fact,” he said at length, “that I have what perhaps -should be described as a prejudice against any supposed communication -with the dead. It has always been surrounded, to my mind, with so much -that is undesirable, nor do I believe in any revelation save that of -science, and on these lines science has no revelation. But there are two -things here that do force themselves on my consideration. One is that -you never knew Dick in the flesh, the other that since you came here, -not before, I have myself felt, not a presence of any sort, but the -sense of well-being and content which always belonged to my -companionship with him. And that I never feel anywhere but at Thorpe, or -at Thorpe except when you are with me. The latter can be explained in -various ways. The former is rather different. Have you ever seen a -photograph of Dick, or has anyone described him to you?” - -“No. I have never seen a photograph, and no one has ever described his -appearance to me.” - -Then she smiled at him suddenly and delightfully. “I am not a curious -woman, but I am human,” she said. “Before we go any further, for pity’s -sake describe Dick Carey to me, and tell me if he was in the habit of -leading Larry by a pocket-handkerchief!” - -“You _have_ described him,” said North, smiling too. “Especially his -smile. I am short-sighted, but I could always tell Dick in a crowd if he -smiled, long before I could distinguish his features. And he did lead -Larry by his handkerchief. It was a regular game between them.” - -“Surely that is in the nature of proof!” exclaimed Ruth. - -“Let us call it circumstantial evidence.” - -“But worth even your—a scientist’s—consideration?” - -“Undoubtedly! By the way, what happened to Larry?” - -“When I thought of him again it was some little time later; he was going -back to the house across the field. And—and—oh, I know it sounds mad—he -was following somebody, and so were Sarah and Selina. You know, don’t -you, what I mean? Dogs run quite differently when they are out on their -own. And I have never known Sarah and Selina leave me to follow anyone -else before, in all their lives.” - -“Any dog would follow Dick,” said North, and then looked as if he would -like to have taken the words back, but she stopped him. - -“You promised,” she said. “And that, too, is a piece of evidence. As I -said, I don’t want to push it a fraction of an inch beyond where it will -go. But think what it means? The breaking down of that awful impassable -wall between the living and the dead. Think what some knowledge, of the -next step only, beyond the Gateway of Death means.” - -“Always supposing there is a next step,” said North. “Again there is no -evidence I can accept. Though, mind you”—he was really in earnest now—“I -am not among those who are content, indeed glad, that it should all end -here. This old universe is too interesting a riddle to drop after a few -years’ study.” - -“Ah, do you know Walt Whitman’s lines?— - - “This day, before dawn, I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded - Heaven. - And I said to my spirit, - When we become the enfolders of these orbs, and the pleasure and - knowledge of everything in them, - Shall we be filled and satisfied then? - And my spirit said, No, we but level that lift to pass and continue - beyond.” - -North nodded. “That’s it! I’m out for that right enough, if it’s going. -I don’t say, mind you, that I’m certain we don’t go on. I’m not such a -fool. But, to my mind, all the evidence so far is the other way.” - -“Have you ever tried to get evidence?” - -“No. All the methods appear to me to be objectionable, very. Even over -this—this possible sight of yours—I don’t feel keen on the idea that -those who have gone are hanging round their old homes, round us who -cannot cognize them.” - -He spoke haltingly, as if expressing himself with difficulty. His -unwillingness to discuss these matters again became evident. - -“But surely time and space in the next world will not exist as we -understand them here, and that must make an almost incalculable -difference. And when you think that so many gave their lives for this -world, isn’t it reasonable to think that the work for some of them may -still be linked up with it? Do you remember when you were talking of the -outlook at the present moment, and Lady Condor asked me what I thought -of it? And I said we were not alone, that those who had died that things -might be better, they with their added knowledge—guided—helped—you -remember? Well, that wasn’t _my own_ idea somehow. It came to me from -somewhere else, quite suddenly, on the moment, as it were. And I had to -say it—though I felt shy and uncomfortable. One does not speak of these -things to all the world. But _some one_ wanted me to say it—just then -and there.” - -She stopped, and in both their minds was a vision of Violet Riversley’s -beautiful angry unhappy face. - -“I remember,” answered North. “And your idea is that Dick’s mind can -communicate with yours by thought?” - -Ruth thought a little; her eyes looked out without seeing. - -“It is not an idea,” she said at last. “I know.” - -“And have you any idea or knowledge why it should be so, seeing you -never knew each other in this life? If you had, and had loved very -deeply, it would be more comprehensible, though less interesting from -the point of view of proving communication. As it is, there seems to me -nothing sufficiently important to account for it. Nothing beyond a -certain likeness of thought and interests.” - -Ruth smiled. The interest had gripped him again. He was thinking out -aloud. She waited until he looked at her. - -“What is your explanation?” he asked. - -And suddenly Ruth found it amazingly difficult to explain. The memory of -that velvet night of stars, the message in the song of the little brown -bird, the revelation which had come to her, swept over her again with a -renewed and surprising sweetness, but of words she seemed bereft. -Compared with the wonder and beauty of the thought they seemed utterly -inadequate and hopeless. She put out both her hands with a little -foreign gesture of helplessness. - -“You have none?” he asked, and she caught the disappointment in his -voice, and looking at him saw, as she had seen once before on his first -visit, the lonely tired soul of the man who, losing Dick Carey, had lost -much. And Dick Carey was there, so very surely there. - -“It isn’t the personal love for one that really brings together,” she -said, her voice very, very gentle. “It is the love for everything that -has life or breath. _That_ love must be communion. It makes you belong.” - -There was a little silence before she went on: - -“You see, I never had any one person to concentrate on, unless it was -old Raphael Goltz, and looking back, I see now he was a cosmic sort of -person. He did really in some way grip the whole of things, and it -helped me more than I had any idea of at the time. Then I cared so much -for all the men out in Flanders who came in and out of my life so -swiftly and spasmodically. Then I came here, and found how much I cared -for all living things in the lower worlds. And he is linked up too with -them all, because he cared so much. And we have both by chance, whatever -chance may be, focused on Thorpe. Do you at all understand what I mean?” - -“Yes, after a fashion,” said North. “It’s like watching some one dimly -moving about in an unknown, and to me a visionary, world. I own you are -right—he moved in it too; and I am also ready to own it is possible -because of my own limitations that I can only regard it as visionary.” - -“Raphael had many books dealing with these things,” said Ruth. “I feel -so sorry now that they did not interest me then. You see, I had never -lost anyone by death. I had no one to lose. It was only out in France -when the men came in and drank my soup or coffee, and some slept like -tired children, and others played a game of cards, or talked to me of -home, and we all seemed like children of one family belonging to each -other. And in a few hours, perhaps less, I would see one or more of them -lying dead—gone out like flames extinguished quite suddenly. And I -didn’t know what life or death meant.” - -North nodded. “It hits one sometimes,” he said. - -“And their people at home—I used to write for some of those who were -brought in to the estaminet and died before they could get them farther. -One thought of them all the time. Going on with their everyday life at -home, and waiting. That is why what has happened to me here seems so -amazingly important, why its truth needs such close questioning, why I -so much want your help.” - -“For what it is worth it is at your disposal, and”—he paused before he -went on with decision—“I own I am interested, as I have never been -before in so-called communication with another world.” - -“There are some books here dealing with psychic faculties. I found them -on the top of the oak bookcase. Mostly by German authors. Would they -have been Mr. Carey’s?” - -“More likely they belonged to a friend of his who used to stay here.” - -“Oh, the German friend!” exclaimed Ruth. - -“You have heard of him?” - -“Mr. Fothersley spoke of him only this morning, and your daughter -mentioned him the other day.” - -“He was an interesting personality, and very strong on the point that -there were extraordinary powers and forces latent in man. I never cared -to discuss them with him. He went too far, and looking back I think I -almost unconsciously dreaded his influence over Dick. I don’t think I -need have. Dick was, I recognize it now, the stronger of the two.” - -“But he was interested in the same things?” - -“Undoubtedly. Possibly I was jealous; I preferred him to be interested -in my particular line of study. He _was_ interested to a great extent of -course, but von Schäde’s lines of thought appealed to him more. I -remember the last night von Schäde was here. It was in the June of 1914. -He had been paying Dick a long visit and was leaving in the morning. It -was the sort of night when the world seems much bigger than it does by -day—a wonderful night. The sky was thick with stars, and he stood just -over there with their light on his face, and talked to us as if we were -a public meeting. He was a good-looking chap in a hard frozen sort of -style. Oliver Lodge had been speaking to the Royal Art Society on the -Sources of Power, and it had got von Schäde on to his hobby. - -“‘You talk of the power of atomic energy, you scientists,’ he said; ‘it -is as nothing compared with the forces possessed by man in himself. If -we studied these, if we understood these, if we knew how to harness and -direct them, there is nothing in heaven and earth we should not be -masters of. Men—we should be gods! And you men with brains puddle about -among the forces of nature, blind and deaf to the forces in man which -could harness every one of the forces of nature obedient to your will, -and leave the study of these things to hysterical madmen and neurotic -women. And those who have some knowledge, who have the gift, the power, -to experiment with these forces if they would, they are afraid of this -and that. My God, you make me sick!’ - -“He threw out both his arms and his face was as white as a sheet. Old -Dick got up and put his arm round the fellow’s shoulders. Goodness knows -what he saw in him! ‘We’ll get the forces harnessed right enough, old -fellow, when we’re fit to use them,’ he said. - -“And they looked at each other for a full minute, von Schäde glaring and -Dick smiling, and then von Schäde suddenly began to laugh. - -“‘Mostly I’m fond of you, Dick,’ he said, ‘but sometimes I hate you like -the deuce!’ - -“He went the next morning, and I was glad. For another thing he fell in -love with Vi, and she was such a little demon to flirt that until the -last minute you never knew if she was serious or not. Morally and -socially he was irreproachable, but—well, I didn’t like him! I often -wondered how he took the news of her engagement to Dick.” - -“That happened after he left?” - -“Yes. The second time Dick went out to the front. He wasn’t a marrying -man really. But you know how things were then. Vi broke down over his -going, and he had always been fond of her since she was a baby. But I -don’t think it would have been a success. I never could picture old Dick -as anything but a bachelor.” - -He stopped, for he saw she was not listening. She was thinking hard. Her -black brows bent, her grey eyes almost as black beneath them. - -“That is very interesting,” she said presently, speaking slowly, as one -tracking an idea. “Von Schäde must have known that Dick Carey knew -better how to exercise those latent powers than he did. They were both -seeking the same thing from different motives.” - -“Explain, please.” - -Ruth was silent again for a moment, still thinking hard. “It’s not easy, -you know,” she said. “But this is the best I can do. They were both -scientists of the invisible, just as you are a scientist of the visible, -but Dick Carey was seeking union with God and von Schäde was seeking -knowledge and power for himself. Therefore they studied the unseen -sources of life and death by different methods, and Dick Carey had got -farther than von Schäde and von Schäde knew it.” - -North shook his head. “Now you are wandering in the mist so far as I am -concerned,” he said. - -Ruth sighed. “I explain badly, but then I am only struggling in the mist -myself. I wish I had cared for these things when Raphael Goltz was -alive! So many things he said which passed me by then come back to me -now with a new meaning. But there is one thing just lately I have felt -very strongly. When he was in the physical body Dick Carey was a far -more wonderful man than any of you knew—except probably von Schäde. Yes, -you loved him I know, the world is black without him, but you didn’t -think he was anything extraordinary. You are a great man and he was -nobody, in the eyes of the world. You don’t know even now how wonderful -he was. And now he has escaped from this clogging mould, this blinding -veil of physical matter, he is, I firmly believe, making this little -corner of the earth, this little Sussex farm, what every home and -village the town might be if we were in touch with the invisible secret -source of all.” - -She stopped, for she felt that North was not following her any longer, -was shrinking back again. - -“Oh!” she cried, “why won’t you believe it is worth your study at any -rate?” - -North turned on her suddenly, harshly, almost brutally. - -“I can’t,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t you see it’s all shapeless, -formless, to a mind like mine? I want to believe. God! it would give one -an horizon beyond eternity; but you talk of what to me is foolishness.” - -He looked at her with an immeasurable dreariness of soul in his eyes, -and very gently she put her worn brown hand in his and held it. - -“Listen,” she said, and her voice was deep with sudden music. “The -children come now. You cannot keep them away. Something draws them to -Thorpe. The wild creatures one can understand. It is sanctuary. But the -children—it must mean something.” - -“You are here.” - -She shrank back as if hurt. “No, oh no! It is not me. It is something -altogether beyond me. Oh, do listen. They were always slipping in, or -standing by the gate with their little faces peeping between the bars. -Quite tinies some of them, and I took them back to their homes at first. -I thought their mothers would be anxious. And then—then I began to -guess. So now I have given them the field beyond the stream and they -come out of school hours.” - -“The lower field!” exclaimed North. “No wonder you have taken -Fothersley’s breath away.” - -“Oh, he does not know of that. Fortunately he was here in the morning -during school hours, so he only saw the Blackwall children. You see,” -she added apologetically, “it is _such_ a child’s field, with the stream -and the little wood with blue-bells, and there are cowslips in the -spring and nuts in the autumn, and I shall make hay as usual, of course. -We cut on Tuesday.” - -“Don’t you find them very destructive?” - -“They haven’t trampled down a yard of grass,” said Ruth triumphantly. “I -gave them a strip by the stream under the silver birches. The primrose -bit, you know, and the wood. And the hay is in a way their property. You -go and try to walk across it! You’ll have a nest full of jackdaws at -you!” - -“But the trees and flowers!” - -“That is just another thing,” she smiled at him. “Oh, why won’t you -believe? I have had to teach them hardly anything. They know. No branch -is ever torn down. Never will you find those pathetic little bunches of -picked and thrown-away flowers here. The birds are just as tame. I teach -them very little. I’m afraid of spoiling my clumsy help. It is so -wonderful. They bring crumbs of any special bit of cake they get, for -the birds, and plant funny little bits of roots and sow seeds. Come down -and see them with me. I don’t take, or tell, other people. I am so -afraid of it getting spoilt.” - -North extracted his long frame from his chair. - -“All right,” he said, with that odd smile of his as of one humouring a -child. “But you are mad, you know, quite mad.” - -“You said that to me before.” - -And then North remembered suddenly that he had often said it to Dick -Carey. - -Their way led across the flower garden, and under the cherry-orchard -trees where the daisies shone like snow on the green of the close-cut -grass. Here they found Bertram Aurelius lying on his back talking in -strange language to the whispering leaves above him, and curling and -uncurling his bare pink toes in the dappled sunlight. His mother sat -beside him, her back against a tree trunk, mending the household linen -when she could keep her eyes off him for more than a minute. The dogs -fell upon Bertram Aurelius, who took them literally to his bosom, -fighting them just as a little puppy fights, and his mother smiled up at -them with her big blue eyes and foolish loose-lipped red mouth. - -“Have you ever heard anything of the father?” said North, when they were -out of earshot. - -“Killed at Bullecourt,” Ruth answered. “I could not help feeling it was -perhaps best. He will be a hero to her now always.” - -The lower field was steeped in the afternoon sunshine, and the children -were chirping like so many birds. Two sat by the stream blowing -dandelion clocks, which another small child carried to them with careful -footsteps, his tongue protruding in the anxious effort to convey the -fragile globes in safety before they floated away. Two bigger boys were -planting busily in a clearing in the wood. Another slept, seemingly just -as he had fallen, with all the lissom grace of childhood, and on the -bank beside him a small girl crooned to something she nursed against her -flat little chest. - -Roger North looked at the peaceful scene with relief. - -“I believe I’d expect a sort of school feast,” he said. “If you don’t -break forth any more violently than this, I’m with you. What are the -little beggars planting?” - -“Michaelmas daisies. They should do there, don’t you think? And we are -trying lilies in that far corner. The soil is damp and peaty. We were -too late for fruit trees this year but I’ve great plans for autumn -planting.” - -North, oddly enough, so it seemed to many, was popular with children. He -never asked them endless questions, or if they wanted to do this or -that. He liked the little people, and had discovered that at heart they -were like the shy wild things. Leave them alone and keep quiet, and, ten -to one, presently a little hand will creep into yours. - -He let himself down on the bank near the crooning child, in silence. She -was a thin white slip of a thing, with very fair hair and a pair of big -translucent eyes. It was an old doll she was nursing, so old that its -face had practically disappeared, and a blank white circle gazed to -heaven from under a quite smart tam-o’-shanter. She was telling some -story apparently, but only now and then were any words intelligible. - -Presently she began to look at North sideways, and her voice rose out of -its low monotone into a higher key. It was like the sudden movement of a -bird nearer to something or some one whose _bona fides_ it has at first -mistrusted. - -The words she was crooning became more intelligible, and gradually North -realized, to his astonishment, that she was repeating, after her own -fashion, the old Saga of Brynhild the warrior maid whom Segurd found -clad in helm and byrne. A queer mixture of the ride of the Valkyries, of -Brynhild asleep surrounded by the eternal fires. Brynhild riding her -war-horse on to the funeral pyre. Loki the Fire God. Wotan with his -spear. All were mixed up in a truly wonderful whole. But still more to -his astonishment it was the sword which appealed evidently above all to -this small white maiden. On the sword she dwelt lovingly, and wove her -tale around its prowess. And when she had brought her recital to a -triumphantly shrill close at the moment when Siegmund draws the sword -from the tree, she turned and looked him full in the face, half shyly, -half triumphantly, wholly appealing. It was as if she said, “What do you -think of that now?” - -North nodded at her. “That’s first rate, you know,” he said. - -“Which would you choose, if you had the choice? Would you choose the -ring or the sword?” she asked. - -“Well, I’m inclined to think old Wotan’s spear is more in my line,” said -North in a tone of proper thoughtful consideration. “It broke the sword -once, didn’t it? At least I believe it did. But it’s rather a long time -ago since I read about these things. Do you learn them at school?” - -“They aren’t lessons.” She looked at him with some contempt. “They’re -stories.” - -“It’s such a long time ago since anyone told me stories,” said North -apologetically. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.” - -She looked at him with compassion, holding the battered doll closer to -her. Her eyes reminded him of a rain-washed sky. - -“I tell Tommy lots of stories,” she said. - -Another child’s voice called to her from the wood, “Moira, Moira,” and -she fled away. It was like the sudden flight of a bird. - -“Who is the child who tells her dolls the story of the Ring?” he asked -Ruth, when she rejoined him. “She is rather like one of Rackham’s Rhine -Maidens herself, by the way.” - -“Moria Kent? Isn’t she a lovely little thing? Her mother is the village -school-mistress.” - -“Ah, that accounts for it I suppose,” said North. - -Ruth opened her mouth to speak, and closed it again. Instead of what she -had meant to say, she said, “Come, it is time for tea. And I have -ordered strawberries and cream.” - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - -Roger North let himself down into the cane deck-chair by his study -window with a sigh of relief. The wonderful weather still held. It had -been a hot morning, there were people staying in the house—people who -bored North—and lunch had been to him a wearisome meal. Everyone had -consumed a great deal of food and wine and talked an amazing lot of -nonsense, and made a great deal of noise, and the heat had become -unbearable. - -Here, though the warmth was great, the stillness was perfect. The rest -of the world had retired to their rooms to change for the tennis party -in the afternoon. North felt he could depend on at least an hour of -quiet. Across the rosebeds and smooth lawns he could see his cattle -lying in the tall grass under the trees. He watched others moving slowly -from shade to shade—Daisy and Bettina, and Fancy—and presently Patricia, -the big white mother of many pigs, hove in sight on her way to the -woods. For North was a farmer too, and loved his beasts better, it must -be owned, than he loved his own kind. - -He cut a hole in the orange he had brought from the lunch-table and -commenced to suck in great content. Like the ladies of Cranford he -considered there was no other way to eat an orange. He also agreed with -them that it was a pleasure that should be enjoyed in private. - -He gave himself up to the soothing peace and rest of his cool shaded -room. The friendly faces of his beloved books looked down on him, the -fragrance of his roses came in, hot and sweet, a very quintessence of -summer. Patricia had reached the wood now; he watched her dignified -waddle disappear in its green depths. What a pleasant and beautiful -world it all was, except for the humans. - -He dropped the jangling remains of the irritating lunch interval out of -his consciousness, and his mind drifted back to his morning’s work, the -conclusion of a week of observation, of measurements, of estimating -quantities, of balancing relations. A week of the scientist’s -all-absorbing pursuit of knowledge, which had, as his wife complained, -made him deaf and dumb and blind to all else. A disturbing fact in his -work was beginning to force itself upon him. He was becoming more and -more conscious that, in spite of the exquisite delicacy of scientific -apparatus, observation was becoming increasingly difficult. He could no -longer make the atom a subject of observation; it escaped him. He was -beginning to base his arguments on mathematical formula. Even with the -chemical atom, four degrees below the ultimate physical atom, he was -beginning to reason, without basing his reasons on observation, because -he could not observe; it was too minute, too fine, too delicate—it -escaped him. He had no instrument delicate enough to observe. He had -come to a deadlock. The fact forced itself upon him with ever-increasing -insistence; he could no longer deny it. He could carry some of his -investigations no farther without the aid of finer, subtler instruments. -His methods failed him. Nor could his particular order of mind accept -the new psychology. He could not investigate by means of hypnotism, or -autoscopy, or accept the strange new psychological facts which were -revolutionizing all the old ideas of human consciousness, because he -could not get away from the fundamental fact that science had no theory -with which these strange new things would fit, no explanation, as he had -said to Ruth Seer, which could arrange them in a rational order. And, -dreaming in the warmth of the afternoon, with the fragrance and beauty -of the wonderful universe filtering into his consciousness, the idea -penetrated with ever-growing insistence: Had the gods, by some wonderful -chance, by some amazing good fortune, placed in his hands, his, Roger -North’s, an instrument, finer, subtler, more delicate, than any of which -he had ever dreamed, the consciousness that was materializing as Ruth -Seer? He seemed struggling with himself, or rather with another self—a -self that was striving to draw him into misty unreal things, and he -shrank back into his world of what seemed to him solid, tangible things, -things that he could touch and handle and prove by measure and -calculation and observation. And then again the larger vision gripped -him. Was there indeed a finer, subtler, more wonderful matter, waiting -to be explored by different, finer, subtler methods? What was it Dick -Carey and Ruth Seer cognized, contracted with outside his ken? Could he -be certain it did not exist? “God! it would give you an horizon beyond -eternity,” he had said to Ruth Seer; that was true enough—if the vision -was true. Always till now he had thought of any vision beyond as a -fable, invented by wise men to help lesser men through what was after -all but a sorry business. And now, for the first time, it really gripped -him—what it would mean if it were not a fable, not a useful deception -for weaker men who could not face life as it really was. God! it would -give you an horizon beyond eternity! The vision was as yet only a dim -muddle of infinite possibilities and Roger North’s mind hated muddle. He -was like the blind man of Bethsaida who, when Christ touched his eyes, -looked up, and saw men, as trees, walking. - -Suddenly he got up and moved a photograph of Dick Carey that stood upon -his writing-table, moved it to an inconspicuous place on the mantelshelf -amongst other photographs. Then he hesitated for a moment before he took -one of the others and put it on the writing-table. - -And this simple action meant that Roger North had put on one side his -shrinking from the intangible and invisible and had started on new -investigations with new instruments for observation. - -Then he went back to his chair and began a second orange. Mansfield had -just carried out the croquet mallets and balls, and was arranging for -the afternoon games in his usual admirable manner. North watched him -lazily as he sucked the orange, pleasantly conscious that a new interest -had gripped his life, his mind already busy, tabulating, arranging the -different subtler matter he proposed to work with. - -It was here the door opened, and with the little clatter and bustle -which always heralded her approach, his wife entered, curled, powdered -and adorned, very pretty and very smart, for her afternoon party. - -A visit from her at this moment was altogether unexpected. It was also -unfortunate. - -It is doubtful if much had depended on it, whether Mrs. North could have -helped some expression of her objection to orange-sucking when indulged -in by her husband. She came to an abrupt halt in the doorway and looked -much as if there was a bad smell under her nose. - -There was an unpleasant pause. North, inwardly fumed, continued to suck -his orange. He had, it is to be feared, the most complete contempt for -his wife’s opinion on all subjects, and it irritated him to feel that -she had nevertheless, at times, a power which, it must be confessed, she -had used unmercifully in the early days of their married life, to make -him feel uncomfortable. - -Finally he flung the orange at the wastepaper basket, missed his aim, -and it landed, the gaping hole uppermost, in the centre of the hearth. - -“If you want to speak to me,” he said irritably, “you had better come -and sit down. On the other hand, if you do not like my sucking an -orange, you might have gone away till I had finished.” - -“I didn’t say anything,” said Mrs. North. - -She skirted the offending orange skin carefully and arranged the fluffy -curls at the back of her neck in front of the glass. Then she sat down -and arranged the lace in front of her frock. - -“I can’t think why you are always so disagreeable now,” she complained -at length. “You used to be so fond of me once.” - -By this time the atmosphere was electric with irritation. A more -inopportune moment for such an appeal could hardly have been chosen. - -“I don’t suppose you have dressed early to come down and tell me that,” -said North. It was not nice of him, and he knew it was not nice, but for -the life of him he could not help it. Indeed it was only by a superhuman -effort that his answer had not verged on the brutal. - -“I came to talk to you about Violet, but it’s so impossible to talk to -you about anything.” - -“Why try?” interposed North. - -“I suppose you take some interest in your own child?” retorted Mrs. -North. “I daresay you have not noticed it, but she is looking wretchedly -ill.” - -North relapsed into silence and continued to watch Mansfield’s -preparation on the lawn. - -“_Have_ you noticed it?” asked his wife, her voice shrill now with -exasperation. - -“Yes,” said North. - -“Very well then, why can’t you take some interest? Why can’t you ever -talk things over with me like other husbands do with their wives? And it -isn’t only that she looks ill; she’s altered—she isn’t the same girl she -was even a year ago. And people remark on it. She isn’t popular like she -used to be. People seem afraid of her.” - -She had secured North’s attention now. The drawn lines on his face -deepened. There was anxiety as well as irritation in his glances. - -“Have you spoken to her? Tried to find out what is wrong?” - -“No,” said Mrs. North. “At least I have _tried_, but it’s impossible to -get anything out of her. It’s like talking to a stranger. Really, -sometimes I’m frightened of her. It sounds ridiculous, of course, but -there it is. And we used to be such good friends and tell each other -everything.” - -“I am afraid she has never really got over Dick’s death,” said North, -his manner appreciably gentler. “And possibly her marriage so soon after -was not the wisest thing.” - -“You approved of it quite as much as I did.” - -“Certainly. I am not in any sense blaming you. Besides, Violet did not -ask either our advice or our approval. My meaning rather is, that -possibly she is paying now for what I own seemed to me at the time a -quite amazing courage.” - -“She confided in you all that dreadful time far more than she did in -me,” said Mrs. North fretfully, and with her pitiful inability to meet -her husband when his natural kindness of heart or sense of duty moved -him to try to discuss things of mutual interest with her in a friendly -spirit. “If you had not taken her away from me then, it might have been -different.” - -North shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his contemplation of the -croquet lawn and Mansfield’s preparations. Violet had never from her -babyhood been anything but a bone of contention, unless he had been -content never to interfere or express opinions contrary to his wife’s. - -“What do you want me to do?” he asked. - -“Only show some natural interest in your own child,” she retorted. “But -you never can talk anything over without being irritable. And as to her -marriage with Fred, we were all agreed it was an excellent thing. Of -course if you haven’t noticed how altered she is, it’s no good my -telling you.” - -“I have noticed it,” said North shortly. - -“Well, what do you think we had better do?” - -“You really want my opinion?” - -North had said this before over other matters. He wrestled with the -futility of saying it over this. But he knew that his wife was a -devoted, if sometimes an unwise, mother, and he had on the whole been -very generous to her with regard to their only child. He sympathized -with her now in her anxiety. - -“Of course I do,” she responded. “Isn’t it what I’ve been saying all -this time?” - -“Then honestly I don’t see what either you or I can do but stand by. She -knows we’re there right enough, both of us. She can depend on Fred too, -she knows that. But it seems to me that until she comes to us we’ve got -to leave her alone to fight out whatever the trouble is in her own way. -I think you are right—there _is_ trouble. But we can’t force her -confidence and we should do no good if we did. I’m afraid you won’t -think that much help.” He looked at her with some kindness. “But I -believe it is quite sound advice.” - -“It’s dreadful to feel like a stranger with one’s own child,” complained -Mrs. North. “It makes me perfectly miserable. Of course I don’t think a -father feels the same as a mother.” - -A shadow fell across the strip of sunlight coming in from the window. A -gay voice broke the sequence of her complaint. - -“Oh, _here_ you are!” it said. - -Both of them looked up hastily, almost guiltily. Violet Riversley stood -on the gravel pathway outside. A gay and gallant figure, slim and -straight in her favourite white. The sun shone on the smooth coiled -satin of her dark hair, on the whiteness of her wonderful skin. Her -golden eyes danced as she crossed the step of the French window. - -“I felt in my bones you would be having a party this afternoon,” she -said. “So I put Fred and myself into the car, and here we are!” - -She looked from one to the other and they looked at her, momentarily -bereft of speech. For here was the old Violet, gay with over-brimming -life and mirth, the beautiful irresistible hoyden of the days before the -war, before Dick Carey had died, suddenly back again as it were. And -now, and now only, did either of them realize to the full the difference -between her and the Violet they had just been discussing. - -“What is the matter with you both?” she cried. “You look as if you were -plotting dark and desperate deeds! And Mansfield is nearly in tears -under the beech-tree because he can’t arrange the chairs to his -satisfaction without you.” She looked at her mother. “He says”—she -looked at her father and bubbled with mirth—“the trenches have spoilt -his sense of the artistic! And he says he is a champion at croquet now -himself. He won all the competitions at V.A.D. hospital. Do you think we -ought to ask him to play this afternoon?” - -“My dear Violet——” began Mrs. North, smitten by the horror of the -suggestion. - -“Look here, Vi,” said North. On a sudden impulse he put his long legs -down from his deck-chair, sat erect, and swept her gay badinage aside. -“We were talking about you.” - -“Me!” - -She bent her straight black brows at him, a shadow swept over her -brilliance, she shivered a little. - -“I suppose I have been pretty poisonous to you lately.” She meditated -for a moment. Then her old irresistible mischievous smile shone out. -“But it’s nothing to what I’ve been to poor Fred.” - -She ran her lithe fingers through North’s grizzled hair and became -serious again. - -“Dad and Mums, darlings, I don’t know what’s been the matter with me—but -I’ve been in hell. I woke up this morning and felt like -Shuna-something’s daughter when the devil was driven out of her. And I -got up and danced round the room in my nighty, because the old world was -beautiful again and I didn’t hate everything and everybody. And don’t -talk to me about what I’ve been like, darlings—I don’t want to think of -it. All I know is, it’s gone, and if it ever comes back——” - -She stopped and repeated slowly: - -“If it ever comes back——” - -Her slim erect figure shivered, as a rod of steel shivers driven by -electric force. - -Then she flung up a defiant hand and laughed. The gay light laughter of -the old Violet. “But I won’t let it! Never again! Never, never, never! -Mums, come out and wrestle with Mansfield’s lost artistic sense.” - -She lifted Mrs. North, protesting shrilly, bodily out of her chair. - -“My dear Violet! Don’t! Oh, my hat!” she cried, and retreated, like a -ruffled bird, to the looking-glass over the mantelshelf to rearrange her -plumage. - -Violet seized her father by both hands and pulled him too out of his -chair. - -“Come and play a game of croquet with me before the guests come, Herr -Professor,” she said. - -It was her old name for him in the days when Karl von Schäde had brought -many German expressions and titles into their midst. It struck North -with a curious little unpleasant shock. - -“Why have you put poor Dick’s photo up here?” asked his wife. - -“Oh, do leave my things alone!” exclaimed North. - -His wife’s capacity for discovering and inquiring into any little thing -he did not want to explain was phenomenal. It irritated him to see her -pick up the frame. It irritated him that she would always speak of his -dead friend as “poor Dick.” - -The atmosphere disturbed by Violet’s sudden radiant entrance became once -more charged with electric irritation. - -Mrs. North put down the frame with a little click. - -“I thought it was some mistake of the servant’s,” she said stiffly. - -Violet pulled her father out of the French window. “Come, we have only -time for half a game now,” she said. - -Mrs. North followed. - -“Your Miss Seer is coming this afternoon, Roger,” she said. “I do hope -you won’t talk to no one else, if you intend to appear at all. It looks -so bad, and only makes everyone talk!” - -With which parting shot she retreated towards Mansfield and the chairs. - -Violet slipped her arm through her father’s as they crossed the lawn. -“She can’t help it, daddy,” she said soothingly. - -North laughed, a short mirthless laugh. - -“I suppose not. Go ahead, Vi. I’ll take blue.” - -They buried themselves in the game after the complete and concentrated -manner of the real croquet player. Both were above the average, and it -was an infinite relief to North to find Violet taking her old absorbing -interest in his defeat. - -Presently Fred Riversley wandered out and stood watching them, stolid -and heavy as usual, but his nod to North held meaning, and a great -content. North was beginning to like this rather dull young man in a way -he would once have thought impossible. He had been the plainest, the -least attractive, and the least interesting of the group of brilliant -children who had grown up in such a bewilderingly sudden way, almost, it -seemed, on the declaration of war, and of whom so few were left. North’s -mind drifted back to those days which seemed so long ago, another -lifetime, to those gay glad children who had centred round his friend -and so been part of his own life. And then a sudden nostalgia seized -him, a sick sense of the purposeless horror of life. And you -cared—really cared—if you made a bad shot at croquet, or if your wife -objected to your sucking oranges. Mansfield, who had faced death by -torture minute after minute out there, was worried because he could not -arrange the chairs at a tennis party. And those boys and the girl, -little Sybil Rawson, were all broken up, smashed out of existence, -finished. They had not even left any other boys and girls of their own -behind; they were some of nature’s waste. - -He missed his shot, and Violet gave a cry of triumph. It gave the game -into her hands. She went out with a few pretty finish shots. - -“Not up to your usual mark that, sir!” said Riversley. - -“No,” said North. “It was a rotten shot!” And he _did_ care. He was -annoyed with himself. “Rotten!” he said, and played the stroke over -again. - -“Absolutely unworthy!” laughed his daughter. - -She put out first one and then the other of her balls with deft -precision and waved her mallet to an approaching car. - -“Here are the Condors,” she said. “And Condie himself! I haven’t seen -him for ages, the old dear!” - -She skimmed the lawn like a bird towards the front door. - -Mansfield was tenderly assisting an enormously stout gentleman to get -out of the car backwards. - -“Excellent, bombardier!” said the stout gentleman. “Excellent. You have -let me down without a single twinge. Now they put my man into the motor -transport. Most unfortunate for me. The knowledge of how to handle a -live bomb would have been invaluable.” - -He heaved slowly round in time to receive Violet Riversley’s -enthusiastic welcome. His face was very round and full, the features, in -themselves good, partially buried in many rolls of flesh, the whole -aspect one of benign good nature. Only an occasional penetrating flash -from under his heavy eyelids revealed the keen intelligence which had -given him no small reputation in the political world. - -“Ah, little Vi! It’s pleasant to see you again,” he said. “How are you, -North?” His voice was soft and thick, but had the beauty of perfect -pronunciation. - -It was the only sound ever known to check his wife’s amazing flow of -conversation. She owned herself that it had been difficult, but she had -recognized the necessity early in their married life. - -“You see, no one wanted to hear me talk if they could hear him,” she -explained. “Now it has become a habit. Condor has only to say ‘Ah!’ and -I stop like an automaton.” - -At this moment she was following him from the car amid the usual shower -of various belongings. Violet and her husband assisted her while North -and Mansfield gathered up the débris. - -“Yes, my dears, we have been to a meeting as usual. Natural—I mean -National Economy. Condor made a really admirable speech, recommending -impossible things; excellent, of course—only impossible! My glasses? -Thank you, Roger. Yes, isn’t the car shabby? I am so thankful. A new -Rolls-Royce has such a painfully rich appearance, hasn’t it? And the old -ones go just as well, if not better. That scarf? Um—yes—perhaps I will -want it. Let us put it into Condor’s pocket. A little more padding makes -no difference to him.” - -“When I was younger it used to be my privilege and pleasure to pick up -these little odds and ends for my wife,” said Lord Condor, smiling -good-naturedly, while his wife stuffed the scarf into his pocket. “But -alas! my figure no longer permits.” - -“I remember my engagement was a most trying time,” said Lady Condor. “My -dear mother impressed on me that if Condor once realized the irritation -my untidiness and habit of dropping my things about would cause him in -our married life, he would break it off. What, Vi? Oh, damn the thing!” - -Violet Riversley, holding a gold bag which had mysteriously dropped from -somewhere, went off into a helpless fit of laughter. - -“Don’t laugh, my dear. It is nothing to laugh at. I do hope Mansfield -did not hear! One catches these bad habits, but I have not taken to -swearing. I do not approve of it for women—or of smoking—do I, Condor? -But that wretched bag has spoilt my whole afternoon; that is the fifth -time it has been handed to me. I could not really enjoy Condor’s speech. -Quite admirable—only no one could possibly do the things he recommended. -But where was I? Oh yes—the bag—you see, I bought it at Asprey’s! You -know, in Bond Street—yes. There was a whole window full of them. How -should it strike one that they were luxuries, and that the scarcity of -gold was so great? One has got quite used to the paper money by now. And -somehow it never seems so valuable as real sovereigns. I am sure our -extravagance is due to this. It’s nearly as bad as paying by cheque. But -where was I? Oh, my bag! You see, we all went to this meeting to -patronize National Economy. Most necessary, Condor says, and we must all -do our best. But it really would have been better, I think, if we had -not all gone in our cars and taken our gold bags. Everyone seemed to -have a gold bag—and aigrettes on their heads. I never wear them myself. -The poor birds—I couldn’t. But I know they cost pounds and pounds, and -no one could call them necessities. Or the gold bags of course, if gold -is so very scarce. Ought we to send them to be melted down? I will -gladly send mine into the lower regions. Just as we were entering it -plopped down on the step, and you can imagine the noise it made, and a -quite poor-looking man picked it up and gave it back to me. He had on -one of the dreadful-looking suits, you know, that they gave our poor -dear men when they were demobilized. He was most pleasant, but what must -he have thought? And I could not explain to him about the shop -window-full because Condor was waiting for me. And then, on the -platform, just as Condor was making one of his most telling points, it -_clanged_ down off my lap, and of course it fell just where there was no -carpet. I tried to kick it under the chair, but little Mr. Peckham—you -know him, dear—would jump up and make quite a show of it, handing it -back to me. No, don’t give it me again. Put it into Condor’s pocket. But -he has gone! To see the pigs with Roger? Isn’t it wonderful the -attraction pigs have for men of a certain age! My dear father was just -the same, and he called his pigs after us—or was it us after the pigs?—I -don’t quite remember which. And where is your mother? Oh, I see—playing -croquet with Mrs. Ingram. My dear, did you ever see such a hat! Like a -plate of petrified porridge, isn’t it? No, tell your mother not to come. -I will just wave my hand. Go and tell her not to stop her game, dear -Violet. And here is Arthur! He has something important to tell me—I know -by his walk. Now let us get comfortable first, and where we shall not be -disturbed. Yes. Those two chairs over there.” - -“I do want a little chat if possible, Marion,” said Mr. Fothersley. He -retrieved a scarf which had floated suddenly across his path, with the -skill born of long practice. “Yes, I will keep it in case you feel -cold.” - -He folded it in a neat square so that it could go into his pocket -without damage to either scarf or pocket, and held the back of her chair -while she fitted herself into it. - -“A footstool? Thank you, Arthur. I will say for Nita, she understands -the art of making her guests comfortable. Now at the Howles’ yesterday I -had a chair nearly impossible to get into and quite impossible to get -out of! But where were we? Oh yes—you have got something you want to -tell me. I always know by your walk.” - -Mr. Fothersley was a little vexed. “I cannot see how it can possibly -affect my walk, Marion.” - -“It is odd, isn’t it?” said her Ladyship briskly. “It is just like my -dear father. A piece of news was written all over him until he got rid -of it. I remember when poor George Somerville shot himself—my dear -mother and I were sitting on the terrace, and we saw my father coming up -from the village—quite a long way off—you could not distinguish a -feature—but we knew at once he was bringing news—news of importance. But -where were we?” - -She stopped suddenly and looked at him with the smile which had turned -the heads of half the gilded youth of fifty years ago. - -“I am a garrulous old woman, my dear Arthur. You are anxious -about something, and here am I worrying you with my silly -reminiscences—yes—now what is it? Tell me all about it, and we will see -what can be done.” - -“I am certainly perturbed,” said Mr. Fothersley. He smoothed down his -delicate grey waistcoat and settled himself back in his chair. “I am -afraid there is no doubt Nita is becoming jealous of Miss Seer.” - -“Good heavens! I would as soon suspect that blue iris!” - -“Quite so! Quite so! But you know what Nita is about these things. And, -unfortunately, it appears that Roger has been over to Thorpe once or -twice alone lately.” - -“Perfectly natural,” said her Ladyship judicially. “He would be -interested in the farm for Dick’s sake. I like to go there myself. She -hasn’t spoilt the place.” - -“Nita called her ‘that woman’ to me just now,” said Mr. Fothersley -solemnly. - -Lady Condor raised her hand. “That settles it, of course! And now, dear -Arthur, what is to be done? We really cannot have one of those dreadful -performances that have unfortunately occurred in the past!” - -“I really don’t know,” said Mr. Fothersley. He was divided between -excitement and distress. “It is quite useless to talk to either of them. -Nita generally consults me, but she listens neither to reason nor -advice. And Roger only laughs or loses his temper.” - -“Yes,” agreed Lady Condor. “I think it depends on the state of his -liver. And as for poor Nita listening to reason on that subject—well—as -you say!” - -“If only she would not tell everybody it would not be so terrible.” - -“Ah, that is just the little touch of bourgeois,” said Lady Condor. “It -was wine, wasn’t it? Or was it something dried? And poor dear Roger is -really so safe—yes—he would be terribly bored with a real _affair de -cœur_. He would forget any woman for weeks if he were arranging a -combination of elements to see if they would blow each other up. And if -the poor woman made a scene, or uttered a word of reproach even, he -would be off for good and all—pouf—just like that. And what good is that -to any woman? I have told Nita so, but it is no good—no! Now if she had -been married to Condor! Poor darling, he is perfectly helpless in the -hands of anything in petticoats! It is not his fault. It is temperament, -you know. All the Hawkhursts have very inflammable dispositions. And -when he was younger, women were so silly about him! I used to pretend -not to know, and I was always charming to them all. It worked -admirably.” - -“I always admired your dignity, dear Marion,” said Mr. Fothersley. - -“_We_ have always shielded our men,” said Lady Condor, and she looked a -very great lady indeed. - -“Our day is passing,” said Mr. Fothersley sadly. “I deplore it very -much. Very much indeed.” - -“Fortunately”—Lady Condor pursued her reminiscences—“Condor has a sense -of humour, which always prevented him making himself really ridiculous: -that would have worried me. A man running round a woman looking like an -amorous sheep! Where are my glasses, Arthur? And who is that girl over -there, all legs and neck? Of course the present style of dress has its -advantages—one has nothing on to lose. But where was I? Something about -sheep? Oh yes, dear Condor. I have always been so thankful that when he -lost his figure—he had a very fine figure as a young man you remember—he -gave up all that sort of thing. You _must_, of course, if you have any -sense of the ridiculous. But about Roger and Miss Seer. She is a woman -with dignity. Now where can she have got it from? She seems to have been -brought up between an orphan clergy school and some shop—was it old -furniture?—something old I know. Not clothes—no—but something old. And -some one said she had been a cook. But one can be anything these days.” - -“She is of gentle birth,” said Mr. Fothersley. “Her mother, I gather, -was a Courthope, and the Seers seem to be quite good people—Irish I -believe—but of good blood. It always tells.” - -“You never know which way,” said her Ladyship sagely. “Now look at my -Uncle Marcus. Oh, there _is_ Miss Seer. Yes—I really don’t think we need -worry. It would be difficult to be rude to her. There, you see—dear Nita -is being quite nice! And Roger is quite safe with Condor and the pigs.” - -It was indeed late in the afternoon before North came upon Ruth, -watching a set of tennis. - -“You don’t play?” he asked. - -“I never had the chance to learn any of the usual things,” she said, -smiling. “I’m afraid I only came to-day with an ulterior motive. I want -you to show me a photograph of Dick Carey.” - -“That, oddly enough, was also in my mind,” he said, smiling too. “Come -into my study and find it for yourself.” - -He was conscious of a little pleasant excitement as they went, and also -of a curious uncertainty as to whether he wanted the experiment to -succeed or not. - -Ruth went in front of him through the French window and stood for a -while looking round her. She was not a slow woman, but nothing she did -ever seemed hurried. - -“What a delicious room!” she said. “And what a glory of books! And I do -like the way you have your writing-table. How much better than across -the window, and yet you get all the light. I may poke about?” - -“Of course.” - -She moved the writing-table and picked up a quaint letter-weight with -interest. The photograph she ignored. - -“I love your writing-chair,” she said. - -“It was my grandfather’s. The only bit I have of his. My parents cleared -out the whole lot when they married—too awful, wasn’t it?” - -“But your books are wonderful! Surely you have many first editions here. -Old Raphael would have loved them.” - -“The best of my first editions are on the right of the fireplace.” - -She turned, and then suddenly her face lit. Lit up curiously, as if -there were a light behind it. - -“Oh!” she said quite softly, then crossed to the fireplace and stood -looking at the photograph he had moved that afternoon from the -writing-table. - -She did not pick it up or touch it; only looked at it with wide eyes for -quite a long time. - -Then she turned to him. - -“That is the man I saw,” she said. “Now will you believe?” - -And at that moment the Horizon beyond Eternity did indeed approach -closer, approach into the realm of the possible. - -He admitted nothing, and she did not press it. She sat down in the big -armchair on the small corner left by Larry, who was curled up in it -asleep. He shifted a little to make more room for her and laid a gentle -feathered paw upon her knee. - -“That’s odd,” said North. “He won’t let anyone else come near my chair -when he’s in it.” - -“He knows I’m a link,” said Ruth, smiling. “I wish you could look on me -as that too.” - -“I do—but for purposes of research only. You mustn’t drive me too -quickly.” - -“I won’t. Indeed I won’t.” She spoke with the earnestness of a child who -has asked a favour. “I only want you just not to shut it all out.” - -“I’m interested, and that is as far as I can go at present. I wondered -if you would care to read a bit of Dick’s diary which I have here. It -came to me with other papers, and there are some letters here.” - -“Oh!” The exclamation was full of interest and pleasure. - -He gave her the small packet, smiling, and she held it between both her -hands for a moment looking at it. - -“They will be very sacred to me,” she said. - -He nodded. “One feels like that. It is only a small portion of a diary. -I fancy he kept one very intermittently. Dick was never a writer. But -the letter about von Schäde will interest you.” - -Ruth stood with her eyes fixed on the small packet. “Could you tell -me—would you mind—how it happened?” she said. - -“A shell fell, burying some of his men. He went to help dig them out. -Another shell fell on the same place. That was the end.” - -She looked up. Her eyes shone. - -“He was saving life, not taking it. Oh, I am glad.” - -She put the packet into the pocket of her linen skirt, gave him a little -smile, and slipped away almost as a wraith might slip. She wanted, -suddenly and overpoweringly, to get back to Thorpe.... - -Lady Condor, enjoying, as was her frequent custom, a second tea, said -quite suddenly, in the middle of a lament on the difficulty of obtaining -reliable cosmetics, “That is a clever woman!” - -Mr. Fothersley, who was honestly interested in cosmetics, tore his mind -away from them and looked round. - -“Who?” he asked. - -“Miss Seer. I have been watching, after what you told me. You have not -noticed? She has been in Roger’s study with him, only about ten -minutes—yes—but she has done it without Nita knowing. Look, she is -saying good-bye now. And dear Nita all smiles and quite pleasant. Nita -was playing croquet of course but even then—— Perhaps it was just -luck—but quite amazing.” - -Mr. Fothersley agreed. “Most fortunate,” he added. - -“You know, Arthur, she is not unattractive,” Lady Condor continued. “By -no means in her _première jeunesse_ and can never have been a beauty. -But there is something cool and restful-looking about her which some men -might like. You never know, do you? I remember once Condor was quite -infatuated for a few weeks, with a woman rather in the same style.” - -“But I thought you didn’t think——” began Mr. Fothersley. - -“Of course I don’t think—not really.” Lady Condor watched Ruth’s -farewells through her glasses. “That’s what is so stupid about all these -supposed affairs of Roger’s. There never is anything in them. So -stupid——” She stopped suddenly and looked sideways at him, rather the -look of a child found with a forbidden toy. - -“But——” began Mr. Fothersley, and stopped also. - -The two old friends looked at each other. - -“Arthur,” said Lady Condor. “I believe you are as bad as I am. Yes—don’t -deny it. I saw the guilt in your eyes. So funny—just as I discovered my -own. But so nice—we can be quite honest with each other.” - -“My dear Marion—I don’t——” Mr. Fothersley began to protest. - -“Dear Arthur, yes—you do. We both of us enjoy—yes—where are my glasses? -What a mercy you did not tread on them. But where was I? Yes. We both of -us enjoy these little excitements. Positively”—her shrewd old face -lighted up with mischief—“positively I believe we miss it when Roger is -not supposed to be carrying on with somebody. I discovered it in a flash -just this very moment! I do hope we don’t really hope there is something -in it all the time. It would be so dreadful of us.” - -“Certainly we do not,” said Mr. Fothersley, deeply pained but -associating himself with her from long habit. “Most certainly not! I can -assure you my conscience is quite clear. Really, you are allowing your -imagination to run away with you. We have always done our best to stop -Nita creating these most awkward situations.” - -“Yes, of course we have,” said Lady Condor soothingly. “I did not mean -that. But now where is Condor? Oh, he has walked home across the fields. -So good for his figure! I wish I could do the same for mine. Yes, Nita -has been quite nice to Miss Seer, and now Violet is seeing her off.” - -“I am motoring back to town to-night,” Violet Riversley was saying as -she shut the door of Ruth Seer’s little two-seater car, “or I would like -to come over to Thorpe. How is it?” - -“Just lovely,” said Ruth, smiling. “Be sure and come whenever you can.” - -She had taken off the brakes, put out the clutch and got into gear -before Violet answered. Then she laid her hand, as with a sudden -impulse, on the side of the car. - -“If one day I should—quite suddenly—wire to you and ask you to have me -to stay—would you?” she asked. - -“Why yes, of course,” said Ruth. - -“You might have other visitors—or be away.” - -“No, I shall not have other visitors, and I shall not be away.” - -The conveyances of other guests had begun to crowd the drive, and Ruth -had to give all her attention to getting her car out of a gate built -before the day of cars. It was only when she was running clear, down the -long slope from Fairbridge, that she remembered the curious and absolute -certainty with which she had answered Violet Riversley’s question. - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - -The clouds of a thunderstorm were looming slowly up as Ruth motored -home, and soon after she got back a sudden deluge swept over Thorpe. In -ten minutes the garden paths were running with water unable to get into -the sun-baked ground and every hand on the farm was busy getting young -things into shelter. - -“I said we should have rain soon,” announced Miss McCox, after the -triumphant manner of weather prophets, as she brought in Bertram -Aurelius, busy trying to catch the falling silver flood with both hands. - -“He has never seen rain before to remember. Think of it!” said Ruth. -“And he isn’t a bit frightened. Where are the other children?” - -“A little wet, more or less, will do _them_ no harm,” replied Miss -McCox. “They’re more in the river than out of it, I’m thinking, bringing -in mess and what not.” She handed Bertram Aurelius, protesting for once -vigorously, through the kitchen window to his mother. “It’s the young -chicken up in the top field I’m after,” she added. - -Ruth laughed as she picked up Selina’s shivering little body which was -cowering round her feet, and ran for the river. She liked the rush of -the rain against her face, the eager thirst of the earth as it drank -after the long drought, the scent of the wet grass. It was all very -good. And if it only lasted long enough, it would make just all the -difference in the world to the hay crop. The thunder was muttering along -the hill-tops while she rescued the children from the shelter of a big -tree, helped Miss McCox with the young chicken, and hurriedly staked -some carnations which should have been done days ago; then she fled for -the house, barely in time to escape the full fury of the storm. - -“The carnations could have been left,” said Miss McCox, as she met her -at the front door. “There’s no sense in getting your feet soaked at your -age. I have a hot bath turned on for you and if you don’t go at once it -will be cold.” - -Bathed, dressed, and glowing with content of mind and body, Ruth watched -the end of the storm from the parlour window. The big clouds were -drifting heavily, muttering as they went, down towards the east, the -rain still fell, but softly now, each silver streak shining separately -in the blaze of sunlight from the west and presently, as Ruth watched, a -great rainbow, perfect and complete, arched in jewelled glory the sullen -blackness of the retreating storm. - -After her dinner she took the packet Roger North had given her, and sat -holding it between her hands in the big armchair by the window. The -beautiful gracious old room was filling with the evening shadows, but -here the light was still clear and full. The sunset lingered, although -already the evening star was shining brightly. Ruth sat there, as Dick -Carey must often have sat after his day’s work, looking across his -pleasant fields, dreaming dreams, thinking long thoughts, loving the -beauty of it all. - -Here he must have thought and planned for the good and welfare of the -farm. The crops and flowers and fruit, the birds and beasts. And in -those last days, of the children who should come, calling him father, to -own the farm one day, and love it as he had loved it. - -Masefield’s beautiful lines passed through Ruth’s mind: - - “If there be any life beyond the grave, - It must be near the men and things we love, - Some power of quick suggestion how to save, - Touching the living soul as from above.” - -She sat very still; the lamp, symbol of the Life Eternal, gleamed more -brightly as the shadows deepened. The glow in the west died away, and -the great stars shone with kindly eyes, just as it must have shone on -Dick Carey, sitting there dreaming too, loving the beauty of it all. - -And presently Ruth became conscious of other things. Curious and -poignantly there grew around her, out of the very heart of the -stillness, the sense of a great movement of men and things, the clash of -warring instincts, an atmosphere of fierce passions, of hatred and -terror, of tense anxiety, like an overstrained rod that must surely -break, and yet holds. A terrible tension of waiting for -something—something that was coming—coming—something that fell. She knew -where she was now; for, through all the drenched sweetness of the fields -and gardens, sickening, suffocating, deadly, came the smell of the Great -Battlefields of the world. All of it was there—the sweat of men, the -sour atmosphere of bivouac and dug-out, rotten sacking and wood, the -fumes of explosives, the clinging horror of gas, the smell of the -unattended death. It was all there, in one hideous whole. Shuddering, -clutching the letters tightly with clenched hands in her lap, Ruth was -back there again; again she was an atom in some awful scheme, again she -knew the dread approach. The wait.... Great roaring echoes rolled up and -filled all space. Sounds crashed and shattered, rent and destroyed. - -And then, through it all, Ruth felt—held it as it were between the hands -of her heart—something so wonderful it took her breath away, and she -knew it for what it was, through all the tumult, the horror, and the -evil, the strong determined purpose of a man for a certain end. It grew -and grew, in wonder and in glory, until her heart could no longer hold -it, could no longer bear it, for it became the strong determined purpose -of many men for a certain end. It joined and unified into a current of -living light and fire, and sang as it flowed, sang so that the sounds of -horror passed and fled and the melody of its flowing filled all space, -the sound of the great Song of the Return. - -She was no longer a lonely atom in a scheme she could not understand, no -longer a stranger and a pilgrim in a weary land, but part of an amazing -and stupendous whole, working in unison, making for an end glorious -beyond conception. Limits of time and space were wiped out, but when the -strange and wonderful happening had passed over, never then, or at any -later time, had she any doubt as to the reality of the experience. She -knew and understood, though, with the Apostle of old, she could have -said, “Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell.” - -But suddenly the body claimed her again, and Ruth Seer did what was a -very unusual thing with her—she put her face between her hands and cried -and cried till they were wet with tears, her whole being shaken as by -the passing of a great wind. - -When, some time later, she opened the packet she found the few pages of -diary much what she had somehow expected. Just the short notes of a man -pressed for every minute of his time, because every minute not given to -definite duty was spent with, or for, his men. His love and care for -them were in every line of those hasty scraps of writing, kept -principally, it seemed to Ruth, so that nothing for each one might be -forgotten. It was that personal touch that struck her most forcibly. Not -one of his men had a private trouble but he knew it and took steps to -help, not one was missing but he headed the search party if prior duties -did not prevent, not one died without him if it were in any way possible -for him to be there. That lean brown hand which she knew—had seen—what a -sure thing it had been to hold. From the little hastily scribbled scraps -it could be pieced together. That wonderful life which he, and many -another, had led in the midst of hell. The light was fading when she -took the letter out of its thin unstamped envelope, but Dick Carey’s -writing was very clear, each word somewhat unusually far apart. - - - “DEAR OLD ROGER (it ran),— - - “We have been badly knocked about, and are here to refit. Seven of - our officers killed and four wounded; 348 out of 726 men killed and - wounded—some horribly maimed—my poor fellows. This is butchery, not - war. The Colonel was wounded early in the day and I was in command. - Kelsey is gone, and Marriott, and little Kennedy, of those you knew. - Writing to mothers and wives is hard work. You might go and see Mrs. - Kelsey. She would like it. I have not a scratch and am well, but the - damnable horror of this war is past belief. I have told Vi as little - as possible, and nothing of the following. Poor von Schäde was - brought into our lines, strangely enough, last evening, terribly - mutilated. They had to amputate both legs and right arm at the - clearing station. I managed to get down after things were over to - see him. But he was still unconscious. We are in a ruined château on - the right of —— Forest. There is a lake in which we can bathe—a - godsend. - - “Just midnight; and while I write a nightingale is singing. It goes - on though the roar of the guns is echoing through the forest like a - great sigh, and even the crash of an occasional shell does not - disturb it. I suppose born and bred to it. My God, what wouldn’t I - give to wake up and hear the nightingales singing to the river at - Thorpe and find this was only an evil dream! - - “_20th._ Von Schäde is gone. I was with him at the end, but it was - terrible. I could not leave him and yet perhaps it would have been - better. He seemed mad with hatred. Poor fellow, one can hardly - wonder. It was not only himself, so mutilated, but he seemed - convinced, certain, that they were beaten. He cursed England and the - English. Me and mine and Thorpe. Even Vi. It was indescribably - horrible. The evil of this war incarnate as it were——” - - -The letter broke off, and ended with the scrawled initials - - - “Yrs., R. C.” - - -and an undecipherable postscript: - - - “Don’t tell Vi.” - - -Had he been called away hurriedly by the falling shell which had buried -his men? The envelope was addressed in another writing. She felt it must -have been so. Very swiftly he had followed the man who had died cursing -him and his, out into the world where thought and emotion, unclogged by -this physical matter, are so much the more powerful and uncontrolled. -Had they met, these two strong spirits, moving on different lines of -force, working for different ends? What had been let loose when Karl von -Schäde had died in that British clearing station, cursing “England and -the English, me and mine and Thorpe. Even Vi.” The great emotional -forces, so much greater than the physical body which imprisons them, -what power was there when freed; this hatred in a man of great and -cultivated intellect, whose aim had been no mean or contemptible thing, -whose aim had been power, what was that force on the other side of -death? How much could it accomplish if, with added knowledge, it so -willed? - -Ruth shivered in the warm June night. A sense of danger to the farm -stole over her. A warning of something sinister, impending, brooding, as -the great thunder-cloud had loomed up before it burst. She stepped out -over the low window-ledge on to the terrace, looked across the sleeping -beauty before her. Still she held the papers in her hand. A glimmering -moon was rising behind the trees, a little faint wind whispered among -the leaves. They made black patterns on the silvered grass as it moved -them very gently. The wind fell, and with it a great stillness. And out -of the stillness came to Ruth Seer a Word. - -She went back into the sitting-room, dark now except for the light of -the little lamp, and knelt before it, and prayed. - -And her prayer was just all the love and the pity she could gather into -her heart for the strong spirit that had gone out black, and bitter, and -tortured, and filled with hate. The spirit that had been Karl von -Schäde. - - - - - CHAPTER X - - -Thorpe was rich with the autumn yield before Violet Riversley claimed -Ruth’s promise. July had been on the whole a wet month, providing -however much-needed rain, but the August and September of Peace Year -were glorious as the late spring, and at Thorpe an abundant harvest of -corn was stored by the great stacks of scented hay. The apple and pear -trees were heavy with fruit. Blenheim Orange and Ribston Pippin with red -cheeks polished by much sun; long luscious Jargonelles and Doyenne du -Comice pears gleamed yellow and russet. The damson-trees showed purple -black amid gold and crimson plums. Mulberry and quince and filbert, -every fruit gave lavishly and in full perfection that wonderful autumn; -and all were there. Dick Carey had seen to that. The Blackwall children -came and went, made hay, picked fruit and reaped corn, as children -should. They gathered blackberries and mushrooms and hazel nuts, and -helped Ruth to store apples and pears, and Miss McCox to make much jam. -Bertram Aurelius got on his feet and began to walk, to the huge joy of -Sarah and Selina. The world was a pleasant place. Ruth moved among her -children and animals and fruit and flowers, and listened to her -nightingales, amid no alien corn, and sang the song old Raphael Goltz -had taught her long ago, in a content so great and perfect that -sometimes she felt almost afraid that she would wake up one morning and -and it all a dream. - -“It’s just like a fairy-tale that all this should come to me,” she said -to Roger North. - -The cottages were finished and tenanted, their gardens stored and -stocked with vegetables and fruit trees, and bright with autumn flowers, -from the Thorpe garden. Even Mr. Fothersley was reconciled to their -existence. - -Ruth had been to no more parties; the days at home were too wonderful. -She garnered each into her store as a precious gift. But the neighbours -liked to drop in and potter round or sit on the terrace. The place was -undoubtedly amazingly beautiful and perfect in its way. The friendliness -and trust of all that lived and moved at Thorpe appealed even to the -unreceptive. Here there were white pigeons that fluttered round your -head and about your feet. Unafraid, bright-eyed tiny beautiful birds -came close, so that you made real acquaintance with those creatures of -the blue sky, the leaf and the sunlight. So timid always of their -hereditary enemy through the ages, yet here the bolder spirits would -almost feed from your hand. Their charm of swift movement, of sudden -wings, seen so near, surprised and delighted. Their bright eager eyes -looked at you as friends. The calves running with their mothers in the -fields rubbed rough silken foreheads against you; and gentle -velvet-nosed cart-horses came to you over the gates asking for apples. -The children showed you their quaint treasures, their little play homes -in the trees and by the river. In their wood the Michaelmas daisies, -mauve and white and purple, were making a brave show, and scarlet -poppies, bad farmers but good beauties, bordered the pale gold stubble -fields. Everywhere was the fragrant pungent scent of autumn and the -glory of fruitful old Mother Earth yielding of her wondrous store to -those who love her and work for it. - -Mr. Pithey was fond of coming, and, still undaunted, made Ruth fresh -offers to buy Thorpe. - -“You’ve got the pick of the soil here,” he complained. “Now I’ve not a -rose in my place to touch those Rayon d’Or of yours. Second crop too! -And ain’t for want of the best manure, or choosing the right aspect. My -man knows what he’s about too. Better than yours does, I reckon. He was -head man to the Duke of Richborough, so he ought to.” - -Ruth’s eyes twinkled. - -“Try giving them away,” she suggested. - -“Givin’ ’em away!” Mr. Pithey glared at her. - -“Giving them away,” repeated Ruth firmly. “Now sit down here while I -tell you all about it.” - -Ruth herself was sitting on a heap of stubble by the side of the corn -field, with little Moira Kent tucked close to her side. - -Mr. Pithey had one of his little girls with him, and both were dressed -as usual in new and expensive clothing. They looked at Ruth’s heap of -stubble with evident suspicion, then the child advanced a step towards -her. - -“Are you going to tell us a story?” - -Ruth smiled. “If you like I will,” she said. - -The child’s rather commonplace pert little face broke into an answering -smile. She took out a very fine lace-bordered handkerchief and spread it -carefully on the ground. Then she sat down on it with her legs sticking -out in front of her. - -Mr. Pithey resigned himself to the inevitable, and let his well-groomed -heavy body gingerly down too. During the wet weather of July the little -blue-faced lady had contracted pneumonia and very nearly died. Racked -with anxiety, for family ties were dear to him, Mr. Pithey’s inflation -and self-importance had failed him, and between him and Ruth a queer -friendship had arisen. - -“She cared—she really cared,” he explained afterward to his wife. - -So Mr. Pithey showed himself to Ruth at his best, and though perhaps it -was not a very handsome best, the direct result was a row of cottages as -a thank-offering. - -“Once upon a time,” began Ruth, “there was a little Earth Elemental who -had made the most beautiful flower in all the world, or at least it -thought it was the most beautiful, so of course, for it, it _was_.” - -“What is an Earth Elemental?” asked Elaine Pithey. - -“The Earth Elementals are the fairies who help make the plants and -flowers.” - -“We don’t believe in fairies,” said Elaine primly. - -“She’s a bit beyond that sort of stuff,” added Mr. Pithey, looking at -the small replica of himself with pride. - -“Some people don’t,” answered Ruth politely, watching the little blue -butterflies among the pale gold stubble, with lazy eyes. Almost she -heard echoes of elfin laughter, high and sweet. - -“I’ve seen them,” Moira broke out very suddenly and to Ruth’s -astonishment. That Moira “saw” things she had little doubt, but even to -her the little lady was reticent. Something in the Puritan -self-complacence had apparently roused her in defence of her inner -world. - -“What are they like then?” asked Elaine, supercilious still, but with an -undercurrent of excitement plainly visible. - -“They’re different,” said Moira. “Some are like humming-birds, only -they’ve colours, not feathers, and some are like sweet-peas made of -starlight. But some of them are just green and brown—very soft.” - -“We took first prize for our sweet-peas at the flower show,” announced -Elaine suddenly and aggressively. - -“As big again as any other exhibit they were,” said Mr. Pithey, dusting -the front of his white waistcoat proudly. “You may beat us in roses, but -our sweet-peas are bigger, I’ll lay half a crown.” - -“Why don’t I see fairies any way, if you do?” asked Elaine, returning to -the attack now she had asserted her superiority. But Moira had withdrawn -into herself, bitterly repentant of her revelation. - -“Have you ever looked through a microscope?” Ruth asked, putting a -sheltering arm round the small figure beside her. - -Elaine looked at her suspiciously. - -“You mean there’s plenty I can’t see,” she said shrewdly. “But why don’t -I see fairies if she does?” - -Ruth smiled. “I am afraid as a rule they avoid us as much as possible. -You see, we human beings mostly kill and torture and destroy all the -things they love best.” - -“I don’t!” - -Ruth pointed to the tightly held bunch of dying flowers in the child’s -hand. - -“They’re only common poppies!” said Elaine contemptuously. - -Ruth took them from her, and, turning back the sheath of one of the -dying buds, looked at the perfect silken lining of it. - -“Some one took a lot of trouble over making that,” she said. “But -suppose you listen to my story.” Moira’s small hot hand crept into hers, -and she began again. - -“There was once a little Earth Elemental who had made the most beautiful -flower in the world. I think it was a crimson rose, and it had all the -summer in its scent. And the little Elemental wondered if it was -beautiful enough for the highest prize of all.” - -“At Battersea Flower Show?” asked Elaine. - -“No. The highest prize in the world of the Elementals is to serve. And -one day a child came and cut the rose very carefully with a pair of -scissors, and the Elemental was sad, for it had made the flower its home -and loved it very much. But the child whispered to the rose that it was -going into one of the dark places which men had made in the world, with -no sunshine, or summer, or joy, or beauty, to take them a message to say -that God’s world was still beautiful, and the sun and stars still shone, -and morning was still full of joy and evening of peace. Then the -Elemental was not sorry any more, for its rose had won the highest -prize.” - -Elaine’s Pithian armour had fallen from her; out of the little pert face -looked the soul of a child. She had lost her self-consciousness for the -moment. - -“And what became of the Elemental?” she asked. - -“The Elemental did not leave its home then. It went with it. And when -the rose had done its work and slipped away into the Fountain of all -Beauty, the Elemental slipped away with it too.” - -“Where is the Fountain of all Beauty?” - -“In the Heart of God.” - -Elaine looked disappointed. “Then it’s all an alle—gory, I s’pose.” - -“No, it’s quite true, or at least I believe it is. Mr. Pithey”—Ruth -turned on him and her grave eyes danced—“take a big bunch of your best -roses, a big bunch, mind, down to the Fairbridge Common Lodging House -for Women, in Darley Street, and tell the Elementals where you are -taking them. It will stir them up no end to give you better roses.” - -“The Common Lodging House!” Mr. Pithey was plainly aghast. “Why, they’d -think I was mad, and ’pon my word and honour I think you are—if you -don’t mind my saying so.” - -“Not a bit. I get told that nearly every day.” - -“I’ll tell the Elementals, Daddy, and you can take the roses, and then -we’ll see,” announced Elaine, who had been pondering the matter. - -Mr. Pithey regarded her with pride. “Practical that, eh?” he said. -“Well, we’ll think about it. But you’ll have to come along now or we’ll -be late for tea with mother. And as to the roses, I’ll beat you yet. -Elementals all nonsense! Dung—good rich dung—that’s what they want. You -wait till next year.” - -He shook hands warmly, and took his large presence away. - -Ruth sent Moira home to tea, and wandered up the hedgerow, singing to -her self, while Sarah and Selina hunted busily. On the terrace she found -Roger North. He looked worn and ill and bad tempered. It was some time -since he had been to see her. His wife’s jealousy of Ruth had culminated -in a scene and he had a dread of disturbing the peace of the farm. But -the silliness of the whole thing had irritated him, and he was worried -about Violet on whom the strange black cloud had descended again more -noticeably than ever. Riversley had gone to Scotland, writing him a -laconic note, “I’m better away—this is my address if you want me.” - -He drank his tea for the most part in silence, and when she had finished -hers Ruth left him and went about her work. North lit his pipe and sat -on smoking, while the two little dogs fought as usual for the possession -of a seat in his chair, edging each other out. And presently Bertram -Aurelius came staggering out of the front door and plump down on the -ground before him. His red hair shone like an aureole round his head and -he made queer and pleasant noises, gazing at North with friendly and -evident recognition. Larry came padding softly up from his favourite -haunts by the river and lay watching them with his wistful amber eyes. - -“Thank God for the blessed things that don’t talk,” said North. - -The deep lines on his face had smoothed out, his irritation subsided, he -no longer felt bad tempered. - -When Ruth came back he smiled at her. “Thank you, I’m better,” he said. -“When I arrived I wasn’t fit to ‘carry guts to a bear.’ You know -Marryat’s delightful story, of course? And how is the farm?” - -“Can’t you feel?” - -She stood in the attitude of one listening. And curiously and strangely -there came to North’s consciousness a something that all his senses -seemed to cognize and contract at once. It was not a sound, it was not a -vision, it was not a sensation, though it combined all three. Radiant -and sweet and subtle, and white with glory, it came and went in a flash. -Was it only a minute or eternity? - -“What was it?” His own voice sounded strange in his ears. - -Ruth smiled. “You felt it?” - -“I felt something. I believe you mesmerized me, you witch woman.” - -She shook her head. “I couldn’t make anyone feel that if I knew all the -arts in the world. Only yourself can find that for you.” - -“What was it, anyhow?” - -“I think”—she paused a moment—“I think it is getting into the Unity of -All.” - -“Where does the bad go to?” - -There was a moment’s silence between them. But the world of the farm was -alive with sound. The pigeons’ coo, the call of the cowman to his herd, -the chuckles of the baby, accompanied by the full evening chorus of -birds. - -“There isn’t any bad in there,” said Ruth. - -“Your farm is bewitched,” said North. “I might be no older than Bertram -Aurelius talking nonsense like this. Come down to earth, you foolish -woman. There’s a telegraph boy coming up the drive.” - -Ruth’s face clouded a little. “I have not got over the dread of -telegrams,” she said. “It takes one back to those dreadful days——” - -She shivered as they waited for the boy to reach them. He whistled as he -came, undisturbed by much clamour from Sarah and Selina; they were old -friends and he knew their ways. - -Ruth tore the envelope open, read the telegram, and handed it to North. -“May I come?” were its three short words, and it was signed “Violet -Riversley.” - -“You will have her?” said North. - -“Yes, of course.” Ruth penciled her answer on the prepaid form and -handed it to the boy. - -North heaved a sigh of relief. “It’s good of you. You know she has not -been well.” - -Ruth sat down and pointed to the other chair. - -“Tell me all you know. It may help.” - -North told her as well as he could. “It’s all so indefinite and -intangible,” he ended. “Sometimes I wonder if her mind is affected in -any way. From the shock Dick’s death was to her you know. That anyone -should be afraid of Vi! It seems ridiculous, remembering what she was. -She _isn’t herself_. That’s the only way I can describe it to you. Upon -my word sometimes lately I’ve almost believed she’s possessed by a -devil. But if she comes here—well, I don’t know why—but I think she will -get all right.” - -Ruth did not answer at first. She sat thinking, with her elbows on her -knees, her face hidden between her hands. - -That sense of danger to the farm had swept over her again. A warning as -of something impending, brooding; looming up like a great cloud on the -edge of her blue beautiful sky. Something strange and terrible was -coming, coming into her life and the life of the farm. And she could not -avert it, or refuse to meet it. Whatever it was it had to be met and -fought. Would it be conquered? For it was strong, terribly strong, and -it was helped by many. And while the moment lasted, Ruth felt small and -frightened and curiously alone. - -“What is the matter?” asked Roger North. His voice was anxious, and when -she looked up she met his eyes full of that pure and honest friendship -which is so good a thing, and so rare, between man and woman. Just so -might he often have looked at Dick Carey. - -She put out her hand to meet his, as a man might do on a bargain. “We -will do our best,” she said. - -And she knew that WE was strong. - - - - - CHAPTER XI - - -“Yes, I am quite satisfied with things on the whole,” said Lady Condor. -“Dear Roger, you need not snort. Of course _you_ are a pessimist, so -nice! One of the lucky people who never expect anything, so are never -disappointed. Or you always expect everything bad, is it? and you are -never disappointed, because you think everything is bad! It doesn’t -sound right somehow, but you know what I mean.” - -“Certainly! It is quite clear,” said North, with commendable gravity. - -They were both calling at Thorpe, one cold afternoon early in October. -Ruth had a big log fire burning in the grate, in the room which still -seemed to belong to Dick Carey. Its warmth mingled with the scent from -big bowls-full of late autumn roses, lent a pleasing illusion of summer. -Lady Condor, wonderful to behold in the very latest thing in early -autumn hats, on which every conceivable variety of dahlia seemed -gathered together, sat by the fire talking of many things. - -“So nice of you to understand!” she exclaimed, nodding at North -genially. “That is the charm of talking to some one with brains. But -where was I? Oh yes! I am quite satisfied with things, because I see the -end of this horrible adoration of money. The Pithians have far surpassed -my wildest hopes. It has become positively discreditable to be very -wealthy. At last everyone begins to realize how truly vulgar has been -their idea. I have always resented this kow-towing down to money. It -gets the wrong people in everywhere, and no wonder the country goes to -the dogs, as my poor dear father used to say. Now why have we got Dunlop -Rancid as our member? Because he has brains to help govern? Certainly -not! He is our member because his father made a large fortune in -buttons—or was it bones?—perhaps it was bone buttons. But something like -that. And he subscribed largely to the party funds, so he represents us, -and when he took me into dinner last week he didn’t know where King -Solomon’s Islands were. Nor did I! But of course that was different. My -dear”—she looked suddenly at Violet Riversley—“why on earth don’t you -make Fred stand for Parliament? He has a fund of common sense which -would be invaluable to the country, and he has only to write a big -cheque for the party funds and there he will be.” - -Violet Riversley was curled—almost crunched—up in the armchair opposite -her Ladyship. She lifted her head when directly questioned and laughed a -little. It was not a nice laugh. It fell across the warm sweet-scented -room like a note from a jarred string. - -“Why should one bother?” she said. “The country is welcome to go to the -dogs for all I care. I’m sorry for the dogs, that’s all.” - -There was a little silence, a sense of discomfort. The bitterness -underlying the words made them forceful—of account. Lady Condor felt -they were in bad taste, and North got up, frowning irritably, and moved -away to the window. Violet, however, was paying no attention to either -of them. She was looking at Ruth, with her golden eyes full of something -approaching malice. - -“You go on playing with your little bits of kindness and your toys, and -think everything in the garden is lovely!” She laughed again, that -little hateful laugh. “And what do you suppose is really going on all -the time! You human beings are the biggest fraud on the face of the -earth!” - -Ruth started a little at the pronoun. Her serenity was disturbed; she -looked worried. - -“You talk of righteousness, and justice, and brotherhood, and all the -rest of the rotten humbug,” Violet Riversley went on, “and hold up your -hands in horror when other people transgress against your paper ideals. -But every nation is out for what it can make, every people will wade -through oceans of blood and torture and infamy if it thinks it can reap -any benefit from it. And why not? Survival of the fittest, that is -nature’s law. But why can’t you say so? Instead of all this hypocrisy -and pretence of high morals. You make me sick! What possible right have -you to howl at the Germans? You are all the same—England and France and -America—the whole lot of you. You have all taken by force or fraud. You -have all driven out by arms and plots weaker peoples than yourselves. I -don’t blame you for that—weaker people should go—it is the law of -nature. But don’t go round whining about how good you are to them. You -are just about as good to them as you are to your animals or anything -else weaker than yourselves. Why can’t you have the courage of your -brutality, and your lust, and your strength. It might be worth something -then. You might be great. As it is you are only contemptible—the biggest -fraud on the face of creation.” - -She faltered suddenly, and stopped. Ruth’s eyes had met hers steadily, -all the time she had been speaking; and now her hostess spoke slowly and -quietly, as one speaks to a little child when one wants to impress -something upon it. - -“Why do you talk like that, Violet Riversley?” she asked. “You know you -do not think like that yourself.” - -North, standing by the window, watched, with the fingers of a horrible -anxiety gripping him. His daughter’s face in the leaping firelight -looked like a twisted distorted mask. Lady Condor, open-mouthed, -comically perplexed, stared from one to the other, for once speechless. - -“It is the truth.” Violet Riversley uttered the words slowly, it seemed -with difficulty. - -“_You_ do not think so,” answered Ruth, still as one who would impress a -fact on a child. Then she rose from her chair. “Come!” she said, with a -strange note of command in her voice, “I know you will all like to walk -round the place before tea.” - -Violet passed her hand across her eyes, much as a person will do when -waking from the proverbial forty winks. She stood up, and shivered a -little. - -Ruth was talking, after a fashion unusual to her, almost forcing the -conversation into certain channels. “Yes, of course, you are very right, -Lady Condor,” she said. “No man can be valued truly until you see what -he can do just with his brain and his character and his own two hands. -Now I can give Violet a really fine character for work. As a matter of -fact I am filled with jealousy. She can milk quicker than I can. I think -because she learnt when she was quite young. Mr. Carey taught her.” - -“Poor dear Dick! He did teach the children such queer things,” said Lady -Condor, allowing herself to be assisted out of her comfortable chair by -the fire without protest. “But who was it learnt to milk? Some one quite -celebrated. Was it Marie Antoinette? Or was it Queen Elizabeth? It must -be just milking time; let us go, dear Violet, and see you milk. It will -interest us so much,” she added, with that amazing tact which no one -except those who knew her best ever realized. - -Violet followed them into the garden without speaking. Her eyes had a -curious vacant look; she moved like a person walking in her sleep. - -Lady Condor took Ruth’s arm and dropped behind the others on the way to -the farmyard. “My dear,” she said, “I don’t know what’s the matter, but -I see you wish to create a diversion. Poor dear Violet, I have never -heard her talk such nonsense before. Rather unpleasant nonsense too, -wasn’t it? Can it be she has fallen in love with one of those dreadful -Socialist creatures? I believe they can sometimes be quite attractive, -and the young women of the present day are so _outré_, you never know -who or what they will take up with. Besides, I believe they wash -nowadays. The Socialists I mean, of course. In my day they thought it -showed independence to appear dirty and without any manners. So funny, -was it not? But I met one the other day who was charming. Quite good -looking and well dressed, even his boots. Or, let me see, was he a -Theosophist? There are so many ‘ists’ now, it is difficult not to get -them mixed up. But where was I? Oh yes—dear Violet! Where can she have -got those queer ideas from? I do hope she is not attracted by some -‘ist.’ I so often notice that when a woman gets queer opinions there is -either a man, or the want of a man, at the bottom of it. And it cannot -be the latter with dear Violet. Ah, now here we are. Don’t the dear -things look pretty? And you have such a lovely milking shed for them. -Violet, you really must show me how you milk. I should like to begin -myself. But don’t you have to lean your head against the cow?—and it -would ruin my dahlias.” - -“Come and see the real dahlias instead,” said Violet, laughing. “Yours -are the most wonderful imitation I have ever seen. I don’t believe you -could tell them from the real ones. Where did you get them? Madame -Elsa?” - -Her voice and manner were wholly natural again. North looked palpably -relieved, but when his daughter had disappeared with Lady Condor towards -the flower garden he turned anxiously to Ruth. - -“Does she often talk like that?” he asked. “It is so unlike her—so -absolutely unlike—” He stopped, his eyes searched Ruth’s, and for a -moment there was silence. “What is it?” he asked. - -They were wandering now, aimlessly, back to the house. - -“If I were to tell you what I think,” said Ruth slowly, “you would call -me mad.” - -“You don’t mind that.” He spoke impatiently. “Tell me.” - -“Not yet—wait. Did anything strike you when she burst out like that just -now?” - -North did not answer. He had ridden over and still held his whip in his -right hand. He struck the fallen rustling leaves backwards and forwards -with it as he walked, with the sharp whish expressive of annoyance and -irritation. - -“You women are enough to drive a man crazy between you,” he said. - -This being plainly no answer to her question Ruth simply waited. - -“How often has she talked in that strain?” North asked at length. - -“Twice only, before to-day.” - -“And you—call her back to herself—as you did just now?” - -“Yes.” - -They had reached the terrace, and he stood facing her. He searched her -eyes with his as he had done before. - -“It is not possible,” he said, but the words lacked conviction. - -Ruth said nothing. Her eyes were troubled, but they met his steadily. - -Then at last North told her. “It might have been Karl von Schäde -speaking,” he said. - -“Come indoors,” she said gently. - -He followed her into the warm rose-scented room and sat down by the -fire, shivering. She threw more logs upon it, and the flames shot up, -many-hued, rose and amber, sea-green and heliotrope. - -“Tell me what you think, what you know,” said North. - -Ruth looked into the leaping mass of flame, her face very grave. Her -voice was very low, hardly above a whisper. - -“I think the hatred in which Karl von Schäde passed into the next world -has found a physical instrument through which to manifest here,” she -said. - -“And that instrument is—good God!” North’s voice was sharp with horror. -“It isn’t possible—the whole thing is ridiculous. But go on. I heard -to-day. That has happened twice before you say. You suspected then, of -course. Is there anything else?” - -And even as he spoke, things, little things, that Violet had said and -done, came back to him. The shrinking of the dogs, his own words—“She is -not herself”—took on new meaning. - -“There is a blight upon the farm since she came,” said Ruth. “The joy -and peace are not here as they were. Perhaps you would not feel it, -coming so seldom.” - -“Yes, I noticed it. But Violet has not made for peace of late. I thought -it was just her being here.” - -“The children don’t care to come as they did, and there have been -quarrels. The creatures are not so tame. Nothing is doing quite so well. -These are little things, but taken all together they make a big whole.” - -“Anyway it’s not fair on you,” said North shortly. “The place is too -good to spoil, and you——” - -In that moment, the supreme selfishness with which he and his had used -her for their own benefit, as some impersonal creature, that could not -be weary or worried or overtaxed, came home to him. He felt suddenly -ashamed. - -Ruth smiled at him. “No,” she said. “The farm, I, you, are all just -instruments too, as she has become, poor child. Only we are instruments -on the other side.” Her voice dropped, and he leant forward to catch the -words. “Dick Carey’s instruments; we cannot fail him.” - -“Then you think——” - -“See!” She held herself together, after her queer fashion, as a child -does when thinking hard. “You remember in the letter about von Schäde, -when Mr. Carey wrote: ‘he died cursing England, the English, me and mine -and Thorpe. It was like the evil of this war incarnate.’ Do you think -that force of emotion perished with the physical, or do you think the -shattering of the physical left it free? And remember too, Karl von -Schäde had studied those forces, had learnt possibly something of how to -handle them. Then Violet, Violet whom he had loved, after his own -fashion, and to whom he would therefore be drawn——” - -“But if there is any justice, here or there,” broke in North, “why -should she become the brute’s instrument?” - -“Because she too was filled with hate. Only so could it have been -possible. Think for a minute and you will see.” - -In his youth, North had been afflicted with spasms of stammering. One -seized him now. It seemed part of the horror which was piercing the -armour in which he had trusted, distorting with strange images that -lucid brain of his, so that all clear train of thought seemed to desert -him. He struggled painfully for a few moments before speech returned to -him. - -“D—damn him. D—damn him. Damn him,” he said. - -Ruth sprang up, and laid her hand across his mouth. Fear was in her -eyes. He had never thought to see her so moved, she who was always so -calm, so secure. - -“For pity’s sake stop,” she said; “if you feel like that you must go. -You must not come here again. You must keep away from her. Oh, don’t you -see you are helping him? I ought not to have told you; I did not realize -it might fill you with hate too.” - -“I’m sorry,” said North harshly. “I’m afraid anything else is beyond -me.” - -He had given up all attempt to insist that it was impossible. The -uncanny horror had him in its grip. He felt that he had bidden farewell -to common sense. - -Ruth grew imperative. “For God’s sake, try!” she said. “Don’t hate. -Don’t curse him like that. Don’t you see—you cannot overcome hate with -hate; you can only add to it. I find it so hard myself not to feel as -you do. But oh, don’t you see, all his life Dick Carey must have loved, -in a small far-off way of course, as God loves. And everything that -lived and moved and breathed came within the scope of his tenderness and -his pity. And That which was himself did not perish with the physical -either. That too is free—free and fighting. You can only overcome hate -with love. But on a physical plane, even God Himself can only work -through physical instruments.” - -She stopped, and looked at North imploringly. - -“I have your meaning,” he said more gently. Her sudden weakness moved -him indescribably. - -“And the worst of it is,” she went on, “I have lately lost that sense of -being in touch with him. You remember how I told you about it. It came, -I thought, through us both loving the farm, but indeed I did know, in -some strange way, what he wanted done and when he was pleased. You will -remember I told you. If I could feel still what was best to do, but it -is like struggling all alone in the dark! Only one thing I know, I hold -to. You cannot overcome hate with hate. You can only overcome hate with -love. But the love is going out of the farm. It was so full of it—so -full—I could hear it singing always in my heart. But now there is -something awful here. I can sense it in the night, I can feel it in all -sorts of ways. The peace has gone that was so beautiful, the radiance -and the joy. And always now I have instead the sense of great struggle, -and some evil thing that threatens.” - -“It is not fair on you or on the farm,” said North, very gently now. -“Violet ought to leave.” - -“I don’t know. Sometimes I have thought so—and yet—I don’t know. I am -working in the dark. I know so little really of these things—we all know -so little.” - -“Her presence is injuring the farm, or so it seems. Indeed, it must be -so. A human being full of hate and misery is no fit occupant for any -home. Also we have no right——” - -Ruth looked at him, and again he felt ashamed. “I beg your pardon,” he -said. - -“We have the sort of right that you acknowledge, I know, but I don’t -think we should claim it.” - -“She came to me, or rather, I think, to the farm, to the nearest she -could get to him. Or again, it might be the other force driving her. I -don’t know. But I can’t send her away. I think of it sometimes, but I -know I can’t.” - -“What is she like on the whole?” - -“Dull and moody sometimes, wandering about the place, hardly speaking at -all. Once or twice she stayed in her room all day and refused all food. -But at other times she will follow me about wherever I go, clinging to -me like a child, eager to help. Sometimes she will commit some horrible -little cruelty, and be ashamed of it afterwards and try to hide it. If -she could speak of it at all, confide in anyone it would be better I -think. But she does not seem able to.” - -North sat staring into the fire with haggard eyes, the deep lines of his -face very visible as the flames leapt and fell. - -“It will send her out of her mind if it goes on,” he said at length. - -Ruth did not answer. Her silence voiced her own exceeding dread; it -seemed to North terrible. If she should fail he knew that it would be -one of the worst things which had ever happened to him. In that moment -he knew how much she had come to stand for in his mind. He kept his eyes -upon the fire and did not look at her. He dreaded to see that fear again -in her eyes, dreaded to see her weak. It was as if the evil of the world -was the only powerful thing after all. And he knew now that he had begun -to hope, things deep down in his consciousness had begun to stir, to -come to life. - -But presently Ruth spoke again, and, looking up, he met the old -comforting friendliness of her smile. Her serenity had returned. Her -face looked white and very worn, but it was no longer marred with fear. - -“I am sorry,” she said, “and I am ashamed to have been so foolish, to -have let myself think for a moment that we should fail. Hate is very -strong and very terrible; but love is stronger and very beautiful. Let -us only make ourselves into fit instruments for its power. We _must_. If -Karl von Schäde lasts beyond, so too, more surely still, does Dick -Carey. Why should we be afraid? Will you give to Karl von Schäde the -instruments for his power and deny them to the friend you loved? And is -it so difficult after all? Think what he must have suffered, his poor -body broken into pieces, his mind full of anguish that his country was -ruined, beaten, and full of the horrors he had seen and which he -attributed to us. Think of those last awful hours of his, and have you -at least no pity? Try for it, reach out for it, get yourself into that -mind which you knew as Dick Carey. Take Karl van Schäde into it too in -your thought.” - -She stopped, her voice broken, but the light that shone in her face was -like a star. - -“I will try,” said Roger North. - -In the pause that followed the approaching clatter of Lady Condor’s -re-entry was almost a relief. She brought them back into the regions of -ordinary everyday things. Violet, too, was laughing, getting more like -herself. The tension relaxed. - -“Miss Seer, if I had planted my dahlias among yours, really you would, -never have found it out. They are an amazing imitation—quite amazing. -Condor thinks my taste in hats too loud. But if men had their way we -should all dress in black. So depressing! Tea? I should love it. But no, -I cannot stay. I have a duty party at home. So dull, but Condor is -determined that Hawkhurst shall stand for the Division now he is safely -tucked away in the other House himself. All the old party business is -beginning again, just as if there had been no war, when we were all -shrieking ‘No more party politics.’ ‘No more hidden policies.’ So like -us, isn’t it? I shall put Caroline Holmes in the chair at all the -women’s meetings. She does so love it—and making speeches. Yes. She is -to marry her Major this autumn, but she assures me it will not ‘curtail -her activities.’ Curtail! so nice! But where was I? Oh yes, my -tea-party, and I would so much rather stay here. I remember I was just -going to be clever, and what happened? Oh, we went out to see Violet -milk, and we saw the dahlias instead. Good-bye. Good-bye. And come soon -to see me.” - -So Lady Condor conveyed herself, talking steadily, outside the -sitting-room, with Roger North in attendance carrying her various -belongings. But as she progressed across the hall, and into her waiting -car, she fell upon a most unusual silence. It was not until she was well -settled in that she spoke again. - -“I don’t like Violet’s looks, Roger,” she said then, her shrewd old eyes -very kindly. “Why are there no babies? There should always be a nursery -full of babies for the first ten years of a woman’s married life. And -where is Fred? You should speak to him about it.” - -She waved a friendly hand at him, various articles falling from her lap -as she did so, and the car rolled away. - -North gave a little snort of bitter laughter as he turned back into the -house. Fred? Fred was eating his heart out, catching salmon in Scotland; -and Violet was at Thorpe, obsessed by a dead man’s hatred. He was filled -with all a man’s desire to cut the whole wretched business summarily, -but the thing had got him in its devilish meshes, and there was no -escape. He stayed to tea because he felt he must help Ruth, and yet with -the uneasy consciousness that he was doing rather the reverse. Violet -had fallen into one of the moody silences so common to her now, and, -after she had had her tea, went back to her chair by the fire and a -book. Ruth and Roger talked of the farm intermittently and with a sense -of restraint, and presently Violet tossed her book on to the opposite -chair and left the room. - -“What is she reading?” asked Roger. - -He crossed to the fire and picked the book up. It was _The Road to -Self-Knowledge_, by Rudolph Steiner, and on the flyleaf, neatly written -in a stiff small writing, “K. von Schäde.” Then Roger suddenly saw red. -The logs still burnt brightly in the grate, and with a concentrated -disgust, so violent that it could be felt, he dropped the book into the -heart of the flames and rammed it down there with the heel of his riding -boot. The smell of burnt leather filled the room before he lifted it, -and watched, with grim satisfaction, the printed leaves curl up in the -heat. - -He made no apology for the act, though presumably the book was now -Ruth’s property. - -“That will show you just how much help I’m likely to be,” he said. -“Always supposing that you are right. And now I’d better go.” - -Ruth smiled at him. The child in man will always appeal to a woman. -“Yes, go,” she said. “I will let you know if there is anything to tell.” - -North rode home with all the little demons of intellectual pride and -prejudice, of manlike contempt for the intangible, whispering to him, -“You fool.” - -His wife made a scene after dinner about his visit to the farm. She -resented Violet having gone there. It had aroused her jealousy, and her -daughter came under the lash of her tongue equally with her husband. -Then North lost his temper, bitterly and completely; they said horrible -things to each other, things that burn in, and corrode and fester after, -as human beings will when they utterly lose control of themselves. It -ended, as it always did, in torrents of tears on Mrs. North’s side, -which drove North into his own room ashamed, disgusted, furious with her -and himself. - -He opened the windows to the October night air. It was keen, with a hint -of frost. The thinned leaves showed the delicate tracery of branches, -black against the pale moonlit sky. The stars looked a very long way -off. Utterly sick at heart, filled with self-contempt for his outbreak -of temper, struggling in a miasma of disgust with life and all things in -it, he leant against the window-sill; the keen cool wind seemed to -cleanse and restore. - -A little well-known whine roused him, to find Vic scratching against his -knee. He picked her up, and felt the small warm body curl against his -own. She looked at him as only a dog can look, and, carrying her, he -turned towards the dying embers of the fire and his easy chair. Then he -stopped, remembering, noticing, for the first time, that Larry had not -come back with him. - - - - - CHAPTER XII - - -North did not visit the farm again. He sent Ruth a brief line: “I am -better away.” That he made no apology and expressed no thanks gave her -the measure of his trust in her and her friendship. - -She answered his brief communication by one equally brief: “Try not to -think of it at all if you cannot think the right way.” - -So North buried himself in his work, forced and drove himself to think -of nothing else. Slept at night from sheer weariness, and grew more -haggard and more silent day by day. At least if he could not be on the -side of the angels he would not help the devils. - -The month was mostly wild and wet, with here and there days of supreme -beauty. It was on one of these, the last day of October, that Ruth and -Violet went, as they often did, for a long tramp through the wet woods -and over the wind-swept hills towards the sea. The atmosphere was that -exquisite clearness which often follows much rain. The few leaves -remaining on the trees, of burnished golden-brown, came falling in soft -rustling showers with each gust of the fresh strong wind. They had -walked far, so far that they had come by hill and dale as the crow flies -to where the fall of the ground came so abruptly as to hide the middle -distance, and the edge of the downs, broken by its low dark -juniper-bushes, stood before them, clear-cut, against the great sweep of -coastline far away beneath. Pale gold and russet, the flat lands -stretched, streaked with the sullen silver of sea-bound river and -stream, to where, like a hard steel-blue line on the horizon, lay the -sea itself. And behind that straight line, black and menacing, and -touched with a livid ragged edge, rolled up the coming of a great storm. - -It made a noble picture, and Ruth watched it for a few moments, her face -responding, answering to its beauty. She loved these landscapes of -England, loved them not only with her present self, but also with some -far-away depth of forgotten experience. And it seemed to her that she -loved with them also those “unknown generations of dead men” to whom -they had been equally dear. For these few moments, as she looked out -over the edge of the downs, she forgot the haunting evil which was -darkening all her days, forgot everything but the beauty of great space, -of the wild rushing wind, the freedom—the escape. - -Odd bits of quotations came to her, as they always did in these moments; -one, more insistent than the others, sang, put itself into music, clear, -bell-like, mysterious: - - “When I have reached my journey’s end, - And I am dead and free.” - -And in that moment her sense of being in touch with Dick Carey came back -to her. Came flooding in like a great tide of help and encouragement and -power. - - “And I am dead and free.” - -And yet people were afraid of death! - -The great winds came up from the sea across the earth-scented downs, -shouting as they came. She loved them, and the big dark masses of cloud. -She could have shouted too, for joy of that great sense of freedom, of -power, of control, because she was one with those magnificent forces of -nature. In her too was that strength and freedom which bowed only to the -One who is All. - -The blood tingled in her veins; in the full sweep of the wind she was -warm—warm with life. She forgot Violet Riversley cowering at her side. -Forgot the little dogs crouching, tucked against her feet, and swept for -one wild moment out into the immensity of a great freedom. Then, -suddenly, the steel-blue line of sea broke into white, the storm-clouds -met and crashed, and lightning, like the sharp thrust of a living sword, -struck across the downs, struck and struck again. Heaven and earth and -the waters under the earth shuddered and reeled in the grip of the -storm, and Violet Riversley, screaming with terror, fell on her knees by -Ruth, clasping her, crying: - -“Keep it away from me! Keep it away! God! I can’t bear it any longer! -Keep it away!” - -And at her cry all the motherhood in Ruth’s nature, never concentrated -only on the few, leapt into full life and splendour, spread its white -wings of protection. And away and beyond her own love and pity she felt -that of another. Away and above her own fight was a greater fight, -infinitely greater. She picked the girl up into the shelter of her arms, -and her whole heart cried out in a passion of pity. She said odd little -foolish words of tenderness, as mothers will, for the form she held was -as light as that of a little child; just a shell it felt, nothing more. - -And then, suddenly, the rain fell in one blinding rushing flood, -drenching the little group to the skin, blotting out everything with its -torrential flow. - -“Ah, look!” said Ruth, almost involuntarily. A great flash of light had -broken through from the west, and against the violet black sky the rain -looked like a silver wall. It was amazingly, even terribly, beautiful. - -“We are in for a proper ducking,” she said, trying to regain the normal. -“Wet to the skin already, all of us. And Sarah and Selina frightened to -death, the little cowards! You’d better keep moving, dear. Come along.” - -It seemed a weary way home. Never had Ruth been more thankful for the -presence of Miss McCox in her household. Fires, hot baths, hot coffee, -all were ready; and she dried even Selina, though surreptitiously, -behind the kitchen door that none might behold her weakness, with her -own hand. She put Violet to bed after her hot bath, and ordered her to -stay there. Nothing but asserting herself forcibly kept Ruth from a like -fate. - -“Them as will be foolish, there is no reasoning with,” said Miss McCox, -with dignity, and retreated to the kitchen muttering like the storm. - -After a lull, it had returned again with renewed force. The old house -rocked as the great wind hurled itself upon it, shrieking against the -shuddering windows as if demanding admittance. Sheets of wild rain broke -upon the panes, and every now and then the thunder crashed and broke and -rent. After her dinner Ruth went up and sat by the log fire in Violet’s -room. The pillow on which she lay was hardly whiter than the girl’s -face. Her great gold eyes gazed out into the shadows blankly. Very small -and young and helpless she looked, and Ruth’s heart ached for her. She -chatted on cheerfully, as she wove a woollen garment for some little -child of France with her ever-busy fingers; chatted of the little things -about the farm; told little quaint stories of the animals and flowers. -Had she known it, just so had Dick Carey often talked, in the winter -evenings over the fire, to the listening children. But Violet Riversley -just lay still, gazing into the shadows, taking little notice. She made -no allusion to her violent attack of terror out in the storm, and it -grew on Ruth uncannily and horribly that the girl who had clung to her, -crying for help, had slipped away from her again, somewhere out into the -darkness and silence, torn from all known anchorage. - -The little dogs had remained in their baskets downstairs; only Larry had -followed her up, and lay across the doorway, his nose upon his paws, his -eyes gleaming watchfully out of the shadow. Every now and then, when the -shattering wind with increasing violence struck against the house again -and again and wailed away like a baffled spirit, he growled in his -throat as at a visible intruder. - -It was late before Ruth gathered her work up and said good-night. She -was honestly tired in mind and body, but an unaccountable reluctance to -leave Violet held her. And yet the girl was apparently less restless, -more normal, than usual. Tired out, like herself, surely she would -sleep. Her terror out in the storm seemed entirely to have gone. - -So Ruth reasoned to herself as she went downstairs. - -In the sitting-room the little dogs slept soundly in their baskets. The -fire still burned, a handful of warm red ashes. The whole place seemed -full of peace and comfort, in marked contrast to the rush and wail of -the storm outside. Ruth crossed to the lamp to see that it was in order, -and moved about putting little tidying touches to the room, as women do -the last thing before they go upstairs to bed. She was fully alive to -the fact that the three weeks of Violet’s visit had been a heavy strain -on her, mentally and bodily. It would be quite easy to imagine things, -to let this knowledge that she was fighting steadily, almost fiercely, -against some awful unseen force overwhelm her, to drive her beyond the -limits of what was sanely and reasonably possible. With her renewed -sense of awareness of Dick Carey’s presence had come an indefinable -yearning tenderness for Violet Riversley which had been lacking before -in her kindly interest and friendship. To give way to fear or dread was -the surest way to fail in both. - -She looked out at the night. By the light streaming from the window she -could see a streak of rain-washed lawn, and, dimly, beyond, the tortured -branches of trees bowed and strained under the whip of the wind. She -drew all the forces of her mind to the centre of her being. - -“Lord of the heights and depths, Who dwellest in all the Forms that Thou -hast made.” - -She let the blind fall into its place and moved back into the room. -Larry had settled himself in the big armchair which had been Dick -Carey’s. She stooped to stroke his head, and he looked at her with eyes -that surely understood. - -“Lord of the heights and depths, Who dwellest in all the Forms that Thou -hast made.” - -She kept the words and the thought in her mind quite steadily. Almost as -soon as she lay down she passed into sleep, and dreamt—dreamt that she -was walking in the buttercup field with Dick Carey and it was early -morning in the heart of the springtime. And he told her many things, -many and wonderful and beautiful things, which afterwards she tried to -recall and could not. And then, suddenly, he was calling to her from a -distance, and she was broad wide awake sitting up in bed, and Larry in -the room below barked fiercely, then was silent. - -The next instant she had thrown her dressing-gown over her shoulders and -was running bare-footed across the landing and down the stairs. Midway -across the big old hall she stopped dead, for on her had fallen, swiftly -and terribly, that old horror of her small childhood, a sense of -all-pervading blackness. It gripped her as forcibly as it had done in -those far-off days. Again she was a small utterly helpless thing in its -hideous clutch. The light streaming from under the sitting-room door -accentuated the blackness, gleamed evilly, assumed a sinister and -terrible importance. - -Almost she turned and fled—fled out of the door behind her into the -storm-swept night, away to the clean air, to the darkness which was full -of beauty and healing. Not this—this that stifled, and soiled, and -buried. Away—anywhere—anyhow—from what was behind that flickering evil -light, which made the hideous blackness visible as well as tangible. - -Almost, but not quite. That which the long years of patience and -endurance had built into her, held. Dick Carey had called to her. What -if he were in there, fighting, fighting against odds. For the world was -full of this Evil let loose, the vibrations became palpable, engulfed -her, beat her down. For a moment that seemed endless she fought for more -than physical life. - -Then she moved forward again, and it was as in dreams when feet are -leaden-weighted and we move them with an effort that seems past our -strength. But she did not hesitate again. Steadily she opened the door. -Dragging those leaden feet she went in and closed it behind her. - -A blast of hot air met her, insufferably hot. Some one had made up the -fire again. Piled high with logs it burnt fiercely. The room was in -disorder. In the far corner by the south window the little dogs lay -cringing with terror, trembling, while before them Larry crouched, his -white fangs bare, his lips lifted till the gums showed, his blazing eyes -fixed on the figure in the centre of the room—the figure of Violet -Riversley. - -Before her, piled on the floor, were various articles, books and papers, -gathered together and heaped in the shape of a bonfire. At her feet lay -the bronze lamp. In her right hand she held the wick, still alight. -Curiously, the light from the blazing logs played on the long folds of -her white gown. Almost it seemed as if she were clothed in flame. - -It was more subconsciously than in any other way that Ruth took in these -details, for every sense she had—and all had become most acutely -alive—concentrated on the terrific and hideous fact that, enveloping -Violet, encasing her as it were, was a great outstanding Figure or -Presence. Fear gripped her to the soul like ice. She could have screamed -with very terror, but she was beyond the use of the body, beyond, it -seemed, all help. For the entity that was not Violet Riversley, very -surely not Violet Riversley, but a being infinitely stronger and more -powerful, looked at her with the eyes of a soul self-tortured, -self-maimed, and she saw in all their terrific hideousness Hate and -Revenge incarnate. - -And as she looked a worse horror gripped her. The Thing was trying to -master her, to make her its instrument, even as it had made Violet -Riversley. The very hair of her head rose upon it as she felt her grip -on herself loosening, weakening. Her individuality seemed to desert her, -to disintegrate, to disappear. - -It might have been a moment; it might have been an eternity. - -Then, as from a long way off, she heard Larry give a strange cry. -Something between a howl and a bay its vibration stirred the air through -miles. The cry of the wolf to the pack for help. The old dog had stood -up, his jowl thrust forward, his body tense, ready for the spring. - -With a final desperate effort, which seemed to tear her soul out of her -body, Ruth cried too—cried to all she had ever thought or dreamed or -held to of Good; and in that moment her awareness of Dick Carey suddenly -became acute. Afterwards, in her ordinary consciousness, Ruth always -found it impossible to recapture, or in any way adequately to remember, -the sensations of the next overwhelming moment. Not only were they -beyond speech they seemed beyond the grip of ordinary thought. - -After that moment of supreme terror, of incredible struggle, with the -acute return of her awareness of Dick Carey, with some crash of warring -elements and forces, mingling as part of and yet distinct from the -raging of the outside storm, she regained Herself. Was out as it were, -in illimitable space, fighting shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, one -with Dick Carey. One, too, with some mighty force, fighting gloriously, -triumphantly, surely; fighting through all the Ages, through all the -Past, on through all the Future, beyond Space and beyond Time. - -Then, suddenly, she was carried out—in no other way could she describe -it afterwards—out of the stress and the battle on a wave of very pure -and perfect compassion into the heart of a radiance before which even -the radiance of the fullest sunlight would be as a rush candle. And into -that infinite radiance came too the deadly hatred, the unspeakable -malice, the craving for revenge, the bitterness, the rebellion—came and -was swallowed up, purified, transmuted. In a great and glorious moment -she knew that the Force was one and the same, and that it is the motive -power behind which makes it Good or Evil. - -Then the outside storm concentrated and fell in one overwhelming crash. -The house rocked, and rocked again. Ruth, mechanically stepping forward, -caught in her arms a body which fell against her almost like a paper -shell. Very swiftly she carried it out into the hall. Her normal senses -were suddenly again acute; they worked quickly. And on the stair, -infinitely to her relief, appeared the shining polished countenance of -Miss McCox. Her attire defied description, and in her hands she held, -one in each, at the carry, the proverbial poker and tongs. Behind her -came Gladys, open-mouthed, dishevelled, likewise fully armed, and -accomplishing a weird sound which appeared to be a combination of -weeping and giggling. - -Ruth struggled with delightful and inextinguishable laughter, which she -felt might very easily degenerate into hysterics, for she was shaking in -every limb. - -“No, no; it is not burglars!” she said. “Put those things down, and take -Mrs. Riversley. She has been walking in her sleep, and I am afraid has -fainted. You know what to do. I must telephone the doctor.” - -In her mind was the immediate necessity of dealing with that sinister -bonfire before it could work damage, also before any eyes but her own -should see it. - -The lighted wick had fallen on to papers sprinkled with the oil, and -already, when she returned to the sitting-room, little tongues of flame -were alight and a thin pillar of smoke crowned its apex. She dealt -swiftly with it with the heavy rugs luckily to her hand, and when the -creeping fire was crushed out and stifled she put the injured remains of -treasured books and ornaments hurriedly into the drawers of the big -bookcase. The damage to the carpet there was no possibility of -concealing, and after a moment of thought she took one of the charred -logs, black and burnt out, and scattered it where the pile had been. -Then she took the wick in which the light still burned, true symbol of -the Life Eternal, and restored it and the lamp to its own place, drew -back the curtains, and opened the great window looking south. - -It was early morning. The storm was riding away in broken masses of -heavy cloud. Drenched and dim, and covered with a rising silver mist, -the racked world rested in a sudden calm. But the storm had left its -traces in the broken branches strewing lawn and garden and field, and -across the pathway a great elm-tree, snapped half-way up the main trunk, -lay with its proud head prostrate, blocking the main entrance. - -The coolness of the dawn touched like a benediction Ruth’s tired face -and black and bruised hands. For a few moments she stood looking up at -the washed sky, the fading stars, while the dogs nestled against her, -craving for notice. A great sense of life and happiness came flowing -into her, flowing like a mighty tide with the wind behind it, and she -knew that all was well. - -She would have given a good deal to sit down and cry, but there was much -to be done. That morning passed like a hurried nightmare, the whole -house pervaded with that painful agitation which the shadow of death, -coming suddenly, brings, for Violet Riversley was desperately and -dangerously ill. She was in a high fever, wildly delirious, and Ruth -found it impossible to leave her. Miss McCox took command in her -absence, and moved about house and farm a very tower of strength in -emergency, while Gladys haunted her footsteps, crying at every word, as -is the manner of her kind in such moments. In the sitting-room, Roger -North and his wife, summoned by telephone, waited while the doctor made -his examination. The room had been stiffly set in order by Miss McCox’s -swift capable hands. Over the scorched and blackened patch on the carpet -she had set a table, nothing but a general air of bareness and smell of -burning remained to hint of anything unusual. Both windows were opened -wide to the chill early morning air, and Mrs. North crouched by the fire -shivering. - -She was utterly unnerved and overcome. The message had arrived just as -she was dressing. She had swallowed a hurried breakfast, when, quite -strangely, it did not matter that the coffee was not so good as usual, -and the half-dozen notes and letters from various friends were of no -real concern whatever. She had been engaged to lunch at the Condors. In -the afternoon she had promised to give away the prizes at a Village Work -Show. And into all this pleasant everyday life had come, shattering it -all into little bits, the sudden paralyzing fact that Violet had been -taken dangerously ill during the night. - -She and her husband had driven over in the little car to find the doctor -still in the sick-room. Ruth was also there, and questioning Miss McCox -was much like extracting information from the Sphinx. - -“I always disliked that woman; she has no more heart than a stone,” Mrs. -North complained tearfully. “And I do think she ought to tell Miss Seer -we have arrived. It is dreadful to be kept away from one’s own child -like this and not know what is happening.” - -“Eliot will be down soon, I expect,” said North. He was wandering -aimlessly, restlessly, about the room, for as the time lengthened his -nerves too grew strained with waiting. What had happened? All sorts of -horrible possibilities pressed themselves upon him. If only Ruth would -come and he could see her alone for a moment! - -He stopped in his restless pacing, and looked down kindly at his wife’s -shivering form. “Shall I shut the windows?” he asked. - -“No,” she answered; “never mind. Oh, Roger, do you think she will die? I -can’t bear it! Oh, why doesn’t he come?” - -She got up and clutched her husband’s coat-sleeve, hiding her face on -his shoulder. “Roger, I couldn’t bear her to die.” - -Never before had the great presence of Death really come near to her, -except to summon the very old whose life had already almost passed to -the other side. And now, suddenly, like a bolt out of a serene blue sky, -it was standing beside her, imminent, threatening, and, to her, -unspeakably terrible. - -Roger North put an awkward arm round her. He felt uncomfortably stiff -and useless, and ridiculously conscious of the fact that she had -forgotten in her hurry and distress to take her hair out of the curler -at the back of her neck. - -He was honestly anxious to be sympathetic, to be all that was kind and -helpful. His own anxiety racked him, and yet, absurdly enough, that -curler obtruded itself on his notice until he found himself saying, “You -have left one of your curlers in.” - -He was acutely aware that it was about the last thing he should have -said and wholly unsuitable to the moment, but his wife, fortunately, -took no such view. - -“It just shows the state of my mind!” she exclaimed, trying with shaking -fingers to disentangle it. “I have never done such a thing in my life -before! What a mercy you noticed it!” - -He helped her to get the little instrument out, and put it in his -pocket. - -There was the sound of a closing door above, the hurried movement of -feet, and Mrs. North clutched her husband’s arm. They both looked -towards the door. But silence fell again, and she began to cry. - -“Do you think she’s dying, Roger?” - -“No, no! Eliot would send for us, of course.” He began his restless walk -to and fro again. “I wish we had got here before Eliot did. You could -have gone in with him then.” - -And here, at last, footsteps came down the stairs, across the hall, the -door opened, and the doctor came in. - -He was an unusual man to find buried in a country practice. A man of -outstanding intellect and of a very charming presence. Between him and -North a warm friendship existed. - -“Ah, you have come!” he exclaimed. - -He took Mrs. North’s hand and looked down at her with exceeding -kindness. - -“The child is very ill and I fear brain trouble,” he said. “I gather she -went for a long walk yesterday and got drenched in the storm, so it is -possibly aggravated by a chill. Do you know of any special worry or -trouble?” - -“Nothing whatever,” said Mrs. North decisively. “Except, of course, poor -Dick’s death. She felt that very much at the time, and Roger thinks she -has never got over it, don’t you, Roger?” - -Roger nodded. For a moment he considered laying before his friend the -abnormal situation in which Ruth Seer believed, and which he himself had -come anyway to recognize as within the realms of possibility. But the -inclination faded almost as soon as born. He had had no speech yet with -Ruth, nor did it seem fair to Violet. Possibly, perhaps, some personal -pride held him. - -The doctor looked at him kindly. “Poor little girl! Well, she made a -brave fight, I remember. Now, Mrs. North, no worrying. How old is the -child? Twenty-six? You can get over anything at twenty-six! I’m sending -in a nurse, and that woman upstairs is worth her weight in gold. You -couldn’t have her in better hands. Now you’d like to go up and have a -look at her. Don’t get worried because she won’t know you; that’s part -of the illness.” - -But outside he looked at Roger with an anxious face. - -“She’s very ill, North,” he said. “It must have been coming on for some -time. The storm—yes—that shook it up into active mischief, no doubt. -We’ll pull her through, I hope; but would you like a specialist’s -opinion? These brain troubles are very obscure.” - -“I leave it to you,” said North, his whole being sick and empty. - -“Well, we’ll see how she goes on in the next twenty-four hours.” - -He sped away, and Roger wandered aimlessly about the farm, looking at -the wreckage of the storm, with Larry and the little dogs, conscious in -their dumb way that their beloveds were in trouble, keeping at his heel. - -By one of those vagaries which make the English climate so lovable in -spite of its iniquities, it was, after the day and night of storm and -rain, that very wonderful thing a perfectly beautiful morning in -November. The sun shone with astonishing warmth, scattering great masses -of grey and silver cloud, against which the delicate black tracery of -bough and twig, stripped of every lingering leaf, showed in exquisite -perfection. - -The farm was wide awake and astir with the life of a new day. But Vi, -little Vi, was lying up there, at the Door of Death. Recollections of -her as a soft-headed, golden-eyed baby came back to him; as a small -child flitting like a white butterfly about the garden; as a swift -vision of long black legs and a cloud of dark hair, running wild with -the boys; as the glorious hoyden who had taken her world by storm in the -days just before the war. And now she lay there a broken thing, tossed -and driven to death in the purposeless play of soulless and unpitying -forces. He ground his teeth in impotent rage, overcome with a very -anguish of helpless pain and wrath. If only Ruth would come and tell him -what had happened! - -The cowman, who was helping the gardener clear away the remains of the -storm, came up from the fallen tree and spoke to him. He was sorry to -hear there was illness at the house. North thanked him mechanically and -escaped into the flower garden. The few remaining flowers were beaten to -the ground, their heads draggled in the wet earth. He got out his knife -and began to cut them off and tidy up the border. He could watch the -house at the same time. The minutes dragged like hours, and then, at -last, the door on to the terrace opened, and Ruth came out. - -She looked round and, catching sight of him, hurried by the shortest -way, across the wet grass, to meet him. His pain-ravaged face smote her -with a great pity. She held out both her hands to meet his. - -“I could not come before,” she said. “She is quieter now. Oh, do not -feel like that! She will get well. I know she will get well.” - -“Where can we go to be alone?” he asked. “I must hear what happened. It -is that which has been driving me mad.” - -“Let us go and walk along the path under the ‘house on the wall,’” she -said. “No one will come there and it is sheltered and warm in the sun.” - -And there, pacing up and down, she told him, as well as she could, the -happenings of the night before. - -North ground his teeth. “She would be better dead,” he said. “And yet——” -He looked at her, a new horror growing in his haggard eyes, a -question——? - -“She will not die,” said Ruth. “But don’t you understand, don’t you -believe, whether she lives or dies the evil is conquered, is transmuted, -is taken in to the Eternal Good?” - -“No, I cannot believe,” said North harshly. “I think you are playing -with words. It seems to me that only Evil is powerful. If anything -survives, it is that.” - -Ruth looked at him with very gentle eyes. “Wait,” she said. “Have just a -little patience. She will get well, and then you will believe.” - -“I cannot believe,” said Roger North. The words fell heavily, like -stones. He paced restlessly backwards and forwards, crunching the wet -gravel viciously under his feet. - -“The house might have been burnt down. You—I suppose you think that was -the object?” - -“Yes, I think it must have been so. At any rate one of them.” - -“That is the loathsome horror of it all!” North burst forth savagely. “I -believe just enough, because in no other way can I account for what has -happened, to make me dread death for her in a way I should never have -dreaded it otherwise. I have always looked on our personal grief as -fundamentally selfish.” - -Ruth was silent. He seemed beyond the reach of help, and she would have -given so much to help him. That he, at any rate for the moment, gave no -thought to what she had been through disturbed her not at all. - -“Listen,” she said presently. “You may think it all imagination, or what -people call imagination, but if you could only have seen it, as I did, -you would know it was very, very real. It was when I was alone with her -waiting for Doctor Eliot. I went to the window to pull the blind down a -little, and when I turned round again—I saw”—she stopped, searching for -adequate words—“I saw what looked like a wall of white light. I can’t -describe it any other way, though it was not like any light we know of -here, more wonderful, alive in some strange way. It was all round her. -No evil thing could get through. I am so sure.” - -She looked at him with her heart in her eyes, but Roger North shook his -head. - -“It leaves me cold,” he said. “Is that why you feel so sure she will get -well?” - -“No. But I _am_ sure; that is all I know.” - -And to that Ruth held through the days of tense anxiety that followed, -through the visit of the specialist from London, who gave little hope, -through the despair of others. She moved among them as one carrying a -secret store of strength. Mrs. North, pitiably broken up, clung to her -for help and comfort, but North, after the talk in the garden, had -withdrawn into himself and kept aloof. The ravages day after day marked -on his face went to Ruth’s heart when he came over to inquire. But for -the moment he was beyond her reach or help. Whatever devils from the -bottomless pit rent and tore his soul during these dark days, he fought -them single-handed, as indeed, ultimately, they must be fought by every -man. - -Mrs. North and Fred Riversley stayed at Thorpe. - -“Uncommonly decent of Miss Seer,” said Mr. Pithey to his wife. “Turning -her house into a hotel as well as a hospital! That stuck-up little Mrs. -North, too. I’ve heard her say things about Miss Seer that have put my -bristles up. Give me Lady Condor every time. Paint or no paint!” - -But Mrs. Pithey had learnt things down in the dark valley. She was not -so censorious as of old. - -“I don’t cotton to Mrs. North myself,” she answered. “She’s a woman who -overprices herself. But she’s a mother, and Miss Seer could do no less -than take her in. You might take down some of these best Musk Cat grapes -after tea, ’Erb. P’raps Mrs. Riversley could fancy ’em.” - -Everyone indeed was very kind, but with the exception of Lady Condor and -Mr. Fothersley, Ruth kept visitors away from Mrs. North. - -Fred Riversley had astonished everyone by turning out a wonderful nurse, -and what little rest Violet had was in his strong arms, nursed like a -child. She seemed nothing more, and in her delirium had gone back to the -days of her childhood and talked of little else, and more and more -happily as the time went by. - -“One might as well try to keep a snow wreath,” he said one afternoon to -Ruth, who was giving him tea after his usual tramp round the fields for -some fresh air and exercise. - -Even as he spoke there was a little bustle and scurry outside the door, -and before it opened Riversley was on his feet and moving towards it. - -Mrs. North stood there, half laughing, half crying. “Oh, she is better!” -she cried. “She has gone into a real sleep. Nurse says we may hope. She -will get well.” - -She dropped on to her knees by the fire and buried her face against the -cushions of the sofa, sobbing and crying, while Riversley tore across -the hall and up the stairs two steps at a time. - - * * * * * - -It was early on the following morning that Violet Riversley opened her -eyes and looked at her husband with recognition in them. - -“Dear old Freddy,” she said weakly. “What’s the matter?” - -He put his arms round her with the tears running down his cheeks, and -she nestled to him like a tired child and fell asleep again. - -When she woke the second time the room was full of the pale November -sunshine. She looked round it curiously for a moment, then her mind -seemed to give up the effort to remember where she was and she looked at -him. - -“I do love you, Freddy,” she said. - -The morning sounds of the farm came in through the open window and she -smiled. “Of course, I’m at Thorpe. I dreamt I was with Dick.” - -Outside, Ruth went across the terrace to her farm work. Her face was -that of one who holds secure some hidden store of happiness. She sang to -herself as she went: - - “When I have reached my journey’s end, - And I am dead and free.” - -The words floated up clear and sweet through the still air. - -“Dead and free.” Violet repeated them in a small faint voice, and again -Fear gripped Riversley by the throat. He longed to hold her more closely -and dared not. There seemed no perceptible substance to hold. His mouth -went dry while he struggled with his difficulty of speech. - -“The journey is worth making too, Vi,” he said. - -The husky strangled voice made its appeal. She looked with more of -understanding into his bloodshot eyes, his haggard ravaged face, and her -own face became suddenly very sweet and of a marvellous brightness. - -“Yes,” she said, “the journey is worth making too.” - -More distant came the sound of Ruth’s song: - - “I pray that God will let me go - And wander with them to and fro, - Along the flowered fields I know, - That look towards the sea, - That look towards the sea.” - -The white pigeons swooped down about her. The dogs, so long kept in to -heel, rushed wildly over the lawn and down to the river, uttering sharp -cries of joy. A robin, perched on the coping of the old wall, sang sweet -and shrill. She looked out over her beloved fields, over the long valley -full of misty sunshine, and was content. The farm was Itself again. She -moved on across the lawn leaving footprints on the silver wet grass, to -where, standing by the gate, she saw Roger North. - -He turned at the sound of her coming, and she called to him: - -“She has slept ever since I ’phoned to you. She will get well.” - -“Thank God!” he said, as men will in these moments, whether they believe -or no. - -His face was curiously alive, alight with some great happening; there -was an air of joyous excitement about him. He moved towards her, and -smiled a little, rather shamefaced smile, and the odd likeness to a -schoolboy who is feeling shy was very apparent. Then he blurted it out. - -“I have seen him,” he said. - -“Ah!” The exclamation was a note of pure joy. “Oh, tell me about it!” - -“He was leaning over the gate. He was looking for me, waiting for me, -just as he used to do. And he looked at me with his dear old grin. It -was ever so real.” - -“Yes. Yes.” - -“And he spoke. Just as you have told me. It isn’t the same as speaking -here. It’s something like a thought passing——” - -He stopped, his face all alight. He looked years younger. The heavy -lines were hardly visible. - -“I wish I had spoken. Somehow at the moment I couldn’t.” - -“I know. One cannot. I believe it is because of the vibrations. I -suppose——” Ruth hesitated. “Can you tell me?” - -“What he said? It—it seems so ridiculous. One expected it would be -something important, something—well, different.” - -She laughed, looking at him with affection, with that wonderful look of -pure friendliness. - -“But why should it?” - -He laughed too—joyously. As he had not laughed since boyhood. Surely -again the world was full of wonder and of glory. Again all things were -possible, in the light of the Horizon beyond Eternity. - -“He said—just as he used to, you know—‘Come _on_, old Roger!’” - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - - 1. Table of Contents added by transcriber. - - 2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. - - 3. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as - printed. - - 4. P. 87, changed '“She is really an excellent worker,” and little Miss - Luce' to '“She is really an excellent worker,” said little Miss - Luce'. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN ON THE OTHER SIDE*** - - -******* This file should be named 60331-0.txt or 60331-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/0/3/3/60331 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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