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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger, by
+Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Once Aboard The Lugger
+
+Author: Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6410]
+This file was first posted on December 8, 2002
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Skip Doughty, Charles Aldarondo and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER--
+
+THE HISTORY OF GEORGE AND HIS MARY
+
+By A. S. M. Hutchinson
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ The Author's Advertisement Of His Novel
+
+
+ BOOK I.
+
+ _Of George._
+
+ I. Excursions In A Garden
+ II. Excursions In Melancholy
+ III. Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped
+ IV. Excursions In A Hospital
+ V. Upon Life: And May Be Missed
+ VI. Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine
+ VII. Moving Passages With A Heroine
+ VIII. Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine
+
+
+ BOOK II.
+
+ _Of his Mary._
+
+ I. Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine
+ II. Excursions In Vulgarity
+ III. Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine
+ IV. Excursions In A Nursery
+ V. Excursions At A Dinner-Table
+
+
+ BOOK III.
+
+ _Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: Of Love and of War._
+
+ I. Notes On The Building Of Bridges
+ II. Excursions Beneath The Bridge
+ III. Excursions In Love
+ IV. Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter
+ V. Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens
+ VI. A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens
+
+
+ BOOK IV.
+
+ _In which this History begins to rattle._
+
+ I. The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will
+ Lose Nothing By Not Accompanying Him
+ II. An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages
+ III. Alarums And Excursions By Night
+ IV. Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath
+ V. Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet
+ VI. The Girl Comes Near The Lugger
+
+
+ BOOK V.
+
+ _Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: Of George in Torment._
+
+ I. Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped
+ II. Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays
+ III. Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit
+ IV. The Rape Of The Rose
+ V. Horror At Herons' Holt
+ VI. A Detective At Herons' Holt
+ VII. Terror At Dippleford Admiral
+ VIII. Panic At Dippleford Admiral
+ IX. Disaster At Temple Colney
+
+
+ BOOK VI.
+
+ _Of Paradise Lost and Found._
+
+ I. Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise
+ II. Mrs. Major Finds The Lock
+ III. Mrs. Major Gets The Key
+ IV. George Has A Shot At Paradise
+ V. Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira
+ VI. Agony In Meath Street
+ VII. Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street
+ VIII. Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street
+ IX. Excursions In A Newspaper Office
+ X. A Perfectly Splendid Chapter
+
+ _Last Shots from the Bridge_
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS NOVEL.
+
+This book has its title from that dashing sentiment, “Once aboard the
+lugger and the girl is mine!” It is not to be read by those who in their
+novels would have the entertainment of characters that are brilliant or
+wealthy, noble of birth or admirable of spirit. Such have no place in
+this history. There is a single canon of novel-writing that we have
+sedulously kept before us in making this history, and that is the law
+which instructs the novelist to treat only of the manner of persons with
+whom he is well acquainted. Hence our characters are commonplace folks.
+We have the acquaintance of none other than commonplace persons, because
+none other than commonplace persons will have acquaintance with us.
+
+And there are no problems in this history, nor is the reader to be
+tickled by any risks taken with nice deportment. This history may be
+kept upon shelves that are easily accessible. It is true that you will
+be invited to spend something of a night in a lady's bedroom, but the
+matter is carried through with circumspection and dispatch. There shall
+not be a blush.
+
+Now, it is our purpose in this advertisement so clearly to give you the
+manner of our novel that without further waste of time you may forego
+the task of reading so little as a single chapter if you consider that
+manner likely to distress you. Hence something must be said touching the
+style.
+
+We cannot see (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a
+story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to
+come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something
+of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this
+history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or divert your
+attention as you read; but we too must be permitted to swing our legs
+and slide off upon matters that interest us, and that indirectly are
+relevant to the history. Life is not compounded solely of action. One
+cannot rush breathless from hour to hour. And, since the novel aims to
+ape life, the reader, if the aim be true, cannot rush breathless from
+page to page. We can at least warrant him he will not here.
+
+These are the limitations of our history; and we admit them to be
+considerable. Upon the other hand, the print is beautifully clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As touching the title we have chosen, this was not come by at the cost
+of any labour. Taken, as we have told, from that dashing sentiment,
+“Once aboard the lugger and the girl is mine!” it is a label that might
+be applied to all novels. It is a generic title for all modern novels,
+since there is not one of these but in this form or that sets out the
+pursuit of his mistress by a man or his treatment of her when he has
+clapped her beneath hatches. This is a notable matter. The novelist
+writes under the influences and within the limitations of his age, and
+the modern novelist correctly mirrors modern life when he presents woman
+as for man's pursuit till he has her, and for what treatment he may will
+when he captures her. The position is deplorable, is productive of a
+million wrongs, and, happily, is slowly changing; but that it exists
+is clear upon the face of our social existence, and is even advertised
+between the sexes in love: “You are mine” the man says, and means it. “I
+am yours” the woman declares, and, fruit of generations of dependence,
+freely, almost involuntarily, gives herself.
+
+But of this problem (upon which we could bore you to distraction) we
+are nothing concerned in our novel. Truly we offer you the pursuit of
+a girl; but my Mary would neither comprehend this matter nor wish to
+be other than her George's. From page 57 she waves to us; let us hurry
+along.
+
+
+
+
+  _.... Who so will stake his lot,
+  Impelled thereto by nescience or whim,
+  Cupidity or innocence or not,
+  On Chance's colours, let men pray for him._
+                         RALPH HODGSON.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+Of George.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Excursions In A Garden.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mr. Christopher Marrapit is dozing in a chair upon the lawn; his darling
+cat, the Rose of Sharon, is sleeping on his lap; stiffly beside him sits
+Mrs. Major, his companion--that masterly woman.
+
+As we approach to be introduced, it is well we should know something of
+Mr. Marrapit. The nervous business of adventuring into an assembly of
+strangers is considerably modified by having some knowledge of the first
+we shall meet. We feel more at home; do not rush upon subjects which are
+distasteful to that person, or of which he is ignorant; absorb something
+of the atmosphere of the party during our exchange of pleasantries with
+him; and, warmed by this feeling, with our most attractive charm of
+manner are able to push among the remainder of our new friends.
+
+Unhappily, the friendly chatter of the neighbourhood, which should
+supply us with something of the character of a resident, is quite
+lacking at Paltley Hill in regard to Mr. Marrapit. Mr. Marrapit
+rarely moves out beyond the fine wall that encircles Herons' Holt,
+his residence; with Paltley Hill society rarely mixes. The vicar,
+with something of a frown, might tell us that to his divers parochial
+subscription lists Mr. Marrapit has consistently, and churlishly,
+refused to give a shilling. Professor Wyvern's son, Mr. William Wyvern,
+has been heard to say that Mr. Marrapit always reminded him “of one
+of the minor prophets--shaved.” Beyond this--and how little helpful it
+is!--Paltley Hill society can give us nothing.
+
+In a lower social grade of the district, however, much might be learned.
+In the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours of Paltley Hill, Mr.
+Marrapit is considerably discussed. Nicely mannered as we are,
+servants' gossip concerning one in our own station of life is naturally
+distasteful to us. At the same time it is essential to our ease on being
+introduced that we should know something of this gentleman. Assuring
+ourselves, therefore, that we shall not be prejudiced by cheap chatter,
+let us hear what the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours have
+to say.
+
+Let it, at least, be written down; we shall know how to value such
+stuff.
+
+Material for this gossip, then, is brought into the kitchens, the
+cottages, and the bar-parlours by Mr. Marrapit's domestic staff.
+
+Mrs. Armitage, his cook, has given tales of his “grimness” to the
+cottages where her comfortable presence is welcomed on Sunday and
+Thursday afternoons. She believes, however, that he must be a “religious
+gentleman,” because (so she says) “he talks like out of the Bible.”
+
+This would seem to bear out Mr. William Wyvern's allusion to the minor
+prophet element of his character.
+
+It is the habit of Clara and Ada, his maids, squeezing at the gate from
+positions dangerous to modesty into which their ardent young men have
+thrust them--it is their habit, thus placed, to excuse themselves
+from indelicate embraces by telling alarming tales of Mr. Marrapit's
+“carrying on” should they be late. He is a “fair old terror,” they say.
+
+The testimony of Mr. Fletcher, his gardener, gloomy over his beer in
+the bar-parlours, seems to support the “stinginess” that the vicar has
+determined in Mr. Marrapit's character. Mr. Fletcher, for example, has
+lugubriously shown what has to be put up with when in the service of a
+man who had every inch of the grounds searched because a threepenny
+bit had been dropped. “It's 'ard--damn 'ard,” Mr Fletcher said on that
+occasion. “I'm a gardener, I am; not a treasure-'unter.” Murmurs of
+sympathy chorused endorsement of this view.
+
+Finally there are the words of Frederick, son of Mrs. Armitage, and
+assistant to Fletcher, whose pleasure it is to set on end the touzled
+hair of the youth of Paltley Hill by obviously exaggerated stories of
+Mr. Marrapit's grim rule.
+
+“'E's a tryant,” Frederick has said.
+
+Such is an epitome of the kitchen gossip concerning Mr. Marrapit; it is
+wholesome to be away from such tattling, and personally to approach the
+lawn whereon its subject sits.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+This lawn, a delectable sight on this fine July afternoon, is set about
+with wire netting to a height of some six feet. By the energies of Mr.
+Fletcher and Frederick the sward is exquisitely trimmed and rolled; and
+their labours join with the wire netting to make the lawn a safe and
+pleasant exercise ground for Mr. Marrapit's cats.
+
+Back in the days of Mr. Marrapit's first occupancy of Herons' Holt,
+this man was a mighty amateur breeder of cats, and a rare army of cats
+possessed. Regal cats he had, queenly cats, imperial neuter cats; blue
+cats, grey cats, orange cats, and white cats--cats for which nothing was
+too good, upon which too much money could not be spent nor too much love
+be lavished. Latterly, with tremendous wrenchings of the heart, he had
+disbanded this galaxy of cats. Changes in his household were partly
+the cause of this step. The coming of his nephew, George, had seriously
+upset the peaceful routine of existence which it was his delight to
+lead; and a reason even more compelling was the gradual alteration in
+his attitude towards his hobby. This man perceived that the fancier's
+eye with which he regarded his darlings was becoming so powerful as to
+render his lover's eye in danger of being atrophied. The fancier's
+eye was lit by the brain--delighted only in “points,” in perfection of
+specimen; the lover's eye was fed by the heart--glowed, not with pride
+over breed, but with affection for cats as cats. And Mr. Marrapit
+realised that for affection he was coming to substitute pride--that
+he was outraging the animals he loved by neglecting the less admirable
+specimens for those perfectly moulded; that even these perfect types he
+was abusing by his growing craze for breeding; polygamy in cats, he came
+to believe, desecrated and eventually destroyed their finer feelings.
+
+Therefore--and the coming of his nephew George quickened his
+determination--Mr. Marrapit dispersed his stud (the word had become
+abhorrent to him), keeping only four exquisite favourites, of which
+the Rose of Sharon--that perfect orange cat, listed when shown at the
+prohibitive figure of 1000 pounds, envy and despair of every cat-lover
+in Great Britain and America--was apple of his eye, joy of his
+existence.
+
+It was the resolve to keep but these four exquisite creatures that
+encompassed the arrival in Mr. Marrapit's household of Mrs. Major, now
+seated beside him upon the lawn--that masterly woman. The fine cat-house
+was pulled down, the attendant dismissed. A room upon the ground floor,
+having a southern aspect, was set apart as bed-chamber and exclusive
+apartment for the four favourites, and Mr. Marrapit sought about for
+some excellent person into whose care they might be entrusted. Their
+feeding, their grooming, constant attention to their wants and the sole
+care of their chamber, should be this person's duties, and it was not
+until a point some way distant in this history that Mr. Marrapit ceased
+daily to congratulate himself upon his selection.
+
+Mrs. Major, that masterly woman, was a distressed gentlewoman. The death
+of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning, seems
+to have given her her first chance of displaying those strong qualities
+which ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she was of those
+to whom plan of action comes instantly upon the arrival of opportunity.
+With lightning rapidity this woman welded chance and action; with
+unflagging energy and with dauntless perseverance used the powerful
+weapon thus contrived.
+
+The case of her husband's death may be instanced. Her hysterical
+distress on the day of the funeral (a matter that would have
+considerably surprised the late Mr. Major) was exchanged on the
+following morning for acute physical distress resulting from the means
+by which, overnight, she had tried to assuage her grief. Noticing, as
+she dressed, the subdued and martyrlike air that her face wore, noticing
+also her landlady's evident sympathy with the gentle voice and manner
+which her racking head caused her to adopt, Mrs. Major saw at once
+the valuable aid to her future which the permanent wearing of these
+characteristics might be. From that moment she took up the role of
+distressed gentlewoman--advertised by tight-fitting black, by little
+sighs, and by precise, subdued voice,--and in this guise sought
+employment at an Agency. The agency sent her to be interviewed by
+Mr. Marrapit. Ushered into the study, she, in a moment of masterly
+inspiration, murmured “The sweet! Ah, the sweet!” when viciously
+scratched by the Rose of Sharon, and upon those words walked directly in
+to Mr. Marrapit's heart.
+
+He required a lady--a _lady_ (Mrs. Major smiled deprecatingly) who
+should devote herself to his cats. Did Mrs. Major like cats? Ah, sir,
+she adored cats; her late husband--Words, at the recollection, failed
+her. She faltered; touched an eye with her handkerchief; wanly smiled
+with the resigned martyrdom of a true gentlewoman.
+
+As so-often in this life, the unspoken word was more powerful than
+mightiest eloquence. Mr. Marrapit is not to be blamed for the inference
+he drew. He pictured the dead Mr. Major a gentleman sharing with his
+wife a passion for cats; by memory of which fond trait his widow's
+devotion to the species would be yet further enhanced, would be
+hallowed.
+
+There is the further thought in this connection that once more, as so
+often in this life, the unspoken word had saved the lie direct. Once
+only, in point of fact, had Mrs. Major seen her late husband directly
+occupied with a cat, and the occasion had been the cause of their
+vacating their lodgings in Shepherd's Bush precisely thirty minutes
+later. Mr. Major, under influence of his unfortunate malady, with
+savage foot had sped the landlady's cat down a flight of stairs; and the
+landlady had taken the matter in peculiarly harsh spirit.
+
+All this, however, lay deeply hidden beneath Mrs. Major's unspoken word.
+The vision of a gentle Mr. Major that Mr. Marrapit conjured sealed
+the liking he had immediately taken to Mrs. Major, and thus was she
+installed.
+
+The masterly woman, upon this July afternoon, desisted from her
+crocheting; observed in the dozing figure beside her signs of movement;
+turned to it, ready for speech.
+
+This she saw. From the reluctant rays of a passing sun a white silk
+handkerchief protected a nicely polished head--a little bumpy, fringed
+with soft white hair. Beneath the head a long face, sallow of hue; in
+either cheek a pit; between them a dominating nose carrying eyeglasses.
+A long, spare body in an alpaca coat; long thin legs; brown morocco
+slippers without heels--upon the lap the peerless Rose of Sharon.
+
+“Time for the Rose to go in,” Mrs. Major softly suggested.
+
+“The Rose,” said Mr. Marrapit, passing a hand gently over the creature's
+exquisite form, “is, I fear, still ailing. Her sleep is troubled; she
+shivers. Her appetite?”
+
+“It is still poorly.” The expression was that of a true distressed
+gentlewoman.
+
+“She has need,” Mr. Marrapit said, “of the most careful attention, of
+the most careful dieting. Tend her. Tempt her. Take her.”
+
+“I will, Mr. Marrapit.” Mrs. Major gathered the Rose against her bosom.
+“You will not stay long? It is growing chilly.”
+
+“I shall take a brief stroll. I am perturbed concerning the Rose.”
+
+“Let me bring you a cap, Mr. Marrapit.”
+
+“Unnecessary. Devote yourself, I pray, to the Rose. I am anxious.
+Nothing could console me should any evil thing come upon her. I am
+apprehensive. I look to you. I will take a stroll.”
+
+Outside the wire fence Mr. Marrapit and Mrs. Major parted. The masterly
+woman glided swiftly towards the house; Mr. Marrapit, with bent head,
+passed thoughtfully along an opposite path.
+
+And immediately the sleeping garden awoke to sudden activity.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+First to break covert was Frederick, Mr. Fletcher's assistant.
+Abnormally steeped in vice for one so young (this wretched boy was
+but fourteen), with the coolness of a matured evil-doer Frederick
+extinguished his cigarette-end by pressing it against his boot-heel;
+dropped it amongst other ends, toilsomely collected, in a tin box;
+placed the box in its prepared hole; covered this with earth and leaves;
+hooked a basket of faded weeds upon his arm, and so appeared in Mr.
+Marrapit's path with bent back, diligently searching.
+
+Mr. Marrapit inquired: “Your task?”
+
+“Weedin',” said Frederick.
+
+“Weeding what?”
+
+“Weeds,” Frederick told him, a little surprised.
+
+Mr. Marrapit rapped sharply: “Say 'sir'.”
+
+“Sir,” said Frederick, making to move.
+
+Mr. Marrapit peered at the basket. “You have remarkably few.”
+
+“There ain't never many,” Frederick said with quiet pride--“there ain't
+never many if you keep 'em down by always doin' your job.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit pointed: “They grow thick at your feet, sir!”
+
+In round-eyed astonishment Frederick peered low. “They spring up the
+minute your back's turned, them weeds. They want a weed destroyer what
+you pours out of a can.”
+
+“You are the weed-destroyer,” Mr. Marrapit said sternly. “Be careful.
+It is very true that they spring up whenever _my_ back is turned. Be
+careful.” He passed on.
+
+“Blarst yer back,” murmured Frederick, bending his own to the task.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A few yards further Mr. Marrapit again paused. Against a laurel bush
+stood a pair of human legs, the seat of whose encasing trousers stared
+gloomily upwards at the sky. With a small twig he carried Mr.
+Marrapit tapped the seat. Three or four raps were necessary; slowly it
+straightened into line with the legs; from the abyss of the bush a back,
+shoulders, head, appeared.
+
+Just as the ostrich with buried head believes itself hid from
+observation, so it was with Mr. Fletcher, needing peace, a habit to
+plunge head and shoulders into a bush and there remain--showing
+nothing against the sky-line. Long practice had freed the posture from
+irksomeness. As a young man Mr. Fletcher had been employed in a public
+tennis-court, and there had learned the little mannerism to which he now
+had constant resort. In those days the necessity of freeing himself from
+the constant annoyance of nets to be tightened, or of disputes between
+rival claims to courts to be settled, had driven him to devise some
+means of escape. It was essential to the safety of his post, upon
+the other hand, that he must never allow it to be said that he was
+constantly absent from his duties. Chance gave him the very means he
+sought. Bent double into a bush one day, searching a tennis ball, he
+heard his name bawled up and down the courts; he did not stir. Those who
+were calling him stumbled almost against his legs; did not observe
+him; passed on calling. Thereafter, when unduly pressed, it became Mr.
+Fletcher's habit to bury head and arms in a bush either until the hue
+and cry for him had lulled, or until exasperated searchers knocked
+against his stern; in the latter event he would explain that he was
+looking for tennis balls.
+
+The habit had persisted. Whenever irritated or depressed (and this man's
+temperament caused such often to be his fate), he would creep to the
+most likely bush and there disappear as to his upper half. It is a fine
+thing in this turbulent life thus to have some quiet refuge against the
+snarlings of adversity.
+
+Mr. Fletcher drew up now and faced Mr. Marrapit; in his hand a snail.
+
+He said gloomily: “Another one”; held it towards his master's face.
+
+Here is an example of how one deception leads to another. This was no
+fresh snail; often before Mr. Marrapit had seen it. To lend motive to
+his concealment Mr. Fletcher carried always with him this same snail;
+needing peace he would draw it from his pocket; plunge to consolation;
+upon discovery exhibit it as excuse.
+
+“There is an abominable smell here,” said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Mr. Fletcher inhaled laboriously. “It's not for me to say what it is.”
+
+“Adjust that impression. Yours is the duty. You are in charge here. What
+is it?”
+
+“It's them damn cats.”
+
+“You are insolent, sir. Your insolence increases. It grows unendurable.”
+
+Mr. Fletcher addressed the snail. “He asts a question. I beg not to
+answer it. He insists. I tell him. I'm insolent.” He sighed; the tyranny
+of the world pressed heavily upon this man.
+
+Mr. Marrapit advertised annoyance by clicks of his tongue: “You are
+insolent when you swear in my presence. You are insolent when you impute
+to my cats a fault that is not theirs.”
+
+“I ain't blamin' the cats. It's natural to them. Whenever the wind sets
+this way I notice it. It's blamin' me I complain of. I don't draw the
+smell. I try to get away from it. It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener,
+I am; not a wind-shaft.”
+
+Whenever Mr. Marrapit had occasion to speak with Mr. Fletcher, after the
+first few exchanges he would swallow with distinct effort. It was wrath
+he swallowed; and bitter as the pill was, rarely did he fail to force it
+down. Mr. Fletcher spoke to him as no other member of his establishment
+dared speak. The formula of dismissal would leap to Mr. Marrapit's
+mouth: knowledge of the unusually small wage for which Mr. Fletcher
+worked caused it to be stifled ere it found tongue. Thousands of
+inferiors have daily to bow to humiliations from their employers; it
+is an encouraging thought for this army that masters there be who,
+restrained by parsimony, daily writhe beneath impertinences from
+valuable, ill-paid servants.
+
+Mr. Marrapit swallowed. He said: “To the smell of which I complain my
+cats are no party. It is tobacco. The air reeks of tobacco. I will not
+have tobacco in my garden.”
+
+Twice, with a roaring sound, Mr. Fletcher inhaled. He pointed towards an
+elm against the wall: “It comes from over there.”
+
+“Ascertain.”
+
+The gardener plunged through the bushes; nosed laboriously; his
+inhalations rasped across the shrubs. “There's no smoking here,” he
+called.
+
+“Someone, in some place concealed, indubitably smokes. Yourself you have
+noticed it. Follow the scent.”
+
+Exertion beaded upon Mr. Fletcher's brow. He drew his hand across it;
+thrust a damp and gloomy face between the foliage towards his master.
+
+“I'd like to know,” he asked, “if this is to be one of my regular jobs
+for the future? Was I engaged to 'unt smells all day? It's 'ard-damn
+'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a blood-'ound.”
+
+But Mr. Marrapit had passed on.
+
+“Damn 'ard,” Mr. Fletcher repeated; drew the snail from his pocket;
+plunged to consolation.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+A short distance down the garden Mr. Marrapit himself discovered the
+source of the smell that had offended him. Bending to the left he came
+full upon it where it uprose from a secluded patch of turf: from the
+remains of a pipe there mounted steadily through the still air a thin
+wisp of smoke.
+
+Outraged, Mr. Marrapit stared; fuming, turned upon the step that sounded
+on the path behind him.
+
+The slim and tall young man who approached was that nephew George, whose
+coming into Mr. Marrapit's household had considerably disturbed Mr.
+Marrapit's peace. Orphaned by the death of his mother, George had
+gone into the guardianship of his uncle while in his middle teens. The
+responsibility had been thrust upon Mr. Marrapit by his sister. Vainly
+he had writhed and twisted in fretful protest; she shackled him to her
+desire by tearful and unceasing entreaty. Vainly he urged that his means
+were not what she thought; she assured him--and by her will bore out the
+assurance--that with her George should go her money.
+
+And the will, when read, in some degree consoled Mr. Marrapit for the
+sniffling encumbrance he took back with him to Herons' Holt after the
+funeral. It was a simple and trustful will--commended George into the
+keeping of her brother Christopher Marrapit; desired that George should
+be entered in her late husband's--the medical--profession; and for that
+purpose bequeathed her all to the said brother.
+
+George was eighteen when Mr. Marrapit entered him at St. Peter's
+Hospital in mild pursuit of the qualification of the Conjoint Board of
+Surgeons and Physicians. “I am entering you,” Mr. Marrapit had said,
+consulting notes he had prepared against the interview--“I am entering
+you at enormous cost upon a noble career which involves, however, a
+prolonged and highly expensive professional training. Your mother wished
+it.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not add that George's mother had expressly paid for
+it. This man had the knowledge that Youth would lose such veneration for
+Authority as it may possess were Authority to disclose the motives that
+prompt its actions.
+
+He continued: “For me this involves considerable self-denial and
+patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to
+your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you
+are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern
+life must be sternly faced.”
+
+“I do not flinch,” George had replied.
+
+“For your personal expenses I shall make you a small allowance. You will
+live in my house. Your wants should be insignificant.”
+
+In a faint voice George squeezed in: “I have heard that one can work far
+better by living near the hospital in digs.”
+
+“Elucidate.”
+
+“Digs--lodgings. I have heard that one can work far better by living
+near the hospital in lodgings.”
+
+“Adjust that impression,” Mr. Marrapit had told him. “You are
+misinformed.”
+
+George struggled: “I should have the constant companionship of men
+absorbed in the same work as myself. We could exchange views and notes
+in the evenings.”
+
+“In your books seek that companionship. With them compare your views.
+Let your notes by them be checked. They are infallible.”
+
+George said no more. At that moment the freedom of hospital as against
+the restraint of school, was a gallant steed upon which he outrid all
+other desires. The prospect of new and strange books in exchange for
+those he so completely abhorred, was an alluring delight. It is not
+until the bargain is complete that we discover how much easier to
+polish, and more comfortable to handle, are old lamps than new.
+
+Mr. Marrapit had referred to his notes: “In regard to the allowance I
+shall make you. I earnestly pray no spur may be necessary to urge you
+at your tasks. Yet, salutary it is that spur should exist. I arrange,
+therefore, that in the deplorable event of your failing to pass any
+examination your allowance shall be diminished.”
+
+“Will it be correspondingly increased when I pass first shot?”
+
+The fearful possibilities of this suggestion Mr. Marrapit had hesitated
+to accept. Speculation was abhorrent to this man. Visions of success
+upon success demanding increase upon increase considerably agitated him.
+Upon the other hand, the sooner these successes were won, the sooner,
+he reflected, would he be rid of this incubus, and, in the long-run, the
+cheaper. He nerved himself to the decision. “I agree to that,” he had
+said. “The compact is affirmed.”
+
+It was a wretched compact for George.
+
+But the sum had not yet been fixed. George, standing opposite his uncle,
+twisted one leg about the other; twined his clammy hands; put the awful
+question: “By how much will the allowance be increased or cut down?”
+
+“By two pounds a quarter.”
+
+George plunged: “So if I fail in my first exam. I shall get eleven
+pounds at the quarter? if I pass, fifteen?”
+
+Horror widened Mr. Marrapit's eyes; shrilled his voice: “What is the
+colossal sum you anticipate?”
+
+“I thought you said fifty-two pounds a year-a pound a week.”
+
+“A monstrous impression. Adjust it. Four pounds a quarter is the sum.
+You will have no needs. It errs upon the side of liberality--I desire to
+be liberal.”
+
+George twisted his legs into a yet firmer knot: “But two failures would
+wipe it bang out.”
+
+“Look you to that,” Mr. Marrapit told him. “The matter is settled.”
+
+But it was further pursued by George when outside the door.
+
+“Simply to spite that stingy brute,” vowed he, “I'll pass all my exams,
+with such a rush that I'll be hooking sixteen quid a quarter out of him
+before he knows where he is. I swear I will.”
+
+It was a rash oath. When Youth selects as weapon against Authority some
+implement that requires sweat in the forging Authority may go unarmed.
+The task of contriving such weapons is early abandoned. In three months
+George's hot resolve was cooled; in six it was forgotten; at the end
+of three years, after considerable fluctuation, his allowance stood at
+minus two pounds for the ensuing quarter.
+
+Mr. Marrapit, appealed to for advance, had raved about his study with
+waving arms.
+
+“The continued strain of renewing examination fees consequent on your
+callous failures,” he had said, “terrifies me. I am haunted by the
+spectre of ruin. The Bank of England could not stand it.”
+
+Still George argued.
+
+With a whirlwind of words Mr. Marrapit drove him from the study:
+“Precious moments fly even as you stand here. To your books, sir. In
+them seek solace. By application to them refresh your shattered pocket.”
+
+Shamefully was the advice construed. George sought and found solace in
+his books by selling his Kirke, his Quain and his Stone to Mr. Schoole
+of the Charing Cross Road; his microscope he temporarily lodged with Mr.
+Maughan in the Strand; to the science of bridge he applied himself with
+a skill that served to supply his petty needs.
+
+Notwithstanding, his career at St. Peter's was of average merit. George
+was now in the sixth year of his studies; and by the third part of his
+final examination, was alone delayed from the qualification which would
+bring him freedom from his uncle's irksome rule.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+His attempt at this last examination had been concluded upon this July
+day that opens our history, and thus we return to Mr. Marrapit, to
+George, and to the line of smoke uprising from the tobacco.
+
+Mr. Marrapit indicated the smouldering wedge.
+
+George bent forward. “Tobacco,” he announced.
+
+“My nose informed me. My eyes affirm. Yours?”
+
+“I am afraid so.”
+
+“My simple rule. In the vegetable garden you may smoke; here you may
+not. Is it so hard to observe?”
+
+“I quite forgot myself.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit cried: “Adjust that impression. You forgot me. Consistently
+you forget me. My desires, my interests are nothing to you.”
+
+“It's a rotten thing to make a fuss about.”
+
+“That is why I make a fuss. It _is_ a rotten thing. A disgusting and a
+noisome thing. Bury it.”
+
+Into a bed of soft mould George struck a sullen heel; kicked the tobacco
+towards the pit. Mr. Marrapit chanted over the obsequies: “I provide you
+with the enormous expanse of my vegetable garden in which to smoke. Yet
+upon my little acre you intrude. I am Naboth.”
+
+Ahab straightened his back; sighed heavily. Naboth started against the
+prick of a sudden recollection:
+
+“I had forgotten. Your examination?”
+
+George half turned away. The bitterest moment of a sad day was come. He
+growled:
+
+“Pipped.”
+
+“_Pipped?_”
+
+“Pilled.”
+
+“_Pilled?_”
+
+“Spun.”
+
+“_Spun?”_
+
+“Three months.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit put his hands to his head: “I shall go mad. My brain reels
+beneath these conundrums. I implore English.”
+
+The confession of defeat is a thousandfold more bitter when made to
+unkind ears. George paled a little; spoke very clearly: “I failed. I was
+referred for three months.”
+
+“I am Job,” groaned Mr. Marrapit. “I expected this. The strain is
+unendurable. It is unnatural. The next chance shall be your last. What
+is the fee for re-examination?”
+
+“Five guineas.”
+
+“My God!” said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He tottered away up the path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Excursions In Melancholy.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Gloom brooded over Herons' Holt that evening. Gloom hung thickly about
+the rooms: blanketed conversation; veiled eyes that might have sparkled;
+choked appetites.
+
+Nevertheless this was an atmosphere in which one member of the household
+felt most comfortable.
+
+Margaret, Mr. Marrapit's only child, was nineteen; of sallow complexion,
+petite, pretty; with large brown eyes in which sat always a constant
+quest--an entreaty, a wistful yearning.
+
+Hers was a clinging nature, readily responsive to the attraction of any
+stouter mind. Enthusiasm was in this girl, but it lay well-like--not
+as a spring. To stir it the influence of another was wanted; of itself,
+spontaneous, it could not leap. Aroused, there was no rush and surge
+of emotion--it welled, rose deeply; thickly, without ripple; crestless,
+flinging no intoxicating spume. Waves rush triumphant, hurtling forward
+the stick they support: the pool swells, leaving the stick quiescent,
+floating.
+
+Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is a clammy thing
+to attract. A curate with a glimpse at Shelley's mind once roused
+Margaret's enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly about him
+that he came near to damning Shelley and all his works; threw up his hat
+when opportunity put out a beckoning finger and drew him elsewhere.
+
+Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father; but she clung to him
+despite his oppressive foibles, because this was her nature. She loved
+church; incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound. She “wrote
+poetry.”
+
+Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons' Holt upon this evening, she
+sat brooding upon her cousin George's failure until a beautiful picture
+was hatched. He had gone to his room directly after dinner; during the
+meal had not spoken. She imagined him seated on his bed, hands deep in
+pockets, chin sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that old devil despair.
+She knew that latterly he had worked tremendously hard. He had told her
+before the examination how confident of success he was, had revealed how
+much in the immediate prospect of freedom he gloried. She recalled
+his gay laugh as he had bade her good-bye on the first day, and the
+recollection stung her just as, she reflected, it must now be stinging
+him.... Only he must a thousand times more fiercely be feeling the burn
+of its venom....
+
+Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake into herself a
+profounder sense of her cousin's misfortune. By ten she was plunged in a
+most pleasing melancholy.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if
+they imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke
+lightness of heart in the majority. Only the surface of their
+spirits ripples under such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce
+the counterpart of a hearty laugh in your vigorous animal, a feast on
+melancholy must be provided. This is a quality that is common among the
+lower classes who find their greatest happiness in funerals. The sombre
+trappings; white handkerchiefs against black dresses; tears; the mystery
+of gloom--these trickle with a warm glow through all their senses. They
+are as aroused by grief, unpleasant to the majority, as the drunkard is
+quickened by wine, to many abhorrent.
+
+Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of melancholy in which
+she was now wrapped brought an added boon--arrayed in it she was best
+able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many of her
+brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at the heart
+she could be most merry--tinkling out her laughing little lines just as
+martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite of, they were
+devilishly racked.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A manuscript returned by the
+last post emphasised her gloom.
+
+Kissing her father good-night, Margaret crept to her room, aching with
+desire to write.
+
+She undressed, read a portion of the _Imitation_, then to her table by
+the open window.
+
+Two hours brought relief. Margaret placed her poem in an envelope
+against its presentation to George in the morning, then from her window
+leaned.
+
+From her thoughts at once George sped; they rushed across the sleeping
+fields to cling about the person of that Mr. William Wyvern who had
+spoken of Mr. Marrapit as reminding him of a minor prophet--shaved.
+This was Margaret's nightly practice, but to-night this girl was most
+exquisitely melancholy, and with melancholy her thoughts of her William
+were tinged. She had not seen him that day; and now she brooded upon the
+bitter happening that had forced all her meetings with her lover to be
+snatched--fugitive, secret.
+
+For Mr. William Wyvern was not allowed at Herons' Holt. When love first
+sent its herald curiosity into William's heart, the young man had sought
+to relieve its restlessness by a visit ostensibly on George, really upon
+Margaret, and extremely ill-advised in that at his heels gambolled his
+three bull-terriers.
+
+Korah, Dathan, and Abiram these were named, and they were abrupt dogs to
+a point reaching brusqueness.
+
+At the door, as William had approached, beamed Mr. Marrapit; upon the
+drive the queenly Rose of Sharon sat; and immediately tragedy swooped.
+
+The dogs sighted the Rose. Red-mouthed the shining pack flew at her.
+Dignity fell before terror: wildly, with streaming tail, she fled.
+
+Orange was the cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white
+ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt
+about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her
+pursuers--heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the
+doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief
+each time the parti-coloured ribbon flashed before his eyes.
+
+With Mr. Fletcher the end had come. Working indoors, aroused by the din,
+the gardener burst out past his master just as the ribbon fluttered into
+sight upon the completion of its fourth circuit. Like a great avalanche
+it poured against his legs; as falls the oak, so pressed he fell.
+
+Each eager jaw snapped once. Korah bit air, Dathan the cat's right ear.
+She wrenched; freed; sprang high upon the porch to safety, blood on her
+coat.
+
+Abiram put a steely nip upon Mr. Fletcher's right buttock.
+
+William called off his dogs; stood aghast. Mr. Marrapit stretched
+entreating arms to his adored. Mr. Fletcher writhed prone.
+
+The torn Rose slipped to Mr. Marrapit's bosom. Clasping her he turned
+upon William--“You shall pay for this blood!”
+
+William stammered: “I'm very sorry, sir. If--”
+
+“Never again enter my gates. I'll have your curs shot!”
+
+Curs was unfortunate; the evil three were whelped of a mighty strain.
+
+“If your fool of a man hadn't got in the way, the cat would have
+escaped,” William hotly cried. Indignant he turned. Banishment was
+nothing then; in time it came to be a bitter thing.
+
+Mr. Marrapit had raged on to Mr. Fletcher, yet writhing.
+
+“You hear that?” he had cried. “Dolt! You are responsible for this!” He
+touched the blood-flecked side, the abrased ear; clasped close the Rose;
+called for warm water.
+
+Mr. Fletcher clapped a hand to his wound as shakily he rose.
+
+“I go to rescue his cat!” he said; “I'm near worried to death by 'ounds.
+I'm a dolt. I'm responsible. It's 'ard,--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I
+am; not a dog muzzle.”
+
+A dimness clouded Margaret's beautiful eyes as this bitter picture--she
+had watched it--was again reviewed. She murmured “Oh, Bill!”; stretched
+her soft arms to the night; moved her pretty lips in a message to her
+lover; snuggled between the sheets and made melancholy her bedfellow.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+By seven she was up and in the fresh garden. George was before her.
+
+She cried brightly: “Why, how early you are!” and ran to him--very
+pretty in her white dress: at her breast a rose, the poem fluttering in
+her hand.
+
+“Yes; for once before you.”
+
+George's tone did not give back her mood, purposely keyed high. She
+played on it again: “Turning a new leaf?”
+
+He drummed at the turf with his heel: “Yes--for to-day.” He threw out a
+hand towards her: “But in the same old book. I've had eight--nine years
+of it, and now there are three more months.”
+
+“Poor George! But only three months, think how they will fly!”
+
+He was desperately gloomy: “I haven't your imagination. Each single day
+of them will mean a morning--here; a night--here.”
+
+“Oh, is it so hard?”
+
+“Yes, now. It's pretty deadly now. You know, when I wasn't precisely
+killing myself with overwork, I didn't mind so much. When it was three
+or four years, anyway, before I could possibly be free, a few extra
+months or so through failing an exam, didn't trouble me. But this
+is different. I was right up against getting clear of all this”--he
+comprehended garden and house in a sweep of the hand--“counted it a dead
+certainty--and here I am pitched back again.”
+
+“But, George, you did work so hard this time. It isn't as though you
+had to blame yourself.” She put a clinging hand into his arm. “You
+can suffer no--remorse. That is what makes failure so dreadful--the
+knowledge that things might have been otherwise if one had liked.”
+
+George laughed quite gaily. Gloom never lay long upon this young man.
+
+“You're a sweet little person,” he said. “You ought to be right, but
+you are wrong. When I didn't work I didn't mind failing. It's when I've
+tried that I get sick.”
+
+Margaret's eyes brightened. There was melancholy here.
+
+“Oh, I know what you mean. I know so well. I have felt that. You mean
+the--the haunting fear that you may never be able to succeed; that you
+have not the--the talent, the capacity.” She continued pleadingly:
+“Oh, you mustn't think that. You can--you _will_ succeed next time, you
+know.”
+
+“Rather!” responded George brightly.
+
+Margaret was quite pained. She would have had him express doubt,
+despondently sigh; would have heartened him with her poem. The confident
+“rather!” jarred. She hurried from its vigour.
+
+She asked: “What had you intended to do?”
+
+“I was to have got a _locum tenens_. I think it would have developed
+into a permanency. A big, rough district up in Yorkshire with a man who
+keeps six horses going. His second assistant--a pal of mine--wants to
+chuck it.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Why? Oh, partly because he's fed up with it, partly because he wants a
+practice of his own.”
+
+“Ah! ... But, George, don't you want a practice of your own? You don't
+want to be another man's assistant, do you?”
+
+George laughed. “I can't choose, Margi. You know, if you imagine there
+are solid groups of people all over England anxiously praying for the
+arrival of a doctor, you must adjust that impression, as your father
+would say. These things have to be bought. I've got about three pounds,
+so I'm not bidding. They seldom go so cheap.”
+
+Margaret never bantered. She had no battledore light enough to return
+an airy shuttlecock. Now, as always, when this plaything came
+buoyantly towards her she swiped it with heavy force clean out of the
+conversational field.
+
+She said gravely: “Ah, I know what you mean. You mean that father ought
+to buy you a practice--ought to set you up when you are qualified. I
+can't discuss that, can I? It wouldn't be loyal.”
+
+“Of course not. I don't ask you.”
+
+They moved towards the sound of the breakfast bell.
+
+“You think,” Margaret continued, “that father ought to buy you a
+practice because your mother left him money for the purpose?”
+
+“I know she left him nearly five thousand pounds for my education
+and all that. I think I may have cost him three thousand, possibly
+four--_so_ I think I am entitled to something, _but_ I shan't get it,
+_therefore_ I don't worry. My hump is gone; in three months I shall be
+gone. Forward: I smell bacon!”
+
+Margaret smiled the wan smile of an invalid watching vigorous youth at
+sport. Firmly she banged the shuttlecock out of sight.
+
+“How bright you are!” she told him. “Look, here is a little poem I wrote
+for you last night. It's about failure and success. Don't read it now.”
+
+George was very fond of his cousin. “Oh, but I must!” he cried. “I think
+this was awfully nice of you. He's not down yet. Let's sit on this seat
+and read it together.”
+
+“Oh, not aloud. It's a silly little thing--really.”
+
+“Yes--aloud.”
+
+He smoothed the paper. She pressed against him; thrilled as she regarded
+the written lines. George begged her read. She would not--well, she
+would. She paused. Modesty and pride gathered on her cheeks, tuned her
+voice low. She read:
+
+  “So you have tried--So you have known
+  The burning effort for success,
+  The quick belief in your own prowess and your skill,
+  The bitterness of failure, and the joy
+  Of sweet success.”
+
+“'Burning effort,'” George said. “That's fine!”
+
+“I'm glad you like that. And 'quick belief'--you know what I mean?”
+
+“Oh, rather.”
+
+The poet warmed again over her words.
+
+  “So you have tried--
+  So you have known
+  The blind-eyed groping towards the goal
+  That flickers on the far horizon of Attempt,
+  Gleaming to sudden vividness, anon
+  Fading from sight.”
+
+“Sort of blank verse, isn't it?” George asked.
+
+“Well, sort of,” the poet allowed. “Not exactly, of course.”
+
+“Of course not,” George agreed firmly.
+
+Margaret breathed the next fine lines.
+
+  “So you have tried--
+  So you have known
+  The bitter-sweetness of Attempt,
+  The quick determination and the dread despair
+  That grapple and possess you as you strive
+  For imagery.”
+
+George questioned: “Imagery...?”
+
+“That verse is more for me than you,” the poet explained. “'For
+imagery'--to get the right word, you know.”
+
+“Rather!” said George. “It does for me too--in exams, when one is
+floored, you know.”
+
+“Yes,” Margaret admitted doubtfully. “Ye-es. Don't interrupt between the
+verses, dear.”
+
+Now emotion swelled her voice.
+
+  “Success be yours!
+  May you achieve
+  To heights you do not dream you'll ever touch;
+  The power's to your hand, the road before you lies--
+  Forward! The gods not always frown; anon
+  They'll kindly smile.”
+
+“Why, that's splendid!” George cried. He put a cousinly arm about
+the poet; squeezed her to him. “Fancy you writing that for me! What a
+sympathetic little soul you are--and how clever!”
+
+Breathless she disengaged herself: “I'm so glad you like it. It's a
+silly little thing--but it's _real_, isn't it? Come, there's father.”
+
+She paused against denial of the poem's silliness, affirmation of its
+truth; but George, moody beneath Mr. Marrapit's eye, glinting behind the
+window, had moved forward.
+
+Margaret thrust the paper in her bosom, tucked in where heart might warm
+against heart's child. Constantly during breakfast her mind reverted to
+it, drummed its rare lines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped.
+
+
+Yet Margaret had called her poem silly. Here, then, was mock-modesty by
+diffidence seeking praise. But this mock-modesty, which horribly abounds
+to-day, is only natural product of that furious modesty which has come
+to be expected in all the arts.
+
+Modesty should have no place in true art. The author or the painter,
+the poet or the composer should be impersonal to his work. That which he
+creates is not his; it is a piece of the art to which he is servant, and
+as such (and such alone) he should regard it. His in the making and the
+moulding, thereafter it becomes the possession of the great whole to
+which it belongs. If it adorns that whole he may freely admire it; for
+he is impersonal to it.
+
+Unquestionably (or unconsciously) we accept this principle in regard to
+human life. The child belongs not to the mother who conceived it but to
+the race of which it is an atom. It hinders or it betters the race. The
+race judges it. By the race it is honoured or condemned; and to it the
+mother becomes impersonal. As it bears itself among its fellows, so she
+judges it--as the artist's work bears itself in the great art it joins,
+so should he judge it. And if the mother joins in his fellows' praise of
+her child, and if she proclaims her pride in it, is she called wanting
+in modesty?--and if the artist joins in praise of his work, and if he
+freely names it good, must he then be vain, boastful? The race grants
+that the mother who gave it this specimen of its kind has a first right
+to show her pride--to the artist who gives a fair specimen to his art we
+should allow a like voice.
+
+For in demanding modesty--in naming impersonality conceit--we have
+produced also mock-modesty; and because, as a people, we have little
+appreciation of the arts, hence little knowledge, hence no standard by
+which to judge, we continually mistake the one form of modesty for the
+other. Modesty we suspect to be mock-modesty, and mock-modesty we take
+to be pleasing humility.
+
+Coming to literature alone, the author should be impersonal to his work
+and must not cry that the writer is no judge of his own labour. Letters
+is his trade; and just as the mason well knows whether the brick he has
+laid helps or hinders, beautifies or insults the house, so the writer
+should be full cognisant whether his work helps make or does mar the
+edifice called literature. Nor must the term literature be denied to the
+ruck of modern writing. All that is written to interest or to instruct
+goes to make the literature of our day. We have introduced new
+expressions just as we have contrived new expressions in architecture;
+and as in the latter case so in the former the bulk of these is
+ephemeral. Nevertheless they are a part of literature, and all efforts
+in them better or sully the pages which in our day we are adding to the
+book of literature. From this book the winds of cycles to come will blow
+all that is unworthy--only the stout leaves will endure; but, no less
+because you write for the supplement than if you have virtue sufficient
+for the bound volume, remember that in every form of writing there
+are standards of good, and that every line printed helps raise or does
+tarnish the letters of our day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Excursions In A Hospital.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+By the half-past nine train George went to town; an hour later was at
+St. Peter's.
+
+From the bar of the Students' Club a throng of young men of his year
+loudly hailed him. He joined them; took with a laugh the commiserations
+on his failure; wrung the hands of those who had been successful.
+
+The successful young gentlemen were standing drinks-each man his
+round. There was much smoke and much laughter. Amusing experiences were
+narrated. You gathered that all who had passed their examination had
+done so by sheer luck, by astonishing flukes. Not one had ever worked.
+Each had been “ragged” on a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing.
+To the brilliancy with which he had gulled or bluffed his examiner, to
+the diplomacy with which he had headed him off the matters of which he
+knew absolutely less than nothing-to these alone were his success due.
+
+Such is ever Youth's account of battle with Age. Youth is a devil of
+a smart fellow, behind whom Age blunders along in the most ridiculous
+fashion. Later this young blood takes his place in the blundering ranks
+and then does learn that indeed he was right--Age knows nothing. For
+with years we begin to realise our ignorance, and the lesson is not
+complete when the grave slams the book. A few plumb the depths of their
+ignorance before death: these are able to speak--and these are the
+teachers of men. We get here one reason why giants are fewer in our day:
+with the growth of man's imaginings and his inventions there is more
+vanity to be forced through; the truths of life lie deeper hid; more
+phantasms arise to lure us from the quest of realities; the task of
+striking truth accumulates.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Soon after midday the party broke up. Its members lunched early;
+visiting surgeons and physicians went their rounds at half-past one.
+
+George strolled to the Dean's office.
+
+A woebegone-looking youth in spectacles stood before the table; opposite
+sat the Dean. He looked up as George entered, and nodded: he was fond of
+George.
+
+“Come along in,” he said; “I shan't be a minute.”
+
+He turned to the sad youth. “Now your case, Mr. Carter,” he said, “is
+quite unique. In the whole records of the Medical School”--he waved at
+a shelf of fat volumes--“in the whole records of the Medical School we
+have nothing in the remotest degree resembling it. You have actually
+failed twice in--in--”
+
+The Dean searched wildly among a litter of papers; baffled, threw out an
+emphasising hand, and repeated, “_Twice_! Other hospitals, Mr. Carter,
+may have room for slackers--we have not. We have a record and a
+reputation of which we are proud. You are in your second year. How old
+are you?”
+
+A faint whisper said, “Nineteen.”
+
+The Dean started. “Nineteen! Oh, dear me, dear me! this is worse than
+I thought--far worse. I am afraid, Mr. Carter, I shall have to write to
+your father.”
+
+Guttural with emotion, Mr. Carter gasped: “I mean to work--indeed I do.”
+
+Again the Dean frantically searched on his desk to discover the subject
+in which Mr. Carter had failed; again was unsuccessful. Deep thought
+ravelled his brow. His fingers drummed indecision on the table. It was a
+telling picture of one struggling between duty and kindliness--masterly
+as the result of long practice.
+
+“Mr. Carter,” the Dean summed up, “I will consider your case more fully
+to-night. Against my better judgment I may perhaps decide not on this
+occasion to communicate with your father. But remember this. At the very
+outset of your career you have strained to breaking-point the confidence
+of your teachers. Only by stupendous efforts on your part can that
+confidence be restored. These failures, believe me, will dog you from
+now until you are qualified--nay, will dog your whole professional
+career. That will do.”
+
+In a convulsion of relief and of agitation beneath this appalling
+prospect the dogged man quavered thanks; stumbled from the room.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+George laughed. “Same old dressing-down,” he said. “Don't you ever alter
+the formula?”
+
+“It's very effective,” the Dean replied. “That's the sixth this morning.
+Unfortunately I couldn't remember in what subject that boy had failed;
+so he didn't get the best part--the part about that being the one
+subject of all others which, if failed in, predicted ruin.”
+
+“It was biology in my case,” George told him. “I trembled with funk.”
+
+“I think most of you do. It's fortunate that all you men when you first
+come up are afraid of your fathers. It gives us a certain amount of hold
+over you. If the thing were done properly, both at the 'Varsities and
+the hospitals, there would be a system of marks and reports just as at
+schools. You are only boys when you first come up, and you should be
+treated as boys; instead, you are left free and irresponsible. It ruins
+dozens of men every year.”
+
+“Perhaps that's why I'm here now,” George responded. “You know I got
+ploughed?”
+
+The Dean told George how sorry he had been to hear it. He questioned:
+“Bad luck, I suppose? I thought it was a sitter for you this time.”
+
+“Yes, rotten luck.”
+
+“It's unfortunate, you know. You would have got a house appointment. I'm
+afraid you will miss that mow. There will be a crowd of very hot men
+up with you in October, junior to you, who will get the vacancies. What
+will you do?”
+
+George shrugged and laughed.
+
+The Dean frowned; interpreted the shrug. “Well, you should care,” he
+said. “You ought to be looking around you. Won't your uncle help you to
+buy a partnership?”
+
+“We are on worse terms than ever after this failure. Not he.”
+
+“And you're not trying to be on good terms, I suppose?”
+
+“Not I.”
+
+“You are a remarkably silly young man. You want balance, Leicester, you
+want balance. It would be the making of you to have some serious purpose
+in life. You will run against something of the kind soon--you'll get
+engaged, perhaps, and then you'll regret your happy-go-lucky ways.” He
+fumbled amongst a pile of correspondence and drew out a letter. “Now,
+look here, I was thinking of you only a few moments ago. Here's a letter
+from a man who--who--where is it?--Ah, yes--If you could raise 400
+pounds by the time you are qualified I could put you on to a splendid
+thing.”
+
+“Not the remotest chance,” said George. “The serious purpose must wait.
+I--”
+
+The Dean waved a hand that asked silence; consulted the letter. “This is
+from a man in practice at a place called Runnygate--one of these rising
+seaside resorts--Hampshire--great friend of mine. He's got money, and
+he's going to chuck it--doesn't suit his wife. I told him I'd find a
+purchaser if he would leave it with me. Merely nominal--only 400
+pounds. He says that in a year or so there'll be a small fortune in the
+practice, because a company is taking the place over to develop it. You
+shall have first refusal. Come now, pull yourself together, Leicester.”
+
+George laughed. He stood up. “Thanks, I refuse now. What on earth's the
+good?”
+
+“Rubbish,” said the Dean. “Think over that serious interest in life. You
+never know your luck.”
+
+George moved to the door. “I know my luck all right,” he laughed. “Never
+mind, I'm not grumbling with it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Upon Life: And May Be Missed.
+
+
+In the ante-room, as it were, of a very short chapter, we must make
+ready to receive our heroine. She is about to spring dazzling upon our
+pages; will be our close companion through some moving scenes. We must
+collect ourselves, brush our hair, arrange our dress, prepare our nicest
+manner.
+
+And as in ante-rooms there are commonly papers laid about to beguile the
+tedium, and as the faint rustle of our heroine's petticoats is warning
+that George's assertion that he knew his luck is immediately to be
+disproved, let us make a tiny little paper on the folly of such a
+statement.
+
+For of his luck man has no glimmer of prescience. Day by day we
+rattle the box, throw the dice; but of how these will fall we have no
+knowledge. We only hope with the gambler's feverishness; and it is this
+very hazard that keeps us crowding and pushing to hold our place at
+the tables where fortune spins. Grow we sick of the game, sour with our
+luck, weary of the hazard, and relinquish we our place at the table, we
+are pushed back and out--elbowed, thrown, trampled.
+
+We are all treasure-seekers set on a treasure-island in a boundless sea.
+Cruelly marooned we are--flung ashore without appeal, and here deserted
+until the ship that disembarked us suddenly swoops and the press-gang
+snatches us again aboard--again without heed to our desire. Whence the
+ship brought us we do not know, and whither it will carry us we do not
+know; there is none to prick a return voyage disclosing the ultimate
+haven, though pilots there be who pretend to the knowledge--we cannot
+test them.
+
+But the marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our
+thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a
+pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised,
+we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some
+seek to break new ground, but what the pick will next turn up no one
+knows.
+
+And it is this uncertainty, this hazard, that keeps us hammer, hammer,
+hammering; that keeps us, some from brooding against the marooners,
+their wanton desertion of us, our ultimate fate at their hands; others
+from making ready against the return voyage as entreated by the pilots.
+
+Certainly, when the pick strikes a pocket, we turn to carousing; cease
+cocking a timid eye at the horizon.
+
+And now our heroine is beckoning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant
+case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers,
+surgeons and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of the
+subject. He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts--three more
+months of dependency--to take greater interest.
+
+One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's side
+until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the cause,
+“Clumsy beast,” said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: “Come on,
+Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West.”
+
+In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's
+eye; a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the nose.
+“Tea,” said he; “it is going to rain.”
+
+He addressed the pretty waitress: “I have no wish to seem inquisitive,
+but which table do you attend?”
+
+The girl jerked her chin: “What's that to you?”
+
+“So much,” Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, “that, until I know, here,
+beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand.”
+
+“Well, all of 'em.” She whisked away.
+
+“You're badly snubbed, Franklyn,” George said. “This rain is nothing.”
+
+A summer shower crashed down as he spoke; a mob of shoppers, breathless
+for shelter, drove them inwards.
+
+“George,” said Mr. Franklyn, seating himself, “your base mind thinks I
+have designs on this girl. I grieve at so distorted a fancy. The child
+says prettily that she attends 'all of 'em.' It is a gross case of
+overwork into which I feel it my duty more closely to inquire.”
+
+George laughed. “Do you always spend your afternoons like this?”
+
+“As a rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that
+day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will be a sad
+wrench to leave the dear old home.” He continued, a tinge of melancholy
+in his voice: “You know, I am the last of the old brigade. The medical
+student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; he is a rabbit.
+Alone, undismayed, I uphold the old traditions. I am, so to speak,
+one of the old aristocracy. Beneath the snug characteristics of the
+latter-day student--his sweet abhorrence of a rag, his nasty delight
+in plays which he calls 'hot-stuff,' his cigarettes and his
+chess-playing--beneath these my head, like Henley's, is bloody but
+unbowed. Forgive a tear.”
+
+The shower ceased; the tea was finished; the pretty waitress was
+coyly singeing her modesty in the attractive candle of Mr. Franklyn's
+suggestions. George left them at the game; strolled aimlessly towards
+the Marble Arch; beyond it; to the right, and so into a quiet square.
+
+Here comes my heroine.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The hansom, as George walked, was coming towards him--smartly, with
+a jingle of bells; skimming the kerb. As it reached him (recall that
+shower) the horse slipped, stumbled, came on its knees.
+
+Down came the shafts; out shot the girl.
+
+The doors were wide; the impetus took her in her stride. One tiny foot
+dabbed at the platform's edge; the other twinkled--patent leather and
+silver buckle--at the step, missed it, plunged with a giant stride for
+the pavement.
+
+“Mercy!” she cried, and came like a shower of roses swirling into
+George's arms.
+
+Completely he caught her. About his legs whipped her skirts; against him
+pressed her panting bosom; his arms--the action was instinctive--locked
+around her; the adorable perfume of her came on him like breeze from a
+violet bed; her very cheek brushed his lips--since the first kiss it was
+the nearest thing possible to a kiss.
+
+She twisted backwards. Modesty chased alarm across her face--caught,
+battled, overcame it; flamed triumphant.
+
+Fright at her accident drove her pale; shame at the manner of her
+descent--leg to the knee and an indelicacy of petticoats--agitated she
+had glimpsed it as she leapt--flushed her crimson from the line of her
+dress about her throat to the wave of her hair upon her brow.
+
+She twisted back. “Oh, what must you think of me?” she gasped.
+
+He simply could not say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Moving Passages With A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George could not say.
+
+His senses were washed aswim by this torrent of beauty poured unexpected
+through eyes to brain. It surged the centres to violent commotion, one
+jostling another in a whirlpool of conflict. Out of the tumult alarm
+flashed down the wires to his heart--set it banging; flashed in wild
+message to his tongue--locked it.
+
+The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He
+loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a moment
+the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down the
+street, a murderer with bloody hand, a liar with false words suddenly
+pumped.
+
+A moment later the driver is calm and aghast at the ruin he has
+contrived. Why, before God, did he pull the leg lever?--the arm
+lever?--the tongue lever? In an instant's action he has accomplished
+calamity; where sunshine laughed now darkness heaps; where the prospect
+smiled disaster now comes rolling up in thunder.
+
+These are your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes
+temporarily idiot--stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out some
+stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have
+fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an
+intolerable fellow.
+
+“Oh, what must you think of me?”
+
+That pause followed while the driver in George's brain stood gapingly
+inactive; and then came laughter to him like a draught of champagne. For
+the girl put up her firm, round chin and laughed with a clear pipe of
+glee--a laugh to call a laugh as surely as a lark's note will set a
+hedge in song; and it called the laugh in George.
+
+He said: “I am thinking the nicest things of you. But have you dropped
+from the skies?”
+
+“From a _cab_,” she protested.
+
+She turned to the road; back to George in dismay, for the catapult, its
+bullet shot, had bolted up the street--was gone from view.
+
+“Oh!--I _was_ in a cab?” she implored.
+
+George said: “It _looked_ like a cab. But a fairy-car, I think.”
+
+A pucker of her brows darkened the quick mirth that came to her eyes.
+She cried: “Oh, don't joke. She will be killed.”
+
+“You were not alone?”
+
+“No--oh, no! What has happened to her?”
+
+“We had better follow.”
+
+She corrected his number. “Yes, I had better. Thank you so much for your
+help.” She took a step; faltered upon it with a little exclamation of
+pain; put a white tooth on her lip.
+
+“You have hurt your foot?” George said.
+
+“My ankle, I think. Oh dear!” and then again she laughed.
+
+It came even then to George that certainly she would have made her
+fortune were she to set up a gloom-exorcising bureau--waiting at the end
+of a telephone wire ready to rush with that laugh to banish the imps of
+melancholy. Never had he heard so infectious a note of mirth.
+
+“Oh, what must you think of me?” she ended. “I simply cannot help
+laughing, you know--and yet, oh dear!”
+
+She put the tips of the fingers of a hand against her lower lip, gazed
+very anxiously up the road, and then again she gave that clear pipe of
+laughter.
+
+“I can't help it,” she told him imploringly. “I simply cannot help
+laughing. It is funny, you know. She was scolding me--”
+
+“_Scolding_!” George exclaimed.
+
+That beauty should be scolded!
+
+“Scolding--yes. Oh, I'm only a--well, scolding me, and I was wishing,
+_wishing_ I could escape. And then suddenly out I shot. And then I look
+around and she's--” A wave of her hand expressed a disappearance that
+was by magic agency.
+
+“But, _scolding_?” George said. “Need you trouble? She will be all
+right.”
+
+“Oh, I must. I live with her.”
+
+“Will she trouble about you?”
+
+“I think she will return for me. Please, _please_ go--would you
+mind?--to the corner, and see if there has been an accident.”
+
+From that direction a bicyclist approached. George hailed. “Is there a
+cab accident round the corner?”
+
+The youth stared; called “Rats!”; passed.
+
+George interpreted: “It means No. Do you think if you were to take my
+arm you could walk to the turning?”
+
+Quite naturally she slipped a white glove around his elbow. The contact
+thrilled him. “No nice girl, you know, would do this,” she said, “with a
+perfect stranger.”
+
+George bent his arm a little, the better to feel the pressure of those
+white fingers. “I am not really perfect,” he told her.
+
+She took his mood. “Nor I really nice,” she joined. “In fact, I'm
+horrible--they tell me. But I think it is wise to follow, don't you?”
+
+“Profoundly wise. Who says you are horrible?”
+
+She gave no answer. Glancing, he saw trouble shade her eyes, tremble her
+lips.
+
+That beauty should know distress!
+
+Very slightly he raised his forearm so that the lock of his elbow felt
+her hand. He had no fine words. This George was no hero with exquisite
+ways. He was a most average young man, and nothing could he find but
+most painfully average words.
+
+“I say, what's up?” he asked.
+
+She spoke defiantly; but some stupid something that she hated yet could
+not repress trembled her lips, robbed her tone of its banter. “What's
+up?” she said. “Why, _you_ would say something was up if you'd just been
+shot plump out of a cab, wouldn't you?”
+
+“Yes, but you were laughing a minute ago.” He looked down at her,
+but she turned her face. “Now, now, I believe--” He did not name his
+thought.
+
+She looked up. Her pretty face was red. He saw little flutters of
+eyelids, flutters round the eyes, flutters at the mouth. “Oh,” she said,
+“oh, yes, and I don't know why. I'm--I believe--” She tried to laugh,
+but the little flutterings clouded the smile like soft, dark wings
+flickering upon a sunbeam.
+
+“I believe--it's ridiculous to a perfect--imperfect--stranger--I believe
+I'm nearly--crying.”
+
+And this inept George could only return: “I say--oh, I say, can I help
+you?”
+
+She stopped; from his arm withdrew her hand. “Please--I think you had
+better go. Please go. Oh, I shall hate myself for behaving like this.”
+
+So unhappy she was that George immediately planned her a backdoor of
+excuse. “But you have no occasion to blame yourself,” he told her.
+“You've had an adventure--naturally you're shaken a bit.”
+
+She was relieved to think he had misunderstood her agitation. “Yes, an
+adventure,” she said, “that's it. And I haven't had an adventure for
+years, so naturally--But, please, I think you had better go. If my--my
+friend saw me with you like this she would be angry--oh, very angry.”
+
+“But why? She saw you fall. She saw me save you.”
+
+“You don't understand. She is not exactly my friend; she is my--my
+employer. I'm a mother's-help.”
+
+The mirth that never lay deep beneath those blue eyes of hers was
+sparkling up now; the soft, dark wings were fluttering no longer.
+
+She continued: “A mother's-help. Doesn't that sound wretched? I'm
+terribly slow at learning the mother's-help rules, but I'm positive
+of this rule--mothers' helps may not shoot out of cabs and leave the
+mother; it's such little help--you must see that?”
+
+“But you will be less help still if you stay here for ever with your
+hurt ankle--you must see that? I must stay with you or see you to your
+home.”
+
+When she answered, it was upon another change of mood. The soft, dark
+wings were fluttering again; and it was the banter of George's tone
+that had recalled them. For this was an adventure--and she had not known
+adventure for years; for these were flippant exchanges arising out of
+gay young hearts, and they recalled memories of days when such harmless
+bantering was of her normal life; for there had been sympathy in
+George's stammering inquiries, and it recalled the time when she lived
+amidst sympathy and amidst love.
+
+The soft, dark wings fluttered again: “I am very grateful to you for
+helping me,” she told him. “You must not think me ungrateful; only, I
+think you had better go. In my position I am not free to--to do as I
+like, talk where I will. You understand?” Her voice trembled a little,
+and she repeated: “You understand?”
+
+George said, “I understand.”
+
+
+
+II.
+
+And that was all that passed upon this meeting. A cab swung round the
+opposite corner; pulled up with a rattle; turned towards them; was
+alongside. Within, a brow of thunder sat.
+
+The cabman called, “I knowed you was all right, miss,” raised the trap,
+and cheerfully repeated the information to his fare: “I knowed she was
+all right, mum.”
+
+The mum addressed gave no congratulation to his prescience. He shut the
+lid; winked at George; behind his hand communicated, “Not 'arf angry,
+she ain't.”
+
+The girl ran forward; agitation bound up her hurt ankle. “Oh!” she
+cried, “I am so glad you are safe!”
+
+The thunder-figure addressed said: “Please get in. I have had a severe
+shock.”
+
+“This gentleman--” The girl half turned to George.
+
+“Please get in--instantly.”
+
+Scarlet the girl went. “Thank you very much,” she said to George;
+climbed in beside the cloud of wrath.
+
+Her companion slammed the door; dabbed at George a bow that was like a
+sharp poke with a stick; called, “Drive on.”
+
+George stepped into the road, held half a crown to the driver: “The
+address?”
+
+The man stooped. With a tremendous wink answered, “Fourteen Palace
+Gardens, St. John's Wood.”
+
+Away with a jingle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George did not return to St. Peter's that afternoon; watched the cab
+from view; walked back to Waterloo; thence took train to Paltley Hill
+with mind awhirl.
+
+Recovering from stunning shock the mind first sees a blur of
+events--formless, seething, inextricably tangled. Deep in this boiling
+chaos is one fact struggling more powerfully than the rest to cool and
+so to shape itself. It kicks a leg free here, there an arm, then another
+leg. Its exertions cause the whole more furiously to agitate--the brain
+is afire. Very suddenly this struggling fact jumps free. Laid hold of it
+is a cold spoon which, plunged back into the seething cauldron, arrests
+the turmoil of its contents.
+
+Or again, recovering from sudden shock the mind first sees a great
+whirling, blinding cloud of dust which hides and wreathes about the
+sudden topple of masonry that has provoked it. Here the slowly emerging
+fact may be likened to a clear gangway through the ruin up which the
+fevered owner may walk to investigate the catastrophe's cause and
+extent.
+
+So now with George. If not dazed by stunning shock, he was at least
+awhirl by set back of the swift sequence of events which suddenly
+had buffeted him; and it was not until strolling up from Paltley Hill
+railway station to Herons' Holt that one cooling fact emerged from which
+he might make an ordered examination of what had passed.
+
+The address that the cabman had given him was this fact--14 Palace
+Gardens, St. John's Wood. Here was the gangway through the pile of
+disorder, and here George resolutely made a start of examining events in
+place of wildly beating about through the dust of aimless conjectures.
+
+He visualised this Palace Gardens residence. A gloomy house, he
+suspected,--prison-like; its inhabitants warders, the girl their
+captive. A beautiful picture was thus presented to this ridiculous
+young man. For if the girl were indeed captive, warder-surrounded, how
+gratefully her heart must press towards him who was no turnkey! The more
+irksomely her captors held her, the more warmly would she remember him.
+Subconsciously he hoped for a rattle of chains, a scourging with whips.
+Every bond, every stroke would speed her spirit to the recollection of
+their meeting.
+
+But this delectable picture soon faded. Love--and this ridiculous George
+vowed he was in love--love is a mental see-saw. The nicely-balanced
+mind is set suddenly oscillating: now up, commandingly above the world,
+intoxicated with the rush and the elevation; now down to depths made
+horribly deep by contrast, wretchedly jarred by the bump.
+
+A new thought impelled a downward jolt of this kind. Failing a gloomy
+14 Palace Gardens, supposing the girl to be happily situated, it was
+horribly improbable that she would give him a moment's thought. This was
+a most chilling idea. Shivering beneath the douche, George's mind ran
+back along the episode of their meeting to discover arguments that would
+build up the chains and the whips.
+
+Memories banked high on either side. In search of his desire George
+gathered them haphazard, closely examined each.
+
+It was an unsatisfactory business. Here was a memory. She had said
+so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that might mean anything. He flung it
+down; took another. She had said so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that
+might have meant nothing.
+
+This was very disturbing. He must systematically go through the whole
+pile of memories--upon an ordered plan reconstruct each step of the
+episode.
+
+At first attempt it was a wretched business. Never was builder set to
+work with bricks so impossible as the bricks of conversation with which
+this reconstruction must be done. Each that the girl had supplied
+might dovetail in as he would have it go; upon the other hand it fitted
+equally well when twisted into the form in which, for all he knew, she
+might have constructed it. The bricks George had himself supplied he
+found even more disconcerting--they were stupid, ugly, laughable. He
+shoved them in, and they grinned at him--mocked him. None the less
+he persevered--he must get his answer; he must see both what she had
+thought of him and if she were likely still to be thinking of him. And
+at last the whole passage was reconstructed. He examined it, and once
+more down came the see-saw with a most shattering bump: he had made
+himself an idiot, and stood champion idiot if he believed she were
+likely to remember him.
+
+With a crash George sent the whole pile flying. Let him wander blindly
+in the dust of imaginings rather than be tortured by the grim austerity
+of ordered facts. More than this, there was one most comfortable memory
+to which he desperately clung--that falter in her voice when she had
+said “You understand?” Whenever, during that evening, doubt stirred and
+bade him recognise himself for a fool, George flattened the ugly spectre
+with the arm he contrived out of this memory.
+
+It was a lusty weapon.
+
+But a fresh vexation that lies in wait for all new lovers tore him when
+he got to bed. In the darkness he set his mind solely to recalling the
+girl's face. The picture tantalisingly eluded him. Generalities he could
+recall. She was fair, very, very fair; her hair was shining golden; but
+how was it arranged? In desperation he squirmed off to her eyes--blue;
+no, grey; no, blue. Damn it, he would forget whether she were black or
+white in a minute. Her chin? Ah, he had that!--white and firm and round.
+And her nose?--small, and a trifle tip-tilted. And her mouth?--her
+mouth, oh, heaven, he could not fix her mouth! The distracted young man
+tossed upon his pillow and went elsewhere. Distinctly he could remember
+her little feet with those silver buckles, quite different from any
+other feet. And she held herself slim and supple. Held herself? Why,
+good heavens! she was tall, and he had been thinking of her as short!
+This was appalling! He might meet her and pass her by. He might ... he
+rushed into troubled slumber.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The night gave him little rest. Whilst his body lay heavy, his brain,
+feverishly active, chased through the hours glimpses of the queen of
+his adventure. By early morning he was prodded into consciousness, and
+awaked to find himself instantly confronted with a terrible affair. Into
+his life, so he assured himself, had come a serious interest such as
+that which the Dean had hoped for him.
+
+Here, lying abed with fresh morning smiling in through the open window,
+for the first time he looked forward, following the face he had pursued
+through his dreams, into the future. Its chambers he found ghastly
+barren. He visualised it as a vast unfurnished house. To the merry eye
+with which two days ago he had looked upon the world, the picture,
+had he then conjured it, would have given him no gloom. He would have
+thought it a fine thing, this empty house that was his own--empty, but
+representing freedom.
+
+The matter was different now. Into this empty house had danced the girl.
+Her gay presence discovered its barrenness. There was not a chair on
+which she could sit, not a dish in the larder.
+
+George recalled that tight little practice at Runnygate that might be
+had for 400 pounds; went down to breakfast rehearsing a scene with his
+uncle; was moody through the meal.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The breakfast dragged past its close. Mr. Marrapit spoke. “The moments
+fly,” he observed.
+
+Margaret said earnestly: “Oh, yes, father.”
+
+“I was addressing George.”
+
+“Ur!” said George, suddenly aroused.
+
+Mr. Marrapit looked at his watch; repeated his observation.
+
+George read his meaning. “I thought of going up by the later train
+to-day,” he explained.
+
+“A dangerous thought. Crush it.” Mr. Marrapit continued: “Margaret, Mrs.
+Major, I observe you have concluded”; and when the two had withdrawn
+addressed himself again to George: “A dangerous thought. You recall our
+conversation of the day before yesterday?”
+
+“Perfectly.”
+
+“Yet by later trains, by idleness, you deliberately imperil your
+future?”
+
+George did not answer the question. This was the very opportunity for
+which he had wished. “I would like to talk about my future,” he said.
+
+“I dare not dwell upon it,” replied Mr. Marrapit.
+
+“I have to. I shall pass all right this time. I want to know--the fact
+is, sir, I know I have slacked in the past; I am a man now, and I--I
+regret it. I fully realise my responsibilities. You may rely that I
+shall make a certainty of the October examination.”
+
+“Commendable,” Mr. Marrapit criticised.
+
+“I want to know what help I may expect when I qualify.”
+
+“I cannot tell you.” Mr. Marrapit threw martyrdom into his tone. “I
+am so little,” he said, “in your confidence. Your expectations when
+qualified may be enormous. I am not favoured with them.” He sighed.
+
+George said: “I mean what help I may expect from you.”
+
+The piece of toast rising to Mr. Marrapit's mouth slowly returned
+towards his plate: “Reiterate that. From _me_?”
+
+“From you,” said George.
+
+The toast dropped from trembling fingers. “_I_?” Mr. Marrapit dragged
+the word to tremendous length. “I? Is it conceivable that you expect
+money from me?”
+
+“I only ask.”
+
+“I only shudder. Might I inquire the amount?”
+
+“The Dean told me of a practice I could have for 400 pounds.”
+
+“Tea!” exclaimed Mr. Marrapit on a gasp. “I must steady myself! Tea!” He
+paused; gulped a cup; with alarmed eyes stared at George.
+
+The affair was going no better than George had expected. He remembered
+the face that was dear to him; nerved himself to continue. “I would pay
+it back,” he said. “Will you lend me the 400 pounds?”
+
+“I must have air!” Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. “I reel before
+this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have supported
+you. Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I totter always
+through life with you upon my bowed back? I am Sinbad.”
+
+“There's no need to exaggerate or make a scene.”
+
+“Did I impel the scene?”
+
+“I only asked you a question,” George reminded.
+
+“You have aroused a spectre,” Mr. Marrapit answered.
+
+“Well, I may understand that I need expect nothing?”
+
+“I dare not answer you. I am shaken. I tremble.”
+
+George rose. Though what hope he had possessed was driven by his uncle's
+attitude, he was as yet only upon the threshold of his love. Hence the
+refusal of what he suddenly desired for that love's sake was not so
+bitter an affair as afterwards it came to be. “This is ridiculous,” he
+said; moved to the door.
+
+“To me a tragedy,” Mr. Marrapit declaimed from the window, “old as
+mankind; not therefore less bitter--the tragedy of ingratitude. At
+stupendous cost I have supported, educated, clothed you. You turn
+upon me for more. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a
+thankless child! I am Lear.”
+
+George tried a thrust: “I always understood my mother left you ample for
+me.”
+
+“Adjust that impression. She left me less than a sufficiency--nothing
+approaching amplitude. To the best of my ability I have fulfilled
+my task. It has been hard. I do not complain. I do not ask you for
+repayment of any excess that may have been incurred. But I am embittered
+by yet further demands. I have been too liberal. Had I meted out strict
+justice as I have striven to mete out kindness, my grey hairs would not
+be speeding in poverty to the grave. I am Wolsey.”
+
+Upon Wolsey George slammed the door; started for the station.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Palace Gardens, St. John's Wood, was his aim. There could be no work,
+nor even thought of work, until again he had met his lady. Yet how to
+meet her cost him another of the wrestles with conjecture that had been
+his lot since the cab carried her away.
+
+At first it was easy work. He would call, he decided, with polite
+inquiries; and as he pictured the scene his spirits rose. The
+thunder-figure that had poked a bow at him from the cab would come
+dragonish into the drawing-room where he waited. Her he would charm with
+the suavity of his manners; she would doff the dragon's skin; would
+say (he had read the scene in novels), “You would like to see Miss
+So-and-so?”
+
+The girl would come in ....
+
+With her appearance in his thoughts George's mind swung from coherent
+reasoning into a delectable phantasy ....
+
+A sudden thought swept the filmy clouds-landed him with a bump upon hard
+rock. He was not supposed to know their address. How, to the dragon,
+could he explain the venal trick by which he had acquired it? Now he
+beheld a new picture. Himself in the drawing-room; to him the dragon;
+her first words, “How did you know where we lived?”; his miserable
+answer.
+
+This was very unpleasant. As a red omnibus took him on towards St.
+John's Wood he decided that the meeting must be otherwise effected. The
+girl must sometimes go out. She had called herself a mother's-help; it
+suggested children; and, if children, doubtless her task to take them
+walking. Well, he would take up a post near to the house, and wait--just
+wait.
+
+And then there came a final thought that struck him cold and staring.
+What if she did not live at the house?--was merely about to visit there
+when the accident befell the cab?
+
+It was a sorely agitated young man that stepped off the 'bus and struck
+up Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+Of his Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+AS that cab swung round the corner bearing away the nameless haunter of
+George's dreams, she to the red wrath beside her turned, and, “Oh, Mrs.
+Chater,” she said, “I hope you are not hurt!”
+
+By a mercy Mrs. Chater was not hurt. By a special intervention of
+Providence she had escaped a fearful death. Whether she would ever
+recover from the shock was another matter. Whether the shock would prove
+to be that sudden strain on her heart which she had been warned would
+end fatally, might at any moment be proved. Much anybody, except her
+darling children, would care if she were brought home dead in this very
+cab. Never had she known a heart to act as hers was acting now--thumping
+as if it would burst, first quickly then slowly. Perhaps Miss Humfray
+would feel it, and give her opinion.
+
+Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant Chaters had been
+nourished; the massive bosom was advertisement that they had done
+well. Beneath the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently
+contracted and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though Mrs. Chater
+said it throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned.
+
+The agitated woman panted, “Can it go on like that?”
+
+“I'm afraid I hardly--” Miss Humfray shifted her hand.
+
+“_Stupid!_ Take off your glove!”
+
+The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous and clumsy the girl
+struggled with it.
+
+“Miss _Humfray!_ How slow you are! _Pull_ it!”
+
+Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A crack answered the jerk,
+and the glove split away in her hand. “_There!_ Not my fault. Next time,
+perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently large. Oh, my poor heart! Now,
+feel. _Press!_”
+
+The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her throat. She pressed, as
+bid, into that heaving blouse; said she could feel it. It was not very
+violent, she thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater lay back and closed her
+eyes--
+
+“_I_ was not able to jump out, you see,” said Mrs. Chater, sinking.
+
+“Oh, you don't think I _jumped_ out--and left you? I _wouldn't_.
+Besides, it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would have prevented
+me in any case. I was thrown. I thought I was going to be killed.”
+
+“You were with a young man.”
+
+“He caught me.”
+
+The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying. That lump in her
+throat seemed to be squeezing tears from her eyes--silly tears. She
+did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy, yet could not but reflect what
+disregard for her the utter absence of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts
+yet more dangerously squeezed the tears. She was a paid _thing_, that
+was all--not even a servant. Mrs. Chater was on kindly terms with her
+servants--had experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded it by
+the familiarity that was too useful to produce contempt--knew her maids'
+young men, entered into their quarrels with their young men, read their
+young men's letters.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner, the girl felt
+herself friendless, outcast, alone. Again she told herself that she did
+not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy; yet it was the studied withholding of
+it--studied or callous because so natural, the merest conventionalism,
+to have asked, “Were you hurt?”--that made her acutely feel her
+position.
+
+A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet to be wounded
+because it was not hers. A ridiculous paradox--and brightly she tried to
+smile at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were swelling now,
+her face turned against the window towards the pavement.
+
+A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of a nice-looking little
+old man with a grey moustache and military air. The tall, slim girl
+was laughing down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily, just
+as--Her mind swung off, and the tears must be blinked again.
+
+They reminded her, those two, of herself and her father. Such familiar
+friends as they looked so she had been with Dad who idolised her
+and whom she had idolised. Just like that--arm in arm, joking,
+“ragging”--she used to walk with him round about the home in
+Ireland--the world to one another and none else in the world, except the
+mother who was so intimately and inseparably of them that years past her
+death they still spoke of her as if she were alive.
+
+Thus, long after her death, it would be: “Dad, we can't go home by the
+hill; mother never lets Grizzle do that climb after a long day.” And:
+“Mary, your mother won't like you being so late; we must turn back.”
+ And: “Mary, there's the pig by mother's almond tree; run and shoo him.”
+
+Partly this refusal to recognise that, though dead, Mother was actually
+gone from them, no longer was sharing their little jokes and duties, was
+because death came with such steady, appreciable, unfrightening steps.
+First the riding stopped, and then the walks made shorter and shorter;
+then the strolls in the garden stopped, and then carrying the couch out
+under the trees--and none of them very fearful, because prepared: it was
+to be--almost the very day could have been named. Thus, when it came,
+though the blow swooped heavy, terrific, she never seemed actually to
+have left them.
+
+“Well, now, dear dears,” she had said with a little smile and a little
+sigh, “we have been happy ... only a little way away....”
+
+But with Dad it was different. Somehow, looking back on it, one had
+supposed that nothing would ever touch the cheery little man; that
+she and he would go on and on and on--well, till they grew very old
+together.
+
+Nothing could ever touch him....
+
+“What a wicked beauty, eh, Mary?” he had said when the man brought round
+the half-broken filly that its owner “funked.”
+
+And she had laughed and said: “Yes, an angel in a temper--what a run you
+will have, Dad!” and had waved from the gate as the angel in a temper
+curveted away around the corner.
+
+Nothing could ever touch him....
+
+And then the man on a bicycle--with a dent in his hat, she noticed.
+
+“If you can come quickly, missy. Top of the Three Finger field he lays.”
+
+Bare-backed she had galloped Grizzle there, and as she sped could not
+for the life of her think of aught else than the dent in the man's hat;
+rode up Three Finger Lane wondering how it came there; approached the
+little group wondering why he did not push it out.
+
+Just as she galloped up they took off their hats. Someone who had been
+on his knees stood upright--she saw the stain of wet earth where he had
+been kneeling; forgot the dented hat; wondered if he knew of the Marvel
+Cleaning Pad that had done so wonderfully with Dad's breeches when he
+took a toss last Friday.
+
+Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
+
+Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him
+home ... could do no good--now.
+
+“Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders.”
+
+Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her
+because of the pain.... Better come away.
+
+She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ... all
+crumpled up....
+
+Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as
+the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over
+the twisted face.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but
+to which memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin
+touched the earth seven feet down....
+
+Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of
+documents; interminable writing of signature; interminable making of
+lists. And then the word LOT. “Lot I,” “Lot 2,” “Lot 50,” “Lot 200”--a
+hammerlike word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep,
+producing grotesque nightmares, as “Lot 12, a polished oak coffin,
+finished plain, brass Handles.”
+
+No! No! That was not to be sold!--leaden hands holding her down;
+stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting “Stop!”
+
+Then sudden consciousness--only a dream! Bolt upright in bed staring
+into the darkness. A dream? How much of it a dream? Was it all a dream?
+The fevered brain would fetch her from her bed, groping to Dad's
+room, striking a match--no familiar form upon the bed; a big white
+ticket--“Lot 56.”
+
+Back to the hot, crumpled couch, there, tossing, to lie attempting a
+grasp, a realisation of what it all meant....
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A dark little office in Dublin.... So much the “Lots” had fetched, so
+much the balance at the bank; no investments, it was to be feared; no
+insurance, my dear Miss Humfray; so much the bills and other claims on
+the estate.... “Don't wish to be bothered with figures? Of course not,
+my dear.... And then we come to the balance--I'm afraid a few pounds,
+practically nothing....”
+
+
+
+V.
+
+On the steamer bound for Holyhead.... During the crossing the stifling
+weight that had benumbed her intellect ever since the man with the dent
+in his hat came riding up the drive seemed suddenly to lift. Whipped
+away perhaps by the edged wind that rushed past her from England to
+Ireland sinking in the sea--a wind to cut you to the bone; discovering
+sensation in every marrow; stinging her to clear thought.... That
+idyllic life with Mother and Dad--the world to one another and none else
+in the world beside--had been rather the creation of circumstance than
+of design. Dad's people were furious when he married Mother; in defiance
+of hers, Mother married Dad. Relations on either side had shrieked their
+disapproval of the match, then left the couple to their own adventures.
+A thing to laugh at in those days, but bringing now to the child that
+was left the realisation of not a support in the world.
+
+Her mother's sisters had written after the funeral inviting her to come
+to them in England “while she looked about her.” She could recall every
+sentence of that letter. It had burned. Each word, each comma was fresh
+before her eyes as the cab jolted on to Palace Gardens.
+
+“It would have been our pleasure constantly to have entertained you
+during your mother's life-time,” they had written, “but she wilfully
+flouted our desires at her marriage and thereafter utterly ignored us.
+The fault for the rift between us was of her making, not ours; we sent
+her an Easter card one year, and had no reply; though we have no
+doubt that your father, not that we would say a word against him now,
+influenced her against her better judgment. However....”
+
+She had written back a hysterical letter.
+
+“Your letter came just after I had returned from burying my dear, dear
+father, who worshipped my darling mother. If I were begging in the
+street, starving, dying, I would not touch a crumb or a penny of
+yours. You are wicked--yes, you are wicked to write to me as you have
+written....”
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+She could not stay in Ireland. Her only friends there lived about the
+dear home that was now no longer a home but a “desirable residence with
+some acres of garden and paddock.” Her only friends there were friends
+who had been shared with Mother and Dad--whose presence now would be
+constant reminder of that happy participation now lost. One and all
+offered her hospitality, but she must refuse. “No, no silly idea of
+being a burden to you, dear, dear Mrs. Sullivan--only I can't, can't
+live anywhere near where we used to live.”
+
+Years before a great friend of hers had married an English clergyman;
+had written often to her from London of the numerous activities in which
+she was engaged--principal among them a kind of agency and home for
+gentlewomen. “Governesses, dear, and all that kind of thing ... poor
+girls, many of them, who have suddenly had to earn a living.”
+
+The correspondence had died, as do so many, from the effects of undue
+urgency at the outset; but she had the address, and was certain there of
+welcome and of aid. “Poor girls who have suddenly had to earn a living.”
+ The words took on a new meaning: she was of these.
+
+From Euston she drove to the address. Her friend had gone. Yes, the
+present occupant remembered the name. The present occupant had been
+there two years; had taken over the lease from the former tenant because
+the lady was ill and had been ordered abroad. That was all the present
+occupant knew; saw her to the door; closed it behind her.
+
+Alone in London. “Alone in London”--it had been one of Dad's jokes; he
+had written a burlesque on it, and they had played it one Christmas
+to roars of fun. O God! what a thing at which to laugh now that the
+realisation struck and one stood on the pavement in the dark with this
+great city roaring at one!
+
+Cabmen, she had heard, were brutes; but the man who had brought her
+to the house must be appealed to.... Where could she get the cheapest
+lodging of some kind?
+
+How did he know? What was she wanting to pay? ...
+
+The great city roared at her. Her head swum a little. An idler or two
+took up a grinning stand: the thing looked like a cab-fare dispute....
+What was she wanting to pay? ... Well, as little as possible. “I have
+never been in London before, and I don't know anybody. My friend here
+has gone. I have just arrived from Ireland.” She began to cry.
+
+He from his box in a moment. “From Ireland!”
+
+Why, he was from Ireland! ... Not likely she was from Connemara? ... She
+was? ... From Kinsloe? ... Why, he knew it well; he was from Ballydag!
+
+He rolled his tongue around other names of the district; she knew them
+all; could almost have laughed at the silly fellow's delight.
+
+Why, the honour it would be if she would come and let his missus make
+her up a bed! “Don't ye cry, missie. Don't ye take on like that. It's
+all right ye are now.” He put a huge, roughly great-coated arm about
+her--squeezed her, she believed; helped her into the cab.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Missus in the clean little rooms over the rattling mews was no less
+delighted. From Kinsloe? Why, missie saw that canary?--that was a
+present from Betty Murphy in Kinsloe, not three months before!
+
+The canary, aroused by the attention paid it, trilled upward in a
+mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her
+head ... louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and
+cage became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have carried
+her to the bed in which she awoke.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Friends in Ireland had given her the addresses of friends in London
+on whom she must call. She visited some houses; then in a sudden wild
+despair tore the list. Either these people were dense of comprehension
+or she clumsy of explanation. To make them realise her position she
+found impossible. They were warmly kind, sympathetic--cheery in that
+lugubrious fashion in which we are taught to be “bright” with the
+afflicted. But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment they
+would warmly cry, “Oh, but you must not think of that yet, Miss Humfray
+... after all you have been through.... You must keep quiet for a
+little.”
+
+One and all gave her the same words. An impulse took her to kick over
+the tea-table--anything to arouse these people from their stereotyped
+mood of sympathy with a girl suddenly bereaved,--and to cry, “But don't
+you _understand_? I am living over a mews--over a _mews_ with twelve
+pounds and a few shillings, and then _nothing_--nothing at all.”
+
+Wise, perhaps, had she indulged the outburst without the action; wiser
+had she written to some of the friends in Ireland, asked to go back to
+one of them for a while. But the dull grief beneath which she still lay
+benumbed prevented her from other course than tonelessly accepting
+the proffered sympathy; and the thought of returning to Ireland was
+impossible. She tore the list of London friends; appealed to Tim and
+Missus.
+
+Tim was helpful. He had taken fares to an Agency in Norfolk Street--an
+Agency for “Disturbed Gentlewomen,” he called it; there took her one
+morning.
+
+“Distressed Gentlewomen,” she found the brass plate to read--“The
+Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed Gentlewomen.”
+
+A lymphatic-looking young woman, assisting the growth of a singularly
+stout face by sucking a sweet, and wearing brown holland sleeve
+protectors hooked up with enormous safety-pins, received her in the room
+marked “Enquiries”; put her into that labelled “Waiting.” Here were two
+copies of the _Christian Herald_, some emigration pamphlets, a carafe
+of water covered by an inverted tumbler dusty with disuse, and three
+elderly females--presumably gentlewomen, possibly distressed, but not
+advertising either condition.
+
+In due time her turn for the room marked “Private”; interrogation by
+Miss Ram, a short, thin lady in black, who bowed more frequently than
+she spoke, possessing a range of inclinations of the head each of which
+had unmistakable meaning.
+
+Position sought?--Oh, anything; governess, companion. Last
+situation?--None; she was inexperienced. Capabilities?--Equally lacking,
+as discovered by a probing cross-examination. Salary required?--Oh,
+anything; whatever was usual; a _home_--that was the chief object in
+view.
+
+Miss Ram entered the details in a severe-looking book with a long
+thin pen--could hold out but faint hopes. The applicants whom she was
+accustomed to suit were “in nine and ninety cases out of one hundred
+cases” accomplished in the domestic or scholastic arts. However. Yes,
+Miss Humfray should call every morning. Better still, stay in the
+waiting-room. Be On the Spot--that was the first requisite for success,
+as Miss Humfray would find whether in a situation or awaiting a
+situation; be On the Spot.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+On the Spot. A nightmare week in the dingy waiting-room ... thoughts
+probing the mind, stabbing the heart.... Nine till one, a cup of tea
+and a roll at an A.B.C. shop, an aimless walk in the park; two till six,
+good-night to the stout young woman named Miss Porter in “Enquiries,”
+ home to the rattling mews and to Missus.
+
+On the Spot. Occasional interviews. “Miss Humfray, a lady will see you.”
+ ... “Oh, too young--far too young.” ... “Thank you, that will do, Miss
+Humfray.” ... “Oh, not my style at all.” ... “Thank you, that will do,
+Miss Humfray.”
+
+On the Spot. Fortunately On the Spot one day--a Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, as
+nursery governess, Streatham.
+
+For a week very much On the Spot with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton. Nursery
+governess was a comprehensive word in the Eyton-Eyton vocabulary;
+covered every duty that in a nursery must be performed. One must do
+the nursery fire, sweep the nursery floor, bring up and carry down the
+nursery meals--servants, you see, object to waiting upon one whom, as
+Mrs. Eyton-Eyton with a careless laugh pointed out, they regard as one
+of themselves. Quickly the lesson was appreciated that while a servant
+must never be “put upon,” the same consideration need not be extended to
+a lady. Servants are rare in the market, young ladies cheap.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The lesson of dependence, subserviency, Mary found harder in the
+learning; did not study it; therein reaped disaster.
+
+She arrived on a Tuesday. Upon that day of the following week Mrs.
+Eyton-Eyton paid to the nursery one of her rare visits, beautifully
+gowned, the hired victoria waiting to take her a round of calls.
+
+Lunch, delayed not to disturb the midday sleep of Masters Thomas and
+Richard Eyton-Eyton, was not cleared--Master Thomas still struggling
+with a plate of sago pudding.
+
+Betwixt her children Mrs. Eyton-Eyton--beautifully gowned, hired
+victoria in waiting--took her seat; Mary hovered behind--and catastrophe
+swooped. Master Thomas grabbed for a glass of milk; Mary strove to
+restrain him. There was an awkward struggle, her elbow--or his--caught
+the plate of pudding, tipped the sticky mass into the silken lap of Mrs.
+Eyton-Eyton, beautifully gowned, hired victoria in waiting.
+
+Infuriated, Mrs. Eyton-Eyton turned upon Mary. “Oh, you little fool!”
+
+The rebuke that should have been taken with downcast eyes, murmured
+apologies, was otherwise received.
+
+“Mrs. Eyton! How dare you call me a fool!”
+
+Pause of blank amazement; sago-messed table-napkin in the scented hand;
+sago creeping down the silken skirt. That a nursery governess--not even
+a servant--should so presume!
+
+“Miss Humfray! You forget yourself!”
+
+“No!-No! It is you who forget yourself. How dare you speak to me like
+that!”
+
+Another moment of utter bewilderment; small Eyton-Eytons gazing
+round-eyed; the girl white, heaving; the woman dully red. Then “Pack
+your boxes, Miss!”
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+She was upon the platform at Victoria Station, a porter asking commands
+for her box, before she realised what she had done. A few pounds in her
+purse, and infinitely worse off now than a week before. Then she had no
+“character”; now employment was to be sought with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton as
+her “last place.” She would not go back to Missus and Tim. Though they
+had tried to conceal it, secretly, she had seen, they were relieved
+when she left. They had not accommodation for her; latterly she had
+dispossessed of his bed a sailor son on leave from his ship.
+
+She left her box in the cloak-room; turned down Wilton Road from the
+station; penetrated the narrow thoroughfares between Lupus Street and
+the river; secured a bedroom with Mrs. Japes at six shillings a week.
+
+Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received a
+furious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel line
+of red ink ruled through the page that began “Name: Mary Humfray,” and
+ended “Salary:--”
+
+“But I don't know a soul in London.”
+
+“You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have a
+reputation for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk.”
+
+A bow closed the interview.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+It was her landlady's husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, who
+dealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
+
+Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shops
+that had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and her
+presumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she found
+Mrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
+
+What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs. Up
+to her room--the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents scattered
+across the floor, the little case in which with her pictures of Mother
+and Dad she kept her money gone.
+
+A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which Mrs. Japes's property
+had also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ... had done
+time ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she'd best go
+... of course she could tell the police.
+
+Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered and
+frightened her.
+
+To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new landlady
+into the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe....
+Answering of advertisements found in the public library in Great Smith
+Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Always
+the same outcome. ... Experience?--None. References?--None.... “Thank
+you; I'm afraid--I'm sure it's all right, but one has to be so careful
+nowadays. Good morning.” ... Always the same outcome.... The idea of
+writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ... That life, those friends,
+seemed of a period that was dead, done, gone--ages and ages ago....
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow--a gentlemanly-looking
+person of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to an
+address copied from the _Daily Telegraph_. Why, by an extraordinary
+coincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!--flat,
+rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help.
+Might he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
+
+Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though putting
+now and then curious little questions which she could not understand....
+Hadn't he seen her at the Oxford one night? ... Assuredly he had not;
+what was the Oxford?
+
+He laughed, evidently pleased. “Gad, you do keep it up!” he cried.
+
+So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
+
+“You understand why I can't use the lift?” he said. “They're beastly
+particular here.”
+
+She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thus
+to a door where he took out a latch-key.
+
+It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, took
+her, trembling her limbs.
+
+She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
+
+“Why, it is the wrong number!” she cried.
+
+He had turned the key. “Lord! you do keep it up!” he laughed, his hand
+suddenly about her arm.
+
+Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the thing.
+
+“Ah, let me go--let me go!”
+
+“Oh, chuck it, you little ass!” His arm was about her waist now,
+dragging her; his face close.
+
+With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched
+from his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered his
+wits; across the hall and running--shaking, hysterical--down the street.
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Thereafter men were a constant horror to her--adding a new and most
+savage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair that
+bayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, she
+went again to Miss Ram at the Agency--almost upon her knees, crying,
+trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat to
+the man in Wilton Road.
+
+Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grim
+exterior; had never realised the actual circumstances; would do what she
+could; no need to be frightened.
+
+Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. No
+sharpness, no slight now could prick her spirit; she had learned too
+well; she would not face those streets again.
+
+That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds were
+healing now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at present
+discomforts. It was only now and again--as now--that she, driven by some
+sudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander--bruising itself in
+those dark passages.
+
+The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob; was
+herself.
+
+Mrs. Chater said: “Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Excursions In Vulgarity.
+
+
+A violent dispute with the cabman set that disturbed heart yet more
+wildly thumping in Mrs. Chater's bosom; the sight of her husband
+uneasily mooning in the dining-room heated her wrath to wilder
+bubblings.
+
+Mr. Chater--a 'oly dam' terror in Mincing Lane, if his office-boy may be
+quoted--was an astonishingly mild man in his own house.
+
+He said brightly, noting with a shiver the gusty stress of his wife's
+deportment: “You _drove_ up, my dear?--And quite right, too,” he hastily
+added, upon a sudden fear that his remark might be interpreted as
+reproach.
+
+“How do you know?” Mrs. Chater's nose went into the brandy-and-soda.
+
+“I saw you from the window,” her husband beamed. He repeated, “The
+window,” and nervously pointed at it. There was a strained atmosphere in
+the room, and he was a little frightened.
+
+“_Oh!_” Out from the brandy-and-soda came the nose; down went the glass
+with an emphasising bang: “_Oh!_”
+
+Mr. Chater gave a startled little jump. He saw, immediately he had
+spoken, the misfortune into which his admission had plunged him; the
+bang of the glass twanged his already apprehensive nerves, and he jerked
+out, “Certainly, my dear,” without any clear grasp as to what he was
+affirming.
+
+“If you had been a _man_,” said Mrs. Chater, speaking with a slow and
+extraordinary bitterness--“if you had been a _man_, you would have come
+out and helped me.”
+
+“But you had got out when I came to the window, my dear.”
+
+“With the _cabman_, I mean.” Mrs. Chater fired the word with alarming
+ferocity. “With the _cabman_. Did you not see that violent brute
+insulting me?”
+
+It was precisely because he had observed the episode that Mr. Chater had
+kept well behind the curtain; but he did not adduce the fact.
+
+“I certainly did not,” he affirmed.
+
+“Ah! I expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the same
+thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut
+outside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. Making me--”
+
+Mr. Chater implored: “Oh, my dear, don't drag that up again!”
+
+“But I _do_ drag it up!” Mrs. Chater a little unnecessarily cried. “I
+_do_ drag it up, and I shall always drag it up--making me a fool as you
+did! I was ashamed of you. I was--”
+
+Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket handkerchief:
+“I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I never understood
+the circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was very much pushed
+about. If I had known the circumstances--”
+
+Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: “Circumstances!”
+
+“My dear,” the agitated man replied, ticking off the points on soft
+fingers, “my dear, I had gone to the window of Swan and Edgar's, leaving
+you, as you expressly desired, to pay the man _yourself_. When I came
+_back_ to you, what I gathered was that the man was entitled to a
+further _sixpence_ and that you had no _change_.”
+
+Mrs. Chater lashed herself with the recollection: “Nothing of the kind!”
+ she burst. “Nothing of the kind! What did the man say to you when you
+asked what was the matter?”
+
+“I quite forget.”
+
+“You do not forget.”
+
+“My dear, I really and truly do forget.”
+
+“For the hundredth time, then, let me tell you. He said that if you
+pushed your ugly mug into it he would knock off your blooming head.”
+
+“Did he say _mug?_” asked Mr. Chater, assuming the air of one who,
+knowing this at the time, would have committed a singularly ferocious
+murder.
+
+“Well you know that he _did_ say mug--_ugly_ mug. Was _that_ a thing for
+a man of spirit to take quietly? Was _that_ a thing for a wife to
+hear bawled at her husband in the open street with the commissionaire
+grinning behind his hand? To my dying day I shall never forget my
+humiliation when you handed him sixpence.”
+
+The unhappy husband murmured: “I do so wish you could, my dear.”
+
+Mrs. Chater shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfect
+tactician, and hurled in the attack upon another quarter.
+
+She said: “Ah, now insult me! Insult me before Miss Humfray! That's
+right! _That's_ right! That's what I'm accustomed to. We all have our
+cross to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from my
+husband is mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open.”
+
+Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice which
+implied that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyes
+tightly closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered nerves,
+swallowed it with the air of one draining a poison flask by way of happy
+release from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and, before her amazed
+husband could open his lips, hammered in the attack from a third
+quarter.
+
+“Little you would have cared,” cried she, “if a miracle had not saved my
+life this afternoon!”
+
+Mr. Chater stood aghast. “My dearest! Saved you! From what?”
+
+His dearest bitterly inquired: “What does it matter to you? You take no
+interest. If my battered corpse--” Swept to tremendous heights by
+the combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her two
+brandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. “If my battered
+corpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this very
+afternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?”
+
+Mr. Chater, apprehension creeping among the roots of his hair, affirmed
+that he would have dropped dead in the precise spot at which he happened
+to be standing at the moment.
+
+Mrs. Chater trumpeted “Never!”--dropped to her chair, and continued.
+“You would have been glad.” Her voice shook. “Glad--and in all this wide
+world only my Bob and my blessed lambs in the nursery would have wept
+o'er my body.”
+
+Of so melancholy a character was the picture thus presented to her mind,
+augmenting her previous agitation, that the tumult within her welled
+damply through her eyes, with noisy distress through her lips.
+
+Patting her distressed back, imploring her to calm, Mr. Chater begged
+some account of the catastrophe from which she had escaped.
+
+Between convulsive sobs she told him, he bridging the hiatuses of
+emotion with “Oh-dear-oh-dears,” in which alarm and sympathy were nicely
+mingled.
+
+Painting details with a masterly hand, “And there was I alone,” she
+concluded--“alone, at the mercy of a wild horse and a drunken cabman.”
+
+“But Miss Humfray was with you?”
+
+“Miss Humfray managed to jump out and leave me.”
+
+Through all this scene--in one form or another a matter of daily
+occurrence, and therefore not to arouse interest--Mary had stood waiting
+its cessation and her orders. Mr. Chater turned upon her. Naturally
+disposed to be kind to the girl, he yet readily saw in his wife's
+statement a way of escape from the castigation he had been enduring.
+As the small boy who has been kicked by the bully will with delighted
+relief rush to the bully's aid when the kicks are at length turned to
+another, urging him on so that he may forget his first prey, so Mr.
+Chater, delighted at his fortune, eagerly joined in turning his wife's
+wrath to Mary's head. For self-preservation, at whatever cost to
+another, is the most compelling of instincts: its power great in
+proportion as we have allowed our fleshly impulses to master us. If,
+when they prompt, we coldly and impersonally regard them, find
+them unworthy and crush them back humiliated, they become in time
+disciplined--wither and die. In proportion as we permit them, upon the
+other hand, they come in time to drive us with a fierceness that cannot
+be checked.
+
+Mr. Chater had disciplined no single impulse that came to him with his
+flesh.
+
+In pious horror he turned upon the girl.
+
+“Managed to jump out!” he exclaimed, speaking as one re-echoing a horror
+hardly to be believed.
+
+“Managed to jump out! Miss Humfray, I would not have thought it of you!”
+
+She cried: “Mr. Chater, I fell!”
+
+Disregarding, and with a deeper note of pained reproach, he continued:
+“So many ties, I should have thought, would have bound you to my wife
+in such an emergency--the length of time you have been with us;
+the unremitting kindness she has shown you, treating you as one of
+ourselves, in sickness tending you, bountifully feeding and clothing
+you, going out of her way to make you happy. Oh, Miss Humfray!”
+
+The strain on his invention paused him. Mrs. Chater, moved by this
+astonishing revelation of her love, assumed an air in keeping--an air
+of some pain but no surprise at such ingratitude. She warmed to this
+husband who, if no hero in the matter of ferocious cabmen, could at
+least champion her upon occasion.
+
+Mary cried: “But I did not jump out! Indeed I did not, Mr. Chater; I
+fell.”
+
+Mrs. Chater said _“Fell!”_ With sublime forbearance she added, “Never
+mind; the incident is past.”
+
+“Mrs. Chater, you must know that I fell out. I was leaning out--you had
+asked me to see the name of the street--when the horse stumbled.”
+
+“It is curious,” said Mrs. Chater, with a pained little smile, “that you
+managed to 'fall out' before the horse could recover and bolt.”
+
+“Very, very curious,” Mr. Chater echoed.
+
+How hateful they were, the girl felt. She broke out: “I--”
+
+“Miss Humfray, that is enough. Help me upstairs. I will lie down.”
+
+Mr. Chater jumped brightly to the bell. “My dear, do; I will send you a
+hot-water bottle.”
+
+His wife recalled the shortcomings for which she had been taking him to
+task. “Send a fiddlestick,” she rapped; “on a boiling day like this!”
+
+She took Mary's arm; leaning heavily, passed from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.
+
+
+Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted,
+eau-de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull the
+tumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.
+
+About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched it
+in the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she had
+learned to take buffetings.
+
+To be dispassionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upon
+a wounded spirit--to regard this Mary with the comically twitching face
+whom now she saw in the glass as a second person whose sufferings might
+be coldly regarded and dissected.
+
+It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to be
+philosophic upon the cares of another--nothing so easy as to wax
+impatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden by
+troubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, we
+can school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as one
+person, and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chiding
+that figure out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.
+
+With some success Mary had studied the art; now gave that
+Mary-in-the-glass who stood before her a healthy reproof.
+
+“The ridiculous thing you did,” Mary-in-the-glass was told--“the
+ridiculous thing you did to make yourself miserable was to go thinking
+about--about Ireland.”
+
+The mouth of Mary-in-the-glass ominously twitched.
+
+“There you go again. And it is so absolutely forbidden to think about
+that. Whatever's the use of it?”
+
+Mary-in-the-glass could adduce no reason, and must be prodded.
+
+“Does it do you any good? Does it do _them_ any good, do you suppose, to
+know that you can never think of them without making yourself unhappy?”
+
+Mary-in-the-glass attempted a weak quibble; was instantly snapped.
+
+“I'm not saying you are _never_ to think of them. Goodness knows what
+I should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you are
+happy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you choose
+to be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whining
+anywhere near them--understand? You only make them unhappy and make your
+troubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs. Chater, you
+must be a wretched sort of person. Her face when the cab brought her
+back! And trying to feel her heart! And her rage with that little worm
+of a Mr. Chater! Can't you see the fun of it instead of crying over it?”
+
+Mary-in-the-glass could. The successive recollections induced the
+prettiest dimples on her face. She was at once forgiven.
+
+Indeed, to snuggle back into her and to merge into her again was just
+now very desirable to the censorious Mary-outside-the-glass. For, merged
+in her sentimental and romantic personality, a most delectable line of
+thought could be pursued--a delectable line, since along this trail was
+to be encountered that stranger who had caught her in her wild ejection
+from the cab.
+
+Sinking in a chair, Mary adventured upon it; she was instantly met.
+
+Mary-outside-the-glass essayed her best to prevent the interview.
+“Poof!” Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young person, sneered. “Poof!
+You little idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five minutes, whom
+you will never again see, and from whose recollections you have most
+certainly passed unless to be recalled as a joke--perhaps to some
+other girl!” (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters these
+Marys-outside-the-glass.) “Why, you must be a donkey to think about
+him! For goodness' sake come away before you make yourself too utterly
+ridiculous! You won't. Well, perhaps you will try to recall the figure
+you must have cut in his eyes? Do you remember what you must have looked
+like as you shot out of the cab like a sack of straw? Pretty sight, eh?
+And can you imagine the expression on your face as you banged into his
+arms? Charming you must have looked, mustn't you? And can you by any
+means realise the idiot you must have looked when Mrs. Chater came
+up and swept you off like an escaped puppy, recaptured and in for a
+whipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you? You didn't happen to
+peep back through the little window at the back of the cab and see him
+laughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have looked....”
+
+And so on. This was the attitude of that cold, calculating,
+dispassionate Mary-outside-the-glass. But Mary smothered the
+voice--would not hear a word of it. Completely she became
+Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, and in that personality
+tripped along the path of thought where stood her stranger.
+
+Delectably she relived the encounter. Paced down the street, took again
+his arm; without a fault recalled his words, without a check gave her
+replies; recalled the pitch of his voice to the nicest note, struck
+again the light in his eyes.
+
+Now why? She had met other men; in Ireland had thrice wounded her tender
+heart by negations that had caused three suitors most desperate
+anguish. None had awakened in her a deeper interest; and yet here was
+a stranger--suddenly encountered, as suddenly left--who in her mind had
+appropriated a track which she was eager to make a well-beaten path.
+Why?
+
+But Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, was no prober of
+emotions. They veiled the hard business of commonplace life; and amid
+them mistily she now floated afar into dim features where her stranger,
+stranger no more, walked with her hand in hand.
+
+There was attempt at first to construct an actual re-encounter.
+Mary-in-the-glass, that romantic young woman, very speciously pointed
+out that in London when once you see a man you may reasonably suppose
+that you will again meet him. For in London one does not aimlessly
+wander; one has some set purpose and traverses a thousand times the same
+streets, crossing daily at the same points as though upon the pursuit
+of a chalked line. Mary-in-the-glass, therefore, constructing a
+re-encounter, happened to be strolling along the scene of the accident,
+and lo! there was he!
+
+Unhappily this vision was transient. Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold
+young woman, got in a word here that erased the picture. The square
+where the cab crashed was too far afield to take the children for
+their walk; holiday was a boon rarely granted and never granted at
+the particular hour of the catastrophe--the only time of day at which,
+according to the chalked-line theory, she might reasonably expect to
+find the stranger in the same spot.
+
+But Mary did not brood long upon this melancholy obstacle; drove away
+Mary-outside-the-glass; became again Mary-in-the-glass. And they are
+impossible creatures these Marys-in-the-glass. They will approach
+an unbridged chasm across which no Mary-out-side could by any means
+adventure, and, floating the gulf, will deliriously roam in the fields
+beyond.
+
+So now. And in that dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her
+stranger sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all
+the favourite spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in
+them; introduced other persons, and marked their comment on her dear
+companion.
+
+It was he whom she made to do mighty deeds in those misty fields; of
+herself hers were merely a girl's gentle fancies, held modest by
+her sex's natural desire to be loved for itself alone--not for big
+behaviour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Excursions In A Nursery.
+
+
+The loud bang of a door was the gong that called Mary back from
+those pleasant fields. They whirled from her, leaving her in sudden
+realisation of the material.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+“Goodness!” cried she, and fell to scattering her outdoor finery at a
+speed dangerous under any but the deftest fingers. Into a skirt of black
+and a simple blouse she slipped, and down, skimming the stairs, to where
+her charges bided their bedtime.
+
+Opening the nursery door she paused upon the threshold with a little
+“Oh!” of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between
+the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon the
+window-pane.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater turned at her entry. “I've been waiting for you a long
+time,” he said.
+
+She asked, “Whatever for?” and in her tone there was a chill.
+
+“Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids tubbed?”
+
+“I didn't think you meant it.”
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed. “Well, now you see that I did. I've been looking
+forward to this all day.”
+
+Plainly she was perturbed. She said: “Mr. Chater, I really would rather
+you did not, if you don't mind.”
+
+“Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be
+the bitterest disappointment.”
+
+His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man,
+black-eyed, dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.
+
+She would not catch his mood. “I am sure when I ask you--”
+
+“Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know,” he laughed; “'cause I ain't
+going.”
+
+Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and
+Angela, her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.
+
+It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.
+
+“I say, be decent to a fellow, Miss Humfray,” he said. “Look here, I
+hadn't seen the kids for two years when I came back yesterday. They
+hardly remember their kind big brother.” He addressed the small girl
+whose round eyes, moving from speaker to speaker since Mary had entered,
+were now upon him. “Do you, Angela?” he asked.
+
+“I--hate--you,” Angela told him, in the slow utterance of one giving
+completest effect to a carefully weighed sentiment.
+
+With equal impressiveness, David, seated beside her, lent his authority
+to the statement. “I--hate--you--too,” he joined.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed a little stupidly.
+
+Mary cried: “Oh, Angela! Oh, David! How can you speak like that!”
+
+“He is perfectly abom'able,” Angela said, unmoved. “He made Davie cry.
+He trod on Davie's beetle.”
+
+The cracked corpse of a mechanical beetle, joy of David's heart, was
+produced in evidence; its distressed owner reddening ominously at this
+renewed recollection of the calamity.
+
+Mary took the sad pieces tenderly. “Silly children! He never meant to
+break it. Oh, such silly children!”
+
+Angela protested, “He did! He did! He put his foot over it while it was
+running, and stopped it. He told David to get it away if he could, and
+David bit his leg, and he said 'Damn you!' and crushed it crack.”
+
+Mary whipped a glance at the murderer. She ignored the evidence.
+“To-morrow!” said she. “Why, what fun! To-morrow we'll play hospital
+like we did when Christabel broke her arm. We'll make Mr. Beetle just as
+well as ever he was before!”
+
+“I'll be doctor!” cried David, transported into delight.
+
+“Yes, and Angela nurse. Look, we'll put poor Mr. Beetle on the
+mantelpiece to-night, right out of the draughts. If he got a draught
+into that crack in his back, goodness knows what wouldn't happen. He
+must eat slops like Christabel did. _What_ fun! Now, bed--_bustle!_”
+
+Their adored Mary had restored confidence. They clung about her.
+
+“It was a pure accident,” explained Mr. Bob Chater, gloomily watching
+this scene. “I'll buy you another to-morrow.”
+
+“There!” Mary cried. “Think of that!”
+
+David reflected upon it without emotion. He regarded his big brother
+sullenly; sullenly said, “I don't want another.”
+
+Mary cried brightly: “Rubbish! Come, kiss your brother good-night, and
+say 'thank you!' Both of you. Quick as lightning!”
+
+They hung back.
+
+Mary had obtained so complete a command of their affections that her
+word was the wise law which, ordinarily, they had come unquestioningly
+to accept. In their short lives David and Angela had experienced a
+procession of nurses, of nursery-governesses, of lady-helps, each one of
+whom received or gave her month's notice within a few weeks of arrival,
+and against whom they had conducted a sullen or a violent war. From the
+first it had been different with Miss Humfray. As was their custom (for
+this constant change tried tempers) upon the very day of her arrival
+they had met her with frank hostility, had declared mutiny at her
+first command. But her reception of this attitude they found a new and
+astonishing experience. She had not been shocked, had not been angry,
+had ventured no threat to tell their mother. Instead, at the outbreak of
+defiance, she went into the gayest and most infectious laughter, kissed
+them--and they had capitulated before they realised the event.
+
+A second attempt at mutiny, made upon the following day, met with a
+reception equally novel. Again this pretty Miss Humfray had laughed, but
+this time had fully sympathised with their view of the point at issue
+and had made of the affair a most entrancing game. She, behold, was a
+pirate captain; they were the rebellious crew. In five minutes they had
+marooned her upon the desert island represented by the hearthrug; had
+rowed away with faces which, under her instructions, were properly
+stern; and only when she waved the white flag of truce had they
+taken her aboard again. Meanwhile the subject of the quarrel had been
+forgotten.
+
+Never a dispute arose thereafter. They idolised this pretty Miss
+Humfray: whatsoever she said was clearly right.
+
+Here, however, was a dangerous conflict of opinion. They hung back.
+
+“Quickly,” Mary repeated. “Kiss him, and say thank-you quickly, or there
+will be no story when you are in bed.”
+
+It was a terrific price to pay; their troubled faces mirrored the
+conflict of decision.
+
+David found solution. In his slow, solemn voice, “You kiss him first,”
+ he said. Miss Humfray always took their medicine first, and David argued
+from the one evil necessity to this other.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed delightedly. “That's a brilliant idea!” he cried;
+came two strides towards Mary; put a hand upon her arm.
+
+So sudden, so unexpected was his movement, that by the narrowest chance
+only did she escape his purpose. A jerk of her head, and he had mouthed
+at the air two inches from her face.
+
+She shook her arm free. “Oh!” she cried; and in the exclamation there
+was that which would have given a nicer man pause.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater was nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air
+had made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who
+worked for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be agreeable
+to her--at all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped affairs that
+this was the first time his theory had found disproof. He saw she was
+offended; so much the more tickling; conquest was thereby the more
+enticing.
+
+He laughed; said he was only “rotting.”
+
+Mary did not reply. The command to kiss their brother went by default;
+she hurried her charges through the door to the adjoining night nursery.
+
+When they were started upon undressing she came back.
+
+“You're going to let me see you tub them?” Bob asked her.
+
+Busy replacing toys in cupboards, she did not reply.
+
+“You're not angry, are you?”
+
+She gave him no answer.
+
+Bob Chater discarded the laugh from his tone. “If you are angry, I'm
+very sorry. You must have known I was only fooling. It was only to make
+the kids laugh.”
+
+So far as was possible she kept her back to him.
+
+The continued slight pricked him. His voice hardened. “When I have the
+grace to apologise, I think you might have the grace to accept it.”
+
+Mary said in low tones: “If you meant only to make them laugh, of course
+I believe you. It is all right.”
+
+“Good. Well, now, may I see them tubbed?”
+
+“I have told you I would rather not.”
+
+“Dash it all, Miss Humfray, you're rather unkind, aren't, you? Here have
+I been away nearly two years--I've been travelling on the Continent for
+the firm-you know that, don't you?”
+
+She said she had heard Mr. and Mrs. Chater talking of it.
+
+“Well, and yet you won't let me come near my darling little sister and
+my sweet little brother to tell 'em all about it?”
+
+“But I'm not keeping you from them, Mr. Chater. You have had plenty of
+time.”
+
+“Time! Why, I only got back yesterday!”
+
+“You have been in here this afternoon.”
+
+“Ah, they were shy. They're better when you are here.”
+
+She had finished her task, and she turned to him. “Mr. Chater, you know
+I could not keep David and Angela from you even if I dreamed of doing
+such a thing. Only, I say I would rather you did not come in while I
+bath them, that is all.”
+
+“Yes, but why?”
+
+“Mrs. Chater would not like it for one thing, I feel sure.”
+
+“Oh, that's all rot. Mother wouldn't mind--anyway, I do as I like in
+this house.”
+
+From all she had heard of Mrs. Chater's beloved Bob, Mary guessed this
+to be true. Long prior to his arrival she had been prejudiced against
+him; acquaintance emphasised the prophetic impression.
+
+“Another night, then,” she said.
+
+He felt he was winning. No girl withstood him long.
+
+“No, to-night. Another thing--I want to know you better. This
+arrangement is all new to me. There was a nurse here in your place when
+I went. I've hardly spoken to you. Have you ever been abroad?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, I'll tell you--and the kids--some of my adventures while you're
+tubbing 'em. Lead on.”
+
+She was at the night-nursery door. Evidently this man would not see her
+conventional reason for not wishing him at the tubbing. Angela had grown
+a biggish girl since he went away.
+
+She said, “Please not to-night.”
+
+“I'm jolly well coming,” he chuckled.
+
+The lesson of dependence was wilfully forgotten. Mary agreed with Angela
+and David: she hated this Bob.
+
+“No,” she said sharply, “you are not.”
+
+He had thrown his cigar into the grate; taken out another; stooped to
+the hearth to scratch a match. His back was to her; to him all her tone
+conveyed was that a “rag” was on hand.
+
+“We'll see,” he laughed; struck the match.
+
+She stepped swiftly within the door; closed it.
+
+Bob Chater laughed again; ran across.
+
+The lock clicked as she turned the key.
+
+“Let me in!” he cried, rattling the handle. “Let me in!”
+
+The splash of water answered him.
+
+He thumped the panel. “Open the door!”
+
+“Now, Angela,” he heard her say, “quick as lightning with that chimmy.”
+
+Bob's face darkened; he damned beneath his breath. Then with a laugh
+he turned away. “I'm going to have some fun with that girl,” he told
+himself; and on the way downstairs, her pretty face and figure in his
+mind, pleased himself with vicious anticipation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Excursions At A Dinner-Table.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two distressing reasons combined to compel Mrs. Chater to give
+Mary place at the evening meal. There was the aggravating fact that
+mothers'-helps, just as if they were ordinary people, must be fed; there
+was also the contingency that servants most strongly objected to serving
+a special meal--even “on a tray”--to one who was not of the family, yet
+who had airs above the kitchen.
+
+Except, then, when there were guests Miss Humfray must be accommodated
+at late dinner. Mrs. Chater considered it annoying, yet found in it
+certain comfortable advantages--as sympathy from friends: “Mustn't it
+be rather awkward sometimes, Mrs. Chater?” A plaintive shrug would
+illustrate the answer: “Well, it is, of course, very awkward sometimes;
+but one must put up with it. That class of person takes offence so
+easily, you know; and I always try to treat my lady-helps as well as
+possible.”
+
+“I'm sure you do, Mrs. Chater. How grateful they should be!” And this
+time a sad little laugh would illustrate: “Oh, one hardly expects
+gratitude nowadays, does one?”
+
+Mary at dinner must observe certain rules, however. Certain dishes--a
+little out of season, perhaps, or classed as luxuries--were borne
+triumphantly past her by a glad parlour-maid acting upon a frown and
+a glance that Mrs. Chater signalled. Certain occasions, again, when
+private matters were to be discussed, were heralded by “Miss Humfray,”
+ in an inflexion of voice that set Mary to fold her napkin and from the
+room.
+
+The girl greeted these early dismissals with considerable relief.
+Dinner was to her a nightly ordeal whose atmosphere swept appetite
+sky-high--took the savour from meats, dried the throat.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Descending to the dining-room upon this evening, her normal shrinking
+from the meal was considerably augmented. On the previous night--the
+first upon which Mr. Bob Chater's legs had partnered hers beneath the
+table--his eyes (like some bold gallant popping out on modesty whenever
+it dared peep from the doorway) had captured her glance each time
+she ventured look up from her plate. The episode of the nursery was
+equivalent to having slapped the gallant's face, and the re-encounter
+was proportionately uncomfortable.
+
+Taking her place she was by sheer nervousness impelled to meet his
+gaze--so heavily freighted it was as to raise a sudden flush to
+her cheek. Her eyes fled round to Mrs. Chater, received a look that
+questioned the blush, drove it duskier; through an uncomfortable
+half-hour she kept her face towards her plate.
+
+It was illuminative of the relations between husband and wife that Mrs.
+Chater carved; her husband dealt the sweets. The carving knife is the
+domestic sceptre of authority: when it is wielded by the woman, the man,
+you will find, is consort rather than king.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Upon the previous evening Mr. Bob Chater had led the conversation.
+To-night he was indisposed for the position--would not take it despite
+his mother's desperate attempts to board the train of his ideas and
+by it be carried to scenes of her son's adventures. A dozen times she
+presented her ticket; as often Bob turned her back at the barrier.
+
+It was a rare event this refusal of his to carry passengers. So loudly
+did he whistle as a rule as to attract all in the vicinity, convinced
+that there was an important train by which it would be agreeable to
+travel.
+
+For Mr. Bob Chater was a loud young man, emanating a swaggering air
+that the term “side” well fitted. To have some conceit of oneself is
+an excellent affair. The possession is a keel that gives to the craft a
+dignified balance upon the stream of life--prevents it from being sailed
+too close to mud; helps maintain stability in sudden gale. Other craft
+are keelless--they are canoes; bobbing, unsteady, likely to capsize in
+sudden emergency; prone to drift into muddy waters; liable to be swept
+anywhither by any current. Others, again--and Mr. Bob Chater was of
+these--are over-freighted upon one quarter or another: they sail with a
+list. Amongst well-trimmed boats these learn in time not to adventure,
+since here they are greeted with ridicule or with contempt; yet among
+the keelless fleets they have a position of some authority; holding
+it on the same principle as that by which among beggars he who has a
+coin--even though base--is accounted king.
+
+Bob Chater's list was ego-wards. His mighty “I”--I am, I do, I say, I
+know, I think--bulged from him, hanging from his voice, his glance, his
+gesture, his walk. In it Mrs. Chater bathed; to be carried along in the
+train of his mighty “I” was delectable to her. But to-night she could
+not effect the passage.
+
+A final effort she made to get aboard. “And in St. Petersburg!” she
+tempted. “I wonder if you ever saw the _Tsar_ when you were in St.
+Petersburg?”
+
+Bob drove her back: “St. Petersburg's a loathsome place.”
+
+Mrs. Chater tried to squeeze through. “So _gay_, they say.”
+
+Bob slammed the gate. “I wish you'd _tell_ me something instead of
+expecting _me_ to do all the talking. I want to hear all that's been
+going on here while I've been away, but I'm hanged if I can find out.”
+
+A little mortified, Mrs. Chater said: “I've hardly seen you, dear,
+except at meals”--then threw the onus for her son's lack of local
+gossip upon her husband. Addressing him, “You've been with Bob all the
+morning,” she told him. “I wonder you haven't given him all the news.
+But, there! I suppose you've done nothing but question him about what
+business he's done!”
+
+Mr. Chater, startled at the novelty of being drawn into table
+conversation while his son and his wife were present, dropped his
+spoon with a splash into his soup, wiped his coat, frowned at the
+parlour-maid, cleared his throat, and, to gain time to determine whether
+he had courage to say that which was burning within him, threw out an
+“Eh?” for his pursuing wife to Worry.
+
+Mrs. Chater pounced upon it; shook it. “What I said was that I suppose
+you've been doing nothing but question poor Bob about what he has done
+for the firm while he's been away.”
+
+Mr. Chater nerved himself to declare his mind. “There wasn't very much
+to question him about,” he said.
+
+His words--outcome of views forcibly expressed by his partners in
+Mincing Lane that morning--were the foolhardy action of one who pokes a
+tigress with a stick.
+
+The tigress shook herself. “Now, I wonder what you mean by _that_?” she
+challenged.
+
+Mr. Chater dropped the stick; precipitantly fled. “Of course it was all
+new to Bob,” he granted, throwing a bone.
+
+Very much to his alarm the tigress ignored the bone; rushed after him.
+“All you seem to think about,” cried she, “is making the boy slave. He's
+never had a proper holiday since he left school, and yet the very first
+time he goes off to see the world you must be fidgeting yourself to
+death all the time that he's not pushing the firm sufficiently; and
+immediately he comes back you must start cross-examining just as if he
+was an office-boy--not a word about his health or his pleasure. Oh, no!
+of course not!”
+
+Squirming in misery, Mr. Chater remarked that he had his partners to
+consider. “I'm only too glad that Bob should enjoy himself--only too
+glad. But you must remember, my dear, that part of his expenses for this
+trip was paid for by the firm--the _firm_. He was to call on foreign
+houses--”
+
+The tigress opened her mouth for fresh assault. Mr. Chater hurriedly
+thrust in a bone. “I don't say he hasn't done a great deal for us--not
+at all; I'd be the last to say that. What I say is that in duty to my
+partners I must take the first opportunity to ask him a few questions
+about it. Bob sees that himself; don't you, Bob?”
+
+“Oh, do let's keep shop off the table,” Bob snarled. “Fair sickens me
+this never getting away from the office.”
+
+“There you are!” Mrs. Chater cried. “There you are! Always business,
+business, business--that's what _I_ complain of.”
+
+With astounding recklessness Mr. Chater mildly said: “My dear, you
+started it.”
+
+Mrs. Chater quivered: “Ah, put it on me! Put it on me! Somehow you
+always manage to do that. Miss Humfray, when you've _quite_ finished
+your soup _then_ perhaps Clarence can take the plates.”
+
+Mary's thoughts, to the neglect of her duty, had crept away beneath
+cover of these exchanges. Now she endured the disaster of amid silence
+clearing her plate with four pairs of eyes fixed upon her. Clarence
+removed the course; Mr. Chater, leaping as far as possible from the
+scene of his ordeal, broke a new topic.
+
+He enticed tentatively: “I saw a funny bit in the paper this morning.”
+
+The tigress paused in the projection of another spring; sniffed
+suspiciously. “Oh!”
+
+“About that young Lord Comeragh,” Mr. Chater hurried on, delighted
+with his success. “He was up at Marlborough Street police-court this
+morning--at least his butler was; of course his lordship wouldn't go
+himself--charged with furiously driving his motorcar; and who do you
+think was in the car with him at the time? Ah!”
+
+Mrs. Chater, naming a young lady who nightly advertised a pretty leg
+from the chorus of a musical comedy, announced that she would not be
+surprised if that was the person. Being told that it was none other, and
+that Mr. Chater had heard in the City that morning that Lady Comeragh
+was taking proceedings and had named the nicely-legged young lady the
+cause of infidelity, became highly astonished and supremely diverted.
+
+Conversation of a most delectable nature was by this means supplied. A
+pot of savoury gossip, flavoured with scandal, was upon the table; and
+Mary, lost to sight behind the cloud of steam that uprose as the three
+leaped about it, finished her dinner undisturbed.
+
+A nod bade her leave before dessert. As she passed out the signaller
+spoke. “I want to see you,” Mrs. Chater said. “Wait for me in the
+drawing-room.”
+
+The command was unusual, and Mary, waiting as bid, worried herself with
+surmises upon it. She prayed it did not mean she was to soothe Mr.
+Bob Chater's digestion with lullabies upon the piano; that it boded an
+unpleasant affair she was assured.
+
+She did not err. Mrs. Chater came to her, dyspeptic-flushed, sternly
+browed.
+
+“Miss Humfray, I have one thing to say to you, no more. No explanations,
+no excuses, please. I hear you have been trying to entertain my son
+in the nursery this evening. If that, or anything like it, occurs
+again--You understand?”
+
+“Mrs. Chater--”
+
+A massive hand signalled Stop. “I said 'not a word.' That is all. Good
+night.”
+
+And Mary, crimson, to her room.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: of Love and of War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Notes On The Building Of Bridges.
+
+
+Within the limits of this short section of our story we shall cram two
+months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as
+they plod through it.
+
+This is well within our power, since the position of the novelist in
+regard to his characters may be compared with that of the destiny which
+in the largest comedy moves to and fro mankind its actors. As destiny
+moves its puppets, so the novelist moves his--upraising, debasing;
+favouring, tormenting; creating, wiping from the page.
+
+And of the pair the novelist is the more just. Has villainy in a
+novel ever gone unpunished? Has virtue ever failed of its reward?
+Your novelist is of all autocrats the most zealous of right and wrong.
+Villain may through two-thirds of his career enjoy his wicked pleasures,
+exceedingly prosper despite his baseness; but ever above him the cold
+eye of his judge keeps watch, and in the end he is apportioned the most
+horrible deserts that any could wish. Virtue may by the gods be hounded
+and harried till the reader's heart is wrung. But spare your tears;
+before Finis is written, down swoops the judge; the dogs are whipped
+off; Virtue is led to fair pastures and there left smiling.
+
+Contrasted with this autocrat of the printed page, the destiny whose
+comedy began with the world and is indefinitely continued makes sorry
+show. Here the wicked exceedingly flourish and keep at it to the end of
+their chapter; here virtue, battling with tremendous waves of adversity,
+is at last engulfed and miserably drowned. Truly, their fit rewards are
+apportioned, we are instructed, after death. But there is something of a
+doubt; the novelist, in regard to his characters, takes no risks.
+
+Upon another head, moreover, the novelist shows himself the more kindly
+autocrat. There is his power, so freely exercised, to bridge time.
+Whereas destiny makes us to watch those in whom we are interested plod
+every inch and step of their lives-over each rut, through each swamp,
+up each hill,-the novelist, upon his characters coming to places dull or
+too difficult, immediately veils from us their weary struggles. Destiny
+will never grant such a boon: we must watch our friends even when they
+bore us, even when they cause us pain. Yet this boon is the commonest
+indulgence of the novelist-as it now (to become personal) is mine.
+
+I bridge two months.
+
+And you must imagine this bridge as indeed a short and airy passage
+across a valley, down into which the persons of our story must carefully
+climb, across which they must plod, and up whose far side they must
+laboriously scramble to meet us upon the level ground. For we are
+much in the position, we novel readers, of village children curiously
+watching a caravan of gipsies passing through their district. The
+gipsies (who stand for our characters) plod wearily away along a bend
+of dusty road. The children cease following, play awhile; then by a
+short-cut through the fields overtake the travellers as again they come
+into the straight.
+
+So now with you and me. We have no need to follow our gipsies down
+the valley that takes two months in the traversing: we skip across the
+bridge.
+
+But, leaning over, we may take a shot or two at them as here and there
+they come into view.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Excursions Beneath The Bridge.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Thus we see the meeting again of George and Mary.
+
+When the agitated young man on the day following the cab accident
+had alighted from the omnibus at the bottom of Palace Gardens he was
+opposite No. 14 by half-past ten; waiting till eleven; going, convinced
+she did not live there; returning, upon the desperate hope that indeed
+she did; waiting till twelve--and being most handsomely rewarded.
+
+Her face signalled that she saw him, but her eyes gave no
+recognition--quickly were averted from him; the windows behind her had
+eyes, she knew.
+
+My agitated George, who had made a hasty step at the red flag that
+fluttered on her cheeks, as hastily stepped away beneath the chill of
+her glance; in tremendous perturbation turned and fled; in tremendous
+perturbation turned and pursued. In Regent's Park he saw her produce a
+brilliant pair of scarlet worsted reins, gay with bells; heard her hiss
+like any proper groom as tandemwise she harnessed David and Angela,
+those restive steeds.
+
+The equipage was about to start--she had cracked her whip, clicked her
+tongue--when with thumping heart, with face that matched the flaming
+reins, hat in hand he approached; spoke the driver.
+
+Her steeds turned about; with wide, unblinking eyes, searched his face
+and hers.
+
+“Your faces are very red,” Angela said. “Are you angry?”
+
+“You have got very red faces,” David echoed. “Are you in a temper?”
+
+Mary told them No; George said they were fine horses; felt legs; offered
+to buy them.
+
+His words purchased their hearts, which were more valuable.
+
+After the drive they would return to the stable, which was this seat,
+Mary told him; she could not stay to speak to him any longer. George
+declared he was the stable groom and would wait.
+
+Away they dashed at handsome speed, right round the inner circle;
+returned more sedately, a little out of breath. There had been,
+moreover, an accident: leader, it appeared, had fallen and cut his
+knees.
+
+“I shied at a motor,” David explained, proud of the red blood now that
+the agony was past.
+
+George unharnessed them; dressed the wounds; scolded the coachman
+because no feed had been brought for the horses; promised that to-morrow
+he would bring some corn--bun corn.
+
+“Will you come to-morrow?” Angela asked.
+
+George glanced at Mary. “Yes,” he told them.
+
+“Every to-morrow?”
+
+“Every to-morrow.”
+
+Tremendous joy. Well delighted, they ran to a new game.
+
+Every to-morrow ran but to three: George and Mary had by then exchanged
+their histories. The pending examination was discussed, and Mary simply
+would not speak to him if, wasting his time, he came daily to idle with
+the children (so she expressed it). She would abandon the Park, she told
+him--would take her charges to a Square gardens of which they had the
+entry, where George might not follow.
+
+George did not press the point. As he wrestled out the matter in the
+hours between their meetings she was a fresh incentive to work. But once
+a week he must be allowed to come: here he was adamant, and she gladly
+agreeable. Saturday mornings was the time arranged.
+
+Mary had been fearful at this first re-encounter that it would be the
+last. The children would certainly tell their mother; Mrs. Chater would
+certainly make an end to the acquaintance.
+
+“Ask them not to tell,” George had suggested.
+
+Impossible to think of such a thing: it would be to teach them deceit.
+
+“Well, I'll ask them.”
+
+“But that would be just as bad. No--if they tell, it cannot be helped.
+And after all--”
+
+“Well, after all...?”
+
+“After all--what would it matter?”
+
+George said: “It would matter to me--a lot.”
+
+He glanced at her, but she was looking after Angela and David. He asked:
+“Wouldn't it matter to you?”
+
+She flushed a little; answered, with her eyes still averted towards the
+children, “Why--why, of course I should mind. I mean--”
+
+But there are meanings for which it is difficult to find clothes in
+which they may decently take the air; and here the wardrobe of Mary's
+mind stood wanting.
+
+George enticed. “Do you mean you would be sorry not to--not to--”
+
+He also found his wardrobe deficient.
+
+Then Mary sent out her meaning, risking its decency. “Why, yes, I would
+be sorry not to see you again; why should I mind saying so? I have liked
+meeting you.” And, becoming timid at its appearance, she hurried after
+it a cloak that would utterly disguise it. “I meet so few people,” she
+said.
+
+But George was satisfied; she had said she would mind--nay, even though
+she had not spoken it, her manner assured him that indeed she would
+regret not again meeting him. It was a thought to hug, a memory to spur
+his energies when they flagged over his studies; it was a brush to paint
+his world in lively colours.
+
+Nor, as the future occurred, need either have had apprehension that the
+children would tell their mother and so set up an insurmountable barrier
+between them. A previous experience had warned Angela that it were
+wise to keep from her mother joys that were out of the ordinary run of
+events.
+
+Returning homeward that day, a little in advance of Mary, she therefore
+addressed her brother upon the matter.
+
+“Davie, I hope that man will come to-morrow.”
+
+“I hope it, too.”
+
+“We won't tell mother, Davie.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because mother'll say No.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because she _always_ says No, stupid.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Oh, Davie, you _are_ stupid! I don't know why; I only _know_. Don't you
+remember that lady that used to talk to Miss Humf'ay and play with us?
+Well, when we told mother, mother said No, didn't she? and the lady
+played with those abom'able red-dress children that make faces instead.”
+
+“Will he play with the abom'able red-dress children that make faces if
+we tell mother?”
+
+“Of _course_ he will.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“They always _do_, stupid.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Angela ran back. “Oh, Miss Humf'ay, Davie is so _irrating!_ He will say
+_Why_ ....”
+
+There is a lesson for parents in that conversation, I suspect.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Leaning from our bridge we may content ourselves with a hurried shot
+at George, laboriously toiling at his books, sedulously attending his
+classes, with his Mary spending glorious Saturday mornings that, as
+they brought him nearer to knowledge of her, sent him from her yet more
+fevered; and, straining towards another point, we will focus for an
+instant upon Margaret his cousin, and Bill Wyvern, her adored.
+
+Mr. William Wyvern had most vigorously whacked about among events since
+that evening when his Margaret had composed her verses for George. At
+that time a fellow-student with George at St. Peter's Hospital, he had
+now abandoned the profession and was started upon the literary career
+(as he named it) that long he had wished to follow. The change had been
+come by with little difficulty. Professor Wyvern--that eminent biologist
+whose fame was so tremendous that even now a normally forgetful Press
+yet continued to paragraph him while he spent in absent-minded seclusion
+the ebb of that life which at the flood had so mightily advanced
+knowledge--Professor Wyvern was too much attached to his son, too docile
+in the hands of his loving wife, to gainsay any wish that Bill might
+urge and that Mrs. Wyvern might support.
+
+Bill achieved his end: the stories he had had printed in magazines,
+secretly shown to his proud mother, were now brought forth and chuckled
+over with glee by the Professor. The famous biologist struggled through
+one of the stories, vowed he had read them all, cheerily patted Bill's
+arm with his shaky old hand, and cheerfully abandoned the hope he had
+held of seeing his son a great surgeon.
+
+It was Bill's burning ambition to obtain a post upon a paper. Not until
+later did he learn that it is the men outside the papers who must have
+a turn for stringing sentences; that those inside are machines, cutting
+and serving the material with no greater interest in it than has the
+cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals. Meanwhile, the glimpse
+we may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging along his pen until clean
+paper became magic manuscripts; living upon a billow of hope when the
+envelopes were sped, submerged beneath oceans of gloom when they were
+returned; trembling into Fleet Street deliciously to inhale the thick
+smell of printer's ink that came roaring up from a hundred basements;
+with goggle eyes venerating the men who with assured steps passed in
+and out the swing-doors of castles he burned to storm; snatching brief
+moments for the boisterous society of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, those
+rare bull-terriers; and finally, expending with his Margaret moments
+more protracted--stealthy meetings, for the most part--in Mr. Marrapit's
+shrubbery.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+But two more peeps from our bridge need we take, and then our characters
+will be ready to meet us upon the further side.
+
+A glance from here will reveal to us Mrs. Major, that masterly woman,
+inscribing in her diary:
+
+“_Getting on with Mr. M. Should sue. Precip. fat._”
+
+Fill out the abbreviations to which Mrs. Major, in her diary, was prone,
+and we have:
+
+“_Getting on with Mr. Marrapit. Should succeed. Precipitancy fatal._”
+
+Succeed in what? To what would precipitancy of action be irreparable?
+Listen to a conversation that may enlighten us--spoken upon the lawn
+of Herons' Holt; Mr. Marrapit in his chair making a lap for the Rose of
+Sharon; Mrs. Major on a garden seat, crocheting.
+
+A stealthy peep assuring her that his eyes were not closed, Mrs. Major
+nerved herself with a deep breath; with a long sigh let it escape in the
+form, “A year ago!”--dropped hands upon her lap and gazed wistfully at
+the setting sun. She had seen the trick very successfully performed upon
+the stage.
+
+Mr. Marrapit turned his eyes upon her.
+
+“You spoke, Mrs. Major?”
+
+With an admirable start Mrs. Major appeared to gather in wandering
+fancies. “I fear I was thinking aloud, Mr. Marrapit. I beg pardon.”
+
+“Do not. There is no occasion. You said 'A year ago.'”
+
+“Did I, Mr. Marrapit?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+A pause followed. The wistful woman felt that, were the thing to be done
+properly, the word lay with her companion. To her pleasure he continued:
+
+“To-day, then, is an anniversary?”
+
+“It is.”
+
+“Of a happy event, I trust?”
+
+Mrs. Major clasped her hands; spoke with admirable ecstasy. “Oh, Mr.
+Marrapit, of a golden--golden page in my life.”
+
+“Elucidate,” Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+Mrs. Major put into a whisper:
+
+“The day I came here.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit slowly moved his head towards her.
+
+Her eyes were averted. “The time has passed swiftly,” he said.
+
+Mrs. Major breathed: “For me it has flown on--on--” She searched wildly
+for a metaphor. “On wings,” she concluded.
+
+Again there was a pause, and again Mrs. Major felt that for this passage
+to have fullest effect the word lay with Mr. Marrapit. But Mr. Marrapit,
+himself considerably perturbed, did not speak. The moments sped. Fearful
+lest they should distance beyond recovery the sentiments she felt she
+had aroused, Mrs. Major hastened to check them.
+
+She said musingly: “I wonder if they are right?”--sighed as though
+doubtful.
+
+“To whom do you refer?”
+
+“Why, the people who say that time flies when it is spent in pleasant
+company.”
+
+“They are correct,” Mr. Marrapit affirmed.
+
+“Oh, I do not doubt it for my part, Mr. Marrapit. I never knew what
+happiness was until I come here--came here. But if--” The masterly woman
+paused.
+
+“Continue” Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+The hard word was softly spoken. Mrs. Major's heart gave two little
+thumps; her plan clear before her, pushed ahead. “But if to you also,
+Mr. Marrapit, the time has seemed to fly, then--then Mr. Marrapit, my
+company has--has been agreeable to you?”
+
+Certainly there was a softness in Mr. Marrapit's tones as he made
+answer.
+
+“It has, Mrs. Major,” he said, “it has. Into my establishment you have
+brought an air of peace that had for some time been lacking. Prior to
+your arrival, I was often worried by household cares that should not
+fall upon a man.”
+
+Earnestly Mrs. Major replied: “Oh, I _saw_ that. I strove to lift them.”
+
+“You have lifted them. You have attended not only my cats but my
+kitchen. I am now able often to enjoy such evenings as these. This peace
+around us illustrates the tranquillity you have brought--”
+
+The tranquillity was at that moment disastrously shattered. A bed of
+shrubbery lay within a few feet of where they sat. What had appeared
+to be a gnarled stump in its midst now quivered, broadened, fell into a
+line with the straightening back of Mr. Fletcher.
+
+Mr. Marrapit was startled and annoyed. “What are you doing there, sir?”
+
+“Snailin',” said Mr. Fletcher gloomily; exhibited his snail.
+
+“Snail elsewhere. Do not snail where I am.”
+
+“I snails where there's snails.”
+
+“Cease snailing. You must have been there hours.”
+
+“What if I have? This garden's fair planted with snails.”
+
+“Snail oftener. Depart.”
+
+Mr. Fletcher moved a few steps; then turned. “I should like to ast if
+this is to be part of my regular job. First you says 'cease snailin','
+then you says 'snail oftener,' then you says 'snail elsewhere.'
+Snails take findin'. They don't come to me; I has to go to them. It's
+'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a lettuce-leaf.”
+
+He gloomily withdrew.
+
+Mr. Marrapit's face was angrily twitching. The moment was not propitious
+for continuing her conversation, and with a little sigh Mrs. Major
+withdrew.
+
+But it was upon that night that she inscribed in her diary:
+
+_“Getting on with Mr. M. Should suc. Precip. fat.”_
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A last peep, ere we hurry across the bridge, will disclose to us Mr. Bob
+Chater still pressing upon Mary the attentions which her position, in
+relation to his, made it so difficult for her to escape. Piqued by her
+attitude towards him, he was the more inflamed than ordinarily he would
+have been by the fair face and neat figure that were hers. Yet he made
+no headway; within a month of the date of his return to Palace Gardens
+was as far from conquest as upon that night in the nursery.
+
+To a City friend, Mr. Lemuel Moss, dining at 14 Palace Gardens with him
+one night, he explained affairs.
+
+“Dam' pretty girl, that governess of yours, or whatever she is,” said
+Mr. Moss, biting the end from a cigar in the smoking-room after dinner.
+“Lucky beggar you are, Bob. My mater won't have even a servant in the
+place that wouldn't look amiss in a monkey-house. Knows me too well,
+unfortunately,” and Mr. Moss, taking a squint at himself in the
+overmantel, laughed--well enough pleased.
+
+Bob pointed out that there was not so much luck about it as Mr. Moss
+appeared to think. “Never seen such a stand-offish little rip in all my
+life,” he moodily concluded.
+
+“What, isn't she--?”
+
+Bob understood the unvoiced question. “Won't even let a chap have two
+minutes' talk with her,” he said, “let alone anything else.”
+
+Mr. Moss stretched himself along the sofa; rejoined: “Oh, rats! Rats!
+You don't know how to manage 'em--that's what it is.”
+
+“I know as well as you, and a dashed sight better, I don't mind
+betting,” Bob returned with heat. In some circles it is an aspersion
+upon a man's manliness to have it hinted that a petticoat presenting
+possibilities has not been ruffled.
+
+“Well, it don't look much like it. I caught her eye in the passage when
+we were coming downstairs, and you don't tell me--not much!”
+
+“Did you though?” Bob said. Himself he had never been so fortunate.
+
+“No mistake about it. Why, d'you mean to say you've never got as far as
+that, even?”
+
+“Tell you she won't look at me.”
+
+Mr. Moss laughed. Enjoyed the “score” over his host for a few moments,
+and then:
+
+“Tell you what it is, old bird,” said he, “you're going the wrong way
+about it. I know another case just the same. Chap out Wimbledon way.
+His people kept a girl--topper she was, too--dark. He was always messing
+round just like you are, and she was stand-offish as a nun. One night
+he came home early, a bit screwed--people out--girl in. Met her in the
+drawing-room. Almost been afraid to speak to her before. Had a bit of
+fizz on board him now--_you_ know; didn't care a rip for anybody. Gave
+her a smacking great kiss, and, by Gad!--well, she _was_ all right. Told
+him she'd always stood off up to then because she was never quite sure
+what he meant--afraid he didn't mean anything, and that she might get
+herself into no end of a row if she started playing around. Same with
+this little bit of goods, I'll lay.”
+
+Bob was interested. “Shouldn't be surprised if you're right,” he said;
+and moodily cogitated upon the line of action prescribed.
+
+Mr. Moss offered to bet that where girls were concerned he was never
+far wrong. “Slap-dash style is what they like,” he remarked, and with a
+careless “It's all they understand” dismissed the subject.
+
+It remained, however, in Bob's mind throughout the evening; sprang
+instantly when, after breakfast upon the following day, he caught a
+glimpse of Mary as he prepared for the City.
+
+Standing for a moment in the hall, it occurred to him that this very
+evening offered the opportunity he sought. Mr. and Mrs. Chater were
+to dine at the house of a neighbour. The invitation had included
+Bob--fortunately he had refused it. Returning to the morning-room, “I
+shan't be in to-night,” he told his mother.
+
+“Then I needn't order any dinner for you?”
+
+“No.” He hung about irresolute, then lit a cigar, and between the puffs,
+“Shall you be late?” he asked carelessly.
+
+“Sure to be,” Mrs. Chater told him. “It's going to be a big bridge
+drive, you know. We shan't get back before midnight. Don't sit up for
+us, dear.”
+
+Bob inhaled a long breath from his cigar, exhaled it deliciously. The
+chance for the slap-dash style was at hand.
+
+“Oh, I'll be later than you. Lemmy Moss has got a bachelors' party on.
+We're going to have a billiard match.”
+
+“That's capital then, dear. I shall let the servants go to Earl's
+Court--I've promised them a long time.”
+
+Bob whistled gaily as he mounted his 'bus for the City. The opportunity
+was surely exceptional.
+
+At eight o'clock he returned; noiselessly let himself in.
+
+The gas in the hall burned low. Beneath the library door gleamed a
+stronger light. Bob turned the handle.
+
+Mary was curled in a big chair with a book. Certainly the opportunity
+was exceptional.
+
+At the noise of his entry she sprang to her feet with a little cry. “Oh,
+dear!” she exclaimed: “what a fright you gave me!”
+
+Bob pushed the door. He laughed. “Did I?”; came towards her. “Are you
+all alone? What a shame!”
+
+“Minnie is in the kitchen, I think. Mrs. Chater said you wouldn't be in
+to-night.”
+
+“Why do you think I came?”
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+“I came to see you.”
+
+She gave a nervous little laugh and made to pass him.
+
+Bob fell back a pace, guarding the door. “Don't you think that was
+thoughtful of me?”
+
+“I don't know what you mean. There was no need.”
+
+“What! No need! You all alone like this when all the rest are enjoying
+themselves!”
+
+“So was I. A long evening with a book.”
+
+She had fallen back as he, speaking, had slowly advanced.
+
+Now the great chair in which she had been seated was alone between them.
+
+“Oh, books! Books are rot.” He stepped around the chair.
+
+She fell back; was cornered between the hearth and a low table.
+
+Bob dropped into the chair; boldly regarded her; his eyes as expressive
+of his slap-dash intentions as he could make them: “Look here, I want
+you to enjoy yourself for once. I'm going to take you to a music-hall or
+somewhere.”
+
+He stretched a foot; touched her.
+
+She drew back close against the mantelpiece, her agitation very evident.
+
+“Well, don't that please you?”
+
+“You know it is impossible.”
+
+Bob paid no regard. This was that same diffidence with which the chap
+near Wimbledon had had to contend.
+
+“We'll come out of the show early and have a bit of supper and be back
+before half-past eleven. Who's to know? Now, then?”
+
+“It's very kind of you. I know you mean it kindly--”
+
+“Of course I do--”
+
+“But I'd rather not.”
+
+“Are you afraid?”
+
+She was desperately afraid. Her face, the shaking of her hand where it
+was pressed back against the wall, and the catch in her voice advertised
+her apprehension. She was afraid of this big young man confidently
+lolling before her.
+
+She said weakly: “It would not be right.”
+
+Bob sat up. “Is that all?” he laughed. His hands were upon the arms of
+the chair, and he made to pull himself up towards her.
+
+She saw her mistake. “No,” she cried hurriedly--“no; I would not go with
+you in any case.”
+
+A shadow flickered upon Bob's face. “What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean what I say. Please let me pass.”
+
+“I want to be friends with you. Why can't you let me?”
+
+“Please let me pass. Mr. Chater.”
+
+Bob lay back. He said with a laugh, “Well, I'm not stopping you, am I?”
+
+She hesitated a moment. The passage between the table and the long
+chair was narrow. But truly he was not stopping her--so far as one might
+judge.
+
+She took her skirts about her with her left hand; stepped forward; was
+almost past the chair before he moved.
+
+Then he flung out a hand and caught her wrist, drawing her.
+
+“Now!” he cried, and his voice was thick.
+
+She gave a half-sound of dismay--of fear; tried to twist free. Bob
+laughed; pulled sharply on her arm. She was standing sideways to
+him--against the sudden strain lost her balance and half toppled across
+the chair.
+
+As Bob reflected, when afterwards feeding upon the incident, had he not
+been as unprepared as she for her sudden stumble, he would have made--as
+he put it--a better thing of it. As it was, her face falling against
+his, he was but able to give a half kiss when she had writhed herself
+free and made across the room.
+
+But that embrace of her had warmed Bob's passions. Springing up, he
+caught her as she fumbled with the latch; twisted her to him.
+
+For a moment they struggled, he grasping her wrists and pressing towards
+her.
+
+With the intention of encircling her waist he slipped his hold. But
+panic made her the quicker. Her outstretched arms held him at bay for
+a breathing space; then as he broke them down she dealt him a swinging
+blow upon the face that staggered him back a step, his hand to his
+cheek.
+
+Mrs. Chater opened the door.
+
+“Oh, he kissed me! He kissed me!” Mary cried.
+
+Bob said very slowly, “You--infernal--little--liar.”
+
+Mrs. Chater glowered upon Mary with cruel eyes. “It was a fortunate
+thing,” she said coldly, “that a headache brought me home. Go to your
+room, miss.”
+
+We may hurry across the bridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Excursions In Love.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Saturday was the day immediately following this scene.
+
+George, on a 'bus carrying him towards Regent's Park, was in spirit
+at one with the gay freshness that gave this September morning a
+spring-like air.
+
+A week of torrid heat, in which London crawled, groaned, and panted, had
+been wiped from the memory by an over-night thunderstorm that burst the
+pent-up dams of heaven and loosed cool floods upon the staring streets.
+No misty drizzle nor gusty shower it had been, but a strong, straight,
+continuous downpour, seemingly impelled by tremendous pressure. Dusty
+roofs, dusty streets, dusty windows it had scoured and scrubbed and
+polished; torrents had poured down the gutters--whenever temporarily the
+pressure seemed to relax, the ears of wakeful Londoners were sung to by
+the gurgle and rush of frantic streams driving before them the collected
+debris of many days.
+
+Upon this morning, in the result, a tempest might have swept the town
+and found never a speck of dust to drive before it. The very air had
+been washed and sweetened; and London's workers, scurrying to and from
+their hives, seemed also to have benefited by some attribute of the
+downpour that tinted cheeks, sparkled eyes, and, rejuvenating limbs,
+gave to them a new sprightliness of movement.
+
+George, from his 'bus, caught many a bright eye under a jaunty little
+hat; gave each back its gleam from the depths of gay lightness that
+filled his heart. Nearing the Park he alighted; made two purchases. From
+a confectioner bun-corn for David and Angela, those ramping steeds;
+from a florist the reddest rose that an exhaustive search of stock could
+discover.
+
+Mary had from him such a rose at their every meeting. She might not wear
+it back to Palace Gardens--it would not flourish beneath Mrs. Chater's
+curiosity; but while they were together she would tuck it in her bosom,
+and George tenderly would bear it home and set it in a vase before him
+to lend him inspiration as he worked.
+
+It is almost certain that such a part is one for which flowers were
+especially designed.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Those splendid steeds, David and Angela, having been duly exercised,
+groomed, and turned out to browse upon bun-corn, George rushed at once
+upon the matter that was singing within him.
+
+Where he sat with his Mary they were sheltered from any but chance
+obtrusion. She had taken off her gloves, and George gave her hands, as
+they lay in her lap, a little confident pat. It was the tap of the baton
+with which the conductor calls together his orchestra--for this was a
+song that George was about to tune, very confident that the chords of
+both instruments that should give the notes were in a harmony complete.
+
+He said: “Mary, do you know what I am going to talk about?”
+
+She had been a little silent that morning, he had thought; did not
+answer now, but smiled.
+
+He laid a hand upon both hers. “You must say 'yes.' You've got to say
+'yes' about twenty times this morning, so start now. Do you know what
+I'm going to talk about?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“No objections this time?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He laughed; gave her hand a little smack of reproof. (You who have loved
+will excuse these lovers' absurdities.) “No, no; you are only to say
+'yes' when I tell you. No objections to the subject this morning?”
+
+His Mary told him “No.”
+
+“Couldn't have a better morning for it, could we?”
+
+She took a little catch at her breath.
+
+George dropped the banter in his tone. “Nothing wrong to-day, is there,
+dear? Nothing up?”
+
+How sadly wrong everything in truth was she had determined not to
+tell him until she more certainly knew its extent. She shook her head;
+reassuringly smiled.
+
+“Well, that's all right--there couldn't be on a morning like this. Now
+we've got to begin at the beginning. Mary, I planned it all out last
+night--all this conversation. We've got to begin at the beginning--Do
+you know I've never told you yet that I love you? You knew it, though,
+didn't you, from the first, the very first? Tell me from when?”
+
+“George, this is awfully foolish, isn't it?”
+
+“Never mind. It's jolly nice. It's necessary, too. I've read about it.
+It's always done. Tell me from when you knew I loved you.”
+
+“After last Saturday.”
+
+“Oh, Mary! Much earlier than _that_! You must have!”
+
+“Well, I thought perhaps you--you cared after that first day when you
+came here.”
+
+“Not before that?”
+
+She laughed. “Come, how _could_ I? Why, I'd hardly seen you.”
+
+“Well, I did, anyway,” George told her. “I loved you from the very
+minute you shot out of the cab that day. There! But even this isn't the
+proper thing. I've been promising myself all night to say four words to
+you--just four. Now I'm going to say them: Mary, I love you.”
+
+She looked in his eyes for a moment, answering the signal that shone
+thence; and then she laughed that clear pipe of mirth which was so
+uniquely her own possession.
+
+“Oh, I say, you mustn't do that,” George cried. He was really perturbed.
+
+“I can't help it. You are so utterly foolish.”
+
+“I'm not. It's the proper thing. I tell you I've planned it all out. I
+love you. I've never said it to you before. Now it's your turn.”
+
+“But what on earth am I to say?”
+
+“You've got to say that you love me.”
+
+“You're making a farce of it.”
+
+“No, I tell you I've planned it all out. I can't go on till you've said
+it.”
+
+“You can't expect me to say: 'George, I love you.' It's ridiculous. It's
+like a funny story.”
+
+“Oh, never mind what it's like. Do be serious, Mary. How can I be sure
+you love me if you won't tell me?”
+
+For the first moment since its happening the thought of Bob Chater and
+of Mrs. Chater passed completely from Mary's mind. She looked around:
+there was no soul in sight. She listened: there was no sound. She
+clasped her fingers about his; leaned towards him, her face upturned....
+
+He kissed her upon the lips....
+
+“The plans,” said George after a moment, “have all gone fut. I never
+thought of that way.”
+
+“It's much better,” Mary said.
+
+“The other's not a patch upon it,” said George.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+You must conjecture of what lovers think when, following their first
+kiss, they sit silent. It is not a state that may be written down in
+such poor words as your author commands. For the touch of lips on lips
+is the key that turns the lock and gives admission to a world dimly
+conceived, yet found to have been wrongly conceived since conceived
+never to be so wonderful or so beautiful as it does prove. Nor, ever
+again, once the silence is broken and speech is found, has that world an
+aspect quite the same. For the door that divides this new world from the
+material world can never from the inside be closed. It is at first--for
+the space of that silence after the first kiss--pushed very close by
+those who have entered; but, soon after, the breath of every rushing
+moment blows it further and further ajar. Drab objects from the outer
+world drift across the threshold and obtrude their presence--vagabond
+tramps in a rose-garden, unpleasant, marring the surroundings, soiling
+the atmosphere. Cares drift in, worldly interests drift in; in drift
+smudgy, soiled, unpleasant objects brushing the door yet wider upon
+its hinges till it stands back to its furthest extent and the
+interior becomes at one with the outer world. The process is gradual,
+indiscernible. When completed the knowledge of what has been done dawns
+suddenly. One knocks against an intruder especially drab, starts into
+wakefulness to rub the bruise, and looking around exclaims, “And this is
+love!”
+
+Well, it was love. But a rose-garden will not long remain beautiful if
+no care is taken of what may intrude.
+
+If we but stand sentinel at the door, exercising a nice discretion, the
+garden may likely remain unsoiled, its air uncontaminated.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+George said that though across the first portion of the scheme he had so
+laboriously planned he had been shot at lightning speed by the vehicle
+of Mary's action, its latter portion yet remained to be discussed.
+“We've got to marry, dearest--and as quick as quick. We can't go on like
+this--seeing each other once a week. No, not even if it were once a day.
+It's got to be always.”
+
+“Always and always, dear,” Mary said softly.
+
+Women are more intoxicated than men by the sudden atmosphere of that
+new world. The awe of it was still upon her. The light of love comes
+strongly to men, with the sensation of bright sunshine; to women as
+through stained glass windows, softly.
+
+She continued: “Fancy saying 'always' and being glad to say it! I never
+thought I could. Do you know--will this frighten you?--I am one of those
+people who dread the idea of 'always.' I never could bear the idea of
+looking far, far ahead and not seeing any end. It frightened me. Ever
+since father died, I've been like that--even in little things, even in
+tangible things. When we go to the seaside in the summer I never
+can bear to look straight across the sea. That gives me the idea of
+always--of long, long miles and miles without a turn or a stop. I
+want to think every day, every hour, that what I am doing can't go
+on--mustchange. It suffocates me to think otherwise. I want to jump out,
+to scream.”
+
+Then she gave that laugh that seldom failed to come to her relief,
+and said: “It's a sort of claustrophobia--isn't that the word?--on a
+universal scale. But why is it? And why am I suddenly changed now? Why
+does the thought of always, always, endless always with you, bring a
+sort of--don't laugh, dear--a sort of bliss, peace?”
+
+This poor George of mine, who was no deep thinker, nevertheless had the
+reason pat. He said:
+
+“I think because the past has all been unhappy and because this, you
+know, means happiness.”
+
+She gave a little sigh; told him: “Yes, that's it--happiness.”
+
+
+
+V.
+
+And now they fell to making plans as mating birds build nests. Here a
+bit of straw and there a tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred
+of wool--George would do this and George would do that; here the
+house would be and thus would they do in the house. Probabilities were
+outraged, obstacles vaulted.
+
+Castles that are builded in the air spring into being quicker than
+Aladdin's palace--bricks and mortar, beams and stones are featherweight
+when handled in the clouds; every piece is so dovetailed, marked and
+numbered that like magic there springs before the eye the shining
+whole--pinnacled, turreted, embattled.
+
+Disaster arrives when the work is completed. “There!” we say, standing
+back, a little flushed and out of breath with the excitement of the
+thing. “There! There's a place in which to live! Could any existence be
+more glorious?” And then we advance a step and lean against the walls
+to survey the surrounding prospect. It is the fatal action. The material
+body touches the aerial structure and down with a crash the castle
+comes--back we pitch into the foundations, and thwack, bump, thwack,
+comes the masonry tumbling about us, bruising, wounding.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+George had built the castle. Mary had sat by twittering and clapping her
+hands for glee as higher and higher it rose. He knew for a fact, he told
+her, that his uncle had not expended upon his education much more than
+half the money left him for the purpose. He was convinced that by
+hook or by crook he could obtain the 400 pounds that would buy him the
+practice at Runnygate of which the Dean had told him. They would have
+a little house there--the town would thrive--the practice would
+nourish--in a year--why, in a year they would likely enough have to be
+thinking of getting a partner! And it would begin almost immediately!
+In three weeks the examination would be held. He could not fail to
+pass--then for the 400 pounds and Runnygate!
+
+And then, unhappily, George leaned against this castle wall; provoked
+the crash.
+
+“Till then, dear,” he said, “you will stay with these Chater people.
+I know you hate it; but it will be only a short time, a few weeks at
+most.”
+
+Instantly her gay twittering ceased. Trouble drove glee from her eyes.
+Memory chased dreams from her brain. Distress tore down the gay colours
+from her cheeks. She clasped her hands; from her seat half rose.
+
+“Oh!” she cried; and again, “Oh! I had forgotten!”
+
+“Forgotten? Forgotten what?”
+
+“Dearest, I should have told you at the beginning, but I could not. I
+wanted to wait until I knew. I have not seen her yet this morning.”
+
+My startled George was becoming pale. “Knew what? Seen whom? What do you
+mean?”
+
+She said, “No, I won't tell you. I won't spoil all this beautiful
+morning we have spent. I will wait till next week.”
+
+“Mary, what do you mean? Wait till next week? No. You must tell me now.
+How could I leave you like this, knowing you are in some trouble? What
+has happened? You must tell. You must. I insist.”
+
+“Ah, I will.” Her agitation, as her mind cast back over the events of
+the previous night, was enhanced by the suddenness of the change from
+the sunshine in which she had been disporting to the darkness that now
+swept upon her. She was as a girl who, singing along a country lane, is
+suddenly confronted from the hedgeside by some ugly tramp.
+
+She said, “You know that young Mr. Chater?”
+
+Dark imaginings clouded upon George's brow. “Yes,” he said. “Yes;
+well--?”
+
+“Last night--” And then she gave him the history of events.
+
+This simple George of mine writhed beneath it.
+
+It was a poison torturing his system, twisting his brow, knotting his
+hands. Her presence, when she finished, did not stay his cry beneath
+his rackings: he was upon his feet. “By Gad,” he cried, “I'll thrash the
+life out of him! The swine! By Gad, I'll kill him!”
+
+She laid a hand upon his arm. “Georgie, dear,” she pleaded. “Don't,
+don't take it like that. I haven't finished.”
+
+Roughly he turned upon her. “Well, what else? What else?”
+
+“I haven't seen him since. He went away early this morning for the
+week-end. And I have not seen Mrs. Chater again either. I am to see her
+this afternoon. She sent me word to take the children as usual and that
+she would see me at three.”
+
+My poor George bitterly broke out: “Oh! Will she? That's kind of her!
+That's delightful of her! Are you going to see her?”
+
+“Of course I shall see her.”
+
+“'Of course'! 'Of course'! I don't know what you mean by talking in that
+tone. You won't stay there another minute! That's what you'll tell her
+if you insist upon seeing her. If you had behaved properly you'd have
+walked out of the house there and then when it happened last night.”
+
+Spite of her trouble Mary could not forbear to laugh. “Dearest, how
+could I?”
+
+But this furious young man could not see her point. His fine passion
+swept him above contingencies.
+
+“Well, then, this morning,” he laid down. “The first thing this morning
+you should have gone.” He supplied detail: “Packed your box, and called
+a cab and gone.”
+
+His dictatory air drew from her another sad little laugh.
+
+“Oh, George, dear,” she cried, “gone where?”
+
+It was a bucket of water dashed upon his flames, and for a moment they
+flickered beneath it--then roared again: “_Where? Anywhere!_”
+
+“Oh!” she cried, “you are stupid! You don't see--you don't understand!
+Easy to say 'anywhere,' but where--_where_? I have no money. I have no
+friends--I--”
+
+The knowledge of her plight and her outlook crowded upon her speech;
+broke her voice.
+
+Her distracted George in a moment had her hands in his. “Oh, my dear,”
+ he cried, “what a fool I am! What a beast to storm like that! I was
+so wild. So mad. Of course you had to think before you moved. You were
+right, of course you were right. But, my darling, I'm right now. You see
+that, don't you? You can't stay a moment longer with those beasts.”
+
+And then he laughed grimly. “Especially,” he added, “after what I'm
+going to do to Master Bob.”
+
+She too laughed. The thought of Bob learning manners beneath the tuition
+of those sinewy brown hands that were about hers was very pleasant to
+her. But it was a pleasure that must be denied--this she saw clearly as
+the result of weary tossings throughout the night; and now she set about
+the task of explaining it to George.
+
+She said: “Oh, my dear, you're not right. Georgie, I can't go--if Mrs.
+Chater will let me stay I must stay.”
+
+He tried to be calm, to understand these women, to understand his Mary.
+“But why?” he asked. “Why?”
+
+“Dearest, because I must bridge over the time until you are ready to
+take me. You see that?”
+
+“Of course. But why there? You can easily get another place.”
+
+“Oh, easily! If you had been through it as I have been! The first thing
+they ask you for is a reference from your former situation. Think what a
+reference Mrs. Chater would give me!”
+
+He would not agree. He plunged along in his blundering, man fashion:
+“In time you could get a place where they would not ask questions--or
+rather--yes, of course this is it. Tell them frankly all that happened.
+Who could see you and not believe you? Tell them everything. There must
+be some nice people in the world.”
+
+“There may be. But they don't want helps or governesses--in my
+experience.” The little laugh she gave was sadly doleful.
+
+He was still angry. “You can't generalise like that. There are thousands
+who would believe you and be glad to take you. Suppose you have to wait
+a bit--well, you have a little money that she must give you; and I--oh,
+curse my poverty!--I can borrow, and I can sell things.”
+
+The help that a man would give a woman so often has lack of sympathy; he
+is unkind while meaning to be kind. George's obdurateness, coming when
+she was most in need of kisses, hurt her. Trouble welled in her eyes.
+
+“I wouldn't do that,” she said. “For one thing, we want all our money.
+Why throw it away to get me out of a place in which I shall only be
+for a few weeks longer? Another thing--another thing--” She dragged
+a ridiculous handkerchief from her sleeve; dabbed her brimming eyes.
+“Another thing--I'm afraid to risk it. I'm afraid to be alone and
+looking for a place again. There--now you know. I'm a coward.”
+
+She fell to sniffing and sobbing; and her wretched George, cursing
+himself for the grief he had evoked, cursing Bob Chater, cursing Mrs.
+Chater, cursing his uncle Marrapit, put his arms about her and drew her
+to him. She quivered hysterically, and he frantically moaned that he
+was a beast, a brute, unworthy; implored forgiveness; entreated calm; by
+squeezing her with his left arm and with his right hand dabbing her eyes
+with her handkerchief, screwed to a pathetic little damp ball, strove to
+stem the flood that alarmingly welled from them.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+It was an awful position for any young man; and just as my poor George,
+distinguished in nothing, inept, bewildered, was in a mood murderous to
+the whole world save this anguished fairy, a wretched old gentleman
+must needs come sunning himself down the path, making for this seat with
+hobbling limbs.
+
+He collapsed upon it, and then, glancing to his right, was struck with
+palpitations by sight of the heaving back of a young woman over whose
+shoulder glared at him with hideous ferocity the face of a young man.
+
+“Dear me, dear me,” said he; “nothing wrong, sir, I trust?”
+
+“Go away!” roared my distracted George.
+
+“Eh?” inquired the old gentleman, horribly startled.
+
+“Go away! Go away!”
+
+The fire of those baleful eyes, of that bellowing voice, struck terror
+into the aged heart. He clutched his stick.
+
+“Oh dear, oh dear,” said he; hobbled away at a speed dangerous to his
+life and limbs to seek protection of a park-keeper.
+
+The sobs grew longer, less hysterical: changed into long “ohs” of
+misery; died away.
+
+“There, there,” said George, patting, dabbing. “There, there.”
+
+With a final frantic sniff she recovered her self-possession.
+
+“I'm a little f--fool,” said she.
+
+“I'm a brute,” said George.
+
+The bitter knowledge nerved each to better efforts. Calm reigned.
+
+Mary said, “Now you must listen and believe, dear.”
+
+“Let me have your hand, then.”
+
+She gave it with a little confiding, snuggling movement, and she
+continued: “You must believe, because I have thought it all out, whereas
+to you it is new. If I were a proper-spirited girl”--she rebuked his
+negation with a gesture--“if I were a proper-spirited girl I know I
+should leave Mrs. Chater at once--walk out and not care what I might
+suffer rather than stay where I had been insulted. Girls in books would
+do it. Oh, Georgie, this isn't books. This is real. I have been through
+it, and I would die sooner than face it again. You know--I have told
+you--what it is like being alone in cheap lodgings in London. Afraid of
+people, dear. Afraid of men, afraid of women. I couldn't, could not go
+through it again. And after all-don't you see?--if Mrs. Chater will
+let me stay, what have I to mind? I shall be better off than before, if
+anything. Mrs. Chater has always been--well, sharp. She may be a little
+worse--there's nothing in that. But this Bob Chater, since he came, has
+been the worst part of it. And as things are now, his mother watchful
+and he--what shall I say? angry, ashamed--why, he will pay no further
+attention to me. Come, am I not right? Isn't it best?--if only she will
+let me stay.”
+
+“I don't like it,” George said. “I don't like it.”
+
+“Dearest, nor I. But we can't, can't have what we like, and this will be
+the best of the nasty things. For so short a time, too. I'm quite bright
+about it. Am I not? Look at me.”
+
+George looked. Then he said, “All right, old girl.”
+
+She clapped her hands. “Only one thing more. You mustn't seek out--you
+mustn't touch the detestable Bob.”
+
+With the gloom of one relinquishing life's greatest prize George said,
+“I suppose I mustn't.” He added, “I tell you what, though. You mustn't
+interfere with this. I'll save it up for him. The day I take you out and
+marry you I'll pull him out--and pay him.”
+
+They parted upon the promises that Mary would write that evening to tell
+him of the result of her interview with Mrs. Chater, and that, in the
+especial circumstances, he might come to see her in the Park for just
+two minutes on Monday morning.
+
+And each went home, thinking, not of that portending interview with Mrs.
+Chater, but upon the love they had declared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+At ten o'clock that night Mary took up her pen.
+
+“First, my dear, to tell you that it is all right. I may stay. I had
+lunch with the children in the nursery, and just as we had finished
+a maid came to say that Mrs. Chater would see me in the study. Down I
+crawled, wishing that I was the heroine of a novel who would have passed
+firmly down the stairs and into the room, 'pale, but calm and serene.'
+Oh! I was pale enough, I feel sure. But as to serene!--my heart was
+flapping about just like a tin ventilator in a wind, and I was jumpy all
+over. You see what a coward am I.
+
+“Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her. Of that I am convinced. She
+sat, enormous, thunder-browed, bolt upright in a straight chair. I stood
+and quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books the consciousness of
+virtue gives one complete self-possession in the face of any accusation,
+however terrible. In books it is the accuser of the innocent who is ill
+at ease. Oh, don't believe it! Mrs. Chater had the self-possession, I
+had the jim-jams.
+
+“'I have not seen you since last night,' she said.
+
+“I gave a kind of terrified little squeak. I had no words.
+
+“'Your version of what happened I do not wish to hear,' she went on.
+
+“This relieved me, because for the life of me I could not have told her
+had she wished to hear it. So I gave another little mouse-squeak.
+
+“'My son has told me.' Her voice was like a deep bell. 'How you can
+reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you have received at my
+hands, here beneath my roof'--she was very dramatic at this point--'I do
+not know.'
+
+“Nor did I--but not in the way she meant. I was thinking how ignoble was
+my meek attitude in light of what had happened. But you don't know what
+it was like, facing that woman and dreading the worse fate of being
+turned out into this awful London again. Another wretched little squeak
+slipped out of me, and she went on.
+
+“'My boy,' said she, 'has implored me to overlook this matter. My
+boy has declared there were faults on both sides' (!!!!). 'If I acted
+rightly as a mother, what would I do?'
+
+“I didn't tell her, Georgie. Could I tell her that if she acted rightly
+as a mother she would box her boy's fat ears until his nose bled? I
+couldn't. I squeaked instead.
+
+“'If I acted rightly as a mother,' said she, 'I would send you away. I
+am not going to.'
+
+“I squeaked.
+
+“'I choose to believe that your behaviour in this matter was a slip. I
+believe the episode will be a lesson to you. That is all. Go.' I goed.”
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George, when he had read thus far, was broadly grinning. Obviously
+Mrs. Chater was not such a bad sort after all. If--as no doubt--she
+implicitly believed her son's version of the incident, then her attitude
+towards Mary was, on the whole, not so bad.
+
+But his Mary, when she had written thus far, laid down her pen, put her
+pretty head upon the paper and wept.
+
+“Oh, my dear!” she choked. “There, that will make you think it was all
+right. You shall never know--never--what really happened. Oh, Georgie,
+Georgie, come very quick and take me away! How can I go on living with
+these beasts? Oh, Georgie, be quick, be quick!”
+
+Then this silly Mary with handkerchief, with india-rubber, and with
+pen-knife erased a stain of grief that had fallen upon her pretty story;
+sniffed back her tears; lifted again her pen.
+
+Now she wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been so
+very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference between
+that first portion so neatly penned--parti-coloured words showing where
+the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled and planned at
+every syllable--and this where emotion sped the thoughts.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+“So that's all right” (she wrote), “and now we've only got to wait, a
+few, few weeks. Dearest, will they fly or will they drag? What does love
+do to time, I wonder--whip or brake?--speed or pull? Georgie mine, I
+feel I don't care. If the days fly I shall be riding in them--galloping
+to you, wind in the face; shouting them on; standing up all flushed with
+the swing and the rush of it; waving to the people we go thundering past
+and gazing along the road where soon I will see you--nearer and nearer
+and nearer.
+
+“And if the days creep? Well, at first, after that picture, the thought
+seems melancholy, unbearable. But that is wrong. The realisation will
+not be unbearable. If they creep, why, then I shall lie in them, very
+comfortable, very happy; dreaming of you, seeing you, speaking with you,
+touching you. Yes, touching you. For, my dear, you are here in the
+room with me as I write. I look up just to my right, and there you are,
+Georgie mine; sitting on the end of my bed, smiling at me. You have
+not left me, my dear, since we parted on the seat this morning. Why, I
+cannot even write that it is only in imagination that I see you. For me
+it is not imagination. I do, do see you, Georgie mine. You are part of
+me, never to leave me.
+
+“How new, how different, love makes life! Everything I do, everything
+I see, everything I hear has a new interest because it is something to
+share with you, something to save up and tell you. I am in trouble
+(you understand that I am not, shall never be again; this is only
+illustration--you must read it 'if I were in trouble'). I am in trouble,
+and you are sharing it with me, sympathising so that trouble is an
+unkind word for what is indeed but an opportunity acutely to feel
+the joy of loving and being loved. I am happy, and the happiness is a
+thousandfold increased because it comes to me warmed through you. I
+am amused, and it is something to tell you and to laugh at the more
+heartily by the compelling sound of your own laughter.
+
+“Everything is new. Why, my very clothes are new. Look, here in my left
+hand is my handkerchief. Only a handkerchief this morning, and to other
+eyes still but a handkerchief. But to mine! Why, you have had it in your
+hand and indeed it speaks to me of you. Here you laid your arm, this was
+the side upon which you touched me as we sat together, here in my hair
+your fingers caressed me--each and all they are new--different from this
+morning.
+
+“Are you thinking me silly when I write like this, or are you dreadfully
+bored with it? I can't help it, Georgie; love means so much more to us
+women than to you men. It is essentially different. When a man in
+love thinks of the woman he thinks of her as 'mine,' and that thrills
+him--possession. But when the woman thinks of him she thinks of
+herself as 'his,' and that moves every fibre of her, strikes every
+chord--capitulation. The man expresses love by saying 'You are mine';
+the woman by 'I am yours.' That is how it is with me. I sing to myself
+that I am yours, yours, yours. I want you to have every bit of me. I
+want you to know every thought I have. If I had bad thoughts, I would
+tell them you. If I had desires, I would make them known and would
+not blush. I want you to see right into my very heart. I want to lay
+everything before you--to come to you bound and naked. That is what love
+is with women, dear. Some of us resist it, school it otherwise--but I do
+not think they are happy; not really happy. It is our nature to be as I
+have said, and to fight against nature is wearying work, leaving marks:
+it is to get tossed aside out of the sun.
+
+“Are you thinking me unutterably tiresome and foolish?--but you will not
+think that; because you love me.
+
+“Ah, let me write that again!-because you love me. And let me write
+this: I love you.
+
+“My dear, is not that curious?--the precious joy of saying 'I love you,'
+and the constant yearning to hear it said. Not lovers alone have this
+joy and this desire. Mothers teach their babies to say 'I love you,
+mother,' and constantly and constantly they ask, 'Do you love me, baby?
+'--yes, and are not satisfied until they have the assurance. And babies,
+too, will get up suddenly from their toys to run to say, 'Mother, I _do_
+love you.'
+
+“Why is it? Why is love so doubted that it must for ever be declared? So
+doubted that even those who do love must constantly be proclaiming
+the fact to the object of their affections, impelled either by the
+subconscious fear that that object mistrusts the devotion, or by the
+subconscious fear that they themselves are under delusion and must
+protest aloud--just as a child upon the brink of being frightened in the
+dark will say aloud, 'I'm not afraid!' Why is it?
+
+“Actions are allowed to proclaim hate, deeds suffice to advertise
+sympathy, but love must be testified by bond. To what crimes must love
+have been twisted and contorted that it should come to such a pass? How
+often must it have been used as disguise to be now thus suspected?
+
+“You never knew I thought of things like this, did you?
+
+“My dear dear, I who am so frivolous think of yet deeper things. And I
+would speak of them to you tonight, for I would have you know my heart
+and mind as, dearest (how dear to think!), you know my face. Yes, of
+deeper things. I suppose clever people would laugh at the religion my
+mother and father lived in, taught me, died in, and now is mine. They
+believed--and I believe--in what I have heard called the Sunday School
+God! the God who lives, who listens, and to whom I pray. I have read
+books attempting to shatter this belief--yes, and I think succeeding
+because written with a cunning appeal only to the intelligence of man.
+Can such a Being as God exist? they ask. And since man's intelligence
+can only grasp proved facts, proofs are heaped upon proof that
+He cannot. The impossibilities are heaped until man must--of his
+limitations--cry that it is impossible. But in my belief God is above
+the possibilities--not to be judged by them, not to be reduced to them.
+I suppose such a belief is Faith--implicit Faith--the Faith that we are
+told makes all things possible. Well, fancy, for the sake of having a
+'religion' that comes into line with 'reason,' abandoning the sense of
+comfort that comes after prayer! Fancy receiving a 'reasoned' belief and
+paying for it the solace of entreating help in the smallest trouble and
+in the largest!
+
+“Do you know, my dear dear, that I pray for you every night?--for your
+health, your happiness, and your success?
+
+“Now you know a little more of me. Is there more to learn, I wonder? Not
+if I can make it clear.
+
+“The candle is in a most melancholy condition: in the last stage of
+collapse. I have prodded it out from its socket with my knife and set it
+flabbily on a penny--so it must work to its very last drop of life. That
+will not be long delayed. I shall suddenly be plunged into darkness
+and must undress in the dark. I shall be smiling all the time I am
+undressing, my thoughts with you.
+
+“At eleven--ten minutes' time--I am to be leaning from the window gazing
+at Orion as you too--so we agreed--will be gazing. Each will know
+the other has his thoughts, and we will say 'good-night.' How
+utterly foolish! How contemptibly absurd, common!--and how mystically
+delightful! You and I with Orion for the apex of eye's sight and our
+thoughts flying from heart to heart the base!
+
+“Georgie mine, if we had never met could we have ever been so happy?
+Impossible! Impossible! Before I pray for you to-night, I thank God for
+you.
+
+“I have kissed the corner where I shall just be able to squeeze
+in--good-night.”
+
+Such was her letter-disloyal to women in its exposure of those truths
+of women's love which are theirs by the heritage of ages, by their
+daily training from childhood upward, and against which they should most
+desperately battle; simple in its ideas of religion; silly in its baby
+sentiment.
+
+Such was my Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Friday was the night of the incident in the library between Bob Chater
+and Mary; Saturday the exchange of love in the Park between Mary and
+her George; Saturday evening the writing of Mary's letter; upon Monday
+George read it.
+
+Now it was Monday morning, and precisely at ten o'clock three persons
+set out for the same seat in Regent's Park--the mind of each filled with
+one of the others, empty of all thought of the third.
+
+Mary--accompanied by David and Angela--carried towards the seat the
+image of her George, but had no heed of Mr. Bob Chater's existence; she
+was the magnet that drew Bob, ignorant of George; George sped to his
+Mary and had no thought of Bob.
+
+Our young men were handicapped in point of distance. Mary, with but
+a short half-mile to go, must easily be first to make the seat; Bob,
+coming to town from a week-end up the river, would occupy little short
+of an hour. George from Herons' Holt to that dear seat, allowed full
+seventy-five minutes.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon the whole, Mr. Bob Chater had not enjoyed his week-end; ideally
+circumstanced, for once the attractions it offered had failed to allure.
+
+Mr. Lemmy Moss, in the tiny riparian cottage he rented for the summer
+months, was the most excellent of hosts; Claude Avinger was widely known
+as a rattling good sort; the three young ladies who came down early on
+Sunday morning and had no foolish objections to staying indecorously
+late, were in face, figure and morals all that Bob, Lemmy, and Claude
+could desire. Yet throughout that day in the cushioned punt Bob won more
+pouts than smiles from the lady who fell to his guardianship.
+
+Disgustedly she remarked to her friends on the home journey, “Fairly
+chucked myself at him, the deadhead “--wherein, I apprehend, lay her
+mistake. For whether a man's assault upon a woman be dictated by love
+or desire, its vehemence is damped by acquiescence, spurred by rebuff.
+Doubtless for our lusty forefathers one-half the fascination of
+obtaining to wife the naked ladies who caught their eye lay in the
+tremendous excitement of snatching them from their tribes; while for the
+ladies, the joy of capture comprised a great proportion of the amorous
+delights.
+
+The characteristics remain. Maidens are more decorously won to-day;
+their tribes do not defend them; but they do the fighting for
+themselves. The sturdier the defence they are able to make, the greater
+the joy of at length being won; while, for the suitor, the more pains he
+hath endured in process of conquest the more keenly doth he relish his
+captive.
+
+So with Bob. The young lady fairly chucking herself at him in the punt
+he could not forbear to contrast with the enticing reserve of Mary. The
+more playfully (or desperately, poor girl) she chucked herself at him,
+the more did her charms cloy as against those of that other prize who so
+stoutly kept him at arm's-length. Nay, the more strenuously did she
+seek to entice his good offices, the more troubled was he to imagine why
+another of her sex should so slightingly regard him.
+
+Thus, as the day wore on, was Bob thrice impelled towards Mary--by
+initial attraction of her beauty; by natural instinct to show himself
+master where, till now, he had been bested; and by the stabbings of his
+wounded vanity.
+
+On Monday morning, then, he caught the ten o'clock train to town, hot
+in the determination immediately to see her and instantly to press his
+suit. He would try, he told himself, a new strategy. Bold assault had
+been proved ill-advised; for frontal attack must be substituted an
+advance more crafty. Its plan required no seeking. He would play--and,
+to a certain extent, would sincerely play--the part of penitent. He
+would apologise for Friday's lapse; would explain it to have been the
+outcome of sheer despair of ever winning her good graces.
+
+As to where he would find her he had no doubts. Dozing one day over a
+book, he had not driven David and Angela from the room until they
+had forced upon him a wearisome account of the secluded seat they had
+discovered in Regent's Park. His patience in listening was an example of
+the profit of casting one's bread upon the waters; for, making without
+hesitation for the seat, he discovered Mary.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The children, as he approached, were standing before her. David had
+scratched his finger, and the three were breathlessly examining the
+wounded hand for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was explaining
+that the place of the wound was over the home of very big drops of
+“blug,” which could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window; when
+Angela, turning at footsteps, exclaimed: “Oh, dear, oh, dear, what
+_shall_ we do? Here's Bob!”
+
+Alarm drummed in Mary's heart: fluttered upon her cheeks. She had felt,
+as she told her George, so certain that from Bob she had now not even
+acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion set her mind
+bounding into disordered apprehensions--stumbling among them, terrified,
+out of breath.
+
+When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning, she could but sit
+dumbly staring at him-questioning, incapable of speech.
+
+It was Angela that answered his salutation: “Oh, why _have_ you come
+here? You spoil _everything_.”
+
+“Hook!” said Bob.
+
+David asked: “What's hook?”
+
+“Run away.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I tell you to.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Bob exclaimed: “Hasn't mother told you not to say 'Why' like that? Run
+away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray.”
+
+David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted instead an
+observant poke: “Miss Humfray doesn't want to speak to you. She hates
+you.”
+
+The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross
+ill-mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to
+his mother. The belief that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary's
+mouth served further to harden his tones.
+
+He said: “Look here, you run away when I tell you, or I'll see you don't
+come out here any more.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Bob swallowed. It was necessary before he spoke to clear his tongue of
+the emotions that surged upon it.
+
+Angela, in the pause, entreated David: “Oh, don't keep saying 'Why?',
+David,” and before he could ask the reason she addressed Bob: “We won't
+go for you. If Miss Humf'ay tells us to go, _then_ we will go.”
+
+Bob looked at Mary. “I only want to speak to you for a minute.”
+
+Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary
+had struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have
+been chance, not deliberate--how should he have known where to seek
+them? Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to take
+the apology with which doubtless he had come--well to be on good terms.
+
+Encouraged by these supports, “Shoo!” she cried to her charges. “Don't
+you hear what your brother asks?”
+
+“Do _you_ want us to go?”
+
+“Oh, shoo! shoo!”
+
+Laughing, they shoo'd.
+
+Bob let them from earshot. “I want to say how sorry I am about Friday
+night.”
+
+“I have forgotten all that.”
+
+“I want to know that you have forgiven me.”
+
+“I tell you I have forgotten it.”
+
+“That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it.” He took a seat beside
+her; repeated: “You can't have forgotten it. How can you have forgotten
+a thing that only happened three days ago?”
+
+“In the sense that I have wiped it out--I do not choose to remember it.”
+
+“Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want
+to know that you forgive me.”
+
+She told him: “Yes, then--oh yes, yes.” His persistence alarmed her, set
+her again to flight among her apprehensions.
+
+“Not when you say it like that.”
+
+Her breath came in jerks, responsive to the unsteady flutters of her
+heart. She made an effort for control; for the first time turned to him:
+“Mr. Chater, please go.”
+
+Her words pricked every force that had him there--desire, obstinacy,
+wounded vanity.
+
+“Why do you say that?” he asked.
+
+“You happened to be passing--”
+
+“Nothing of the kind,” he told her.
+
+“You have come purposely?” One foothold that seemed safe was proving
+false.
+
+“Of course. I tell you--why won't you believe me?--that I have been
+ashamed of myself ever since that night. At the first opportunity I have
+come straight to tell you so, I ought to be in the City. I could not
+rest until I had made my apology.”
+
+“Well, you have made it--I don't mean to say that sharply. I think--I
+think it is very nice of you to be so anxious, and I freely accept your
+apology. But don't you see that you are harming me by staying here? I
+beg you to go.”
+
+“How am I harming you? Am I so distasteful to you that you can't bear me
+near you?”
+
+This was the personal note that of all her apprehensions had given Mary
+greatest alarm. “Surely you see that you are harming me--I mean hurting
+me--I mean, yes, getting me into trouble by staying like this with me.
+Mrs. Chater might have turned me off on Saturday--”
+
+“I spoke for you.”
+
+“Yes.” The words choked her, but she spoke them--“I am grateful to you
+for that. But if she found me talking to you again--especially if she
+knew you came here to see me, she would send me away at once. She told
+me so.”
+
+“How is she to know?”
+
+“The children--”
+
+“I'll take care of that.”
+
+“You can't prevent it. In any case--”
+
+Bob said bitterly: “In any case! Yes, that's it. In any case you hate
+the sight of me.”
+
+She cried: “Oh, why will you speak like that? I mean that in any case it
+is not right. I promised.”
+
+Bob laughed. “If that's all, it is all right. You didn't promise for
+me.”
+
+“It makes no difference. You say you are sorry--I believe you are sorry.
+You can only show it one way. Mr. Chater, please leave me alone.”
+
+Her pretty appeal was fatal to her desire. It enhanced her graces.
+In both phrase and tone it was different from similar request in the
+petulant mouths of those ladies amongst whom Bob purchased his way.
+Dissatisfied, they would have said “Oh, chuck it! Do!” But “Mr. Chater,
+please leave me alone!”--that had the effect of moving Mr. Chater a
+degree closer along the seat.
+
+He said: “You shan't have cause to blame me. Look here, you haven't
+asked me to explain my conduct on Friday.”
+
+“I don't wish you to.”
+
+“Don't you want to know?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Aren't you curious?” His voice was low with a note of intensity. This
+was love-making, as he knew the pursuit.
+
+He went on: “I'm sure you're curious. Look here, I'm going to tell you.”
+
+“I'm going,” she said; made to rise.
+
+He caught her hand where it lay on her lap; pressed her down. “You're
+not. If you do I shall follow--but I won't let you,” and he pressed
+again in advertisement.
+
+Now she was alarmed--not for the result of this interview, but for its
+very present perils. Fear strangled her voice, but she said, “Let me
+go.”
+
+“You must hear me, then.”
+
+“I wish to go.”
+
+“You must stay to hear me.” He believed a fierce assault would now win
+the heights. He released her hand; but she was still his prisoner, and
+he leant towards her averted head.
+
+“I'm going to tell you why I behaved like that that night. It was
+because I could not contain myself any longer. You had always been so
+icy to me; kept me at arm's-length, barely let me speak to you; and all
+the time I was burning to tell you that I loved you--there, you know
+it now. On that night you were still cold when you might have been only
+barely civil and I could have contained myself. But you would not give
+me a word, and at last all that was in me for you burst out and I could
+not hold myself. It was unkind; it was frightening to you, perhaps; but
+was it a crime?--is it a crime to love?”
+
+His flow checked, waiting an impulse from her.
+
+She was but capable of a little “Oh!”--the crest of a gasp.
+
+He misread her emotion. “Has it all been pretence, your keeping me from
+you like this? I believe it has. But now that you know you will be kind.
+Tell me. Speak.”
+
+Encouraged by her silence he took her hand.
+
+That touch acted as a cold blast upon her fevered emotions. Now she was
+calm.
+
+She shook off his hand. “Have you done?”
+
+The tone more than the question warned him.
+
+“Well?” he said; sullen wrath gathering.
+
+“Well, never speak to me again.”
+
+“You won't be friends?”
+
+“Friends! With you!”
+
+Her meaning--that he had lost--stung him; her tone--that she despised
+him--was a finger in the wound.
+
+He gripped her arm. “You little fool! How are you going to choose? If
+I want to be friends with you, how are you going to stop it? By God,
+if you want to be enemies it will be the worse for you. If I can't be
+friends with you at home, I'll get you turned out and I'll make you be
+friends outside.”
+
+She was trying to twist her arm from his grasp.
+
+He gripped closer. “No, I don't mean that. I love you--that's why I talk
+so when you rebuff me. I'll not hurt you. We shall--I will be friends.”
+
+His right arm held her. He slipped his left around her, drew her to
+him, and with his lips had brushed her cheek before she was aware of his
+intention.
+
+The insult swept her free of every thought but its memory. By a sudden
+motion she slipped from his grasp and to her feet; faced him.
+
+“You beast!” she cried. “You beast!”
+
+He half rose; made a half grab at her.
+
+She stepped back a pace; something in her action reminded him of that
+stinging blow she had dealt him in the library; he dropped back to his
+seat and she turned and fled up the path whither Angela and David had
+toddled.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was while Bob sat gazing after her, indeterminate, that he felt a
+hand from behind the seat upon his shoulder; looked up to see a tall
+young man, fresh faced, but fury-browed, regarding him.
+
+“What's your name?” asked George.
+
+“What the devil's that to do with you?”
+
+The tone of the first question had been of passion restrained. The
+passion broke now from between George's clenched teeth, flamed in his
+eyes.
+
+He tightened his grip upon the other's shoulder so that he pinched the
+flesh.
+
+“A lot to do with me,” he cried. “Is it Chater?”
+
+“What if it is? Let me go, damn you!”
+
+“Let you go! I've been itching for you for weeks! What have you been
+saying to Miss Humfray?”
+
+“Damn you! Take off your hand! She's a friend of yours, is she?”
+
+My furious George choked: “Engaged to me.” Further bit upon his passion
+he could not brook. He brought his free hand down with a crash upon
+the face twisted up at him; relaxed his hold; ran round the seat--those
+brown hands clenched.
+
+If Bob Chater at no time had aching desire for a brawl, he was at least
+no coward: here the events he had suffered well sufficed to whip
+his blood to action. He sprang to his feet, was upon them as George,
+sideways to him, came round the arm of the seat; lunged furiously and
+landed a crack upon the cheekbone that spun George staggering up the
+path.
+
+It was a good blow, a lusty blow--straight from the shoulder and with
+body and leg work behind it; a blow that, happier placed, might well
+have won the battle.
+
+A ring upon Bob's finger cut the flesh he struck, and he gave a savage
+“Ha!” of triumph as he saw George go spinning and the red trickle come
+breaking down his cheek.
+
+A great ridge in the gravel marked the thrust of foot with which George
+stayed his stagger, from which he impelled the savage spring that
+brought him within striking distance.
+
+There was no science. This was no calmly prepared fight with cool brains
+directing attack, searching weak points, husbanding strength, deft in
+defence. Here was only the animal instinct to get close and wound; to
+grapple and wound again.
+
+George it was that provoked this spirit. Till now he had not seen this
+flushed face before him. But he had for many days conjured it up in
+his fancy--sharpening upon it the edge of his wrath, bruising himself
+against the wall of wise conduct that kept him from meeting and visiting
+upon it the distress his Mary had endured.
+
+Now that he saw it in the flesh (and it was not unlike his conception),
+he came at it with the impulse of one who, straining against a rope,
+rushes headlong forward when a knife parts the bond.
+
+The impulse thus given more than countered the greater bulk and reach
+that should have told in Bob's scale. Bob felt his wits and his courage
+simultaneously deserting him before the pell-mell of blows that came
+raining against his guard. Whensoever he effected a savage smash that
+momentarily checked the fury, it served but to bring back this seemingly
+demented young man with a new rush and ardour.
+
+Bob gave step by step, struck short-arm, felt the faint saltness of
+blood upon his lips, staggered back before a tremendous hit between the
+eyes, stumbled, tripped, fell.
+
+“Get up!” George bellowed; waited till Bob came rushing, and sent him
+reeling again with a broken tooth that cut the brown knuckles.
+
+Bob lacked not courage and had proved it, for he was sorely battered.
+But the pluck in him was whipped and now venom alone bade him make what
+hurt he could.
+
+His heavy stick was leaning against the seat. He seized it; swung it
+high; crashed a blow that must have split the head it aimed.
+
+George slipped aside; the blow missed. He poised himself as Bob,
+following the impulse, went staggering by; put all his weight behind a
+crashing hit and sent him spinning prone with a blow that was fittingly
+final to the exhibition of lusty knocks.
+
+Bob propped himself on one arm, rose to his feet; glared;
+hesitated--then fell to brushing his knees.
+
+It was a masterly white flag.
+
+“Had enough?” George panted. “Had enough? Are you whipped, you swine?”
+
+Bob assiduously brushed.
+
+“When you're better, let me know,” George cried; turned and hurried up
+the path whither Mary had disappeared.
+
+The forced draught of fury, pain, and exertion sent Bob's breath roaring
+in and out in noisy blasts--now long and laboured, now spasmodic quick.
+
+He examined his bill of health and damage. Face everywhere tender to the
+touch; clothes dust-covered and torn; both knees of trousers rent; silk
+hat stove in when in a backward rush he had set his foot upon it. His
+tongue discovered a broken tooth, his handkerchief a bleeding nose, his
+fingers blood upon his chin, trickling to his shirt front.
+
+So well as might be he brushed his person; straightened his hat; clapped
+handkerchief to his mouth; past staring eyes, grinning faces, hurried
+out of the Park to bury himself in a cab.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+From a window Mrs. Chater saw the bruised figure of her darling boy
+alight; with palpitating heart rushed to greet him.
+
+“Bob! My boy! My boy! What has happened?”
+
+Her boy brushed past; bounded to his room. Laboriously, sick with fear,
+the devoted mother toiled in pursuit--found him in his room tearing off
+his coat.
+
+“My boy! My boy!”
+
+Her boy bellowed: “_Hot water!_”
+
+Can a mother's tender care cease towards the child she bare?
+
+Oh! needless to ask such a question, you for whom is pictured this
+devoted woman plunging at breakneck speed for the bathroom, screaming as
+she runs: “Susan! Kate! Jane! Jane! Kate! Susan!”
+
+Doors slammed, cries echoed, stairs shook, as trembling servants rushed
+responsive.
+
+Crashing of cans, rushing of water, called them to the bathroom.
+
+“Oh, m'am! What is it?”
+
+Water flew in sprays as the agonised mother tested its temperature with
+her hands; cans rattled as she kicked them from where, in dragging one
+from the shelf, the others had clattered about her feet.
+
+Jane, Kate, and Susan clustered in alarm about the door: “Oh, m'am!
+M'am! Whatever is it?”
+
+Mrs. Chater gave no reply. Her can full, she plunged through them. This
+way and that they dodged to give her passage; dodge for dodge, demented,
+hysterical, she gave them--slopping boiling water on to agonised toes;
+bursting through at last; thundering up the stairs.
+
+The three plunged after her: “Oh, m'am! M'am! Whatever is it?”
+
+The devoted woman paused at the head of the stairs; screamed down
+orders: “Sticking-plaster! Lint! Cotton-wool! Mr. Bob has had an
+accident! Hot-water bottles! Ice! Doctor! Go for the doctor, one of
+you!”
+
+A figure with battered face above vest and pants bounded from its room.
+“No!” Bob roared. “No!”
+
+“No!” Mrs. Chater echoed, not knowing to what the negative applied, but
+hysterically commanding it.
+
+“No!” screamed the agitated servants, one to another.
+
+“No! no doctor!” bellowed Bob; grabbed the can from his mother; shot
+back to his room.
+
+“No doctor!” Mrs. Chater screamed to the white-faced pack upon the
+stairs; fled after him.
+
+“My boy! Tell me!”
+
+Her boy raised his dripping face from the basin. “For God's sake shut
+the door!” he roared.
+
+She did. “Tell me!” she trembled.
+
+“It's that damned girl.”
+
+“That girl?”
+
+“Miss Humfray!”
+
+“Miss Humfray! Done that to you! Oh, your poor face! Your poor face!”
+
+“No!--no! Do be quiet, mother! Some infernal man she goes about with in
+the Park! I spoke to him and he set on me!”
+
+“The infamous creature! The wicked, infamous girl! A bad girl, I knew
+it!--”
+
+Agitated tapping at the door: “The cotton-wool m'am.” “Sticking-plaster,
+m'am.” “'Ot bottle, m'am.”
+
+“Go away!” roared Bob. “Go away! O-oo, my face!” He hopped in wrath and
+pain. “Send those damned women away!”
+
+Mrs. Chater rushed to the door. Passing, she for the first time caught
+full sight of her son's face now that the hot water had exposed its
+wreck. “Oh, your eyes! Your poor eyes! They're closing up!”
+
+Bob staggered to the mirror; discovered the full horror of his marred
+beauty. “Curse it!” he groaned and gave an order.
+
+Mrs. Chater flew to the telephone.
+
+In the office of Mr. Samuel Hock, purveyor of meat, by appointment, to
+the Prince of Wales, the telephone bell sharply rang. Mr. Hock stepped
+to the receiver, listened, then bellowed an order into the shop:
+
+“One of beefsteak to 14 Palace Gardens, sharp!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+With tremendous strides, with emotion roaring in and out his nostrils in
+gusty blasts of fury, my passionate George encompassed the Park this way
+and that until he came at length upon his trembling Mary.
+
+Save for that first blow where Bob's ring had marked his cheek he had
+suffered but little in the fight--sufficiently, notwithstanding, coupled
+with his colossal demeanour, for Mary's eyes to discover that something
+was amiss.
+
+She came to him; cried at a little distance: “Oh, dearest, I--I could
+not meet you at the seat.”
+
+Then she saw more clearly. She asked: “What has happened?” and stood
+with quivering lip recording the flutters of her heart.
+
+George took one hand; patted it between both his. For the moment his
+boiling anger cooled beneath grim relish of his news. “I've pretty well
+killed that Chater swine,” he said.
+
+“Mr. Chater?--you've met Mr. Chater?”
+
+Now emotion boiled again in her turbulent George. He said: “I saw you
+run from him. I saw--what had he been doing?”
+
+“Oh, Georgie!”
+
+“Well, never mind. I'd rather not hear. I've paid him for it, whatever
+it was.”
+
+“You fought? Oh, and your face--and your hand bleeding too!”
+
+Tears stood in this ridiculous Mary's eyes. Women so often cry at the
+wrong moment. They should more closely study their men in the tremendous
+mannish crises that come to some of us. This was no moment for tears; it
+was an hour to be Amazon. To be hard-eyed. To count the scalps brought
+home by the brave--in delight to squeal over them; in pride to clap the
+hands and jump for joy at such big behaviour.
+
+My Mary erred in every way. Her moistening eyes annoyed George.
+
+“Oh, don't make a fuss about that, Mary,” he cried irritably. “It's
+nothing. Master Bob won't be able to see for a month.”
+
+“Oh, George, why did you do it?”
+
+Then the tremendous young man flamed. “Why did I do it? 'Pon my soul,
+Mary, I simply don't understand you sometimes. You've made me stand by
+and see you insulted for a month, and then I see him catch hold of you,
+and you run, and I go and thrash him, and you say, 'Why did you do
+it?' _Do_ it? _Do_ it? Why, good Lord, what would you have had me
+do--apologise for you?”
+
+She turned away, dropped his hand.
+
+My unfortunate George groaned aloud: sprang to her. “Mary, darling,
+dearest, you know I didn't mean that.”
+
+She kept her face from him; her pretty shoulders heaved.
+
+He cried in misery, striving to see her face: “What a brute I am! What a
+brute! Mary, Mary, you know I didn't mean that.”
+
+She gasped: “You ge-get angry so quick.”
+
+“I know, I know. I'm not fit--I couldn't help--Mary, do look up.”
+
+She swallowed a sob; gave him her little hand.
+
+He squeezed it, squeezed it as it were between his love for her and the
+tremendous passion that was consuming him. Contrition at his sharp words
+to her hammered the upper plate, wrath at the manner of her reception of
+his news was anvil beneath. The poor fingers horribly suffered.
+
+There are conditions of the male mind--and this George was in the very
+heart of one--when softness in a woman positively goads to fury.
+The mind is in an itching fever, and--like a bull against a
+gate-post--requires hard, sharp corners against which to rub and ease
+the irritation. Comes the lord and master home sulky or in fury, the
+wise wife will meet him with a demeanour so spiked that he may scratch
+his itching at every turn. To be soft and yielding is the most fatal
+conduct; it is to send the lumbering bull crashing through the gate-post
+into the lane to seek solace away from the home paddock.
+
+Unversed in these homely recipes, this simple Mary had at least the wit
+not to cry “Oh!” in pain and move her hand. They found a seat, and for
+good five minutes this turbulent George sat and threshed in his wrath
+like a hooked shark--this little hand the rope that held him. Soon its
+influence was felt. His tuggings and boundings grew weaker. The venom
+oozed out of him.
+
+He uncovered the crushed fingers; raising, pressed them to his lips.
+
+He groaned. “Now you know me at last.”
+
+She patted those brown hands; did not speak.
+
+“You know the awful temper I've got,” he went on. “Uncontrollable--angry
+even with you--foul brute--”
+
+“But I annoyed you, Georgie.”
+
+He flung out an accusatory hand against himself. “How? By being sweet
+and loving! Why, what a brute I must be!”
+
+She told him: “You shan't call yourself names. In fact, you mustn't.
+Because that is calling me names too. We belong, Georgie.”
+
+The pretty sentiment tickled him. Gloom flew from his brow before
+sunshine that took its place. He laughed. “You're a dear, dear old
+thing.”
+
+She gave a whimsical look at him. “I ought to have said at once what I
+am going to say now: Did you hurt him much?”
+
+“I bashed him!” George said, revelling in it. “I fairly bashed him!”
+
+She snuggled against this tremendous fellow.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+It was a park-keeper who, from that opium drug of sweet silence with
+which lovers love to dull their senses, recalled them to the urgency for
+action.
+
+The park-keeper led David by one hand, Angela by the other, whence
+he had found them wandering. Disappointment that their owner was
+a protected lady instead of a nicely-shaped nursemaid whom by this
+introduction he might add to his recreations, delivered him of stern
+reproof at the carelessness which had let these children go astray.
+
+“I would very much like to know,” he concluded, “what their ma would
+say.”
+
+“My plump gentleman,” said George pleasantly, “meet me at this
+trysting-place at noon to-morrow, and your desire shall be gratified.”
+
+The park-keeper eyed him; thought better of the bitter words he had
+contemplated; contented himself with: “Funny, ain't yer?”
+
+“Screaming,” said George. “One long roar of mirth. Hundreds turned away
+nightly. Early doors threepence extra. Bring the wife.”
+
+The park-keeper withdrew with a morose air.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+And now my George and his Mary turned upon the immediate future. Conning
+the map of ways and means and roads of action, a desolate and almost
+horrifying country presented itself. No path that might be followed
+offered pleasant prospects. All led past that ogre's castle at 14 Palace
+Gardens; at the head of each stood the ogress shape of Mrs. Chater,
+gnashing for blood and bones over the disaster to her first-born. She
+must be faced.
+
+George flared a torch to light the gloom: “But why should you go near
+her, dearest? Let me do it. I'll take the children back. I'll see her.
+I'll get your boxes.”
+
+Even the sweetest women trudge through life handicapped by the
+preposterous burden of wishing to do what their sad little minds
+hold right. It is a load which, too firmly strapped, makes them dull
+companions on the highway.
+
+Mary said: “It wouldn't be _right_, dear. The children are in my charge;
+how could I send them back to their mother in the care of a strange
+man? And it wouldn't be right to myself, either. It would look as if I
+admitted myself in the wrong. No; I must, must face her.”
+
+George's torch guttered; gave gloom again. He tried a second: “Well,
+I'll come with you. That's a great idea. She won't dare say much while
+I'm there.”
+
+“Oh, it wouldn't be _right_, Georgie. You oughtn't to come to the
+house--to see her--after what you've done to the detestable Bob. No,
+I'll go alone and I'll go now. You shall come as far as the top of the
+road and there wait.”
+
+“And then?” George asked.
+
+This was to research the map for rest-houses and for fortunes that might
+be won after the ogre castle had been passed.
+
+Mary conned and peered until the strain squeezed a little moisture in
+her eyes. “I don't know,” she said faintly.
+
+Her bold George had to know. “It won't be for very long, dear old girl.
+You must find another situation. Till then a lodging. I know a place
+where a man I know used to have digs. A jolly old landlady. I'll raise
+some money--I'll borrow it.”
+
+Mary tried to brighten. “Yes, and I'll go to that agency again. I must,
+because I shall have no character, you see. I'll tell her everything
+quite truthfully, and I think she'll be nice.”
+
+“It's no good waiting,” George said. His voice had the sound of a
+funeral bell.
+
+Mary arose slowly, white. She said: “Come along.”
+
+With a tumbril rumble in their ears, the children dancing ahead, they
+started for Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The groans and curses of her adored Bob, his bulgy mouth and shutting
+eyes, his tender nose and the encrimsoned water where he had layed his
+wounds--these had so acted upon Mrs. Chater's nerves, plunged her into
+such vortex of hysteria, that the manner of her reception of Mary was
+true reflection of her fears, nothing dissembled.
+
+Withdrawing her agitated face from the dining-room window as Mary and
+the children approached, she bounded heavily to the door; flung it ajar;
+collapsed to her knees upon the mat; clasped David and Angela to that
+heaving bosom.
+
+“Safe!” she wailed. “Safe! Thank God, my little lambs are safe!”
+
+Distraught she swayed and hugged; kissed and moaned again.
+
+David pressed away. “You smell like whisky, mummie,” he said.
+
+It was a dash of icy water on a fainting fit; wonderfully it strung the
+demented woman's senses. She pushed her little lambs from her; fixed
+Mary with awful eye.
+
+“So you've come back--_Miss?_”
+
+Mary quivered.
+
+“I wonder you dared. I wonder you had the boldness to face me after
+your wicked behaviour. You've got nothing to say for yourself. I'm not
+surprised--”
+
+Mary began: “Mrs. Chater, I--”
+
+“Oh, how can you? How can you dare defend yourself? Never, never in
+all my born days have I met with such ingratitude; never have I been
+deceived like this. I took you in. I felt sorry for you. I fed you,
+clothed you, cared for you, treated you as one of my own family; and
+this is my reward. There you stand, unable to say a word--”
+
+“If you think, Mrs. Chater--”
+
+“Don't _speak_! I won't hear you. Here have I day after day been
+entrusting my beloved lambs to your care, and heaven alone knows what
+risks they have run. My boy--my Bob, who would die rather than get a
+living soul into trouble--sees you with this man you have been going
+about with. He does his duty to me, his mother, and to my precious
+lambs, his brother and sister, by reproving you, and you set this
+man--this low hired bully--upon him to murder him. I'll have the law
+on the coward. I'll punish him and I'll punish you, miss. No wonder you
+were frightened when my Bob caught you. No wonder.”
+
+“That is untrue, Mrs. Chater.”
+
+“Don't _speak!_”
+
+“I will speak. I shall speak. It is untrue.”
+
+“You dare--”
+
+“It is a lie. Yes, I don't mind what I say when you speak to me like
+that. It is a wicked lie.”
+
+“Girl--!”
+
+“If your son told you he caught me with the man who thrashed him as he
+deserved, he told you a lie. He never saw me with him. He followed me
+into the Park this morning and tried to repeat what he did on Friday
+night. He is a coward and a cad. The man to whom I am engaged caught him
+at it and thrashed him as he deserved. There! Now you know the truth!”
+
+Very white, my ridiculous Mary pressed her hand to her panting breast;
+stopped, choked by the wild words that came tumbling up into her mouth.
+
+Very red, swelling and panting in turkey-cock fury, Mrs. Chater,
+towering, swallowed and gasped, breathless before this vixenish attack.
+
+But she was the first to find speech; and incoherently she stormed as
+at a scratching do those persons whose true selves lie beneath a tissue
+film of polish.
+
+She bubbled and panted: “Oh, you wicked girl!--oh, you wicked girl!--oh,
+you wicked girl!--bold as brass-calling me a liar--_me_--and my
+battered boy--engaged indeed!--I'll have the law and the police and
+the judges--my solicitors--libel and assault, and slander and attempted
+murder--boxes searched--my precious lambs to hear their mother spoken
+to like this--get out of the hat-rack, David, and go upstairs this
+instant--Angela, don't stand there--if I wasn't a lady I'd box your
+ears, miss--only a week ago didn't I give you a black silk skirt of
+mine?--and fed you like a princess, with a soft feather pillow too,
+because you said the bolster made your head ache--servants to wait on
+you hand and foot--and this is my reward--how I keep my hands off you
+heaven only knows--but you shall suffer, miss--oh, yes you shall--I'll
+give you in charge--I'll call a policeman.”
+
+She turned towards the kitchen stairs; screamed “Susan! Kate! Jane!
+Susan!”
+
+Small need to bellow. Around the staircase corner three white-capped
+heads--Kate holding back Susan, Susan restraining Jane, Jane holding
+Kate--had been with delighted eyes and straining ears bathing in this
+rare scene. With glad unanimity they broke their restraint one upon the
+other; crushed pell-mell, hustling up the narrow stairs.
+
+Mrs. Chater plumped back into a chair; with huge hands fanned her heated
+face. “Fetch a policeman!”
+
+They plunged for the door.
+
+Bob's swollen countenance came over the banisters. He roared “Stop!”
+
+Kate, Jane and Susan swung between the conflicting authorities.
+
+“Call a policeman! Summon a constable! Fetch an officer!” In
+gusty breaths from behind Mrs. Chater's hands, working like a red
+paddle-wheel, came the commands.
+
+“Stop!” roared Bob; and to enforce pushed forward the battered face till
+it stuck out flat over the hall.
+
+His alarmed mother screamed: “Bob, you'll fall over the banisters!”
+
+The two kept up a battledore and shuttlecock of agitated conversation.
+
+“Well, stop those women!” Bob cried; “for God's sake, stop them, mother!
+What on earth are you thinking of?”
+
+“I'll give her in charge!”
+
+“You can't, you can't. Oh, my God, what a house this is!”
+
+“She called me a liar!”
+
+“You can't charge her for that.”
+
+“She half murdered you!”
+
+“She never touched me. Why don't you do as I told you? Why don't you
+send her away?”
+
+“Mercy, Bob! you'll fall and kill yourself!”
+
+“Do as I say, then! Do as I say!”
+
+“Well, put back your head! Put back your head.”
+
+“Do as I say, then!”
+
+Mrs. Chater stopped the paddle-wheel; rose to her feet. Bob's ghastly
+face drew in to safer limits. She addressed Mary: “Again my boy has
+interceded for you. Oh, how you must feel!” She addressed the maids: “Is
+her box packed?”
+
+They chorused “Yes”; pointed, and Mary saw her tin box, corded, set
+against the wall.
+
+“Call a cab,” Mrs. Chater commanded; and as the whistle blew she turned
+again upon Mary.
+
+“Now, miss, you may go. I pack you off as you deserve. But before you
+go--”
+
+The battered face shot out again above the banisters: “Pay her her wages
+and send her away, mother. Do, for goodness' sake, send her away!”
+
+“Wages! Certainly not! Mercy! Your head again! Go back, Bob!”
+
+The maddened, pain-racked Bob bellowed: “Oh, stop it! stop it! I shall
+go mad in a minute. She is entitled to her wages. Pay her.”
+
+“I won't!”
+
+“Well, I will. Susan! Susan, come up here and take this money. How much
+is it?”
+
+“She is not to be paid,” Mrs. Chater trumpeted.
+
+“She is to be paid,” bawled her son. “Do you want an action brought
+against you? Oh, my God, what a house this is!”
+
+“My boy! You will fall! Very well, I'll pay her.” Mrs. Chater turned to
+Mary. “Again and yet again my son intercedes for you, miss. Oh, how you
+must feel!” She grabbed around her dress for her pocket; found a purse;
+produced coins; banged them upon the table. “There!”
+
+And now my Mary, who had stood upright breasting these successive
+surges, spoke her little fury.
+
+With a hand she swept the table, sending the coins flying this way and
+that--with them a card salver, a vase, a pile of prayer-books. With her
+little foot she banged the floor.
+
+“I would not touch your money--your beastly money. You are contemptible
+and vulgar, and I despise you. Mr. Chater, if you are a man you
+will tell your mother why you were thrashed. Do you dare to say you
+interfered because you found me with someone? Do you dare?”
+
+With masterly strategy Bob drove home a flank attack. To have affirmed
+he did dare might lead to appalling outburst from this little vixen. He
+said very quietly, as though moved by pity: “Please do not make matters
+worse by blustering, Miss Humfray.” He sighed: “I bear you no ill-will.”
+
+My poor Mary allowed herself to be denuded of self-possession. His words
+put her control to flight; left her exposed. Tears started in her eyes.
+She made a little rush for the stairs. “Oh, you coward!” she cried. “You
+coward! I will make you say the truth.”
+
+Would she have clutched the skirts of his dressing-gown, forgetting the
+proper modesty of a nice maiden, and dragged him down the stairs?
+Would she indelicately have pursued him to his very bedroom, and there,
+regardless of his scanty dress, have assaulted him?
+
+Bob believed she would. It is so easy for the world's heroines to remain
+calm against attack. My Mary was made of commoner stuff--the wretched,
+baser clay of which not I, but my neighbours, not you, but your
+acquaintances, are made.
+
+Bob believed she would. He cried, “Send her away! Why the devil don't
+you send her away?”; gathered his skirts; fled for the safety of a
+locked door.
+
+Mrs. Chater believed she would. Mrs. Chater plunged across the hall;
+stood, an impassable and panting guardian, upon the lowermost step. Her
+outstretched arm stayed Mary; a voice announced, “The cab'm.”
+
+My Mary stood a moment; little fists clenched, flashing eyes; blinked
+against the premonition of a rush of tears; then, as they came, turned
+for the door.
+
+“Go!” trumpeted Mrs. Chater. “Go!”
+
+Mary was upon the mat when Angela and David made a little rush; caught
+her skirts. The alarming scenes had hurtled in sequence too rapid and
+too violent to be by the children understood. But a scrap here and a
+scrap there they had caught, retained, correctly interpreted; and the
+whole, though it supplied no reason, told clearly that their adored Mary
+was going from them.
+
+“You're coming back soon, aren't you?” David cried.
+
+“You're not going away, are you, Miss Humf'ay?” implored Angela.
+
+Mrs. Chater shrilled: “Children, come away. Come here at once.”
+
+Mary dropped one knee upon the mat; caught her arms about the
+children. She pressed a cool face against each side her wet and burning
+countenance, gave kisses, and upon the added stress of this new emotion
+choked: “Good-bye, little ducklings!”
+
+“Oh, darling, _darling_ Miss Humf'ay, we _will_ be good if you'll stay!”
+ They felt this was the desperate threat that so often followed their
+misdemeanours put into action.
+
+She held them, hugging them. “It isn't that. You have been good.”
+
+“Then you said you would stay for ever and ever if we were good.”
+
+“Not ever and ever; I said--I said perhaps a fairy prince would come to
+take me. Didn't I?”
+
+This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He
+regarded the hansom at the door: “That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy
+princes don't come in cabs.”
+
+“The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle,
+kiss me.”
+
+She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon the
+small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about which
+they clung.
+
+They screamed, “Let me go!”
+
+David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and howl: “Take away
+your _hand_, mother!”
+
+Angela gasped: “Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!”
+
+With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater's stormy eyes, my Mary stooped
+over David.
+
+“David!” The calm ring of the tones he had learned to obey checked his
+clamour, his plunging kicks. She stooped; kissed him. “Be good as gold,”
+ she commanded. “Promise.”
+
+“Good as gold--yes--p'omise,” David choked.
+
+Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula. Mary stepped back. Susan
+slammed the door.
+
+With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.
+
+“Drive down the street,” she choked; lay back against the cushions; gave
+herself to shaking sobs.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Her George met her a very few yards down the street. He gave an order to
+the cabman and sat beside her.
+
+It was not long before her grief was hushed. She dried her eyes; nestled
+against this wonderful fellow who, as love had now constituted her
+world, was the solace against every trouble that could come to her, the
+shield against any power that might arise to do her hurt.
+
+They debated the position and found it desperate; discussed the
+immediate future to discover it threatening. Yet the gloom was
+irradiated by the glowing light of the prospective future; the rumbling
+of present fears was lost in the tinkling music of their voices,
+striking notes from love.
+
+The cab twisted this way and that; clattered over Battersea Bridge, down
+the Park, to the right past the Free Library, and so into Meath Street
+and to the clean little house of the landlady whom George knew.
+
+To her, in the tiny sitting-room, the story was told.
+
+It appeared that she had never yet taken a lady lodger. In her street
+ladies were regarded with suspicion; that no petticoats were ever to be
+fetched across the threshold was a rule to which each medical student
+who engaged her rooms must first subscribe.
+
+None the less she was here acquiescent. She knew George well; had for
+him an affection above that which commonly she entertained for the noisy
+young men who were her means of livelihood. Mary should pay for the
+little back bedroom that Mr. Thornton had; and, free of charge, should
+have use of the sitting-room rented by Mr. Grainger. There would be no
+lodgers until the medical schools reopened in October.
+
+So it was settled--and together in the sitting-room where Mrs. Pinking
+made them a little lunch again they debated the immediate future. It
+was three weeks before George's examination was due. Again he declared
+himself confident that, when actually he had passed, his uncle would
+not refuse the 400 pounds which meant the world to them--which meant
+the tight little practice at Runnygate. But the intervening weeks were
+meanwhile to be faced. Mary must have home. At the Agency she must pour
+forth her tale and seek new situation till they could be married. If the
+Agency failed them--They shuddered.
+
+Revolving desperate schemes for the betterment of this position into
+which with such alarming suddenness they had been thrust, George took
+his leave. He would have tarried, but his Mary was insistent that his
+work must not be interfered with. Upon its successful exploitation
+everything now depended.
+
+Brightly she kissed her George good-bye. He was not to worry about her.
+She was to be shut from his mind. To-morrow she would go to the Agency.
+He might lunch with her, and, depend upon it, she would greet him with
+great news.
+
+So they parted.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+In which this History begins to rattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will Lose
+Nothing By Not Accompanying Him.
+
+
+In pursuit of our opinion that the novel should hark back to its origin
+and be as a story that is told by mouth to group of listeners, here we
+momentarily break the thread.
+
+It is an occasion for advertisement.
+
+As when the personal narrator, upon resumption of his history, will at a
+point declare, “Now we come to the exciting part,” so now do I.
+
+Heretofore we have somewhat dragged. We have been as host and visitor at
+tea in the drawing-room. Guests have arrived; to you I have introduced
+them, and after the shortest spell they have taken their leave.
+
+My Mary and my George--favoured guests--have sat with us through our
+meal; but how fleeting our converse with those others--with Mr. William
+Wyvern, with Margaret, with Mrs. Major and with Mr. Marrapit! I grant
+you cause to grumble at their introduction, so purposeless has been
+their part. I grant you they have been as the guests at whose arrival,
+disturbing the intimate chatter, impatient glances are exchanged; at
+whose departure there is shuffle of relief.
+
+Well, I promise you we shall now link our personages and set our history
+bounding to its conclusion. We have collected them; now to switch on the
+connection and set them acting one against the other until the sparks do
+fly; watching those sparks shall be your entertainment.
+
+The switch which thus sets active the play of forces I shall call
+circumstance. If it has been long delayed, I have the precedent of
+all the story of human life as my excuse. For we are the children
+of circumstance. We move each in our little circle by a stout hedge
+encompassed. Circumstance suddenly will break the wall: some fellow man
+or woman is flung against us, and immediately the quiet ambulation of
+our little circle is for some conflict sharp exchanged. To-day we are at
+peace with the world, to-morrow warring with all mankind.
+
+I say with all mankind, because so narrow and so selfish is our outlook
+upon life that one single man or woman--a dullard neighbour or a
+silly girl--who may interfere with us, throws into turmoil our whole
+existence. Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out all life save only
+this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world--engaging
+our complete faculties.
+
+Deeper misfortune cannot be conceived. It is through allowing such
+occurrences to crush us that brows are wrinkled before their time;
+nerves broken-edged while yet they should be firmly strung; death
+reached ere yet the proper span of life is lived.
+
+For these unduly wrinkled brows, too early broken nerves, too soon
+encountered graves, civilised man has agreed upon an excuse. He names it
+the strain of life in modern conditions. There is no body in this plea.
+It is not the conditions that matter; it is our manner of receiving
+those conditions. Bend to them and they will crush; face them and they
+become of no avail; allow them to be the Whole of life, and immediately
+they are given so great a weight that to withstand them is impossible;
+regard them in their proper proportion to the scheme of things, and they
+become of airy nothingness.
+
+For if we regulate each to its right importance all that surrounds us,
+not forgetting that since life is transient time is the only ultimate
+standard of value, how unutterably insignificant must small human
+troubles appear in their relation to the whole scheme of things, to the
+enduring hills, the immense seas, vast space.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Compare vexations encompassed by the
+artifice of man with the tremendous life that is mothered by nature.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Set troubles against the enduring hills,
+misfortunes against the immense seas, perplexities against vast space,
+torments against the stout trees. Learn to take tribute of strength from
+every object that is built of strength--the strength of solidity that
+a stout beam may give, the strength of beauty that from a picture or a
+statuary irradiates.
+
+Gain strength from strength. It is a first principle of warfare to band
+undisciplined troops with tried regiments, to shoulder recruits with
+veterans. The horse-breaker will set the timid colt in harness with the
+steady mare. Thus is stiffening and a sense of security imparted to
+the weaker spirit; timidity oozes and is burned by the steady flame
+of courage that from the stronger emanates. In the heat of that flame
+latent strength warms and kindles in the weaker.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Seek intercourse with the minds that are
+above you; if not to be encountered, they are to be purchased in books.
+Avoid communion with the small minds below you and of your level.
+
+No man, nor book, nor thing can be touched without virtue passing thence
+into you. See to it that who or what you touch gives you strength, not
+weakness; uplifts, not debases. The aspiring athlete does not seek to
+match his strength against inferiors. These give him--easy victory.
+Contact with them is for him effortless; they tend to draw him to their
+plane. Rather, being wise, he shuns them to pit his prowess against such
+as can give him best, from whom he may learn, out of whom he will take
+virtue, by whom he will be raised to all that is best in him. Gain
+strength from strength. The attributes strength and weakness are
+as infectious as the plague. Make your bed so that you may lie with
+strength and catch his affection.
+
+I do not pretend that these are thoughts which influenced the persons of
+my history. My unthinking George and my simple Mary would care nothing
+for such things. Sight of the enduring hills would evoke in my George
+the uttered belief that they would be an infernal sweat to climb; sound
+of the immense seas if in anger would move my Mary to prayer for all
+those in peril on the wave, if in lapping tranquillity to sentimental
+thoughts of her George. But they had laughter and they had love.
+Adversity can make little fight against those lusty weapons.
+
+And now we have an exquisite balcony scene and rare midnight alarms for
+your delectation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+On that day when George left his Mary at the little lodgings in Meath
+Street, Battersea, Bill Wyvern returned to Paitley Hill after absence
+from home for a week upon a visit.
+
+His Margaret was his first thought upon his arrival. Letters between
+the pair were, by the sharpness of Mr. Marrapit's eye, compelled to be
+exchanged not through the post but by medium of a lovers' postal box
+situate in the hole of a tree in that shrubbery of Herons' Holt where
+they were wont by stealth to meet. Thus when Bill, upon this day of his
+return, scaled the tremendous wall and groped among the bushes, he
+saw the trysting bower innocent of his love--then searched and found a
+letter.
+
+A sad little note for lover's heart. Mr. Marrapit, it said, abed of a
+chill, prevented Margaret meeting her Bill that afternoon. Her father
+must be constantly ministered; impossible to say when she would be
+released. She heard him calling, she must fly to him. With fondest love.
+No time for more.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The lines chilled Bill's heart. His was a fidgety and nervous love
+that took fright at shadow of doubt. The week that had divided him
+from Margaret was the longest period they had not embraced since their
+discovery one of another. Was it not possible, he tortured himself,
+that loss of his presence had blurred his image in her heart? Countless
+heroes of his own stories who thus had suffered rose to assure him that
+possible indeed it was. The more he brooded upon it the more probable
+did it become.
+
+Bedtime found him desolated. In apprehension he paced his room. The
+thought of sleep with this devil of doubt to thump his pillow was
+impossible. Leaning from his window he gazed upon the stars and groaned;
+dropped eyes to the lawn, silvered in moonlight, and started beneath the
+prick of a sudden thought. It was a night conceived for lovers' tryst.
+He would seek his Margaret's open window, whistle her from her bed, and
+bring this damned doubt of her to reality or knock the ghostly villain
+dead.
+
+It was an inspiriting thought, and Bill started to whistle upon it until
+he remembered the demeanour in which he would have sent forth one of
+his own heroes upon such a mission. “Dark eyes gleaming strangely from a
+pale, set face,” he would have written. Bill's eyes were of a clearest,
+childlike blue which interfered a little with the proper conception of
+the role he was to play; but blanketing his spirits in melancholy he
+stepped from his room and passed down the stairs.
+
+That favoured bull-terrier Abiram, sleeping in the hall, drummed a
+tattoo of welcome upon the floor.
+
+“Chuck it,” said Bill morosely.
+
+The “faithful hound” that gives solace to the wounded heart is a pretty
+enough thing in stories; Abiram had had no training for the part. This
+dog associated his master not with melancholy that needed caressing but
+with wild “rags” that gave and demanded tremendous spirits.
+
+Intelligence, however, showed the wise creature that the tone of that
+command meant he was to be excluded from whatever wild rag might be
+now afoot. It was not to be borne. Therefore, to lull suspicion,
+Abiram ceased his drumming; rose when Bill had passed; behind him crept
+stealthily; and upon the door being opened bounded around his master's
+legs and into the moonlight with a joyous yelp.
+
+Fearful of arousing Korah and Dathan in their kennels to tremendous din
+if he bellowed orders, Bill hissed commands advising Abiram to return
+indoors under threat of awful penalties.
+
+Abiram frisked and skipped upon the lawn like a young lamb.
+
+Bill changed commands for missiles.
+
+Abiram, entering into the thing with rare spirit, caught, worried, and
+killed each clod of earth hurled at him, then bounded expectant forward
+for the next sacrifice that would be thrown for his delight in this
+entrancing game.
+
+“Very well,” spoke Bill between his teeth. “Very well. You jolly well
+come, my boy. Wait till you get near enough for me to catch you, that's
+all.”
+
+Beneath this understanding they moved forward across the lawn and down
+the road; Abiram sufficiently in the rear to harass rats that might be
+going about their business, without himself being in the zone of his
+master's strength.
+
+Heaving a sigh burthened with fond memory as he passed the wall
+of Herons' Holt where it gave upon the secret meeting-place in the
+shrubbery, Bill skirted the grounds; for the second time in his life
+passed through the gate and up the drive.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Well he knew his adored's window. From the shrubbery she had pointed it
+him. Now with a bang of the heart he observed that the bottom sash stood
+open so that night breezes, mingling freely with the perfumes of her
+apartment, unhindered could bear in to her his tremulous love-signals.
+
+He set a low whistle upon the air. It was not louder, he felt, than the
+agitated banging of his heart that succeeded it.
+
+Again he whistled, and once again. There was a rustling from within.
+
+“Margaret!” he softly called. “Margaret!”
+
+She appeared. The blessed damosel leaned out. About her yearning face
+the long dark hair abundantly fell; her pretty bed-gown, unbuttoned low,
+gave him glimpse of snowy bosom, beautifully rounded.
+
+“Oh, Bill!” she cried, stretching her arms.
+
+Then, glancing downwards at her person, she stepped back swiftly.
+Reappearing, the soft round of her twin breasts was not to view.
+
+She had buttoned up her night-dress.
+
+“Oh, Bill!”
+
+“Oh, Margaret!”
+
+“_Wow!_” spoke Abiram in nerve-shattering welcome. “_Wow!_”
+
+The blessed damosel fled. Bill plunged a kick. Abiram took the skirt of
+it; waddled away across the lawn, his waving stern expressing pleasure
+at having at once shown his politeness by bidding a lady good evening,
+and at being, like true gentleman, well able to take a hint.
+
+Bill put upon the breeze:
+
+“It's all right. He's gone.”
+
+No answer. Shuddering with terror lest that hideous _wow!_ had disturbed
+the house the blessed damosel lay trembling abed, the coverings pressed
+about her straining ears.
+
+“He's gone,” Bill strained again, his larynx torn with the rasp of
+whispers that must penetrate like shouts and yet speed soft-shod. “He's
+gone!”
+
+Margaret put a white leg to the ground--listened; drew forth its
+companion--listened; glimpsed her white legs; shuddered at such
+immodesty with a man so close; veiled them to their toes with her
+bed-gown; listened; stepped again to the window.
+
+“Oh, Bill!”
+
+“Oh, Margaret!”
+
+“Has anyone heard, do you think?”
+
+“My darling, not a soul. It sounded loud to us. Oh, Margaret--”
+
+“Hush! Yes?”
+
+“Do you know why I am come?”
+
+“Hush!--no.”
+
+“I thought--from your note--that you didn't care to see me again. I
+thought-being away like that--that you found you didn't-love me after
+all. Oh, I was tortured, Margaret. Oh--!”
+
+“Hush! Listen!”
+
+“Damn!” said Bill.
+
+The blessed damosel poked her beautiful head again into the night. “It's
+all right. I thought I heard a sound. We must be careful.”
+
+“Oh, Margaret, I was tortured--racked. I had to come to you. Tell me I
+was wrong in thinking--”
+
+“Oh, Bill, Bill, I--”
+
+This girl was well-nigh in a swoon of delicious excitement. Emotion took
+her and must be gulped ere she found voice. She stretched her arms down
+towards him.
+
+“Oh, Bill, I thought so, too.”
+
+A steely pang struck at his heart. “You thought you didn't love me after
+all?”
+
+“No, no, no.”
+
+Emotion dragged her from the window to her waist. Her long hair cascaded
+down to him so that the delicious tips, kissing his face, might by his
+lips be kissed.
+
+“No, no,” she breathed; “I thought the same of you. I thought you might
+have found--”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Hush!”
+
+“Damn!” said Bill.
+
+She reappeared; again her tresses trickled to him. “It's all right. I
+thought you might have found you didn't love me after all. Dearest, not
+hearing from you--”
+
+In sympathy of spirit Bill groaned: “What could I do?”
+
+She clasped her hands in a delicious ecstasy. “I know, I know. But you
+know how foolish I am. I felt--oh, Bill, forgive me!--I felt that, if
+you had really cared, a way of sending me a message might have been
+found. Of course, it was impossible. And there was more than that. When
+we parted last week, I thought you seemed not to care very much--”
+
+“Oh, Margaret!”
+
+“I know, I know. I know now how foolish I was, but that is what I
+thought--and, Bill, it tortured me. I've not been able to sleep at
+nights. That is how I was awake just now.”
+
+“Margaret, I believe you're crying.”
+
+“I'm so--so happy now.”
+
+“Oh, so am I! Aren't you glad I came, Margaret?”
+
+She murmured, “Oh, Bill!”; gave him a smile that pictured her answer.
+
+Mutually they gazed for a space, drinking delight.
+
+Her thirst quenched, Margaret said:
+
+“Bill, those nights, those terrible nights when I have been doubtful of
+you, filled me with thoughts that shaped into a poem last night.”
+
+“A poem to me?”
+
+“About us. Shall I read it?--now that the doubt is all over.”
+
+He begged her read.
+
+She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand
+paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful
+moon:
+
+  “Our meeting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature knew we met?
+  Twilight soft with a gentle breeze
+  Bearing scent of the slumbering seas;
+  Music sweet--'twas a nightingale,
+  Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail--
+  Golden sky that was flecked with red
+  (Ribands of rose on a golden bed).
+  Ah, love! when first we met!”
+
+She paused. “It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest,” she
+whispered, “and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That is
+the imagery of it--as it seemed to me.”
+
+Bill said: “And to me; a beautiful imagery.”
+
+She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: “Oh, it's nothing, really.
+You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in song. One has
+to set them down.”
+
+“One is merely the instrument,” Bill said.
+
+“Yes, the instrument.” She hugged the phrase. “The _instrument_. How
+cleverly you put things!”
+
+Bill disavowed the gift. Margaret breathed, “Oh, you do; I have so often
+noticed it.” Bill again denied.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Conventionality demanded this little exchange of them, and to-day the
+empress sway of conventionality is rarely rebelled. Even, as here, when
+treading the path of love, the journey must constantly be stopped while
+handfuls of the sweet-smelling stuff are tossed about our persons.
+Neglect the duty and you must walk alone. For to neglect conventionality
+is like going abroad without clothes; the naked man appears. Now,
+nothing can be more utterly horrid to our senses than a stark woman or
+stark man walking down the street. We should certainly pull aside the
+blind to have a peep, and the more we could see of the nakedness the
+further would we crane our heads (provided no one was by to watch); but
+to go out and chat, to be seen in company with the naked creature,
+is another matter. We would sooner chop off our legs. So with the
+conventions. The fewer of them you wear, the more naked (that is to say,
+real) do you become. Eyes will poke at you round the blinds, but you
+must walk quickly past the gate, please. If you will not go through
+the machine and come out a nice smooth sausage, well, you must remain
+original flesh and gristle; but you will smell horrid in nice noses.
+
+Is it not warming, as you read this, to know perfectly well that you are
+not one of the sausages?
+
+
+
+V.
+
+When they had sufficiently daubed themselves, Margaret asked:
+
+“Shall I read the next verse? That was the imagery of our meeting; this
+of our parting.”
+
+Bill gulped. This man was fondling the scented tresses that trickled
+about his face; speech was a little difficult.
+
+She put her page beneath the moon; gave her voice to its rapture:
+
+  “Our parting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature our folly knew?
+  Mournful swish of the sobbing rain;
+  Distant surge of the Deep in pain;
+  Whispering wail of the wandering wind,
+  Seeking, sobbing, a rest to find;
+  Fitful gleam from a troubled sky
+  (Nature weeping to see love die).
+  Ah, love, when last we met!
+
+“It was a perfect day, really,” she said. “Very hot, and just before
+lunch, do you remember? But there, again, it is the _imagery_ of it
+as it seemed to our inner selves. It comes to one, and one is the
+_instrument_.”
+
+Bill's voice was hoarse. “Margaret, come down to me,” he said.
+
+“I dare not.”
+
+“You must. I must touch you--kiss you. You must come down!”
+
+“Bill, I dare not; I should be heard.”
+
+He bitted his next words as they came galloping up. Dare he give them
+rein? And then again he bathed in the ecstasy of the scene. The black
+square of the open window; the scented roses that framed it; the silver
+night that lit its picture--her dusky face between her streaming hair,
+her white arms, bare to where the pushed-back sleeves gave them to the
+soft breeze to kiss, the soft outline of her breast where the press of
+her weight drew close her gown.
+
+It was not to be borne. The bitted words lashed from his hold. He
+gasped:
+
+“Then I am coming up!”
+
+Was she aghast at him? he asked himself. He stood half-checked while her
+steady eyes left his face, roamed from him--contrasting, as ashamed he
+felt, the purity of the still night with the clamour of his turbulent
+passions--and settled on an adjacent flowerbed.
+
+At last she spoke, very calmly.
+
+“There is a potting-box just there,” she said. “If you turned it on end
+you could reach the window, and then--”
+
+The box gave him two feet of reach. He jumped for the ledge--caught it;
+pulled; fetched the curve of an arm over the sill.
+
+Then between earth and paradise he hung limp; for a sudden horror was in
+his Margaret's eyes.
+
+She put upon his brow a hand that pressed him back; gave words to her
+pictured alarm: “A step upon the gravel!”
+
+'Twixt earth and window, with dangling legs and clutching arms, in
+muscle-racking pain he hung.
+
+Truly a step, and then another step.
+
+And then a very tornado of sound beat furiously upon the trembling
+night; with it a flash; from it the pattering of a hundred bullets.
+
+Someone had discharged a gun.
+
+As Satan was hurled, so, plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill fell.
+And now the still air was lashed into a fury of sound-waves, tearing
+this way and that in twenty keys; now the sleeping garden was torn by
+rushing figures, helter-skelter for life and honour.
+
+Sounds!--the melancholy bellow of that gardener, Mr. Fletcher, as the
+recoil of the bell-mouthed blunderbuss he had fired hurled him prone
+upon the gravel; the dreadful imprecations of Bill striving to clear
+his leg of the potting-box through whose side it had plunged; piercing
+screams of Mrs. Major from a ground-floor room; shrills of alarm from
+Mr. Marrapit; _gurr-r-ing_ yelps from Abiram in ecstasy of man-hunt.
+
+Rushing figures!--Bill, freed from his box, at top speed towards the
+shrubbery; Mr. Fletcher, up from his fall, with tremendous springs
+bounding across the lawn; Abiram in hurtling pursuit.
+
+More sounds!--panic screams from Mr. Fletcher, heavily labouring; the
+protest of a window roughly raised; from George's head, thrust into the
+night: “Yi! Yi! Yi! Hup, then! Good dog! Sock him! Sock him! Yi! Yi!
+Yi!”
+
+We must seek the fuse that touched off this hideous turbulence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Alarums And Excursions By Night.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+We are going into a lady's bedroom, but I promise you the thing shall be
+nicely done: there shall not be a blush.
+
+It was midnight when Bill Wyvern projected the scheme whose execution
+we have followed through sweetness to disaster. Two hours earlier the
+Marrapit household had sought its beds.
+
+It was Mr. Marrapit's wise rule that each member of his establishment
+should pass before him as he or she sought their chambers. Night is the
+hour when the thoughts take on unbridled licence; and he would send
+his household to sleep each with some last admonition to curb fantastic
+wanderings of the mind.
+
+Upon this night Mr. Marrapit was himself abed of the chill that Margaret
+had mentioned in her note to Bill. But the review was not therefore
+foregone. Upon his back, night-capped head on pillow propped, he lay as
+the minute-hand of his clock ticked towards ten.
+
+His brow ruffled against a sound without his door. He called:
+
+“Mrs. Armitage!”
+
+“Sir?” spoke Mrs. Armitage through the oak.
+
+“Breathe less stertorously.”
+
+Mrs. Armitage, his cook, waiting outside upon the mat, gulped wrath;
+respirated through open mouth.
+
+The clock at Mr. Marrapit's elbow gave the first chime of ten. Instantly
+Mrs. Armitage tapped.
+
+“Enter,” said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+She waddled her stout figure to him. Behind her Clara and Ada, those
+trim maids, took place.
+
+Mr. Marrapit addressed her. “To-morrow, Mrs. Armitage, arouse your girls
+at six. Speed them at their toilet; set them to clean your flues.”
+ He glanced at a tablet taken from beneath his pillow. “At 4.6 this
+afternoon I smelt soot.”
+
+“The flues were cleaned this morning, sir.”
+
+“Untrue. Your girls were late. Prone in suffering upon my couch, my ears
+tell me all that is accomplished in every part of the house. Ten minutes
+after your girls descended I heard the kitchen fire roar. I suspect
+paraffin.”
+
+Mrs. Armitage wriggled to displace the blame. “I rose them at six, sir.
+They sleep that heavy and they take that long to dressing, it's a wonder
+to me they ever do get down.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit addressed the sluggards. “Shun the enervating couch. Spring
+to the call. Cleanliness satisfied, adorn not the figure; pursue the
+duties. Ponder this. Seek help to effect it. Contrive a special prayer.
+To your beds.”
+
+They left him; upon the mat encountered Frederick, and him, in abandon
+of relief, dug vitally with vulgar thumbs.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Squirming, Frederick, the gardener's boy, advanced to the bedside.
+
+Mr. Marrapit sternly regarded him: “Recite your misdeeds.”
+
+“I've done me jobs, sir.”
+
+“Prostrated, I cannot check your testimony. One awful eye above alone
+can tell. Upon your knees this night search stringently your heart.
+Bend.”
+
+Frederick inclined his neck until his forehead was upon the coverlet.
+Mr. Marrapit scanned the neck.
+
+“Behind the ears are stale traces. Cleanse abundantly. To your bed.”
+
+Without the door Frederick encountered Mr. Fletcher. “You let me catch
+you reading abed to-night,” Mr. Fletcher warned him.
+
+“Cleanse yer blarsted ear-'oles,” breathed Frederick, pushing past.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Mr. Fletcher moved in to the presence.
+
+“Is all securely barred, bolted and shuttered?” Mr. Marrapit asked.
+
+“It's all right.”
+
+“I am apprehensive. This is the first night I have not accompanied you
+upon your round. Colossal responsibility lies upon you. Should thieves
+break through and steal, upon your head devolves the crime.”
+
+Wearily Mr. Fletcher repeated: “It's all right.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit frowned: “You do not inspire confidence. Sleep films your
+eye. I shudder for you. Women and children are in your care this night.
+The maids, Mrs. Armitage, Mrs. Major, my daughter, the young life of
+Frederick, are in your hands. What if rapine and murder, concealed in
+the garden, are loosed beneath my roof this night?”
+
+Mr. Fletcher passed a fist across his brow; spoke wearily: “It's all
+right, Mr. Marrapit. I can't say more; I can't do more. I tell you again
+it's all right.”
+
+“Substantiate. Adduce evidence.”
+
+Mr. Fletcher raised an appealing hand: “How can I prove it? My word's a
+good word, ain't it? I tell you the doors are locked. I can't bring 'em
+up to show you, can I? I'm a gardener, I am.”
+
+“By zeal give proof. Set your alarum-clock so that twice in the night
+you may be roused. Gird then yourself and patrol. But lightly slumber.
+Should my bell sound in your room spring instantly to my bedside. To
+your couch.”
+
+Battling speech, Mr. Fletcher moved to the door. At the threshold
+protest overcame him. He gave it vent: “I should like to ast if I was
+engaged to work by night as well as day? Can't I even have me rest?
+'Ow many nights am I to patrol the house? It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a watchdog.”
+
+“Away, insolence.”
+
+Insolence, upon the stairs, morosely descending, drew aside to give room
+to Margaret and George.
+
+Margaret parted her lips at him in her appealing smile. “Oh, Mr.
+Fletcher,” in her pretty way she said, “you locked me out. Indeed you
+did.” She smiled again; tripped towards Mr. Marrapit's door.
+
+Mr. Fletcher stayed George, following. “Mr. George, did you shut up
+secure behind Miss Margaret?”
+
+George reassured him; questioned his earnestness.
+
+Mr. Fletcher pointed through a window that gave upon the garden. “I've
+the 'orrors on me to-night,” he said. “According to Master there's
+rapine lurking in them bushes. Mr. George, what'll I do if there's
+rapine beneath this roof to-night?”
+
+“Catch it firmly by the back of the neck and hold its head in a bucket
+of water,” George told him.
+
+Mr. Fletcher passed, pondering the suggestion. “Only something to do
+with rats after all,” he cogitated with wan smile of relief.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Margaret, at her father's bedside, luxuriously mouthed the fine phrases
+of the Book of Job which nightly she read him. Her chapter finished, she
+inquired: “Shall I read on?”
+
+“Does Job continue?”
+
+“No, father. The next begins, 'Then answered Bildad, the Shuite.'”
+
+George coughed upon the threshold.
+
+“Terminate,” said Mr. Marrapit. “Bildad is without.”
+
+“Oh, father, George is not!”
+
+“He torments me. He is Bildad. Terminate. To your bed.”
+
+She pressed a warm kiss upon Job's brow; took on her soft cheek the
+salute of his thin lips. “You have everything, dear father?”
+
+“Prone on my couch I lack much. I am content. You are a good girl,
+Margaret.”
+
+“Oh, father!” She tripped from the room in a warmth of satisfaction.
+
+The rough head of Bildad the Shuite came round the door; spoke “Good
+night.”
+
+“Approach,” said Job. Bildad's legs came over the mat. “You seek your
+room? But not your couch?”
+
+“I'm going to bed, if that's what you mean,” George told him.
+
+Mr. Marrapit groaned. “Spurn it. Shun sloth. In the midnight oil set the
+wick of knowledge. Burn it, trim it, tend it.”
+
+George withdrew to his room; set the midnight pipe in his mouth; leaning
+from his window sped his thoughts to Battersea.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+One member of the house remained to be sent to sleep. Mrs. Major put a
+soft knuckle to the door; came at the call; whispered “I thought I might
+disturb you.”
+
+“You never disturb me, Mrs. Major.”
+
+A little squeak sprung from the nutter in the masterly woman's heart.
+
+“You sigh, Mrs. Major?”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I can't bear to see you lying there. The”--she paused
+against an effort, then took the aspirate in a masterly rush--“the house
+is not the same without you.”
+
+“Your sympathy is very consoling to me, Mrs. Major.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Marrapit!” She plunged a shaft that should try him: “I wish I
+had the right to give you more.”
+
+“Your position in this house gives you free access to me, Mrs. Major.
+Regard your place as one of my own circle. Do not let deference stifle
+intercourse.”
+
+The masterly woman hove a superb sigh. “If you knew how I feel your
+kindness, Mr. Marrapit. Truly, as I say to myself every night, fair is
+my lot and goodly is my--” Icy dismay took her. Was the missing word
+“hermitage” or “heritage”? With masterly decision she filled the blank
+with a telling choke; keyed her voice to a brilliant suggestion of
+brightness struggling with tears: “The sweetling cats are safely
+sleeping. I have come straight from them. Ah, how they miss you! How
+well they know you suffer!”
+
+“They do?” A tremble of pleasure was in Mr. Marrapit's voice.
+
+“They does--do.” Mrs. Major recited their day, gave their menu. “I must
+not tarry,” she concluded; “you need rest. Good night, Mr. Marrapit.
+Good night.”
+
+“Good night, Mrs. Major.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit put out his candle.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+And now in every room, save one, Sleep drew her velvet fingers down
+recumbent forms; pressed eyelids with her languorous kiss; upon her warm
+breast pillowed willing heads; about her bedfellows drew her Circe arms.
+
+Mrs. Major's room was that single exception, and it is that masterly
+woman's apartment we now shall penetrate.
+
+Hurrying to semi-toilet; again assuring herself that the key was turned;
+peering a last time for lurking ravishers beneath the bed, Mrs. Major
+then fumbled with keys before her box--threw up the lid.
+
+Down through a pile of garments plunged her arm. Her searching fingers
+closed about her quest and a very beautiful smile softened her face--a
+smile of quiet confidence and of trust.
+
+In greater degree than men, women have this power of taking strength
+from the mere contact of an inanimate object. A girl will smile all
+through her sleep because, hand beneath pillow, her fingers are about
+a photograph or letter; no need, as with Mrs. Major there was no need,
+even to see the thing that thus inspires. The pretty hand will delve to
+recesses of a drawer, and the thrill that brings the smile will run
+up from, it may be, a Bible, a diary, or a packet of letters touched.
+Dependent since Eden, woman is more emotionally responsive to aught that
+gives aid than is man; for man is accustomed to battle for his prizes,
+not to receive them.
+
+Mrs. Major drew up, that smile still upon her face, and the moon through
+uncurtained window gave light upon the little joy she fetched from the
+depths of her trunk.
+
+“Old Tom Gin.”
+
+The neck of Old Tom's bottle clinked against a glass; Old Tom gurgled
+generously; passed away through the steady smile he had inspired.
+
+       *       *        *       *        *
+
+Mrs. Major set a carafe of water upon a little table; partnered it with
+Old Tom; reclined beside the pair on a comfortable seat; closed her
+eyes.
+
+At intervals, as the hand crept between eleven and twelve of the clock,
+she would open them; when she did so diluted Old Tom in the glass fell
+lower, full-bodied Old Tom in the bottle marched steadily behind.
+
+The further Old Tom crept downwards from the neck of his captivity, with
+the greater circumspection did Mrs. Major open her eyes. Considerable
+practice had told this masterly woman that Old Tom must be commanded
+with a steady will: else he took liberties. Eyes suddenly opened annoyed
+Old Tom, and he would set the furniture ambulating round the room in a
+manner at once indecorous in stable objects and calculated to bewilder
+the observer. Therefore, upon setting down her glass, this purposeful
+woman would squarely fix the bureau that stood opposite her, would for
+a moment keep her gaze upon it with a sternness that forbade movement,
+then gently would close her eyes. When Old Tom must be again interviewed
+she would lift the merest corner of an eyelid; catch through it the
+merest fraction of the bureau; determine from the behaviour of this
+portion the stability of the whole.
+
+Thus if the corner she sighted showed indecorous propensities--as,
+swelling and receding, fluttering in some ghostly breeze, or altogether
+disappearing from view,--she would drop her lid and wait till she might
+catch it more seemly. This effected, she would work from that fixed
+point, inch by inch, until the whole bureau was revealed--swaying a
+little, perhaps, but presently quiescent.
+
+When, and not until, it was firmly anchored she would slowly start
+her eye in review around the other objects of her apartment. If
+the wash-stand had tendency to polka with the bed, or the wardrobe
+unnaturally to stretch up its head through the ceiling, Mrs. Major would
+march her gaze steadily back to the bureau, there to take fresh strength
+and start again. When all was orderly--then Old Tom.
+
+Masterly in all things, this woman was most masterly in her cups.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Into Mr. Marrapit's dreams there came a whistle.
+
+He pushed at Sleep; she crooned to him and he snuggled against her.
+
+Upon his brain there rapped a harsh _Wow_!
+
+He wriggled from his bedfellow; she put an arm about him, drew him to
+her.
+
+Now there succeeded a steady wash of sound--rising, falling, murmuring
+persistent against his senses.
+
+He turned his back upon Sleep. She crooned; he wriggled from her.
+Seductively she followed; he kicked a leg and jarred her, threw an arm
+and hurt her. Disgusted, she slipped from bed and left him, leaving a
+chilly space where she had warmly lain.
+
+Mr. Marrapit shivered; felt for Sleep; found her gone; with a start sat
+upright.
+
+The breakwater gone, that wash of sound which had lapped around his
+senses rushed in upon them. Lingering traces of the touch of Sleep still
+offered resistance--a droning hum. The wash surged over, poured about
+him--_VOICES_!
+
+Mr. Marrapit violently cleared his throat. The voices continued.
+Violently again. They still continued. Tremendously a third time. They
+yet continued. From this he argued that they could not be very close to
+his door. Intently he listened, then located them--they came from the
+garden. He felt for the bell-push that carried to Mr. Fletcher's room;
+put his thumb upon it; steadily pressed.
+
+Sleep toyed no tricks in Mr. Fletcher's bed. Like some wanton mistress
+discovered in the very act of betrayal, she at the first tearing clamour
+of the electric bell bounded from the sheets, scuttled from the room.
+
+“Rapine!” cried Mr. Fletcher; plunged his head beneath the bedclothes
+and wrestled in prayer.
+
+The strident gong faltered not nor failed. Steady and penetrating it
+dinned its hideous call. Mr. Fletcher waited for screams. None came. He
+pushed the sheet between his chattering teeth, listened for cudgelling
+and heavy falls. None came. That bell had single possession of the
+night. The possibility that only patrolling was required of him nerved
+him to draw from his concealment. He lit a candle; into trousers pushed
+his quivering legs; upon tottering limbs passed up the stairs to Mr.
+Marrapit's room.
+
+“Judas!” Mr. Marrapit greeted him.
+
+Mr. Fletcher sighed relief: “I thought it was rapine.”
+
+“You have betrayed your trust. You are Iscariot.”
+
+“I come when you rung.”
+
+“Silence. I have heard voices.”
+
+“God help us,” Mr. Fletcher piously groaned; the candle in his shaking
+hand showered wax.
+
+“Blasphemer! He will not help the craven. Gird yourself.”
+
+“I'll call Mr. George.”
+
+“Refrain. I will attend to that. Gird yourself. Take the musket from the
+hall. It is loaded. Patrol!”
+
+“I don't want the musket.”
+
+“Be not overbold. Outside you may be at their mercy.”
+
+“_Outside!_”
+
+“Assuredly.”
+
+“Me patrol outside!”
+
+“That is your task. Forward!”
+
+By now Mr. Marrapit had risen; swathed himself in a dressing-gown.
+Sternly he addressed Mr. Fletcher: “As you this night quit yourself so
+will I consider the question of your dismissal. If blood is spilt this
+night it will be upon your head.”
+
+Mr. Fletcher trembled. “That's just it. It's 'ard--damn 'ard--”
+
+“Forward, Iscariot.” Mr. Marrapit drove Judas before him; in the hall
+took down the gun and pressed it into the shaking hands. He drew the
+bolts, impelled Iscariot outward, and essayed to close the door.
+
+Mr. Fletcher clutched the handle. Mr. Marrapit pushed; hissed through
+the crack: “Away! Search every nook. Penetrate each fastness. Use
+stealth. Track, trace, follow!”
+
+Discarding entreaty, Mr. Fletcher put hoarse protest through the slit of
+aperture that remained: “I should like to ast if I was engaged for this,
+Mr. Marrapit,” he panted. “I'm a gardener, I am--”
+
+“I recognise that. To your department. With your life forefend it.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit fetched the door against the lintel; in the brief moment he
+could hold it close slid the lock.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+No tremor of fear or of excitement ruffled this remarkable man. Calm in
+the breezes of life he was calm also in its tempests. This is a natural
+corollary. As a man faces the smaller matters of his life so he will
+face its crises. Each smallest act accomplished imprints its stamp upon
+the pliable mass we call character; our manner of handling each tiniest
+common-place of our routine helps mould its form; each fleeting thought
+helps shape the mould.
+
+The process is involuntary and we are not aware of its working.
+Character is not made by tremendous thumps, but by the constant
+patterings of minutest touches. The athlete does not build his strength
+by enormous exertions, but by consistent and gentle training. Huge
+strains at spasmodic intervals, separated by periods in which he lies
+fallow in sloth, add nothing to his capacity for endurance; it is by the
+tally of each minute of his preparation that you may read how he
+will acquit himself against the test. Thus also with the shaping of
+character, and thus was Mr. Marrapit, collected in minor affairs, mighty
+in this crisis.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Turning from the door he marched steadily across the hall towards the
+stairs to arouse George.
+
+At the lowermost step a movement on the landing above made him pause. He
+was to be spared the trouble. Placing the candle upon a table he looked
+up. He spoke. “George!”
+
+“Wash it?” said a voice. “Wash it?”
+
+“Wash nothing,” Mr. Marrapit commanded. “Who is this?”
+
+The answer, starting low, ascended a shrill scale: “Wash it? Wash it?
+Wash it?”
+
+“Silence!” Mr. Marrapit answered. “Descend!”
+
+He craned upwards. The curl-papered head of Mrs. Major poked at him over
+the banisters.
+
+“Darling,” breathed Mrs. Major. “Darling--_um!_”
+
+“Mrs. Major! What is this?”
+
+“Thash what _I_ want to know,” said Mrs. Major coquettishly. “Wash it?
+Wash _ish_ it?”
+
+“You are distraught, Mrs. Major. Have no fear. To your room.”
+
+The curl-papered head waggled. Mrs. Major beamed. “Darling.
+Darling--um!”
+
+“Exercise control,” Mr. Marrapit told her. “Banish apprehension. There
+are thieves; but we are alert.”
+
+The head withdrew. Mrs. Major gave a tiny scream: “Thieves!” She took a
+brisk little run down the short flight which gave from where she stood;
+flattened against the wall that checked her impulse; pressed carefully
+away from it; stood at the head of the stairs facing Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He gazed up. “I fear you have been walking in your sleep, Mrs. Major.”
+
+Mrs. Major did not reply. She pointed a slippered toe at the stair below
+her; swayed on one leg; dropped to the toe; steadied; beamed at Mr.
+Marrapit; and in a high treble coquettishly announced, “_One_!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit frowned: “Retire, Mrs. Major.”
+
+Mrs. Major plumped another step, beamed again: “_Two_!”
+
+“You dream. Retire.”
+
+Mrs. Major daintily lifted her skirt; poised again. The projected
+slipper swayed a dangerous circle. Mrs. Major alarmingly rocked. That
+infamous Old Tom presented three sets of banisters for her support; she
+clutched at one; it failed her; “Three four five six seven eight nine
+ten--_darling_!” she cried; at breakneck speed plunged downwards, and
+with the “_Darling_!” flung her arms about Mr. Marrapit's neck.
+
+Back before the shock, staggering beneath the weight, Mr. Marrapit went
+with digging heels. They could not match the pace of that swift blow
+upon his chest. Its backward speed outstripped them. With shattering
+thud he plumped heavily to his full length upon the floor; Mrs. Major
+pressed him to earth.
+
+But that shock was a whack on the head for Old Tom that temporarily
+quieted him. “What has happened?” Mrs. Major asked, clinging tightly.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gasped: “Release my neck. Remove your arms.”
+
+“Where are we?”
+
+“You are upon my chest. I am prone beneath you. Release!”
+
+“It's all dark,” Mrs. Major cried; gripped firmer.
+
+“It is not dark. I implore movement. Our juxtaposition unnaturally
+compromises us. It is abhorrent.”
+
+Mrs. Major opened the eyes she had tightly closed during that staggering
+journey and that shattering fall. She loosed her clutch; got to her
+knees; thence tottered to a chair. That infamous Old Tom raised his head
+again; tickled her brain with misty fingers.
+
+Mr. Marrapit painfully rose. He put a sympathetic hand upon the seat of
+his injury; with the other took up the candle. He regarded Mrs. Major;
+suspiciously sniffed the air, pregnant with strange fumes; again
+regarded his late burden.
+
+Upon her face that infamous Old Tom set a beaming smile,
+
+“Follow me, Mrs. Major,” Mr. Marrapit commanded; turned for the
+dining-room; from its interior faced about upon her.
+
+With rare dignity the masterly woman slowly arose; martially she poised
+against the hat-rack; with stately mien marched steadily towards him.
+
+Temporarily she had the grip of Old Tom--was well aware, at least, of
+his designs upon her purity, and superbly she combated him.
+
+With proud and queenly air she drew on--Mr. Marrapit felt that the swift
+suspicion which had taken him had misjudged her.
+
+Mrs. Major reached the mat. Old Tom gave a playful little twitch of her
+legs, and she jostled the doorpost.
+
+With old-world courtesy she bowed apology to the post. “Beg pardon,” she
+graciously murmured; stood swaying.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+Step by step with her as she had crossed the hall, Mr. Fletcher,
+recovering from the coward fear in which he shivered outside the door,
+had crept forward along the path around the house. As Mrs. Major stood
+swaying upon the threshold of the dining-room he reached the angle;
+peered round it; in horror sighted Bill's figure pendant from Margaret's
+window.
+
+Thrice the bell-mouth of his gun described a shivering circle; tightly
+he squeezed his eyelids--pressed the trigger.
+
+BANG!
+
+Mr. Marrapit bounded six inches--hardly reached the earth again when,
+with a startled scream, Mrs. Major was upon him, again her arms about
+his neck.
+
+And now shriek pursued shriek, tearing upwards through her throat. Old
+Tom had loosed the ends of all her nerves. Like bolting rabbit in young
+corn the tearing discharge of that gun went madly through them, and
+lacerated she gave tongue.
+
+Stifled by the bony shoulder that pressed against his face, Mr. Marrapit
+went black. He jerked his head free, put up his face, and giving cry for
+cry, shrilled, “George! George! George!”
+
+The din reached George where from his window he leaned, crying on Abiram
+in the man-hunt across the garden. He drew in his head, bounded down the
+stairs. Over Mrs. Major's back, bent inwards from the toes to the rock
+about which she clung, Mr. Marrapit's empurpled face stared at him.
+
+Upon George's countenance the sight struck a great grin; his legs it
+struck to dead halt.
+
+Mrs. Major's shrieks died to moans.
+
+“Action!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. “Remove this creature!”
+
+George put a hand upon her back. It shot a fresh shriek from her; she
+clung closer.
+
+“Pantaloon!” Mr. Marrapit strained. “Crush that grin! Action! Remove
+this woman! She throttles me! The pressure is insupportable. I am
+Sinbad.”
+
+George again laid hands. Again Mrs. Major shrieked; tighter clung.
+
+Mr. Marrapit, blacker, cried, “Zany!”
+
+“Well, what the devil can I do?” George asked, hopping about the pair;
+Mrs. Major's back as responsive to his touch as the keys of a piano to
+idle fingers.
+
+“You run to and fro and grin like a dog,” Mr. Marrapit told him. “Each
+time you touch her she screams, grips me closer. I shall be throttled.
+Use discretion. Add to mine your assurance of her safety. She is not
+herself.”
+
+George chuckled. “She's not. She's tight as a drum.”
+
+“Liar!” moaned Mrs. Major.
+
+“Intoxicated?” Mr. Marrapit asked.
+
+“Blind.”
+
+Sharp words will move where entreaty cannot stir.
+
+Mrs. Major relaxed her hold; spun round. “Monster” and “Perjurer” rushed
+headlong to her lips. “Ponsger!” she cried; tottered back against the
+sofa; was struck by it at the bend of her knees; collapsed upon it. Her
+head sunk sideways; she closed her eyes.
+
+“You can see for yourself,” George said.
+
+Mr. Marrapit sniffed: “My nose corroborates.”
+
+“Ponsger!” the prone figure wailed.
+
+Mr. Marrapit started: “Mrs. Major!”
+
+She opened her eyes: “Call me Lucy. Darling-_um!_” She began to snore.
+
+“Abhorrent!” Mr. Marrapit pronounced.
+
+Whisperings without made him step to the door. White figures were upon
+the stairs. “To your beds!” he cried.
+
+“Oh, whatever is it, sir?” Mrs. Armitage panted.
+
+“Away! You outrage decency.” Mr. Marrapit set a foot upon the stairs.
+The affrighted figures fled before him.
+
+George, when his uncle returned, was peering through the blind. “Who
+the devil loosed off that gun? It is immaterial. All events are buried
+beneath this abhorrent incident. The roof of my peace has crashed about
+me.” Mr. Marrapit regarded the prone figure. “Her inspirations grate
+upon me; her exhalations poison the air. Rouse her. Thrust her to her
+room.”
+
+“You'll never wake her now till she's slept it off.”
+
+“Let us then essay to carry her. She cannot remain here. My shame shall
+not be revealed, nor hers uncovered.”
+
+George began: “To-morrow--”
+
+“To-morrow I speed her from my gates. My beloved cats have been in the
+care of this swinish form. They have been in jeopardy. I tremble at
+their escape. To-morrow she departs.”
+
+A sudden tremendous idea swept over George, engulfing speech.
+
+With no word he moved to the sofa; grasped the prone figure; put it upon
+its weak legs. They gave beneath it. “You must take her feet,” he said.
+
+Averting his gaze, Mr. Marrapit took the legs that Old Tom had
+devitalised. The procession moved out; staggered up the stairs.
+
+Heavy was the burden; bursting with vulgar laughter was George; but that
+huge idea that suddenly had come to him swelled his muscles, lent him
+strength.
+
+He heaved the form upon the bed.
+
+On the dressing-table a candle burned. By its light Mr. Marrapit
+discovered Old Tom's bottle, two fingers of the villain yet remaining.
+
+He beat his breast. “Extinguish that light. I to my room. Seek Fletcher.
+He patrols the garden for malefactors. In the morning I will see you.
+Before this disaster my chill is sped. You are of my flesh. Cleave unto
+me. In our bosoms let this abhorrent sore be buried. Seek Fletcher.”
+
+The distraught man tottered to his room.
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+George went slowly down the stairs, bathing in the delicious thrills of
+unfolding the wrappings from about his great idea. He had yet had time
+but to feel its shape and hug it as a child will feel and hug a doll
+packed in paper. Now he stripped the coverings, and his pulses thumped
+as he saw how fine was it. Almost unconscious to his actions he unbarred
+the door; stepped into the thin light; was not aroused until, treading
+upon Mr. Fletcher's musket, his idea was suddenly jolted from him.
+
+Here the gun that gave the echoes; where the hand that started it?
+
+A hoarse cry came to him: “Mr. George! Mr. George!”
+
+He looked along the sound. Above a hedge below the lawn an apple-tree
+raised its branches. Within them he could espy a dark mass that as he
+approached took form. Mr. Fletcher.
+
+The grass hushed George's footsteps. Rounding the hedge he came upon the
+little drama that gave that note of dread to Mr. Fletcher's calls.
+
+Beneath the gardener's armpits one branch of the apple-tree passed;
+behind his knees another. Between them hung his heavy seat. Whitely a
+square of it peered downwards; melancholy upon the sward lay the lid of
+corduroy that should have warmed the space. For ten paces outwards from
+the tree-trunk there stretched a pitted path. Abiram, as George came,
+turned at this path's extremity; set his sloe eye upon the dull white
+patch in Mr. Fletcher's stern; hurled forward up the track; sprang and
+snapped jaws an inch below the mark as Mr. Fletcher mightily heaved.
+
+A lesser dog would have yapped bafflement, fruitlessly scratched upwards
+from hind legs. Abiram was perfect dog of the one breed of dog that
+is in all things perfect. Silently he plodded back; turned; ran; leapt
+again. Again Mr. Fletcher heaved, and again the fine jaws snapped an
+inch beneath the pallid square of flesh.
+
+As once more uncomplaining he turned, Abiram sighted George; ruffled.
+George spoke his name. Abiram wagged that short tail that marked his
+Champion Victor Wild blood, shook the skull that spoke to the same
+mighty strain.
+
+This dog expected in his human friends that same devotion to duty which
+is the governing trait of his breed. His shake implied, “No time for
+social niceties, sir. I have a job in hand.”
+
+“Call 'im off, Mr. George,” Mr. Fletcher implored. “Call 'im--_ur!_”--he
+heaved upward as Abiram again sprang--“off,” he concluded, sinking once
+more as the bull-terrier trotted up the little path.
+
+It was a fascinating scene. “You're quite safe,” George told him.
+
+“Safe! I'm _tired!_ I can't keep on risin' and fallin' all night. It's
+'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a--_ur!_” He heaved again.
+
+George told him: “You do it awfully well, though; so neat.”
+
+“Call 'im off,” Mr. Fletcher moaned. “He'll have me in a minute. He's
+'ad a bit off of me calf; he's 'ad a piece out of me trousers. He'll go
+on. He's a methodical dog--_ur!_”
+
+George took a step; caught Abiram's collar. “How on earth did you get up
+there?”
+
+“Jumped.”
+
+“Jumped! You couldn't jump up there!”
+
+Mr. Fletcher took a look to see that Abiram was securely held; then
+started to wriggle to a pose of greater comfort. “I'd jump a house with
+that 'orror after me,” he said bitterly. By intricate squirmings he laid
+a hand upon the cold patch of flesh that gazed starkly downwards from
+his stern. “If I ain't got hydrophobia I've got frost-bite,” he moaned.
+“Cruel draught I've had through this 'ole. Take 'im off, Mr. George.”
+
+George was scarcely listening. His thoughts had returned to the
+delicious task of fingering his great idea.
+
+“Take 'im off, Mr. George,” Mr. Fletcher implored.
+
+George passed a handkerchief under Abiram's collar; tugged for the gate;
+there dispatched the dog down the road.
+
+Abiram shook his head; trotted with dejected stern. A job had been left
+unfinished.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Hallooing safety to the apple-tree, too preoccupied to inquire further
+into the reason for the gun and the presence of Bill's dog, George
+turned for the house.
+
+Awakening birds carolled his presence. They hymned the adventures of
+the day that Dawn, her handmaiden, came speeding, silver-footed,
+perfume-bearing, fresh from her dewy bath, to herald.
+
+George put up an answering pipe. For him also the day was
+adventure-packed and must lustily be hymned. Entering Mr. Marrapit's
+study he drew the blinds; upon a telegraph form set Mary's name and her
+address; pondered; then to these words compressed his great idea:
+
+“_Go agency this morning. Get name on books. Meet you there. Think can
+get you situation here. George._”
+
+“Immediately the office opens,” said George; trod up to his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+As Mr. Marrapit had said, the disaster of the night had sped his
+complaint.
+
+He appeared at breakfast. No word was spoken. He ate nothing.
+
+Once only gave he sign of interest. Midway through the meal muffled
+sounds came to the breakfast party. Scufflings in the hall struck an
+attentive light in Mr. Marrapit's eyes; slam of the front door jerked
+him in his seat; wheels, hoofs along the drive drew his gaze to the
+window. A cab rolled past--a melancholy horse; a stout driver, legs set
+over a corded box; a black figure, bolt upright, handkerchief to eyes.
+
+The vision passed. Mr. Marrapit gazed upwards; his thin lips moved.
+
+Vulgar curiosity shall not tempt us to pry into the demeanour with
+which, an hour earlier, this man had borne himself in the study with
+Mrs. Major. Of that unhappy woman's moans, of her explanations, of the
+tears that poured from her eyes--bloodshot in a head most devilishly
+racked by Old Tom--we shall not speak.
+
+Margaret stretched her hand for more bread. Despite the moving scenes in
+which during the night she had travelled with her Bill, her appetite
+was nothing affected. With her meals her sentimentality was upon the
+friendliest terms. This girl was most gnawed by hunger when by emotion
+she was most torn.
+
+She stretched for a third slice.
+
+Mr. Marrapit cleared his throat. The sound shot her. She caught his
+eye and the glance pierced her. Her outstretched hand dropped upon the
+cloth, toyed with crumbs.
+
+Mr. Marrapit said: “I perceive you are finished?”
+
+Margaret murmured: “Yes.” Her voice had a tremulous note. It is a bitter
+thing to lose a slice of bread-and-butter for which the whole system
+imperatively calls.
+
+“Withdraw,” Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+She put a lingering glance upon the loaf; wanly glided from the room.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+As she closed the door George prepared for his great idea. He drank
+deeply of a cup of tea; drew down his cuffs; pondered them. They were
+covered in pencilled notes, evolved by desperate work all that morning,
+to aid him when the hour was at hand.
+
+He absorbed Note I; spoke: “I am afraid last night's events very much
+distressed you, sir--”
+
+“They are interred. Do not resurrect them.”
+
+George hurried to Note 2. “My sympathies with you--”
+
+“Let the dead bury the dead. Mourn not the past.”
+
+George skipped to Note 3. “What I am concerned about is the cats.”
+
+“You are?”
+
+“Oh, sir, indeed I am. I am not demonstrative. Perhaps you have not
+guessed my fondness for the cats?”
+
+“I have not.”
+
+“Believe me, it is a deep affection. When I saw that unhappy woman
+tigh--under the influence of spirits, what was my first thought?”
+
+“Supply the answer.”
+
+George took another glimpse at Note 3. “What was my first thought?”
+ he repeated. “Was it distress at sight of a woman so forgetful of her
+modesty? No. Was it sympathy for the cruel deception that had been
+practised upon you? Forgive me, sir, it was not.” (He glanced at his
+notes.) “What, then?”
+
+He paused brightly.
+
+“It is your conundrum,” said Mr. Marrapit. “Solve it.”
+
+George raised an impressive hand. “What, then? It was the thought of the
+risks that the cats I so loved had run whilst beneath the care of this
+woman.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit's groan inspirited George. He was on the right track. He
+took Note 4. “I asked myself, Who is responsible for the jeopardy in
+which these creatures have been placed? Heaven knows, I said, what they
+may not have suffered. This woman may have neglected their food, she may
+have neglected their comforts. In a drunken fit she might have poisoned
+them, beat them, set furious dogs upon them.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit writhed in anguish.
+
+George acted as Note 4 bade him. He dropped his voice. “Let us trust,
+sir,” he said, “that none of these things has taken place.”
+
+“Amen,” Mr. Marrapit murmured. “Amen.”
+
+George's voice took a sterner note. “But, I asked myself, Who is
+responsible for those horrors that might have been, that may have been?”
+
+Mr. Marrapit dropped his head upon his hands. He murmured: “I am.
+Peccavi.”
+
+George rose in noble calm. He read Note 5; gave it with masterly effect:
+“No, sir. I am.”
+
+“You!”
+
+“I! I have not slept since I leftyou, sir. I have paced my room and” (he
+read a masterly note) “remorse has paced with me, step by step, hour by
+hour. Did I help my uncle, I asked myself, when he was selecting this
+Mrs. Major? No. Was I by his right hand to counsel and advise him?
+No. Has not my training at hospital, my intercourse with ten thousand
+patients, taught me to read faces like an open book? It has. Should not
+I then have been by his side to help him when he selected a woman for
+the post of caring for our-forgive me, sir, I said 'our'--caring for our
+cats? I should. I asked myself how I could make amends. Only by begging
+my uncle's forgiveness for my indifference and by imploring him to let
+me help him in the choice of the next woman he selects.”
+
+A masterly pause he followed with an appeal sent forth in tones of rare
+beauty: “Oh, sir, I do beg your forgiveness; I do implore you let me
+make amends by helping you in your next choice.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit wiped moist eyes. “I had not suspected in you this
+profundity of feeling.”
+
+George said brokenly: “I have given you no reason.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit replied on a grim tone: “Assuredly you have not.”
+
+George glanced at Note 6; fled from the danger zone.
+
+“Where I fear the mistake was made in Mrs. Major,” he hurried, “was that
+she was not a perfect lady. Our--forgive me for saying 'our'--our cats
+are refined cats, cats of gentle birth, of inherent delicacy. Their
+attendant should be of like breeding. She should be refined, her birth
+should be gentle, her feelings delicate. She should be a lady.”
+
+“You are right,” Mr. Marrapit said. “As sea calleth to sea, as like
+calleth to like, so would an ebb and flow of sympathy be set in motion
+between my cats and an attendant delicately born. Is that your meaning?”
+
+George murmured in admiration: “In beautiful words that is my meaning.”
+ He paused. Now the bolt was to be shot, and he nerved himself against
+the strain. He fired: “I have a suggestion.”
+
+“Propound.”
+
+No further need for notes. George pushed back his cuffs; gulped the
+agitation that swelled dry and suffocating in his mouth. “This is my
+suggestion. Because I have had experience in the reading of faces;
+because I wish to make recompense for my share in the catastrophe of
+Mrs. Major's presence; because--”
+
+“You are drowning beneath reasons. Cease bubbling. Strike to the
+surface.”
+
+George had not been drowning. He had been creeping gingerly from
+stepping-stone to stepping-stone. The endeavour had been to come as
+close as possible to the big rock upon which he intended to spring. The
+less the distance of the leap the more remote the chance of slipping
+down the rock and being whirled off in swift water. It is a method of
+progression by which, in the race of existence, many lives are lost.
+The timid will hobble from stone to stone, landing at each forward point
+more and yet more shaky in the knees. The torrent roars about them. Sick
+they grow and giddy; stepping-stones are green and slimy; the effort of
+balancing cannot be unduly prolonged.
+
+Ere ever they feel themselves ready for the leap they slip, go whirling
+and drowning downstream past the stepping-stones that are called
+Infirmity of Purpose. Or they may creep close enough the rock, only to
+find they have delayed over their hobbling progression until the rock is
+already so crowded by others who have been bolder over the stones as to
+show no foothold remaining. They leap and fall back.
+
+We are all gifted with strength sufficient for that spring; but disaster
+awaits him who scatters his energies in a hundred hesitating little
+scrambles.
+
+Now George sprang; poised upon that last “because.”
+
+“And because--I wish--” He sprang--“Therefore I suggest that I should go
+to town to-day and search every agency until I find you a lady I think
+suitable.”
+
+The thud of his landing knocked the breath out of him. In terror he lay
+lest Mr. Marrapit's answering words should have the form of desperate
+fellows who would hurl him from his hold, throw him back.
+
+“I agree,” Mr. Marrapit said.
+
+George was drawn to his feet. He could have whooped for joy.
+
+“I agree. I have misjudged you. In this matter I lay my trust in you.
+Take it, tend it, nurse it; cherish it so that it may not be returned to
+me cold and dead. Speed forth.”
+
+“Have I a free hand?” George asked.
+
+“Emphatically no. Every effort must be made to keep down expenses. Here
+are two shillings. Render account. As to salary--”
+
+George burst out: “Oh, she'll come for anything.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit started. “She? Whom?”
+
+George threw a blanket to hide the hideous blunder. “Told of such a home
+as this is,” he explained, “a true lady would come for anything.”
+
+The blunder sank, covered. “I earnestly pray that may be so,” Mr.
+Marrapit said. “I doubt. Rapacity and greed stalk the land. Mrs. Major
+had five-and-twenty pounds per annum. I will not go above that figure.”
+
+George told him: “Rely upon me. But, by a free hand I meant a free hand
+as to engaging what I may think a suitable person.”
+
+“Emphatically no. You are the lower court. Sift sheep from goats. Send
+sheep here to me. I am the tribunal. I will finally select.”
+
+The refusal placed a last obstacle in the path of George's scheme, but
+he did not demur. Primarily he dared not. To demur might raise again
+that blunder he had let escape when he had said, “She'll come for
+anything”; this time it might rage around and not be captured. All might
+be wrecked. Secondly he felt there to be no great need for protest. The
+confidence of having won thus far gave him courage against this final
+difficulty.
+
+“Trust me, sir,” he said.
+
+Very soberly he paced from the room; gently closed the door; with the
+tread of one bearing a full heart heavily moved up the stairs.
+
+He reached his room; ripped off sobriety. “Oh, Mary!” he exultantly
+cried, “if I can get you down here, old girl!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit, meanwhile, stepped to the room where his cats lived;
+lovingly toyed with his pets; took the Rose of Sharon a walk in the
+garden. He was in pleasant mood. Great had been the distress of the
+night, but this man had enjoyed a luxurious warm bath--in crocodile's
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mary in the little Battersea lodgings was at breakfast when her George's
+telegram arrived. She puckered over its mystery; shaped events this way
+and that, but could make of them no keyhole that the message would fit
+and unlock.
+
+She flew among the higher improbabilities: George, she conjectured, had
+misrepresented this stony-hearted uncle; last night had told all to Mr.
+Marrapit, and Mr. Marrapit had warmed to her and bade him fetch her to
+Herons' Holt. She ripped George's description of his uncle from about
+the old man; dressed Mr. Marrapit in snowy locks and a benign smile;
+pictured him coming down the steps with outstretched hand to greet her.
+She heard him say, “My daughter”; she saw him draw George to her, lock
+their hands; she heard him murmur, “Bless you, my children.”
+
+This was a romantic young woman. A poached egg was allowed to grow cold
+as she trembled over her delectable fancies.
+
+But a glance at the telegram pulled her from these delicious flights;
+bumped her to earth. “_Think can get you situation here._” “Situation”
+ drove the fatherly air from Mr. Marrapit; once more rehabilitated him as
+her George presented him--grim and masterly.
+
+Further conjecture altogether drove Mr. Marrapit from the picture. What
+situation could be offered her in the Marrapit household? Why should
+“here” mean Herons' Holt? It must mean at a house in the district.
+
+Upon the magic carpet of this new thought my Mary was whirled again in
+an imaged paradise. She would be near her George.
+
+High in these clouds she ran to her bedroom for her hat; but with it
+there descended upon her head a new thought that again sent her toppling
+earthwards. Characterless, and worse than characterless, how was she
+to get any such delightful post? My Mary started up the street for the
+Agency, blinking tears.
+
+At Battersea Bridge a new thought came sweeping. She clutched on to it;
+held it fast. Into her tread it put a spring; to her chin gave a brave
+tilt. If everything failed, if of the telegram nothing came, why, at
+least she had the telegram!--was making for the Agency under a direct
+command from her George. The thought swelled her with confidence and
+comfort. How warm a thing it was to feel that she did not face the world
+alone! Her George's arm was striking for her, her George's hand was
+pointing a terse command. “Go to Agency.” She was obeying him; she
+belonged to him.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Mary had intended to wait outside the Agency until her George should
+arrive and explain his mysterious message. But she was scarcely at the
+building when Miss Ram, also arriving, accosted her--took her upstairs.
+Miss Ram quite naturally regarded the meeting as evidence that Mary had
+come for help. Mary, in a flutter as to George's intentions, could but
+meekly follow.
+
+In the room marked “Private,” settled at her table, Miss Ram icily
+opened the interview. “I have heard from Mrs. Chater. I did not expect
+to see you again.”
+
+Mary began: “I don't know what you have heard--”
+
+Miss Ram stretched for a letter.
+
+“Oh, I don't wish to,” Mary cried; put out a hand that stayed the
+action. “To hear all she says would again begin it all. It would be like
+her voice. It would be like being with her again. Please, please, Miss
+Ram, don't tell me.”
+
+“You have your own version?”
+
+“I have the truth.” Mary pointed at the letter-file. “The truth isn't
+there. Mrs. Chater isn't capable of the truth. She cannot even recognise
+the truth when she hears it.”
+
+In yet more freezing tones Miss Ram replied: “She is an old and valued
+client.”
+
+“You only know her in this office,” Mary told her. “You don't know her
+in her home.”
+
+“I have suited her with other young ladies. I have heard of her from
+them.”
+
+“And they have spoken well of her?”
+
+“Discounting the prejudice of a late employee, they have spoken well.”
+
+“Was her son there with them?”
+
+“They have not told me so.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mary; sat back in her chair.
+
+“Then your version is about the son?”
+
+Mary nodded. Recollection put a silly lump in her throat.
+
+Miss Ram said: “Miss Humfray, when I received that letter from Mrs.
+Chater, I said I would have no more to do with you. I told Miss Porter
+I would not see you. Why, out of all my ladies, do you come back to me
+characterless from your situations? I will listen to your story. Make
+it very brief. Don't exaggerate. I have sat in this chair for seventeen
+years. I can distinguish in a minute between facts and spleen. You
+desire to tell your version?”
+
+“I must,” Mary said. “What I'd like to do would be to get up and say,
+'If you doubt me, I'll not trouble to convince you.' I'd like to walk
+out and leave you and face anything rather than 'explain.' Why should
+I 'explain' to anybody? But I'm not going to walk out. I haven't the
+pluck. I know what it is like to be alone out there.” She gave a little
+choke. “I've learnt that much, anyway.” She went on. “I'll just tell
+you, that's all. I don't want your sympathy; I only want your sense of
+justice.”
+
+“I like your spirit,” Miss Ram said. It was a quality she rarely found
+in her applicants. “Go on.”
+
+Then Mary told. She phrased bluntly. Her recital was after the manner of
+the fireworks called “Roman candles.” These, when lit, pour out fire and
+smoke in a rather weak-kneed dribble. They must be held tightly. When
+tensely enough constricted, of fire and smoke there is little, but at
+intervals out there pops an exceedingly luminous ball of flame.
+
+My Mary kept the pressure of pride upon her throat. There was no dribble
+of emotion. Only the facts popped out--hard and dry, and to Miss
+Ram intensely illuminative. Mary did not mention George's name. She
+concluded her narrative with jerky facts relative to the scene in the
+Park. “Then I ran away,” she said, “and a friend of mine came up. He had
+seen. And he thrashed him. When I got back to Mrs. Chater's her son had
+arrived--battered. He told his mother that he had seen me with a man and
+had interfered. That the man assaulted him. That's all.”
+
+“The miserable hound!” pronounced Miss Ram with extraordinary ferocity.
+
+From a drawer in her desk she took a manuscript book, bound in limp
+leather, tied with blue ribbon. Herein were contained the remarkable
+thoughts which from time to time had come to this woman during her
+seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the
+flyleaf was inscribed “Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram.” It was her intent
+to publish this darling work when beneath each letter of the alphabet
+twelve aphorisms were written.
+
+“The miserable hound!” cried she, when the full tale of Mr. Bob Chater's
+vileness was told; drew “Aphorisms” towards her and wrote in hot blood.
+
+Then looked at Mary. “_L,_” she read, “_L. Lust. Lust is the sound meat
+of natural instinct gone to carrion. Men eat meat, wolves eat carrion.
+Some men are wolf-men_--Hand me the dictionary, Miss Humfray. Two r's in
+carrion. I _thought_ so. Thank you.”
+
+She replaced “Aphorisms.” “My dear, I will do what I can for you,” she
+told Mary. “I _do_ believe you. Go into the interview room. I hear a
+step.”
+
+
+
+III.
+
+That step was George's. Abashed in this home of women he shuffled
+uneasily in the passage, then put a hesitating knuckle upon “Enquiries.”
+
+From within a violent movement was followed by a strange guttural sound.
+George entered.
+
+With scarlet face and watery eyes, Miss Porter--the stout young woman
+who presided over this department, and whose habit it was to suck sweets
+the better to beguile the tedium of her duties--gazed at him; made
+guttural sounds. The start of George's knock had caused this girl
+to swallow a particularly large sweet, and its downward passage was
+inflicting upon her considerable pain.
+
+Her face was an alarming sight. “I'm afraid--” George began.
+
+“Pardon!” gasped Miss Porter, driving the sweet with a tremendous
+swallow. “Pardon!”
+
+“Not at all,” George pleasantly said. “Not at all. I called with
+reference to a lady-help.”
+
+The grinding sweet forbade the pleasant dalliance
+
+Miss Porter could have wished with this handsome young man. In a brave
+spasm (this girl was in great suffering), “I will tell the Principal,”
+ she said; trod heavily to Miss Ram's door.
+
+Fate is an abominable trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand
+it gave Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her
+enjoying him. Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of a fine sweet.
+
+Reappearing and holding the door ajar: “Miss Ram will see you,” she
+murmured. Tears were in this girl's eyes; the bolted sweet was still
+paining her very much indeed.
+
+IV.
+
+In two clever bows Miss Ram without a word greeted George; indicated a
+chair.
+
+George sat down. “I want,” he began--“that is, my uncle wants, a
+lady-help--”
+
+“Name, please,” rapped Miss Ram, opening the ledger.
+
+George gave it; stretched a leg to indicate a confidence he did not
+feel; pitched his voice to aid the presentment. “When I say lady-help--”
+
+“Address, please,” said Miss Ram with a pistol-snap.
+
+George withdrew the signs of confidence with a jerk. He gave the
+information. Then waited Miss Ram to give him a lead. He had twice been
+shot; was in no desire again to expose his person.
+
+Miss Ram fixed her small black eyes upon him. She said nothing. The
+intrusion of a young man into matters essentially domestic she strongly
+disapproved. Under “D” in “Aphorisms” this woman had a trenchant note
+touching this matter. “_D. Domesticity. Domesticity_,” said this note,
+“_is the offspring of all the womanly virtues. The virtues impregnate
+the woman, and domesticity is the resultant child. Absence of a single
+womanly trait aborts or debilitates the offspring. Men have nothing
+whatever to do with it, and nothing is more abominable than a man who
+meddles with domestic matters._”
+
+The rays of Miss Ram's disconcerting eye pushed George steadily
+backwards from the rock of such small confidence as remained to him.
+Assailed by the inquiring bows with which she now interrogated his
+further purpose, he slipped from it, plunged wildly into the sea of what
+he required, and for five minutes beat this way and that, hurling the
+splash of broken sentences at Miss Ram's unbending countenance.
+
+Beginning a description of Mr. Marrapit's household, he floundered
+thence to a description of the required lady's duties; abandoning that
+unfinished, splashed to a description of the manner of person for whom
+he sought.
+
+It was his object to paint a character and appearance as near to his
+Mary's as he could master; to induce Miss Ram to suggest her as likely
+candidate for the post. He could not introduce his Mary to his uncle
+unless she came under the auspices of some recognised institution.
+
+So he floundered on.
+
+Miss Ram did not move. His struggles grew less; he caught at haphazard
+words; flung them desperately; at last relapsed; sat sweating.
+
+Miss Ram poked him with a questioning bow. He did not stir.
+
+With a further bow she accepted his defeat; handed him a pink paper.
+“Now, kindly fill up this form. State precisely what you require. Write
+clearly, please.”
+
+George obeyed. Miss Ram studied the answers to her printed
+interrogations; opened her ledger. “I have several suitable ladies.”
+ She started to read a list. “Miss Minna Gregor; aged 25; daughter of
+the late Humphrey Gregor, stockbroker; three years' character from Mrs.
+Mountsaffron of Charles Street, to whom she was lady-help and from whom
+an excellent reference may be obtained.”
+
+“Too old,” said George.
+
+Miss Ram frowned; returned to the ledger. “Miss Ellen Hay; aged
+20; daughter of Lieutenant Hay, late R.N. For two years with Mrs.
+Hoyle-Hoyle of Knightsbridge.”
+
+George squeaked, “Too young.” He had not anticipated this ordeal.
+
+Miss Ram read on. At the fifteenth name George was in desperate
+agitation. His list of objections was exhausted. Each protest had
+narrowed his field.
+
+“This is the last upon my books,” Miss Ram severely told him. “She
+fills all your requirements. None of your objections applies. You will
+certainly engage her.”
+
+“I feel sure I shall,” George brightly said. If this was the last name
+it must be Mary.
+
+“I am glad to hear that,” Miss Ram announced. “You are hard to please.
+This is a most admirable young woman.”
+
+George leaned forward with an expectant smile. Miss Ram read: “Miss Rosa
+Brump--”
+
+George's smile died. An “Eh?” was startled out of him.
+
+“Brump,” said Miss Ram testily. “Brump. B-r-u-m-p, _Brump_.”
+
+George said “Oh!”; ran a finger around the inside of his collar.
+
+Miss Ram read on, emphasising the Brumps with the suggestion of a ball
+bouncing from rock to rock:
+
+“Miss Rosa _Brump_; aged 21; daughter of the late Selwyn Agburn _Brump_,
+barrister-at-law. Companion to Miss Victoria Shuttle of Shuttle Hall,
+Shuttle, Lines, until that lady's death. The late Miss Shuttle dying
+suddenly, Miss _Brump_ has no reference from her. What that reference
+would have been, however, is clearly evidenced by the fact that in her
+will Miss Shuttle bequeathed 'to my faithful companion Rosa _Brump_,'
+her terra-cotta bust of the late Loomis Shuttle, Esq., J.P., inventor of
+the Shuttle liquid manure.”
+
+Miss Ram wagged a finger at George. “That speaks for itself,” she said.
+
+George did not answer. He was in a confusion of fear. This terrible
+woman would force Miss Brump upon him. He was powerless in her hands. He
+was in chains.
+
+“Does it not?” poked Miss Ram.
+
+“Rather,” said George. “Oh, rather.”
+
+“Very good. I congratulate your uncle upon obtaining this estimable
+young woman. She should call here in a few minutes. You can then make
+final arrangements. Meanwhile, this form--”
+
+George hurled himself free from this hypnotic panic. Anything must be
+done to shake off this intolerable Brump.
+
+“One moment,” he said. “I had forgotten--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“What colour is Miss Brump's hair?”
+
+“Her _what?_”
+
+“Hair. Her hair.”
+
+“How extraordinary! Brown.”
+
+George effected an admirable start. He echoed: “_Brown?_ Oh, not brown?”
+
+“Certainly. Brown.”
+
+George mournfully shook his head. “Oh, dear! How unfortunate! I'm afraid
+Miss Brump will not suit, Miss Ram. My uncle--extraordinary foible--has
+a violent objection to brown hair. He will not have it in the house.”
+
+“Unheard of!” Miss Ram snapped. “Unheard of!”
+
+George rubbed together his sweating palms; blundered on. “None the less
+a fact,” he said impressively. He dropped his voice. “It is a very sad
+story. He had fifteen brothers--”
+
+“Fifteen!”
+
+“I assure you, yes. All were black-haired except one, who was brown--the
+first brown-haired child in the history of the house. 'Bantam' they used
+to call him when they were girls and boys together--'Bantam.'”
+
+“_Girls_! You said brothers!”
+
+“Ah, yes. Girls as well. Twelve, twelve girls.”
+
+“Twelve girls and fifteen boys!”
+
+“I assure you, yes. A record. As I was saying, the brown-haired child,
+he took to drink. It is most painful. Died in a madhouse. My uncle, head
+of the family, reeled beneath the stigma--reeled. Vowed from that day
+that he would never let a brown-haired person cross his threshold.”
+
+George wiped his streaming face; sat back with a sigh. Miss Brump was
+buried.
+
+Miss Ram's next words caused him to start in his seat.
+
+“But your hair is brown.”
+
+My contemptible George, all his lies now rushing furious upon him, put
+his hand to his head; withdrawing it, gazed at the palm with the air of
+one looking for a stain.
+
+“How about _that_?” rapped Miss Ram.
+
+George gave a wan smile. “It is my misfortune,” he said simply--“my
+little cross. We all have our burdens in this life, Miss Ram. Pardon me
+if I do not care to dwell upon mine.”
+
+With a bow Miss Ram indicated sympathy; decorously closed the subject.
+
+George gave a little sigh. With a simulation of brightness he proceeded:
+“You are sure you have no other lady?”
+
+“I have one,” said Miss Ram. “She would not suit.”
+
+“May I be allowed to judge?”
+
+Miss Ram turned to the ledger. “'Miss Mary Humfray.'”
+
+George started. “It is nothing,” he explained. “One of those shivers;
+that is all.”
+
+Miss Ram bowed. “'Miss Mary Humfray; aged 21; only child of the late
+Colonel Humfray, Indian Army; references from former employer not good,
+but with extenuating circumstances.'”
+
+“I think she might suit,” George said. “She--she--” he groped
+wildly--“she is the daughter of a colonel.”
+
+“So were four others.”
+
+George wiped his brow. “The--the _only_ daughter.”
+
+“You consider that a merit?”
+
+“My uncle would. He has curious ideas. He is himself an only child.”
+
+Miss Ram stared. George had the prescience of trouble, but could not
+find it. “Oh, yes,” he said, “oh, yes.”
+
+“Fifteen brothers and twelve sis--”
+
+George saw the gaping pit; sprang from it. “_Has_ an only child,” he
+corrected. “_Has_, not _is_.”
+
+Miss Ram glared, continued: “What of the absence of character?”
+
+“I imagine the fact of being an only child would override that. You said
+there were extenuating circumstances?”
+
+“There are. I personally would speak for the young lady.”
+
+Excitement put George upon his feet. “I thank you very much, Miss Ram. I
+feel that this lady will suit.”
+
+“You have asked nothing about her. With the others you were unusually
+particular.”
+
+“I act greatly by instinct. It is a family trait. Something seems to
+assure me in this case.”
+
+Miss Ram gazed searchingly at George; answered him upon an interested
+note. “Indeed!” she spoke. “Remarkable. Pray pardon me.” She drew
+“Aphorisms” from its drawer; hesitated a moment; with flowing pen wrote
+beneath “I.”
+
+She turned towards George. “Pray pardon me,” she repeated. “What you
+tell me of acting by instinct greatly interests me as a student of
+character. In this little volume here I--allow me.” She emphasised with
+a quill-pen. “_I. Instinct. Instinct is the Almighty's rudder with which
+He steers our frail barques upon the tempestuous sea of life at moments
+when otherwise we should be quite at a loss. Some of us answer quickly
+to this mysterious helm and for example something seems to tell them in
+the middle of the night that the house is on fire, and they get up and
+find it is. Let those who don't answer quickly beware!_”
+
+“That's awfully well put,” said George. “Awfully well.”
+
+For the first time Miss Ram smiled. “You would wish to interview the
+young lady?” she asked. “Fortunately she is present. Kindly step to the
+Interview Room.”
+
+She led the way. With thundering pulses George followed. His Mary rose.
+Miss Ram introduced them.
+
+George rolled his tongue in a dry mouth; passed it over dry lips. He had
+no words.
+
+“Have you no questions?” Miss Ram asked severely.
+
+For a third time since he had entered this building, panic broke damply
+upon George's brow. He blew his nose; in a very faint voice asked: “Your
+age is twenty-one?”
+
+Upon an agitated squeak his Mary told him: “Yes.”
+
+“Ah!” In desperation he paused: caught Miss Ram's awful eye; was goaded
+to fresh plunge. “Ah, one-and-twenty?”
+
+In a tiny squeak Mary replied: “Yes.”
+
+He shuffled in desperation. “When will you be twenty-two?”
+
+“In February.”
+
+“Ah! February.” This was awful. “February.”
+
+Miss Ram's eye stabbed him again.
+
+“February. Then you must be twenty-one now?”
+
+“_Tch-tch!_” sounded Miss Ram.
+
+“Twenty-one,” George stammered. “Twenty-one--”
+
+From the other room at that moment Miss Porter called.
+
+“I am required,” said Miss Ram, “elsewhere. I will return in a moment.”
+ She passed out; closed the door.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+“My darling!” cried George.
+
+“Georgie!”
+
+They embraced.
+
+He held her to him; kissed the soft gold hair.
+
+On a movement in the next room his Mary wriggled free. “Tell me.”
+
+“By Gad, it's been awful! Did you hear me in that room?”
+
+She nodded, laughing at him. He kissed the smiles.
+
+“Oh, do be careful! Let _go_, George; let _go_. I couldn't hear what you
+said. But you were hours--_hours_.”
+
+“Years,” said George. “Years. Aeons of time. I have aged considerably. I
+thought it would never end. It was appalling.”
+
+She clasped her pretty hands. “But tell me, George. Do tell me. I don't
+understand _anything_. What has _happened?_”
+
+“Give me time,” George told her. “I am not the same George. The
+light-hearted George of yore is dead under Miss Ram's chair. I am old
+and seamed with care.”
+
+“George, _do, do_ tell me! Don't fool.”
+
+“I'm not fooling. I can't fool. You don't realise what I have been
+through. You have no heart. I can't fool. When I was a child I thought
+as a child; I did childish things. But now that I have been through
+Miss Ram's hands my bright boyhood is sapped. I am old and stricken in
+years.”
+
+“Oh, Georgie, _do, do_ tell me!”
+
+This ridiculous George gave a boyish laugh; clasped his Mary again;
+squeezed her to him till she gasped. “I've got you, Mary!” he said. He
+kissed the gold hair. “I've got you. I'm going to see you every day.
+You're coming down to live at Herons' Holt.”
+
+Then he told her.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Miss Ram returned; directed at George a bow that Was one huge note of
+interrogation.
+
+“Quite satisfactory,” George replied. “I am sure my uncle will agree.”
+
+“There is, of course,” objected Miss Ram, “the unfortunate matter of
+references.”
+
+George took a frank air. “Miss Ram, I am quite willing to take your
+personal assurances on that matter. On behalf of my uncle I accept
+them.”
+
+“I will send a written statement of the matter,” said Miss Ram. Her air
+was dogged.
+
+“I most solemnly assure you that is unnecessary.”
+
+Miss Ram killed him with a bow. “It is my custom. I have the reputation
+of seventeen years to sustain.”
+
+George quailed.
+
+“Your uncle,” Miss Ram exclaimed, “will also wish to see Miss Humfray.
+She shall go this afternoon.”
+
+“Not this afternoon,” George told her. “No. To-morrow. He could not see
+her to-day.”
+
+“Very well. To-morrow. To-night I will write the references to him.
+Kindly pay the fee to Miss Porter in the office. Good morning!”
+
+She pushed him off with a stabbing bow. He fled.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+In that delectable interview during Miss Ram's absence George had
+arranged with his Mary that this was a day to be celebrated. She should
+not proceed instantly to be weighed by Mr. Marrapit; let that ordeal be
+given to the morrow. This splendid day should splendidly end; tremendous
+gaiety should with a golden clasp fasten the golden hours of the
+morning. In the afternoon he had a lecture and clinical demonstrations.
+Like a horse he would work till half-past six. At seven he would meet
+his Mary in Sloane Square.
+
+So it was. At that hour George from the top of his 'bus spied his Mary
+upon the little island in the Square. He sprang down and his first
+action was to show a fat and heavy sovereign, pregnant with delights,
+lying in his palm.
+
+“Borrowed,” said George. “One pound sterling. Twenty shillings net. And
+every penny of it is going to fly.”
+
+He called a hansom, and they smoothly rolled to Earl's Court.
+
+When sovereigns are rare possessions, how commanding an air the feel of
+one imparts! Mary watched her George with pride. How masterful was he!
+How deferential the head waiter at the restaurant in the Exhibition
+became! The man was putting them off with an inner table. Her George by
+a look and a word had him in a minute to right-abouts, and one of the
+coveted tables upon the verandah was theirs. Waiters flocked about. With
+such an air did George command the cheapest wine upon the list that
+the waiter, whose lip ordinarily would have curled at such an order,
+hastened to its execution with dignity of task, deference of service.
+
+They ate robustly through the menu: faltered not nor checked at a single
+dish. They passed remarks upon their neighbours. At intervals George
+would say, “Isn't this fine, Mary?”; or his Mary would say, “Oh,
+Georgie, isn't this splendid?” And the other would answer, “Rather!”
+
+A meal and a conversation to make your proper lovers shudder! There was
+no nibbling at and toying with food; there was no drinking and feasting
+from the light of one another's eyes. When George felt thirsty he
+would put his nose in the cheap claret and keep it there till mightily
+refreshed; such hungry yearnings as his Mary felt she satisfied with
+knife and fork. These were very simple children and exceedingly healthy.
+
+But while his Mary's tongue ached with a cold, cold ice, George was
+in the pangs of mental arithmetic. As the bill stood, that pregnant
+sovereign had given birth to all the delights of which it was capable;
+was shattered and utterly wrecked in child-bed.
+
+A waiter came bustling. There was just time. George leant across. “Mary,
+when I ask you if you'll have coffee, say you prefer it outside--it's
+cheaper there.”
+
+“Coffee, sir?”
+
+“Special coffee,” George ordered nonchalantly. “Yes, two. One moment.
+Would you rather have your coffee outside near the band, Mary?”
+
+His Mary was splendid. She looked around the room, she looked into the
+cool night--and there her eye longer lingered. “It's cooler outside,”
+ she said. “I think it would be nicer outside, if you don't mind.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+“Sure you don't mind?”
+
+“Oh, no; no, not a bit. Bill, waiter.”
+
+The waiter bowed low over his munificent tip; dropped it into a jingling
+pocket. George gathered his miserable change; slid it silently to where
+it lay companionless; with his Mary passed into the warm night.
+
+In the Empress Gardens they found a hidden table; here sipped coffee,
+and here were most dreadfully common. Mary's hand crept into her
+George's; they spoke little. The warm night breeze gently kissed their
+faces; the band stirred deepest depths; they set their eyes upon the
+velvety darkness that lay beyond the lights, and there pictured one
+another in a delectable future. Mary saw a very wonderful George; now
+and then glimpsed a very happy little Mary in a wonderful home. George
+also saw a happy little Mary in a wonderful home, but he more clearly
+followed a very wonderful George, magnificently accomplishing the mighty
+things that made the little Mary happy.
+
+       *       *        *       *        *
+
+George kissed his Mary upon the doorstep of the Battersea lodgings;
+caught the last train to Paltley Hill; and as he walked home from the
+station the scented hedges murmured to him with his Mary's voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Girl Comes Near The Lugger.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+At breakfast upon the following day George set forth the result of
+his labours; with urgent eloquence extolled the virtues of this Miss
+Humfray.
+
+Before Mr. Marrapit's plate lay an open envelope; upon the back George
+could read the inscription “Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed
+Gentlewomen.”
+
+What had Miss Ram said of his Mary? The thought that she had written
+a reference which at the last moment would dash into dust this mighty
+scheme, was as a twisting knife in George's vitals. Every time that Mr.
+Marrapit stretched his hand for the letter the agitated young man upon
+a fresh impulse would dash into defiant eulogy of his darling; and so
+impetuous was the rush of his desperate words that at the beat of every
+new wave Mr. Marrapit would withdraw his startled hand from the letter;
+frown at George across the coffee-pot.
+
+At last: “Sufficient,” he announced. “Curb zeal. Mount discretion.
+Satisfy the demands of appetite. You have not touched food. Tasks he
+before you. Do not starve the brain. I am tired of your eulogies of this
+person. For twenty-one minutes you have been hurling advertisements at
+me. I am a hoarding.”
+
+The bill-sticker pushed a piece of bacon into a dry mouth; sat with
+goggling eyes.
+
+The hoarding continued: “I have here this person's reference. It is
+good.”
+
+“Down shot the piece of bacon; convulsively bolted like Miss Porter's
+sweet.
+
+“Good!” cried George.
+
+“I said good. For faulty articulation I apologise.”
+
+“I know, I heard. I meant that I am pleased.”
+
+“Strive to express the meaning. The person arrives for inspection
+at mid-day. For your assistance I tender thanks. The incident is now
+closed. Do you labour at hospital to-day?”
+
+George had determined to be at the fount of news. In town, uncertain, he
+could have applied himself to nothing. He said:
+
+“No, here; I work here to-day.”
+
+“To your tasks,” commanded Mr. Marrapit.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George went to his room, but his tasks through that morning lay
+neglected.
+
+Impossible to work. He was in a position at which at one time or another
+most of us are placed. He was upon one end of a balanced see-saw, and he
+was blindfolded so that it was impossible to see what might happen upon
+the other extremity. Suddenly he might be swung up to highest delight;
+suddenly he might be dashed earthwards to hit ground with a jarring
+thud. The one eventuality or the other was certain; but he must sit
+blindfold and helpless--unable to affect the balance by an ounce. Here
+is the position in which all of us are made cowards. Bring the soldier
+into action, and his blood will run hot enough to make him intoxicated
+and insensible to fear; hold him in reserve, and courage will begin to
+ooze. Give us daylight in which we may see aught that threatens us, and
+likely enough we shall have desperate courage sufficient to rush in and
+grapple; it is in the darkness that uncertainty sets teeth chattering.
+More prayers are said, and with more devotion, at night than in the
+morning. We creep and crawl and squirm to heaven when the uncertainty of
+the night has to be faced; but we can get along well enough, thank you,
+when we spring out of bed with the courage of morning.
+
+George could not work until he knew whether he was to be swung high
+or thrown low. He paced his room; glimpsed his watch; tremendously
+smoked--and groaned aloud as, at every turn, he would receive the
+buffets of recollection of some important point upon which he had
+omitted to school his Mary.
+
+In those desperate moments he decided finally that Margaret should not
+be told that Mary and he were so much more than strangers. Supposing all
+went well, and his Mary came to Herons' Holt, her safety and his would
+certainly be imperilled by giving the key of their secret to his
+cousin. It was a hard resolve. About the beautiful romance of the thing
+Margaret's nature would have crooned as a mother over her suckling. She
+would have mothered it, cherished it, given them a hundred opportunities
+of exchanging for clasps and whispers the chilly demeanour they must
+bear one to another. But the pleasure must be foregone. My George had
+the astonishing sense to know that the animal instinct in Margaret's
+nature would outride the romance. Twice the countless years that
+separate us from the gathering of our first instincts may pass, and this
+the strongest of them--the abhorrence of secrecy-will never be uprooted.
+When all life was a ferocious struggle for life, secrecy--and it would
+have been the secret of a store of food--was inimical to the existence
+of the pack: it was opposed to the first of the slowly forming laws of
+nature. There must be equality of opportunity that all might equally
+be tested. Thus it was that a secret hoard of food, when come upon,
+instantly was noised abroad by the discoverer, and its possessor torn
+to death; and thus it is to-day that a secret once beyond the persons
+immediately concerned is carried from mouth to mouth till the world has
+it, and its first possessors take the violence of discovery.
+
+For a reason that was almost similar George negatived the impulse which
+bade him meet his Mary at the station, walk with her to the house, and
+leave her before the gates. For, supposing again that she were accepted
+and came to Herons' Holt, this suspicious meeting would come flying to
+Mr. Marrapit upon the breezes that whirl in and out of every cranny
+and nook in small communities. Towns are blind and deaf; villages have
+peeping eyes, straining ears, loose mouths, that pry and listen and
+whisper.
+
+Almost upon the hour of twelve there came to the agitated young man's
+ears a ring that could be none other than hers.
+
+He tip-toed to the banisters; peered below. His Mary was ushered in.
+
+While she stood behind the maid who tapped on Mr. Marrapit's door, she
+glanced up. George had a glimpse of her face; waved encouragement from
+the stairhead.
+
+The maid stood aside. His Mary passed in to the ogre's den.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Clad in a dressing-gown, Mr. Marrapit was standing against the
+fireplace. My trembling Mary settled just clear of the closing door;
+took his gaze. He put his eye upon her face; slowly travelled it down
+her person; rested it upon her little shoes; again brought it up; again
+carried it down; this time left it at her feet.
+
+The gaze seemed to burn her stockings. She shuffled; little squirms of
+fright nudged her. She glanced at her feet, fearful of some hideous hole
+in her shoes.
+
+“I am--” she jerked.
+
+Then Mr. Marrapit spoke: “I see you are. Discontinue.”
+
+The command was shot at her. Trembling against the shock she could only
+murmur: “Discontinue?”
+
+“Assuredly. Discontinue. Refrain. Adjust.”
+
+“Discontinue...?” With difficulty she articulated the word, then put
+after it on a little squeak: “... What?”
+
+“It,” rapped Mr. Marrapit.
+
+“I am afraid--”
+
+“I quake in terror.”
+
+“I don't understand.”
+
+“Pah!” Mr. Marrapit exclaimed. “You said 'I am.' Were you not about to
+say 'I am standing on the polished boards'?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I believed that was in your mind. Let it now enter your mind. You are
+on the polished boards. You have high heels. I quake in terror lest they
+have left scratch or blemish. Adjust your position.”
+
+Mary stepped to the carpet. She was dumb before this man.
+
+Mr. Marrapit bent above the polished flooring where she had stood.
+“There is no scratch,” he announced, “neither is there any blemish.” He
+resumed his post against the fireplace and again regarded her: “You are
+young.”
+
+“I am older really.”
+
+“Elucidate that.”
+
+“I mean--I am not inexperienced.”
+
+“Why say one thing and mean another? Beware the habit. It is perilous.”
+
+“Indeed it is not my habit.”
+
+“It is your recreation, then. Do not indulge it. Continue.”
+
+“I am young, but I have had experience. I think if you were to engage me
+I would give you satisfaction.”
+
+“Adduce grounds.”
+
+“I would try in every way to do as you required. I understand I am to
+look after cats.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Here.”
+
+“Abandon that impression. I have not said so.”
+
+“No, I mean if you engage me.”
+
+“Again you say one thing and mean another. I am suspicious. It is a
+habit.”
+
+“Oh, _indeed_ it is not.”
+
+“Then if a recreation, a recreation to which you are devoted. You romp
+in it. Twice within a minute you have gambolled.”
+
+My Mary blinked tears. Since rising that morning, her nerves had been
+upon the stretch against this interview. She had schooled herself
+against all possibilities so as to win into the house of her dear
+George, yet at every moment she seemed to fall further from success.
+
+“You ca-catch me up so,” she trembled.
+
+Mr. Marrapit expanded upwards. “Catch you up! A horrible accusation. The
+table is between us.”
+
+“You mis-misunderstand me.” She silenced a little sniff with a dab of
+her handkerchief. She looked very pretty. Mr. Marrapit placed beside her
+the mental image of Mrs. Major; and at every point she had the prize. He
+liked the soft gold hair; he liked the forlorn little face it enframed;
+he liked the slim little form. His cats, he suspected, would appreciate
+those nice little hands; he judged her to have nice firm legs against
+which his cats could rub. Mrs. Major's, he apprehended, would have been
+bony; not legs, but shanks.
+
+Mary made another dab at her now red little nose. The silence increased
+her silly fright. “You mis-misunderstand me,” she repeated.
+
+With less asperity Mr. Marrapit told her: “I cannot accept the blame.
+You wrap your meanings. I plunge and grope after them. Eluding me, I am
+compelled to believe them wilfully thrown. Strive to let your yea be yea
+and your nay nay. With circumspection proceed.”
+
+Mary gathered her emotion with a final little sniff. “I like ca-cats.”
+
+“I implore you not to accuse me of misunderstanding you. A question is
+essential. You do not always pronounce 'cats' in two syllables?”
+
+“Oh, no.”
+
+“Satisfactory. You said 'ca-cats.' Doubtless under stress of emotion.
+Proceed.”
+
+Mary sniffed; proceeded. “I like ca-cats--cats. If you were to engage me
+I am sure your cats would take to me.”
+
+“I admit the possibility. I like your appearance. I like your voice.
+Had you knowledge of the acute supersensitiveness of my cats you would
+understand that they will appreciate those points. I do not require in
+you veterinary knowledge; I require sympathetic traits. I do not engage
+you to nurse my cats--though, should mischance befall, that would come
+within your duties,--but to be their companion, their friend. You are a
+lady; themselves ancestral they will appreciate that. I understand
+you are an orphan; there also a bond links you with them. All cats are
+orphans. It is the sole unfortunate trait of their characters that they
+are prone to forget their offspring. In so far as it is possible to
+correct this failing amongst my own cats, I have done my best. Amongst
+them the sanctity of the marriage tie is strictly observed. The word
+stud is peculiarly abhorrent to me. Polygamy is odious. There is a final
+point. Pray seat yourself.”
+
+Mary took a chair. Mr. Marrapit, standing before her, gazed down upon
+her. From her left he gazed, then from her right. He returned to the
+fireplace.
+
+“It is satisfactory,” he said. “You have a nice lap. That is of first
+importance. The question of wages has been settled. Arrive to-morrow.
+You are engaged.”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: of George in Torment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped.
+
+
+If we write that Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful, we
+use the term as a figure of speech that must be taken in its accepted
+sense; not read literally. For it is impossible that life, in whatever
+conditions, can be eventless. The dullest life is often with events the
+most crowded. In dulness we are thrown back upon our inner selves, and
+that inner self is of a construction so sensitive that each lightest
+thought is an event that leaves an impression.
+
+In action, in gaiety, in intercourse we put out an unnatural self to
+brunt the beat of events. We are upon our guard. There are eyes watching
+us, and from their gaze we by instinct fend our inner self just as by
+instinct we fend our nakedness.
+
+Overmuch crowded with such events, the inner self is prone to shrivel,
+to fade beneath lack of nutriment; and it may happen that in time the
+unnatural self will take its place, will become our very self.
+
+That is gravely to our disadvantage. Overmuch in action, the man of
+affairs may win the admiration of a surface-seeing world; may capture
+the benefits of strong purpose, of wealth, and of position. But he is
+in danger of utterly losing the fruits that only by the inner, the
+original, and true self can be garnered.
+
+Life presents for our pursuit two sets of treasures. The one may be had
+by the labours of the hands; the other by exercise of the intellect--the
+true self. And at once this may be said: that the treasures heaped by
+the hands soil the hands, and the stain sinks deep. The stain enters the
+blood and, thence oozing, pigments every part of the being--the face,
+the voice, the mind, the thoughts. For we cannot labour overlong in the
+fields without besweating the brow; and certainly we cannot ceaselessly
+toil after the material treasures of life without gathering the traces
+of that labour upon our souls. It stains, and the stain is ugly.
+
+Coming to treasures stored by exercise of the intellect, the true
+self, these also put their mark upon the possessor; but the action is
+different and the results are different. Here the pigment that colours
+the life does not come from without but distils from within. Man does
+not stoop to rend these treasures from the earth; he rises to them. They
+do not bow; they uplift. They are not wrenched in trampling struggle
+from the sties where men battle for the troughs; they are absorbed from
+the truths of life that are as breezes upon the little hills. They are
+in the face of Nature and in Nature's heart; they are in the written
+thoughts of men whose thoughts rushed upward like flames, not
+dropped like plummet-stones--soared after truth and struck it to our
+understanding, not made soundings for earthy possessions showing how
+these might be gained.
+
+Yet it is not to be urged that the quest of material treasures is to
+be despised, or that life properly lived is life solely dreaming among
+truths. The writer who made the story of the Israelites sickening of
+manna, wrapped in legend the precept that man to live must work for
+life. We are not living if we are not working. We cannot have strength
+but we win meat to make strength.
+
+No; my protest is against the heaping of material treasure to the
+neglect of treasure stored by the true self. Material treasure is not
+ours. We but have the enjoyment of it while we can defend it from the
+forces that constantly threaten it. Misfortune, sorrow, sickness--these
+are ever in leash against us; may at any moment be slipped. Misfortune
+may whirl our material treasures from us; sorrow or sickness may canker
+them, turn them to ashes in the mouth. They are not ours; we hold them
+upon sufferance. But the treasures of the intellect, the gift of
+being upon nodding terms with truth, these are treasures that are our
+impregnable own. Nothing can filch them, nothing canker them: they are
+our own--imperishable, inexhaustible; never wanting when called upon;
+balm to heal the blows of adversity, specific against all things malign.
+Cultivate the perception of beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to
+distinguish between the realities of life and the dross of life; and you
+have a great shield of fortitude of which certainly man cannot rob you,
+and against which sickness, sorrow, or misfortune may strike tremendous
+blows without so much as bruising the real you.
+
+And it is in the life that is called uneventful that there is the most
+opportunity for storing these treasures of the intellect. Perhaps there
+is also the greater necessity. In the dull round of things we are thrown
+in upon ourselves, and by every lightest thought and deed either are
+strengthening that inner self or are sapping it. Either we are reading
+the thoughts of men whose thoughts heap a priceless store within us,
+or we are reading that which--though we are unaware--vitiates and puts
+further and further beyond our grasp the truths of life; either we are
+watching our lives and schooling them to feed upon thoughts and deeds
+that will uplift them, or we are neglecting them, and allowing them
+to browse where they will upon the rank weeds of petty spites, petty
+jealousies, petty gossipings and petty deeds. In action we may have no
+time to waste over this poisonous herbage; but in dulness most certainly
+we do have the temptation--and as we resist or succumb so shall we
+conduct ourselves when the larger events of life call us into the lists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful: need not be recorded.
+We are following the passage of the love 'twixt her and George; and
+within the radius of Mr. Marrapit's eye love durst not creep. She saw
+little of her George. They were most carefully circumspect in their
+attitude one to another, and conscience made their circumspection trebly
+stiff. There are politenesses to be observed between the inmates of a
+house, but my Mary and my George, in terror lest even these should be
+misconstrued, studiously neglected them.
+
+The aloofness troubled Margaret. This girl wrapped her sentiment about
+Mary; delighting in one who, so pretty, so young, so gentle-voiced, must
+face life in an alien home. The girls came naturally together, and it
+was not long before Margaret bubbled out her vocation.
+
+The talk was upon books. Margaret turned away her head; said in the
+voice of one hurrying over a commonplace: “I write, you know.”
+
+She tingled for the “Do you?” from her companion, but it did not come,
+and this was very disappointing.
+
+She stole a glance at Mary, sitting with a far-away expression in her
+eyes (the ridiculous girl had heard an engine whistle; knew it to be the
+train that was taking her George to London). Margaret stole a glance at
+Mary; repeated louder: “I write, you know.”
+
+It fetched the delicious response. Mary started: “Do you?”
+
+Margaret said hurriedly: “Oh, nothing worth speaking of.”
+
+Mary said: “Oh!”; gave her thoughts again to the train.
+
+It was wretched of her. “Poems,” said Margaret, and stressed the word
+“_Poems_.”
+
+Mary came flying back from the train. “Oh, how interesting that is!”
+
+At once Margaret drew away. “Oh, it is nothing,” she said, “nothing.”
+ She put her eyes upon the far clouds; breathed “Nothing” in a long sigh.
+
+From this it was not a far step to reading, with terrible reluctance,
+her poems to Mary; nor from this again was it other than an obvious step
+to telling of Bill. Her pretty verses were so clearly written at some
+heart which throbbed responsive, that Mary must needs put the question.
+It came after a full hour's reading--the poet sitting upon her bed in a
+litter of manuscripts, Mary in a low chair before her.
+
+In a tremulous voice the poet concluded the refrain of an exquisite
+verse:
+
+  “Beat for beat, your heart, my darling,
+          Beats with mine.
+  Skylarks carol, quick responsive,
+          Love divine.”
+
+The poet gave a little gulp; laid down her paper.
+
+Mary also gulped. From both their pretty persons emotion welled in a
+great flood that filled the room.
+
+“I'm sure that is written _to_ somebody,” Mary breathed.
+
+Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing
+to be capable of words.
+
+Mary implored: “Oh, do tell me!”
+
+Then Margaret told the story of Bill--with intimate details and in the
+beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding emotion
+piled upwards to the very roof.
+
+Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will
+examine a baby--if they must--with a bashful diffidence that pulls down
+the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its
+chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love--if they
+must--with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
+
+It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must
+not be discovered.
+
+When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her confidence:
+“And have you--are you--I know practically nothing about you, Mary,
+dear. _Do_ tell me, are _you_ in love?”
+
+Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She
+laughed. “Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?”
+
+Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
+
+Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another
+by knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer
+sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the arrow
+that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions so that
+she should not flinch at the wound.
+
+Margaret twanged the bow-string. “No time to fall in love?” she
+murmured. She fitted the shaft; let fly. “Do you like George, dear?”
+
+Mary stooped to her shoe-laces. Despite her preparations the arrow had
+pierced, and she hid her face to hide the blood.
+
+“George?” said she, head to floor.
+
+“Yes, George. Do you like George?”
+
+My Mary sat up, brazen. “George? Oh, you mean your cousin? I daresay
+he's very nice. Practically I've never even spoken to him since I've
+been here.”
+
+“I know. Of course he's very busy just now. Do you think you would like
+him if you did know him?”
+
+It was murderous work. Mary was beginning to quiver beneath the arrows;
+was in terror lest she should betray the secret. A desperate kick was
+necessary. She wildly searched for a foothold; found it; kicked:
+
+“I'm sure I shouldn't like him.”
+
+The poet softly protested: “Oh why, Mary?”
+
+“He's clean-shaven.”
+
+“And you don't like a--”
+
+“I can't stand a--”
+
+“But if he had a--”
+
+“Oh, if he had a--Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly.”
+ She fled.
+
+Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope
+paper towards her; wrote:
+
+  “Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?”
+
+A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued
+the idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his
+return. After a few paces, “George,” she asked, “do you like Mary?”
+
+George was never taken aback. “Mary? Mary who?”
+
+“Miss Humfray.”
+
+“Oh, is her name Mary?”
+
+“Of course it is.” Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up
+at him. “Do you like her, George?”
+
+“Like whom?”
+
+“Why, Mary--Miss Humfray.”
+
+“Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major--in some ways. If
+that's what you mean.”
+
+Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this
+girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.
+
+“George, dear, I wish you would do something for me.”
+
+“Anything.”
+
+“How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?”
+
+She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from his
+pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.
+
+She asked him: “What is the matter?”
+
+He said brokenly: “You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a moustache.
+It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one way. It is
+by pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a tooth-brush
+and tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have to do it every
+morning, and I somehow can never remember it.”
+
+Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.
+
+She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic
+temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept
+waiting for its meals.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the
+hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate,
+and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of
+an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to
+approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated air
+advertised long neglect.
+
+It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by
+chance, George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into
+the copse, had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick
+undergrowth had plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had taken
+him within, shown him an outer and an inner room, and, in the second, a
+sight that had given him laughter; for he discovered there sundry empty
+bottles labelled “Old Tom,” a glass, an envelope addressed to Mrs.
+Major. It was clear that in this deserted place--somehow chanced
+upon--the masterly woman had been wont, safe from disturbance, to meet
+the rascal who, taken to Herons' Holt on that famous night, had so
+villainously laid her by the heels.
+
+Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this
+day when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief whispered
+moment to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking pale, had
+told her to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately George gave her
+directions for the hut; there he would meet her at five o'clock; there
+not the most prying eye could reach them.
+
+Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him,
+just within the threshold of the open door. It was their first secluded
+meeting since she had come to Herons' Holt.
+
+Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed “I have thee, girl”;
+sprang on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.
+
+“The first moment together in Paltley Hill!” he cried. “The first holy
+kiss!”
+
+His Mary wriggled. “George! You frightened me nearly out of my life.
+It's not holy. You're hurting me awfully.”
+
+“My child, it is holy. Trust in me.”
+
+“George, you _are_ hurting.”
+
+“Scorn that. It is delicious!”
+
+He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a space,
+looking at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild
+spirits, despite her roguishness, for a space they did not speak. His
+hands were below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was
+the junction whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being
+received and pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without
+hitch or delay the delectable thrill came pouring; above, between their
+eyes, on wires invisible they signalled its safe arrival.
+
+They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the
+intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with thirst
+will with a little sigh put down the glass that has touched him back to
+vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made them dumb
+before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they had been
+whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the
+medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we
+are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs
+about us, we have no words to express the elevation. Debase love and we
+can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must be
+dumb.
+
+With a little laugh they broke.
+
+“Going on all right, old girl?” George asked.
+
+“Splendidly.”
+
+“Happy?”
+
+She laughed and said: “I will give the proper answer to that. How can I
+be other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?”
+
+“I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way--very, very lucky.
+Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure. Cherish it,
+tend it, love it.”
+
+“Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you waste
+them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me--about your exam.”
+
+“To-morrow.”
+
+She was at once serious. “To-morrow?”
+
+“To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow
+my angel voice trills in the examiners' ears.”
+
+“I thought you had a paper first, before the viva?”
+
+“Do not snap me up, girl. I speak in metaphors. To-morrow my angel hand
+glides my pen over the paper. On Thursday my angel tongue gives forth my
+wisdom with the sound of a tinkling cymbal.”
+
+“The paper to-morrow, the viva on Thursday?”
+
+He bowed his angel head.
+
+“George, don't, _don't_ fool. Are you nervous? Will you pass?”
+
+“I shall rush, I shall bound. I shall hurtle through like a great
+boulder.”
+
+“_Georgie!_ Will you?”
+
+He dropped his banter. “I believe I shall, old girl. I really think I
+shall. I've simply sweated my life out these weeks--all for you.”
+
+She patted his hand. “Dear old George! How I shall think of you! And
+then?”
+
+“Then--why, then, we'll marry! Mary, I shall hear the result immediately
+after the viva. Then I shall rush back here and tackle old Marrapit at
+once. If he won't give me the money I think perhaps he'll lend it, and
+then we'll shoot off to Runnygate and take up that practice and live
+happily ever after.”
+
+With the brave ardour of youth they discussed the delectable picture;
+arranged the rooms they had never seen; planned the daily life of which
+they had not the smallest experience.
+
+Twice in our lives we can play at Make-Believe--once when we are
+children, once when we are lovers. And these are the happiest times
+of our lives. We are not commoners then; we are emperors. We touch the
+sceptre and it is a magic wand. We rule the world, shaping it as we
+will, dropping from between our fingers all the stony obstacles that
+would interfere with its plasticity. Between childhood and love, and
+between love and death, the world rules us and bruises us. But in
+childhood, and again in love, we rule the world.
+
+So they ruled their world.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+That night Mary prayed her George might pass his examination--a prayer
+to make us wise folk laugh. The idea of our conception of the Divinity
+deliberately thrusting into George's mind knowledge that he otherwise
+had not, the idea of the Divinity deliberately prompting the examiners
+to questions that George could answer--these are ludicrous to us in
+our wisdom. We have the superiority of my simple Mary in point of
+intelligence; well, let us hug that treasure and make the most of it.
+Because we miss the sense of confidence with which Mary got from her
+knees; passed into her dreams. With our fine intellects we should lie
+awake fretting such troubles. These simple, stupid Marys just hand the
+tangle on and sleep comforted. They call it Faith.
+
+Yes, but isn't it grand to be of that fine, brave, intellectual,
+hard-headed, business-like stamp that trusts nothing it cannot see and
+prove? Rather!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Up the drive George came bounding with huge strides. The fires of
+tremendous joy that roared within him impelled him to enormous energy.
+
+Upon the journey from Waterloo to Paltley Hill he could with difficulty
+restrain himself from leaping upon the seat; bawling “I've passed! I've
+passed! I'm qualified!” He could not sit still. He fidgeted, wriggled;
+thrust his head first from one window, then from the other. Every foot
+of the line was well known to him. To each familiar landmark his spirit
+bellowed: “Greeting! When last you saw me I was coming up in a blue
+funk. Now! Oh, good God, now--” and he would draw in, stride the
+carriage, and thrust his head from the other window.
+
+His four fellow-passengers regarded him with some apprehension. They
+detected signs of lunacy in the young man; kept a nervous eye cocked
+upon the alarm cord; at the first stopping place with one accord arose
+and fled. One, signing herself “Lady Shareholder,” had her alarming
+experience in her daily-paper upon the following morning.
+
+At his station George leapt for the platform a full minute before the
+train had stopped. Up the lanes he sent his bursting spirits flying
+in shrill whistlings and gay hummings; slashed stones with his
+stick; struck across the fields and took gates and stiles in great
+spread-eagled vaults.
+
+So up the drive, stones still flying, whistlings still piping.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon the lawn he espied Mr. Marrapit and his Mary. She, on a garden
+seat, was reading aloud from the _Times_; Mr. Marrapit, on a deep chair
+stretched to make lap for the Rose of Sharon, sat a little in advance of
+her.
+
+George approached from Mr. Marrapit's flank; soft turf muffled his
+strides. The warm glow of kindliness towards all the world, which his
+success had stoked burning within him, put a foreign word upon his
+tongue. He sped it on a boisterous note:
+
+“Uncle!” he cried. “Uncle, I've passed!”
+
+Mary crushed the _Times_ between her hands; bounded to her feet. “Oh!”
+ she cried. “Hip! hur--!”
+
+She bit the final exclamation; dropped to her seat. Mr. Marrapit had
+twisted his eye upon her.
+
+“You are in pain?” he asked.
+
+“No--oh, no.”
+
+“You have a pang in the hip?”
+
+“Oh no--no.”
+
+“But you bounded. You cried 'hip'! Whose hip?”
+
+“I was startled.”
+
+“Unsatisfactory. The brain, not the hip, is the seat of the emotion.
+Elucidate.”
+
+“I don't know why I said 'hip.' I was startled. Mr. George startled me.”
+
+“Me also he startled. I did not shout hip, thigh, leg nor knee. Control
+the tongue.”
+
+He turned to George. “Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has projected
+this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you repeat it.”
+
+Sprayed upon between mortification and laughter at the manner of his
+greeting, George's enthusiasm was a little damped. But its flame was too
+fierce to be hurt by a shower. Now it roared again. “I've passed!” he
+cried. “I'm qualified!”
+
+“I tender my felicitations. Accept them. Leave us, Miss Humfray. This is
+a mighty hour. Take the Rose. Give her cream. Let her with us rejoice.”
+
+Mary raised the cat. She faced about so that she directly shut Mr.
+Marrapit from his nephew; with her dancing eyes spoke her happiness to
+her George; passed down the lawn.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright. “Again,
+accept my felicitations,” he said. “They are yours. Take them.”
+
+With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: “It is a
+mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to
+port, through hurts to harbour.”
+
+He paused.
+
+“You mean--” George said, groping.
+
+“Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our
+minds and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand.
+Westward the setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows.
+Between us the horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer
+stands. It is banished by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is
+ended. The vow which I swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept. I
+would nourish you, I declared, until you were a qualified physician.
+You are a qualified physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the
+future, upon a written invitation, I trust you will visit this home in
+which your youth has been spent. When do you leave?”
+
+The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm
+came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He
+had not anticipated it. He jerked: “When do I--leave?”
+
+“Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness and
+waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When does
+it fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope, spend
+beneath my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?”
+
+George flamed. “You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:
+
+“Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood.” He
+became stern. “Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to
+stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest
+money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you Godspeed.”
+
+George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became humble.
+“I am sorry,” he said. “I see what you mean. I appreciate your kindness.
+You ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them before
+you.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one
+waiting a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some
+kind would be necessary. “Proceed,” he said.
+
+George said: “My plans--” He swallowed. “My plans--” Again he swallowed.
+His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought despairingly for one
+that would not at the very outset turn Mr. Marrapit into screams. “My
+plans--” he stammered.
+
+“My God!” Mr. Marrapit groaned. “My God! What is coming?”
+
+George said on a rush: “These are my plans. I intend to marry--”
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.
+
+“Then--then--” said George, floundering. “After that--then--I intend to
+marry--I--”
+
+“Bigamy,” Mr. Marrapit murmured. “Bigamy.”
+
+“Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little
+seaside practice that is for sale.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes
+half closed, face working upon some inward stress.
+
+“Those are my plans,” George summarised: “to marry and buy this
+practice.”
+
+A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face
+ceased; he opened his eyes, sat up. “When?” he asked.
+
+“At once.”
+
+“This practice--”
+
+“I have it in my eye.”
+
+“Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?”
+
+“You mean the price?”
+
+“I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes.”
+
+“Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you.”
+
+“To _me?_”
+
+“Yes. I wanted to ask--”
+
+“You intend to ask me for money?”
+
+“I want to suggest--”
+
+“How much?”
+
+“Four--five hundred pounds.”
+
+“Great heaven!” Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the
+end of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: “Margaret!”
+
+She tripped to him. “Father! What is it?”
+
+“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit throated. “Barley water!”
+
+While she was upon her errand no--words passed between the two. Mr.
+Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. “Leave us,” he said.
+He drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench beside
+him; gave George a wan smile. “I am stricken in years,” he said. “I
+have passed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had
+experience of such affections of the brain. I thought”--the hideous
+memory shook him--“I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds.”
+
+George said defiantly: “I did.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly
+gulped. “I shall have a stroke,” he cried. “My hour is at hand.”
+
+My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. “Oh, I say, uncle,
+don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me.”
+
+“I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to
+myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns.”
+
+George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. “Oh,
+for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it
+impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask,
+you have only to say no.”
+
+“You promise that?”
+
+“Of course; of course.”
+
+“I say it now, then. No.”
+
+“But you haven't heard me.”
+
+“Unnecessary.”
+
+The tortured young man raised his voice.
+
+“It is necessary! You shall! You must!”
+
+“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. “Barley water! I am going to be
+murdered.”
+
+“Oh, this is insupportable!” George cried.
+
+“I endorse that. A double death threatens me. I shudder between a stroke
+and a blow. I shall be battered to death on my own lawn.”
+
+“If you would only listen to me,” George implored. “Why can we never be
+natural when we meet?”
+
+“Search your heart for the answer,” Mr. Marrapit told him. “It is
+because your demands are unnatural.”
+
+“You haven't heard them. Listen. I am on the threshold of my career.
+I am sure you will not ruin it. The real price of this practice is
+650 pounds--the value of a year and a half's income; that is the usual
+custom. I am offered it for four hundred. Then I want to marry and to
+have a little balance with which to start--say 100 pounds for that. That
+makes 500 pounds altogether. I implore you to lend--lend, not give--that
+sum. I will pay you back 50 pounds at the end of the first year and a
+hundred a year afterwards. Interest too. I don't know much about these
+things. Any interest you like. We would get a solicitor to draw up an
+agreement. Say you will lend the money. I feel sure you will.”
+
+“You delude yourself by that assurance.”
+
+“Oh, wait before you refuse. My prospects are so bright if only you
+will help me. I have no one else to whom I can turn. It is only a loan I
+ask.”
+
+“It is refused.”
+
+George stamped away, hands to head. The poor boy was in agony. Then
+returned:
+
+“I won't believe you. You will not be so heartless. Think over what I
+have said. Tell me to-night--to-morrow.”
+
+“My answer would be the same.”
+
+“You absolutely refuse to lend me the money?”
+
+“I refuse. It is against my principles.”
+
+My frantic George clutched at a shimmering hope. “Against your
+principles to lend? Do you mean that you will give--give me 500 pounds?”
+
+“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. He drank; gasped: “Give 500 pounds!
+You are light-headed!”
+
+“Then lend it!” George supplicated on a last appeal. “Make any
+conditions you please, and I will accept them. Uncle, think of when you
+were a young man. Remember the time when you were on the threshold of
+your career. Think of when you were engaged as I am now engaged. Imagine
+your feelings if you had been prevented marrying. You won't stand in
+my way? The happiest life is before me if you will only give your aid.
+Otherwise--otherwise--oh, I say, you won't refuse?”
+
+“I implore you to close this distressing scene.”
+
+“Will you lend me the money?”
+
+“My principles prevent me.”
+
+“Then damn your principles!” George shouted. “Damn your principles!”
+
+While he had been battering his head against this brick wall he had been
+saved pain by the hope that a last chance would carry him through. Now
+that he realised the futility of the endeavour, the stability of the
+wall, he had time to feel the bruising he had suffered--the bitterness
+of failure and of all that failure meant. The hurts combined to make him
+roar with pain, and he shouted furiously again: “Damn your principles!”
+
+“Barley water!” throated Mr. Marrapit on a note of terror. He reached
+for the glass. It was empty.
+
+He struggled to his feet; got the chair between George and himself;
+cried across it: “Beware how you touch me.”
+
+“Oh, I'm not going to touch you. You needn't be afraid.”
+
+“I have every need. I am afraid. Keep your distance. You are not
+responsible for your actions.”
+
+“You needn't be afraid, I tell you. It is too ridiculous.”
+
+“I repeat I have need. Keep your distance. My limbs tremble as one in a
+palsy.” Mr. Marrapit gripped the chair-back; his shudders advertised his
+distress.
+
+“I only want to say this,” George declaimed, “that if you refuse what
+I ask, you are refusing what is lawfully mine. My mother left you 4000
+pounds for my education. At the outside you have spent three. The 500
+pounds is mine. I have a right to it.”
+
+“Keep your distance, sir.”
+
+My furious George took three steps forward.
+
+“Can you answer what I say?” he shouted.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave a thin cry: turned, and with surprising bounds made
+across the lawn. A slipper shot from his foot. He alighted upon a
+stone; bounded heavenwards with a shrill scream; and hopping, leaping,
+shuffling, made the corner of the house.
+
+George swung on his heel. It occurred to him to visit Bill Wyvern.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Rape Of The Rose.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Bill was away from home, the maid who answered the door told George;
+Mrs. Wyvern was out; the Professor was in his study.
+
+George found the great biologist warming his chilly old bones in a vast
+armchair before a fire.
+
+With a twinkling of his sky-blue eyes that spoke to pleasant temper, the
+Professor greeted George; nodded him into an opposite seat.
+
+“I am reading a letter,” he announced. This man spoke very slowly, never
+abbreviated; had now an air of child-like happiness. “It is a letter
+from Bill.”
+
+George said: “Ah, what is Bill doing? I've not seen him for days.”
+
+Professor Wyvern chuckled away and fumbled with clumsy old fingers among
+the closely-written sheets on his lap. One he selected and inclined
+towards George. Its upper half was thickly lettered in heavy red type,
+prominent among which there bawled forth in wavy capitals, thickly
+underscored:
+
+  “THE DAILY.” EVERYBODY'S PAPER. PRICE 1/2d.
+
+“Hot stuff!” George cried. “Is old Bill on the staff of the _Daily_?”
+
+“Old Bill is on the staff of the _Daily_,” the Professor returned with
+more chuckling. “You have heard of it?”
+
+“Well, it's advertised everywhere. You can't get away from it. First
+number out to-morrow, isn't it?”
+
+“Yes, it is. I think it will be a very terrible production--a very
+horrible production indeed. But I am an annual subscriber because
+of Bill, and I have written a short article for the first issue also
+because of Bill. Bill says” (the Professor fumbled again; ran his nose
+twice up and down each sheet; finally struck the passage) “Bill says,
+'You were a brick, dear old governor, to send that article. It is a most
+thundering scoop for the _Daily_, and made the Boss most awfully bucked
+up with me. You are a brick, dear old Governor.”
+
+A little tear rolled out of Professor Wyvern's silly old eye, and he
+blew his nose in a series of terrific thunder-claps.
+
+“There!” he said. “You see how pleased Bill is with himself. I am afraid
+he uses the most terrible expressions in his letters, but he does not
+use them when he is writing his stories. He is a clever boy, and I am
+very proud of him. Now let me tell you.” He fell to nosing the sheets
+again. “All this first part is about his dogs. '... if Abiram and Dathan
+start scrapping, just hoof Abiram--it's his fault.'”
+
+The Professor looked up at George. “I would more readily kick a police
+constable than I would kick Abiram,” he said. “I must tell Hocken all
+this.”
+
+He continued, “'... see that Korah is kept short of meat for a bit ...
+when they are exercising, for goodness' sake don't let them be taken
+down Windmill Lane. There is a collie there that they have got a grudge
+against and will tear to bits if they catch.'”
+
+The Professor paused. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! I must give all this part to
+Hocken to keep. Ah! Now here is about his work. They have engaged him
+at four pounds a week. He does not know exactly what he is. Not a
+sub-editor. Not a reporter. He thinks they will put him on to what he
+calls 'special jobs,' or he may have to do what he calls 'ferret round'
+and find jobs for himself. The understanding is that he is only on
+probation. If he does anything very good they will put him on the
+permanent staff; if not, he is liable to go at a week's notice. Then he
+says, 'Tell all this to George, and give him my love. He was up for his
+exam--'”
+
+Professor Wyvern broke off. “Dear me!” he cried; “oh, dear me, I have
+forgotten! You have been up for your examination?”
+
+George nodded.
+
+Kindly old Professor Wyvern misinterpreted the lack of enthusiasm. “When
+I was a medical student,” he said, “I failed dozens of times in my final
+examination--dozens. It's no criterion of knowledge, you know: it
+is just luck. Never let examination failure dishearten you. Go along
+happily, George, and take your chance when it comes.”
+
+“It's come,” George said, beaming; recollection of his splendid success
+temporarily overshadowed recollection of his tragic failure.
+
+“You have qualified?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The Professor's sky-blue eyes danced with glee. He struggled on to his
+tottery old legs; before George could save him the exertion, had hobbled
+over the hearth-rug and was wringing his hand in tremendous pleasure.
+
+“Well done, George!” he bubbled. “Well done! Well done! It is the
+most splendid news. I have not had such a happy day for a long time.
+Qualified! Well, that is splendid! Splendid!”
+
+He fell back into his chair, panting with his excitement. “Ring that
+bell, George. We must celebrate this.”
+
+A maid appeared. “Susan,” said the Professor, “bring up a small bottle
+of champagne and two glasses. Mr. George has passed his examination. Be
+very quick, Susan.”
+
+Susan was very quick. The cork popped; the glasses foamed and fizzed.
+“Now we will have one glass each,” the Professor said. “I think, it will
+kill me at this hour, and if my wife catches me she will send me to bed;
+so we must be very quick. Now, this is your health, George. God bless
+you and good luck!”
+
+He drained his glass like the brave old boy that he was; and when his
+eyes had done streaming, and he had finished gasping and choking, bade
+Susan hurry away the signs of the dreadful deed before her mistress
+should catch her.
+
+“And now tell me your plans, George. Which road to Harley Street, eh?”
+
+Then George poured into those kindly old ears all the tragic story--the
+girl he was going to marry; the practice he was going to buy; the
+wrecker who had wrecked his fair ships ere ever he had put to sea.
+
+There were in the Professor's nature no sympathies that enabled him even
+to comprehend miserliness in any degree. Made aware of the taint in Mr.
+Marrapit, he became red and furious in his abhorrence of it. With snorts
+and fumes he punctuated the recital; when it closed, burst out: “Why,
+but it is yours! the money is yours. It is misappropriation.”
+
+“That's just what I say.”
+
+“Well, he must be made to give it you.” George laughed grimly. “I say
+that, too. But how?”
+
+“Are you certain of your facts, George?”
+
+“I've been to Somerset house and seen my mother's will.”
+
+“Legally, then--we'll get it out of him by law.”
+
+“I've thought of that,” George said. “I don't think it is possible.
+Look, the passage runs like this. I have it word for word. 'To my
+brother Christopher Marrapit 4000 pounds, and I desire him to educate in
+the medical profession my son George.' Not even 'with which I desire
+him,' you see. I don't think there's any legal way of getting the money
+I want--the five hundred.”
+
+
+
+II.
+
+For full ten minutes Professor Wyvern made no answer. He stared in the
+fire, and every now and again one of his little chuckles set his bent
+old shoulders bobbing. Upon a longer chuckle they waggled for a
+space; then he turned to George. “Not legally; well, then, what about
+illegally, George?”
+
+George did not comprehend.
+
+“A very bad notion has come into my head,” the Professor continued. “I
+ought to be ashamed of it, but I am not. I think it would be very funny.
+I think your uncle would deserve it. I am sure it would be very funny,
+and I think it would be proper and justifiable.”
+
+“Go on,” George said. “Tell me.”
+
+The Professor's old shoulders bobbed about again. “No, I will not tell
+you,” he said. “I will not be a party to it; because if my wife found
+out she would send me to bed and keep me there. But I will tell you a
+little story, George. If it sets up a train of action that you like to
+follow--well, I think it will be very funny. Only, don't tell me.”
+
+“I say, this is mysterious. Tell me the story.”
+
+“Yes, I will. This is the story. When I was a student in Germany we had
+a professor called Meyer. He wore a wig because he was quite bald. He
+was very sensitive about his baldness and would have no one know--but we
+knew. Upon one afternoon there was a great violinist who was coming to
+play at our town. All the professors announced that for this occasion
+they would postpone the lectures they should then have given, so that
+their classes might attend the concert. But this Professor Meyer said
+that he would not postpone his lecture. It was a link in a series, you
+understand--not to be missed,--so his class, of which I was one; were
+very furious. We told him that we were entitled to a holiday this day
+since all had it, but he would not hear us. We were very angry, for
+this holiday was our right. Now, also, one week before the concert the
+burgomaster of our town was to give a great banquet to the celebration
+of the centenary of a famous citizen. Here our Professor Meyer was to
+make a speech. Well, when he remained adamant, determined to give us
+no holiday, we had a great meeting, and thus we arranged to procure
+the holiday that was ours by right. Our plot was justified by his
+mulishness. He should lose the thing he most cherished--he should lose
+his wig two days before his banquet with the burgomaster. One of us
+would take his wig, seizing him as by night he walked to his rooms.
+Before his distress we should be most sympathetic, offering every aid.
+Perchance he would encourage our efforts by offer of the prize we most
+desired. The plot worked, with no misadventure, to a brilliant triumph.
+We took the wig. We enveloped him in our sympathy. 'Search out and
+restore my wig,' said he, 'and you shall have your holiday.' Then we
+found his wig and we enjoyed the holiday that was our right. That is the
+story,” Professor Wyvern ended.
+
+Mystification clouded George's face. He pushed out a leg, stared at the
+toe. He stared at the fire; at the Professor, chuckling and rubbing
+his hands, he stared. His brain twisted the story this way and that,
+striving to dovetail it into his own circumstances.
+
+In such a process the eyes are the mouth of the machine whence the
+completed manufacture sends forth its sparkling. But while the mechanism
+twists and turns the fabrics there is no sparkle--the eyes are clouded
+in thought, as we say.
+
+The eyes that George turned upon toe, upon fire, and upon Professor
+Wyvern, were dull and lack-lustre. The machine worked unproductive;
+there was a cog that required adjustment, a lever that wanted a pull.
+
+George sought the foreman machinist; said slowly: “But I don't see how
+the story helps me?”
+
+“Well, you must think over it,” Professor Wyvern told him. “I dare
+not tell you any more. I must be no party to the inference that can be
+drawn. But do you not see that the thing our Professor cherished most
+was his wig? Now, Bill has told me that the thing your uncle cherishes
+above all price is--”
+
+Click went the machine; round buzzed the wheels; out from George's eyes
+shot the sparkles. He jumped to his feet, his face red. “Is his cat!” he
+cried. “His Rose of Sharon! I see it! I see it! By Gad, I'll do it! Look
+here now--”
+
+“No, I will not,” the Professor said. “I do not wish to know anything
+about it. I hear my wife's step.”
+
+“I understand. All right. But don't tell a soul--not even Bill.”
+
+“I cannot tell, because I do not know. But I suspect it is something
+very funny,” and the Professor burst into a very deep “Ho! ho! ho!”
+
+“My dearest,” said Mrs. Wyvern at the door, “whatever can you be
+laughing at so loudly?”
+
+“Ho! ho! ho! ho!” boomed the Professor, belling like a bloodhound. “It
+is something very funny.”
+
+Mrs. Wyvern kissed the thin hairs on the top of his mighty head. “Dear
+William, I do trust it was not one of those painful stories of your
+young days.”
+
+George stayed to dinner. By nine he left the house. He did not make for
+home. Striking through lanes he climbed an ascending field, mounted a
+stile, and here, with an unseeing eye upon Herons' Holt twinkling its
+bedroom lights in the valley below, he smoked many pipes, brooding upon
+his scheme.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+It was not a melancholy process. Every now and again a crack of laughter
+jerked him; once he took his pipe from his mouth and put up a ringing
+peal of mirth that sent a brace of bunnies, flirting near his feet,
+wildly scampering for safety. Long he brooded....
+
+A church clock gave him eleven. At ten he had been too deeply buried.
+Now his head was pushed clear from the burrow in which he had been
+working, and the sound caught his attention. No light now pricked
+Herons' Holt upon the dusky chart stretched beneath him. Its occupants
+were abed.
+
+“I'll do it to-night!” cried George. “I'll do it at once!”
+
+He drew on his pipe. A full cloud of smoke came. The pipe was well
+alight, and caution bidding him that it were well to bide a while
+so that sleep might more cosily warm the beds of the household, he
+determined that he would have out his last smoke as plotter: his next
+would be smoked as doer of the deed.
+
+He rehearsed his plan. A knife would slip back the catch of the window
+behind which the Rose of Sharon lay. Possessing himself of her person
+he would speed to that tumbled hut in the copse. There she might lie in
+safety for the night: neither hut nor copse was in any man's road. Upon
+the morrow, when the hideous circumstance had been discovered, he would
+bear himself as events seemed to demand. He would be boundless in his
+sympathy, a leader in the search. If the idea of reward did not occur to
+Mr. Marrapit, he must suggest it. Unlikely that in the first moment
+of loss, when the Rose would still seem to be near, the reward would
+approach the figure at which he aimed. That was for his cunning to
+contrive. But obviously it would be impossible permanently to keep the
+Rose in the hut. To-morrow, when pretending to search for her he could
+guard the place where she lay; but he could not always be sentinel.
+The countryside would be scoured; no stone left unturned, no spinney
+unbeaten.
+
+As he saw the matter, the plan would be to get somewhere down the
+railway line on pretext of a clue, taking the Rose of Sharon with him;
+for the success of the whole scheme depended upon his concealing the cat
+until Mr. Marrapit should be upon his bended knees in his distress,
+in deepest despair as to the Rose's recovery, and hence would be
+transported to deepest gratitude when it was restored to his arms.
+George told himself he must be prepared against the eventuality of his
+uncle failing to offer in public reward so large a sum as 500 pounds.
+That did not greatly distress. Best indeed if that sum were offered,
+but, failing it, it was upon Mr. Marrapit's gratitude that George
+ultimately reckoned. Surely when he “found” the cat it would be Mr.
+Marrapit's natural reply to give in exchange the sum he had that
+afternoon so violently refused. At the least, he could not refuse to
+lend it.
+
+Early in his brooding George had decided he must not tell his Mary.
+First, it would be cruel to set her upon the rack of acting a part
+before Mr. Marrapit, before the household, before every questioner she
+must encounter; second--second, my ignoble George had doubts as to in
+what spirit his Mary would regard this plot did he make her partner in
+it. That it was wholly justifiable he personally would have contended
+before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that
+was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother
+had given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have
+protested-without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of
+righteousness, with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his
+cause before his Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion
+to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye with him in the matter. She
+might; but it was an eventuality he did not care to try against a test.
+His Mary was a girl--and girls are in their conduct narrowed by scruples
+that do not beset men. His Mary--and this it was that would make a test
+so violent--his Mary was his Mary, and well he knew, and loved, the
+little heart so delicately white as instantly to discover the finest
+specks of sootiness--if specks there were--in any breeze that might
+cross its surface.
+
+No, he would not tell his Mary. When the thing was done--when he, the
+black-hearted rogue, had the little saint safe in the toils she would
+find so delicious, then--then he would tell her, would silence her
+frightened squeals--if she squealed--by his intention to pay back the
+money, whether won as reward (which was improbable) or earned as token
+of gratitude (which was highly likely). He had only asked to borrow, and
+it should only be a loan.
+
+Across the dark fields in spirit he kissed his little saint. ... Of
+course--of course--one must admit these brutal things--of course the
+scheme might fail. Anything might happen to crash it about his ears.
+That was a deadly, dismal thought, but he flattened it from sight with
+that lusty hammer that gay youth uses--“I shan't be any worse off if it
+does fail.”
+
+The smoke came through his pipe in burning whiffs. He shook it bowl
+downwards. Ashes and sparks fell in a shower. The pipe was done.
+
+_Whoop! forrard!_ The game was afoot.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A moon as clear as that which shone when Bill stole to Herons' Holt
+to woo his blessed damosel, gave a clear light to George as now he
+approached the house. He took his way across the fields, and his
+progression was that of no stealthy-footed conspirator. Two miles of
+downward-sloping land lay between the stile whereon he had brooded and
+the home that his plottings were to disturb. In buoyant spirits--for
+this was action, and action makes lusty appeal to youth--he trotted or
+galloped as the descent was easy or sharply inclined; the low hedges he
+took in great sprawling jumps, the ditches in vast giant strides--arms
+working as balance-pole, humming as he ran.
+
+Upon the lawn he became more cautious. But the moon showed Herons' Holt
+sleepy-eyed-blinds drawn.
+
+The cats' parlour, back of the house, gave upon a little strip of turf
+that kept away the kitchen garden. George drew his knife; approached the
+window. Now he was a criminal indeed.
+
+To slip the catch was easy work; between upper and lower sash there was
+clear space. George inserted his pen-knife. Tip of blade grated against
+catch; a little pressure--an answering movement; a little more--and,
+_click_, the trick was done!
+
+Now he raised the sash, and now he is in the room. Glimmer of a match
+shows him the sleeping-baskets; its steadier flame discloses the Rose,
+snugly curled, a little free of her silken coverlet.
+
+Wake, now, Rose--as an older school of novelists would have addressed
+you. Wake, Rose! Wake, pretty Rose! Queenly Rose, awake! Wake precious,
+virgin Rose! Squeal! scratch! bite! Claw those wicked hands descending
+into your pure bed! Spring like spotless maiden aroused to find ravisher
+at her couch! Spring, Rose, spring! Squawking news of outrage to all the
+house, bound wildly, Rose, about this room that else you shall not see
+until through searing perils you have passed! Spring! Rose, spring!
+
+Not Rose!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The ravisher's hands descended upon her person--she only purred. They
+passed about her warm and exquisite form--she purred the more. They
+tickled her as they laid hold--she stretched a leg; purred with fuller
+note. Perchance this virgin cat dreamed of some gallant young Tom wooing
+her bed; perchance these ticklings had their deliciously transfigured
+place in her visions; perchance--she only purred.
+
+Now George tucked her beneath his arm. Legs dangled wretchedly; gallant
+young Tom leapt from her dreams and she awoke. She stirred. George had a
+foot upon the window-sill, and the night air ruffled her downy coat.
+She was pressed against bony ribs; a rough arm squeezed her wretchedly;
+long, poky fingers tortured her flank; her legs draggled dismally. She
+voiced protest in a plaintive, piercing, long-drawn _“Mi-aow!”_
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Ah, Rose! Pretty, foolish Rose--as our older school again would have
+written--why did you entertain sensuous dreams when you should have been
+stirring?
+
+_“Mi-aow!”_
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Too late, Rose! Too late! That beauteous head--that prize-winning head
+which from kittenhood upwards has known none other than caress, is now
+a mark for battering bumps if you do but open those perfect jaws--those
+prize-winning jaws. Too late, Rose! Too late! Do not cry now, Rose! The
+ravisher has you. His blood congeals in terror at your plaintive cry.
+In his brutish panic he will answer it with thuds. Too late, Rose! Too
+late!
+
+“_Mi-aow!_”
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Ah, Rose, Rose!
+
+He is outside now. “Shut up, you fat idiot!” he hisses. Squeezing her
+yet more villainously with one arm, with the other he draws down the
+sash. Through the gate, into the lane, over the stream, down the ride,
+into the copse--up to the hut.
+
+The outer door hangs grinningly upon its hinges. The door going to
+the inner room has a working latch; George kicks it open; elbows it to
+behind him; drops the Rose with jarring plump; strikes a match. There is
+the dusty pile of Old Tom bottles, there the little heap of bracken upon
+which Mrs. Major doubtless had reclined while with Old Tom she talked.
+Excellent!
+
+The match goes out. He lights another. The Rose is standing forlornly at
+his feet. While the match lasts he lifts her to the bracken bed; presses
+her down; backs out; closes the door.
+
+His watch, put beneath the moon, tells him it is upon one o'clock. He
+pulls to the outer door; wedges beneath it a stump of wood that keeps it
+firmly shut; makes for home.
+
+In an hour he is sleeping the dreamless, childlike slumber that comes
+to those who, setting their hand to the plough, have manfully laboured a
+full day's work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Horror At Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Sleep does not necessarily shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton
+mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice
+or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, seductive
+when least desired.
+
+George, steeped in crime, snuggled warmly to her until aroused by a rude
+shaking.
+
+Night-capped and dressing-gowned, white-faced and trembling, awful in
+grief Mr. Marrapit stood near him.
+
+“Get up! The Rose of Sharon is lost.”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“I tell you it is so. Up!”
+
+George pushed a shaking leg out of bed. He was had unawares. As a
+sleeper pitched sleeping into the sea, so from unconsciousness he was
+hurled plump into the whirlpool of events. And as the sleeper thus
+immersed would gulp and sink and kick, so now he blinked, shivered, and
+gasped.
+
+He repeated: “Impossible!”
+
+“I tell you it is so. I have eyes; I have been to her room.” Mr.
+Marrapit's voice rose in a wailing cry. “I have been to her room. Gone!
+Gone!”
+
+George put out the other leg--crime-steeped legs that quivered. He had
+looked for a space between awaking and meeting his uncle in which to
+prepare his plans, rehearse his words. This abrupt rousing stampeded his
+senses. He quavered “Wher--where can she be?”
+
+Mr. Marrapit flung up his arms. “Oh, my God! If I knew that would I be
+here? Up! Up! Join the searchers in the garden.”
+
+George pushed a criminal leg into his trousers. Conscience made thumbs
+of his fingers, trembled his joints. He hopped frantically, thrusting
+with the other foot.
+
+“Dance!” Mr. Marrapit moaned bitterly. “Dance! That is right! Why do you
+not sing also? This is nothing to you! Dance on! Dance on!”
+
+George cannoned the wash-stand. “It _is_ something to me. I can hardly
+believe it!”
+
+“Is sorrow expressed in a gavotte? Grief in a hornpipe?”
+
+“I'm not dancing. My damned bags are stuck!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit wrung his hands. “Discard them! Discard them! Must decency
+imperil the Rose?”
+
+With a tremendous kick George thrust in past the obstruction.
+
+“They're on now--my slippers--coat--what shall I do?”
+
+“Join the searchers. Scour the grounds. Search every shrub. Climb every
+tree.”
+
+The agonised man led downstairs. “I found the window open,” he moaned.
+“Night by night, year in year out, I have shut it. Impossible that I
+forgot. If I forgot, the Rose is in the garden or in the vicinity. If I
+did not forget, the window was forced--the Rose was stolen. A detective
+shall decide.”
+
+George grew quite cold. Employment of a detective had not occurred to
+him. They were at the front door. He put a hand on Mr. Marrapit's arm.
+“Oh, not a detective. Don't get a detective.”
+
+“If need be I will get forty detectives. I will blacken the countryside
+with detectives.”
+
+George grew quite hot. “Uncle, let us keep this private. Leave it with
+me. Rely on me. I will find your cat.”
+
+“Into the garden,” cried Mr. Marrapit. “Join the searchers. They have
+failed once. Lead, animate, encourage.”
+
+“And you won't get a detective?”
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not reply. He had opened the hall door; Mr. Fletcher in
+the middle distance approached moodily.
+
+Mr. Marrapit thrust out a hand. “Back! Back!” he cried hoarsely.
+
+Wearily Mr. Fletcher gave answer. “It's no use, Mr. Marrapit. It's no
+good saying 'back.' I've been back. I've been back and I've been front
+and I've been both sides. I've looked here, I've looked there; I've
+looked up, I've looked down. I'm giddy with looking.” He approached;
+stood before them. Woe heavily draped herself about this man.
+
+“Oh, easily discouraged!” Mr. Marrapit cried.
+
+“Oh, infirm of purpose! Back, faint-heart! Do not say die.”
+
+Faint-heart mopped a streaming brow. “But I do say die. I do say die,
+Mr. Marrapit, and I damn well shall die if I go creepin' and crawlin'
+and hissin' much longer. It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not
+a cobra.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit slammed the door. George hurried out of sight; in the
+kitchen garden sat down to think. He was frightened. Thus far the plot
+had not worked well. Detectives!
+
+He gave an hour to the search he was ostensibly conducting; when he
+again entered the house was more easy-minded. Employed in meditation
+that hour gave him back his coolness of the night. Rudely awakened,
+given no time in which firmly to plant his feet, securely to get a
+purchase with his hands before the storm burst, he had been whirled
+along helpless and bewildered before Mr. Marrapit's gusty agony. Instead
+of resisting the torrent, directing its course, he had been caught where
+it surged fiercest, hurled down-stream. In the vulgar simile of his
+reflections he was rotting the whole show.
+
+But now he had steadied himself. He girded his loins against the part he
+had to play; with new determination and confidence entered the house.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+There was no breakfast at Herons' Holt that morning. When George,
+dressed, bathed and shaved, sought out his uncle, it was to find Mr.
+Marrapit in the study.
+
+The distracted man was pacing the floor, a closely written sheet of
+paper in his hands. He turned upon George.
+
+“In the hour of my travail I am also beneath the burden of earlier
+griefs. Yesterday a disastrous scene took place between us. Oaths rasped
+from your lips.”
+
+“Forget that, sir. Forget it.”
+
+“That is my desire. Misery wails through the corridors. In her presence
+let us bury private differences. In this appalling catastrophe every
+help is required. You have youth, manhood; you should be invaluable.”
+
+George declared: “I mean to be. I will not rest until the Rose is
+restored.”
+
+This was perfectly true, as he was to discover.
+
+“Commendable,” Mr. Marrapit pronounced. Now that this volunteer was
+enlisted, Mr. Marrapit discarded supplication, resumed mastery. “While
+you have searched,” he said, “I have schemed.” He indicated the paper he
+carried. “These are my plans. Peruse them.”
+
+George read; returned the paper. “If these arrangements do not restore
+the Rose,” he declared, “nothing will. I see you do not mention my name.
+I fear you doubted my assistance. I think I will join the--the----“--he
+glanced at the paper--“the _extra-mural_ searchers. I know the
+countryside well. I can go far and fast.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit agreed. “Summon the household,” he commanded.
+
+George called Margaret; the two carried out the order.
+
+In a semicircle the household grouped about their master; from Mrs.
+Armitage at the one horn to George at the other they took their
+places--Mrs. Armitage, Clara, Ada, Mr. Fletcher, Frederick, Mary,
+Margaret, George.
+
+Paper in hand Mr. Marrapit regarded them. He pointed at Frederick.
+
+“That boy is sucking a disgusting peppermint. Disgorge.”
+
+Glad of relief, all eyes went upon the infamous youth. He purpled,
+struggled, gulped, swallowed--from his eyes tears streamed.
+
+“Stiffneck!” Mr. Marrapit thundered. “Disgorge, I said. You are
+controlled by appetite; your belly is your god.”
+
+“Well, I ain't 'ad no breakfast,” Stiffneck answered fiercely. Like Miss
+Porter upon a similar occasion this boy was in great pain.
+
+“And no breakfast shall you have until the Rose is restored. Heartless!
+How can you eat while she, perhaps, does starve?” The angry man
+addressed the group. “These are the plans for her recovery. Give ear.
+You, vile boy, will rush to the dairy and order to be sent at once as
+much milk as Mrs. Armitage will command you. Mrs. Armitage, you with
+your maids--Fletcher, you with that boy, are the _intramural_
+workers, the workers within the walls. George, Margaret, Miss
+Humfray--_extra-mural_. Mrs. Armitage, with milk let every bowl and
+saucer be filled. Fletcher, at intervals of thirty feet along the wall
+let these be placed. If our wanderer is near she will be attracted.
+Margaret, with Miss Humfray to the village. Collect an army of village
+boys. Describe our Rose. Set them to scour the countryside for her.
+Yourselves join that search. Let the call of 'Rose! Rose!' echo through
+every lane. George, you also will scour far and wide. Upon your way
+despatch to me a cab from the station. I drive to the post-office to
+telephone for a detective. I have not yet decided which detective. It is
+a momentous matter.” He flung out both hands. “To your tasks! Let zeal,
+let love for our lost one spur each to outvie the efforts of another.
+Fletcher, raise the window. That pungent boy has poisoned the air.”
+
+They trooped from him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A Detective At Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Bolt Buildings, Westminster, is a colossal red structure reared upon
+the site of frightened-looking little houses which fell beneath the
+breaker's hammer coincident with the falling in of their lease. Here you
+may have a complete floor of rooms at from three to five hundred a
+year; or, high under the roof, you may rent a single room for forty-five
+pounds.
+
+Mr. David Brunger, Private Detective and Confidential Inquiry Agent,
+appeared on the books of the Bolt Buildings management as lessee of one
+of these single rooms. The appearance of his quarters as presented to
+the visitor had, however, a more pretentious aspect.
+
+Shot to the topmost floor in the electric lift, passing to the left
+and up five stairs in accordance with the lift boy's instructions,
+the intending client would be faced by three doors. Upon the first was
+inscribed:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks).
+
+Upon the middle door:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Private).
+
+And upon the third:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Office).
+
+These signs of large staff and flourishing business were in keeping with
+the telling advertisements which Mr. David Brunger from time to time
+caused to appear in the Press.
+
+“Watch your wife,” said these advertisements, adding in smaller type
+that had the appearance of a whisper: “David Brunger will watch her.”
+ “What keeps your husband late at office?” they continued. “David Brunger
+will find out. Confidential inquiry of every description promptly and
+cheaply carried out by David Brunger's large staff of skilled detectives
+(male and female). David Brunger has never failed. David Brunger has
+restored thousands of pounds' worth of stolen property, countless
+missing relatives. David Brunger, 7 Bolt Buildings, Strange Street, S.W.
+Tel. 0000 West.”
+
+In London, with its myriad little eddies of crime and matrimonial
+infelicity, there is a neat sum to be made out of detective work.
+Scotland Yard wolfs the greater part of these opportunities; there are
+established names that absorb much of the remainder. In the surplus,
+however, there is still a livelihood for the David Brungers. For if the
+Brungers do not go nosing after silken petticoats covering aristocratic
+but wanton legs; if the Brungers do not go flying across the Continent,
+nose to ground, notebook in hand, after the fine linen worn by my lord
+who is making holiday with something fair and frail under the quiet
+name of Mr. and Mrs. Brown; if the Brungers are not employed to draggle
+silken petticoats and fine linen through the Divorce Court, there is
+work for them among humbler washing baskets. Jealous little shop-keepers
+have erring little wives, and common little wives have naughty little
+husbands: these come to your Brungers. And if, again, the Brungers
+do not dog the footsteps of your fifty-thousand-pound men, your
+embezzlement-over-a-period-of-ten-years men, your cheque-forging
+men--if the Brungers are invited to do no dogging after these, there are
+pickings for them in less flashy crimes. Hiding in cupboard work while
+the sweated little shop-assistant slips a marked shilling from the till,
+hiding in basement work while a trembling little figure creeps down and
+pilfers the stock--these are the pranks that come to your Brungers.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+While Mr. Marrapit at Herons' Holt was addressing to his household
+grouped about him his orders relative to the search for the Rose of
+Sharon, Mr. David Brunger at Bolt Buildings was entering the door marked
+“DAVID BRUNGER (Private).”
+
+A telephone, a gas stove, a roll-top desk, an office chair, an armchair,
+a tiny deal table and a wooden-seated chair comprised the furniture of
+the apartment.
+
+“For myself, I like severity and simplicity of surroundings,” Mr. David
+Brunger in the office chair would tell a client in the armchair. “For
+_myself_--” and he would waggle his head towards the side walls with an
+air that seemed to imply prodigal luxury in the fittings of “(Clerks)”
+ and “(Office).”
+
+Entering the room Mr. Brunger unlocked the roll-top desk; discovered the
+stump of a half-smoked cigarette; lit it and began to compare the day's
+racing selections of “Head Lad,” who imparted stable secrets to one
+tipster's organ, with those of “Trainer,” who from the knowledge of his
+position very kindly gave one horse snips to another.
+
+At ten o'clock the large staff of trained detectives (male and female),
+mentioned in Mr. Brunger's advertisements, came pouring up the stairs,
+knocked at the door and filed into the room. Its name was Issy Jago, a
+Jewish young gentleman aged seventeen, whose appearance testified in the
+highest manner to the considerable thrift he exercised in the matter of
+hair-dressers and toilet soap.
+
+Mr. Issy Jago sat himself on the wooden-seated chair before the small
+deal table; got to work upon his finger-nails with the corner of an
+omnibus ticket; proceeded to study the police court reports in the
+_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+It was his duty, whenever he noted plaintiffs or defendants to whom Mr.
+David Brunger's services might be of benefit, to post to them Mr.
+David Brunger's card together with a selection of entirely unsolicited
+testimonials composed and dictated by Mr. Brunger for the occasion.
+
+Also his duty to receive clients.
+
+When a knock was heard at “DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks)” Mr. Issy Jago
+would slip through from “DAVID BRUNGER (Private)” to the tiny closet
+containing the cistern into which the door marked “DAVID BRUNGER
+(Clerks)” opened. Sliding through this door in such a manner as to give
+the client no glimpse of the interior, he would inform the visitor,
+with a confidential wink, “Fact is we have a client in there--a very
+well-known personage who does not wish it to be known that he is
+consulting us.” The impressed caller would then be conducted into “DAVID
+BEUNGER (Private).”
+
+Between “DAVID BRUNGER (Private)” and “DAVID BRUNGER (Office),” on the
+other hand, there was no communication. Indeed there was no room behind
+“(Office)”: the door gave on to the roof. When, therefore, a hesitating
+client chose to knock at “(Office)” Mr. Issy Jago, emerging from
+“(Private),” would give the whispered information: “Fact is there's a
+very important private consultation going on in there--Scotland Yard
+consulting us.” And the impressed client would forthwith be led into
+“DAVID BRUNGER (Private).”
+
+In either event, the client trapped, Mr. Issy Jago would skip into
+“(Clerks)” and sit on the cistern till Mr. Brunger's bell summoned him.
+
+For the privilege of adding to the dignity of his single apartment
+by having his name inscribed upon the cistern cupboard and upon the
+emergency exit to the roof, Mr. Brunger paid thirty shillings extra per
+annum.
+
+III.
+
+By half-past ten Mr. Brunger was occupied in composing an unsolicited
+testimonial to be sent to the wife of a green-grocer in the Borough who,
+on the previous day, had summoned her husband for assault at Lambeth
+Police-Court.
+
+“I had suspicions but no proof of my 'usband's infidelity,” dictated
+Mr. Brunger, pacing the floor, “until I enlisted your services. I must
+say--”
+
+At that moment the telephone bell rang. Mr. Brunger ceased dictation;
+took up the receiver.
+
+“Are you David Brunger, the private detective?” a voice asked.
+
+“We are,” replied Mr. Brunger in the thin treble he used on first
+answering a call. “Who are you, please?”
+
+“I am Mr. Christopher Marrapit of Herons' Holt, Paltley Hill, Surrey.
+I--”
+
+“One moment,” piped Mr. Brunger. “Is it confidential business?”
+
+“It is most urgent business. I--”
+
+“One moment, please. In that case the private secretary must take your
+message.”
+
+Mr. Brunger laid down the receiver; took a turn across the room;
+approached the telephone; in a very deep bass asked, “Are you there?”
+
+The frantic narrative that was poured into his ears he punctuated with
+heavy, guttural “Certainly's,” “Yes's,” “We comprehend's,” “We follow
+you's.” Then: “Mr. David Brunger himself? I'm afraid that is impossible,
+sir. Mr. Brunger has his hands very full just now. He is closeted
+with Scotland Yard. At this moment, sir, the Yard is consulting him
+...'m...'m. Well, I'll see, sir, I'll see. I doubt it. I very much doubt
+it. But hold the line a minute, sir.”
+
+In his capacity of Mr. David Brunger's private secretary, Mr. David
+Brunger drank from the carafe of water on the mantelpiece to clear his
+tortured throat.
+
+In his capacity of the great detective and confidential inquiry agent
+himself, he then stepped to the telephone and, after exhibiting a power
+of invention relative to startling crimes in hand that won even the
+admiration of Mr. Issy Jago, announced that he would be with Mr.
+Marrapit at three o'clock.
+
+“It may be a big job, Issy,” he remarked, relighting the stump of
+cigarette, “or it may be a little job. But what I say and what I do is,
+_impress your client. Impress your client,_ Issy. Let that be your maxim
+through life. And if I catch you again takin' a draw at my cigarette
+when my back's turned, as I see you just now, I'll damn well turn you
+inside out and chuck you through that door. So you watch it. You've made
+this smoke taste 'orrid-'orrid. No sauce, now; no sauce.”
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+By two o'clock the results of Mr. Marrapit's colossal scheme began to
+pour in.
+
+The bowls of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every
+stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a
+clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the immediate
+generalship of Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Throughout the morning cats bounded, flickered and disappeared upon the
+wall. Fat cats, thin cats; tom cats, tabby cats; white cats, black cats,
+yellow cats, and grey cats; young cats and old cats. As each appeared,
+Mr. Marrapit, first expectant then moaning, would wave his assistants to
+the assault. Up would go the clothes-prop of Mr. Fletcher or Frederick;
+down would go the stranger cat. It was exhausting work.
+
+At two-thirty the village boys who had been searching were mustered at
+the gate. Each bore a cat. Some carried two. Leaving his clothes-prop
+lancers, Mr. Marrapit hurried down the drive to hold review.
+
+“Pass,” he commanded, “in single file before me.”
+
+They passed. “Dolt! Dolt!” groaned Mr. Marrapit, writhing in the
+bitterness of crushed hope as each cat was held towards him. “Dolt and
+pumpkin-head! How could that wretched creature be my Rose?”
+
+How, indeed, when at that moment the Rose of Sharon in the ruined hut
+was lapping milk taken her by George in a lemonade bottle, her infamous
+captor smoking on the threshold?
+
+Precisely at three o'clock Mr. David Brunger arrived. Conducted to the
+room whence the Rose had disappeared, the astute inquiry agent was there
+closeted with Mr. Marrapit for half an hour. At the end of that time Mr.
+Marrapit appeared on the lawn. His face was white, his voice, when he
+spoke, hollow and trembling. He called to the clothes-prop lancers:
+
+“Cease. Cease. Withdraw the milk. The Rose of Sharon is not strayed. She
+is stolen!”
+
+“Thenk Gord!” said Frederick. “Thenk Gord! I've pretty well busted
+myself over this game.”
+
+Mr. Fletcher said nothing; drew his snail from his pocket; plunged head
+downwards in a bush. Woe sat heavy upon him; beneath the indignity and
+labour of thrusting at stranger cats with a clothes-prop this man had
+grievously suffered.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The Rose was stolen. That was Mr. Brunger's discovery after examination
+of the window-latch where George's knife had marked it, the sill where
+George's boots had scratched it. Outside the great detective searched
+for footmarks--they had been obliterated by heavy rainfall between
+the doing of the hideous deed and its discovery. Upon the principle of
+impressing his client, however, Mr. Brunger grovelled on the path with
+tape measure and note-book; measured every pair of boots in the house;
+measured the window; measured the room; in neat little packets tied up
+specimens of the gravel, specimens of the turf, specimens of hair from
+the Rose of Sharon's coat, picked from her bed.
+
+It was six o'clock when he had concluded. By then George had returned;
+the three held council in the study. Addressing Mr. Marrapit, Mr.
+Brunger tapped his note-book and his little packages. “We shall track
+the culprit, never fear, Mr. Marrapit,” he said. “My impression is that
+this is the work of a gang--a _gang_.”
+
+“Precisely my impression,” George agreed.
+
+Mr. Brunger took the interruption with the gracious bow of one who
+condescends to accept a pat on the back from an inferior. Mr. Marrapit
+twisted his fingers in his thin hair; groaned aloud.
+
+“A _gang,_” repeated Mr. Brunger, immensely relishing the word. “We
+detectives do not like to speak with certainty until we have clapped our
+hands upon our men; we leave that for the amateurs, the bunglers--the
+_quacks_ of our profession.” The famous confidential inquiry agent
+tapped the table with his forefinger and proceeded impressively. “But I
+will say this much. Not only a gang, but a desperate gang, a dangerous,
+stick-at-nothing gang.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit writhed. The detective continued: “What are our grounds for
+this belief?” he asked. “What are our _data_?”
+
+He looked at George. George shook his head. Easy enough, and useful,
+to acquiesce in the idea of a gang, but uncommonly hard to support the
+belief. He shook his head.
+
+Mr. Brunger was disappointed; a little at sea, he would have clutched
+eagerly at any aid. However, “impress your client.” He continued: “These
+are our data. We have a valuable cat--a cat, sir, upon which the eyes of
+cat-breeders are enviously fixed. Take America--you have had surprising
+offers from America for this cat, sir, so you told me?”
+
+“Eight hundred pounds,” Mr. Marrapit groaned.
+
+“Precisely. Observe how our data accumulate. We have dissatisfaction
+among breeders at home because you will not employ this cat as, in their
+opinion, for the good of the breed, she should be employed.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit moaned: “Polygamy is abhorrent to me.”
+
+“Precisely. Our data positively pile about us. We have a thousand
+enthusiasts yearning for this cat. We have your refusal to sell or
+to--to--” Mr. Brunger allowed a hiatus delicately to express his
+meaning. “Then depend upon it, sir, we have a determination to secure
+this cat by foul means since fair will not avail. We have a conspiracy
+among unscrupulous breeders to obtain this valuable cat, and hence, sir,
+we have a gang--a _gang_.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit put his anguish of mind into two very deep groans.
+
+“Keep calm, my dear sir,” Mr. Brunger soothed. “We shall return your
+cat. We have our data.” He continued: “Now, sir, there are two ways of
+dealing with a _gang_. We can capture the _gang_ or we can seduce the
+_gang_--by offering a reward.”
+
+George jumped in his chair. “Anything wrong?” Mr. Brunger inquired.
+
+“Your--your extraordinary grasp of the case astonishes me,” George
+exclaimed.
+
+“Experience, sir, experience,” said Mr. Brunger airily. Addressing Mr.
+Marrapit, “We must put both methods to work,” he continued. “I shall
+now go to town, look up the chief breeders and set members of my trained
+staff to track them. Also I must advertise this reward. With a cat of
+such value we cannot use half measures. Shall we say one hundred pounds
+to start with?”
+
+“Barley water!” gasped Mr. Marrapit. “Barley water!”
+
+George sprang to the sideboard where always stood a jug of Mr.
+Marrapit's favourite refreshment. Mr. Marrapit drank, agitation rattling
+the glass against his teeth.
+
+“Think what it means to you, sir,” persuaded Mr. Brunger, a little
+alarmed at the effects of his proposal.
+
+The detective's tone had a very earnest note, for he was thinking
+with considerable gratification what the hundred pounds would mean to
+himself. On previous occasions he had urged rewards from his clients,
+put Mr. Issy Jago in the way of securing them, and paid that gentleman a
+percentage.
+
+“Think what it means to you,” he repeated. “What is a hundred pounds or
+thrice that sum against the restoration of your cat? Come, what is it,
+sir?”
+
+“Ruin,” answered Mr. Marrapit, gulping barley water. “Ruin.”
+
+Mr. Brunger urged gravely: “Oh, don't say that, sir. Think what our dumb
+pets are to us. I've got a blood-'ound at home myself that I'd give
+my life for if I lost--gladly. Surely they're more to us, our faithful
+friends, than mere--mere--”
+
+“Pelf,” supplied George, on a thin squeak that was shot out by the
+excitement of seeing events so lustily playing his hand.
+
+“Mere pelf,” adopted Mr. Brunger.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gulped heavily at the barley water; set his gaze upon
+a life-size portrait in oils of his darling Rose; with fine calm
+announced: “If it must be, it must be.”
+
+With masterly celerity Mr. Brunger drew forward pen and paper;
+scribbled; in three minutes had Mr. Marrapit's signed authority to offer
+one hundred pounds reward.
+
+He put the document in his pocket; took up his hat. “To-morrow,” he
+said after farewells, “I or one of my staff will return to scour the
+immediate neighbourhood. It has been done, you tell me, but only by
+amateurs. The skilled detective, sir, will see a needle where the
+amateur cannot discern a haystack.”
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+He was gone. His last words had considerably alarmed George. No time was
+to be lost. All was working with a magic expediency, but the Rose
+must not be risked in the vicinity of one of these needle-observing
+detectives. She must be hurried away.
+
+“Uncle,” George said, “I did not say it while the detective was here--I
+do not wish to raise your hopes; but I believe I have a clue. Do not
+question me,” he added, raising a hand in terror lest Mr. Marrapit
+should begin examination. “I promise nothing. My ideas may be wholly
+imaginary. But I believe--I believe--oh, I believe I have a clue.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit rushed for the bell. “Recall the detective! You should have
+spoken. I will send Fletcher in pursuit.”
+
+George seized his uncle's arm. “On no account. That is why I did not
+speak before. I am convinced I can do better alone.”
+
+“You do not convince me. You are an amateur. We must have the skilled
+mind. Let me ring.”
+
+George was in terror. “No, no; do you not see it may be waste of time?
+Let me at least make sure, then I will tell the detective. Meanwhile
+let him pursue other clues. Why send the trained mind on what may be a
+goose-chase?”
+
+The argument had effect. Mr. Marrapit dropped into a chair.
+
+George explained. To follow the clue necessitated, he said, instant
+departure--by train. He would write fullest details; would wire from
+time to time if necessary. His uncle must trust him implicitly. The
+detective must not be told until he gave the word.
+
+Eager to clutch at any hope, Mr. Marrapit clutched at this. George was
+given money for expenses; at eight o'clock left the house. There had
+been no opportunity for words with his Mary. She did not even know
+that Mr. Marrapit had refused the money that was to mean marriage and
+Runnygate; she had not even danced with her George upon his success in
+his examination. Leaving the household upon his desperate clue, George
+could do no more than before them all bid her formal farewell. At
+half-past eight he is cramming the peerless Rose of Sharon into a basket
+taken from Mr. Fletcher's outhouses; at nine the villain is tramping
+the railway platform, in agony lest his burden shall mi-aow; at ten the
+monster is at Dippleford Admiral; at eleven the traitor is asleep in the
+bedroom of an inn, the agitated Rose uneasily slumbering upon his bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Terror At Dippleford Admiral.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+“Impress your client,” was the maxim of Mr. David Brunger. “Make a
+splash and keep splashing,” was that of Mr. Henry T. Bitt, editor of
+Fleet Street's new organ, the _Daily_.
+
+Muddy pools were Mr. Bitt's speciality. His idea of the greatest
+possible splash was some stream, pure and beautiful to the casual eye,
+into which he could force his young men and set them trampling the
+bottom till the thick, unpleasant mud came clouding up whence it had
+long lain unsuspected. There was his splash, and then he would start to
+keep splashing. By every art and device the pool would be flogged till
+the muddy water went flying broadcast, staining this, that, and the
+other fair name to the nasty delight of Mr. Bitt's readers. Scandal was
+Mr. Bitt's chief quest. Army scandal, navy scandal, political scandal,
+social scandal--these were the courses that Mr. Bitt continuously strove
+to serve up to his readers. Failing them--if disappointingly in evidence
+on every side was the integrity and the honour for which Mr. Bitt raved
+and bawled when in the thick of splashing a muddy pool,--then, argued
+Mr. Bitt, catch hold of something trivial and splash it, flog it,
+placard it, into a sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set
+the halfpennies rising like trout in an evening stream.
+
+Bringing these principles-indeed they won him his appointment--to the
+editorship of the _Daily_, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by the
+fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue of
+the paper.
+
+But while preparing for press upon the second night the chance came.
+There was no scandal, no effective news; but there was matter for a
+sensational, semi-mysterious “leading story” in a tiny little scrap of
+news dictated by Mr. David Brunger, laboriously copied out a dozen times
+by Mr. Issy Jago and left by that gentleman at the offices of as many
+newspapers.
+
+Seven sub-editors “spiked” it, three made of it a “fill-par.,” one gave
+it a headline and sent it up as an eight-line “news-par.”; one, in the
+offices of the _Daily_, read it, laughed; spoke to the news-editor;
+finally carried it up to Mr. Bitt.
+
+Mr. Bitt's journalistic nose gave one sniff. The thing was done. Some
+old idiot was actually offering the ridiculously large sum of one
+hundred pounds for the recovery of a cat. Here, out of the barren,
+un-newsy world, suddenly had sprung a seed that should grow to a forest.
+The very thing. The _Daily_ was saved.
+
+Away sped a reporter; and upon the following morning, bawling from the
+leading position of the principal page of the _Daily_, introducing a
+column and a quarter of leaded type, these headlines appeared:
+
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  VALUABLE CAT STOLEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+  HUGE REWARD.
+
+  CHANCE FOR AMATEUR DETECTIVES.
+
+All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+
+_Daily_ readers revelled in it. It appeared that a gang of between five
+and a dozen men had surrounded the lonely but picturesque and beautiful
+country residence of Mr. Christopher Marrapit at Herons' Holt, Paltley
+Hill, Surrey. Mr. Marrapit was an immensely wealthy retired merchant
+now leading a secluded life in the evening of his days. First among
+the costly art and other treasures of his house he placed a magnificent
+orange cat, “The Rose of Sharon,” a winner whenever exhibited. The gang,
+bursting their way into the house, had stolen this cat, despite Mr.
+Marrapit's heroic defence, leaving the unfortunate gentleman senseless
+and bleeding on the hearth-rug. Mr. Marrapit had offered 100 pounds
+reward for the recovery of his pet; and the _Daily_, under the heading
+“Catchy Clues,” proceeded to tell its readers all over the country how
+best they might win this sum.
+
+All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_Daily_ readers revelled in it. Upon three of their number it had a
+particular effect.
+
+Bill Wyvern had not been at the _Daily_ office that night. Employed
+during the day, he had finished his work at six; after a gloomy meal had
+gone gloomily to bed. This man was on probation. His appointment to a
+permanent post depended upon his in some way distinguishing himself; and
+thus far, as, miserable, he reflected, he utterly had failed. The “copy”
+ he had done for the first issue of the _Daily_ had not been used; on
+this day he had been sent upon an interview and had obtained from his
+subject a wretched dozen words. These he had taken to the news-editor;
+and the news-editor had treated them and him with contempt.
+
+“But that's all he would say,” poor Bill had expostulated.
+
+“All he would say!” the news-editor sneered. “Here, Mathers, take this
+stuff and make a quarter-col. interview out of it.”
+
+Thus it was in depressed mood that Bill on the following morning opened
+his _Daily._
+
+The flaring “Country House Outrage” hit his eye; he read; in two minutes
+his mood was changed. A sensation at Paltley Hill! At Mr. Marrapit's!
+Here was his chance! Who better fitted than he to work up this story?
+Fortunately he knew Mr. Henry T. Bitt's private address; had the good
+sense to go straight to his chief.
+
+A cab took him to the editor's flat in Victoria Street. Mr. Bitt was
+equally enthusiastic.
+
+“Hot stuff,” said Mr. Bitt. “You've got your chance; make a splash. Go
+to the office and tell Lang I've put you on to it. Cut away down to the
+scene of the outrage and stay there as our Special Commissioner till I
+wire you back. Serve it up hot. Make clues if you can't find 'em. Hot,
+mind. H-O-T.”
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Professor Wyvern was the second reader upon whom the sensational story
+had particular effect.
+
+Through breakfast the Professor eyed with loving eagerness the copy of
+the _Daily_ that lay folded beside his plate.
+
+At intervals, “I have made a very good breakfast, now,” he would say.
+“Now I will try to find what Bill has written in this terrible paper.”
+
+But thrice Mrs. Wyvern lovingly checked him. “Dear William, no. You have
+hardly touched your sole. You must finish it, dear, every scrap, before
+you look at the paper. You have been eating such good breakfasts lately.
+Now, please, William, finish it first.”
+
+“It is as big as a shark,” the Professor grumbles, making shots with his
+trembling fork.
+
+“Dear William, it is a very small sole.”
+
+At last he has finished. A line catches his eye as he unfolds the
+_Daily_, and he chuckles: “Oh, dear! This is a very horrible paper.
+'Actress and Stockbroker--Piccadilly by night.'”
+
+“Dear William, we only want to read what Bill has written. An interview,
+he tells us, with--”
+
+Dear William waggles his naughty old head over the actress and the
+stockbroker; shaky fingers unfold the centre pages; nose runs up one
+column and down another, then suddenly starts back burnt by the flaring
+“Country House Outrage.”
+
+“Dearest! Dearest! Whatever is the matter?”
+
+But dearest is speechless. Dearest can only cough and choke and splutter
+in convulsions of mirth over some terrific joke of which he will tell
+Mrs. Wyvern no more than: “He has done it. Oh, dear! oh, dear! He has
+done it. Oh, dear! This will be very funny indeed!”
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It will be seen that two out of the three readers particularly
+interested in Mr. Bitt's splash were agreeably interested. Upon the
+third the effect was different.
+
+It was George's first morning in the little inn at Dippleford Admiral.
+An unaccustomed weight upon his legs, at which thrice he sleepily kicked
+without ridding himself of it, at length awoke him.
+
+He found the morning well advanced; the disturbing weight that had
+oppressed him he saw to be a hairy object, orange of hue. Immediately
+his drowsy senses awoke; took grip of events; sleep fled. This object
+was the Rose of Sharon, and at once George became actively astir to the
+surgings of yesterday, the mysteries of the future.
+
+Pondering upon them, he was disturbed by a knock that heralded a voice:
+“The paper you ordered, mister; and when'll you be ready for breakfast?”
+
+“Twenty minutes,” George replied; remembered the landlady had overnight
+told him she was a little deaf; on a louder note bawled: “Twenty
+minutes, Mrs. Pinner!”
+
+Mrs. Pinner, after hesitation, remarked: “Ready now? Very well, mister”;
+pushed a newspaper beneath the door; shuffled down the stairs.
+
+In the course of his brief negotiations with Mrs. Pinner upon the
+previous evening, George, in response to the proud information that the
+paper-boy arrived at nine o'clock every morning on a motor bicycle,
+had bellowed that he would have the _Daily_. For old Bill's sake he had
+ordered it; with friendly curiosity to see Bill's new associations he
+now withdrew his legs from beneath the Rose of Sharon; hopped out of
+bed; opened the paper.
+
+Upon “Country House Outrage” George alighted plump; with goggle eyes,
+scalp creeping, blood freezing, read through to the last “Catchy Clue”;
+aghast sank upon his bed.
+
+It had got into the papers! Among all difficult eventualities against
+which he had made plans this had never found place. It had got into the
+papers! The cat's abduction was, or soon would be, in the knowledge of
+everyone. This infernal reward which with huge joy he had heard offered,
+was now become the goad that would prick into active search for the
+Rose every man, woman, or child who read the story. It had got into the
+papers! He was a felon now; fleeing justice; every hand against him.
+Discovery looked certain, and what did discovery mean? Discovery meant
+not only loss of the enormous stake for which he was playing--his
+darling Mary,--but it meant--“Good God!” groaned my miserable George,
+“it means ruin; it means imprisonment.”
+
+Melancholy pictures went galloping like wild nightmares through this
+young man's mind. He saw himself in the dock, addressed in awful words
+by the judge who points out the despicable character of his crime;
+he saw himself in hideous garb labouring in a convict prison; he
+saw himself struck off the roll at the College of Surgeons; he saw
+himself--“Oh, Lord!” he groaned, “I'm fairly in the cart!”
+
+Very slowly, very abject, he peeled off his pyjamas; slid a white and
+trembling leg into his bath.
+
+But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed
+away the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from
+George's brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a
+tingling glow braced also his mind against the pummellings of his
+position. Drying, he caught himself whistling; catching himself in such
+an act he laughed ruefully to think how little ground he had for good
+spirits.
+
+But the whistling prevailed. This ridiculous buoyancy of youth! What
+luckless pigs are we who moon and fret and grow besodden with the waters
+of our misfortunes! This cheeky corkiness of youth! Shove it under the
+fretted sea of trouble, and free it will twist, up it will bob. Weight
+it and drop it into the deepest pool; just when it should be drowned,
+pop! and it is again merrily bobbing upon the surface.
+
+It is a sight to make us solemn-souled folk disgustingly irritated. We
+are the Marthas--trudging our daily rounds, oppressed with sense of the
+duties that must be done, with the righteous feeling of the hardness of
+our lot; and these light-hearts, these trouble-shirkers, this corkiness
+of youth, exasperate us enormously. But the grin is on their side.
+
+The whistling prevailed. By the time George was dressed he had put his
+position into these words--these feather-brained, corky, preposterous
+words: “By gum!” said George, brushing his hair, “by gum! I'm in a devil
+of a hole!”
+
+The decision summed up a cogitation that showed him to be in a hole
+indeed, but not in so fearsome a pit as he had at first imagined. He had
+at first supposed that within a few minutes the earth would be shovelled
+in on him and be buried. Review of events showed the danger not to be
+so acute. On arrival the previous night, after brief parley with Mrs.
+Pinner he had gone straight to his room, bearing the Rose tight hid in
+her basket. No reason, then, for suspicion yet to have fallen upon him.
+He must continue to keep the Rose hid. It would be difficult, infernally
+difficult; but so long as he could effect it he might remain here
+secure. The beastly cat must of course be let out for a run. That was a
+chief difficulty. Well, he must think out some fearful story that would
+give him escape with the basket every morning.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Breakfast was laid in a little sitting-room over the porch, adjoining
+his bedroom. George pressed the poor Rose into her basket; carried it
+in.
+
+Mrs. Pinner was setting flowers on the table. George carried the basket
+to the window; placed it on a chair; sat upon it. With his right hand
+he drummed upon the lid. It was his purpose to inspire the Rose with a
+timid wonder at this drubbing that should prevent her voicing a protest
+against cramped limbs.
+
+“Some nice tea and a bit of fish I'm going to bring you up, mister,”
+ Mrs. Pinner told him.
+
+Recollecting her deafness, and in fear lest she should approach the
+basket, George from the window bellowed: “Thank you, Mrs. Pinner. But I
+won't have tea, if you please. Won't have tea. I drink milk--_milk_. A
+lot of milk. I'm a great milk-drinker.”
+
+The Rose wriggled. George thumped the basket. “As soon as you like, Mrs.
+Pinner. As quick as you like!”
+
+Mrs. Pinner closed the door; the Rose advertised her feelings in a long,
+penetrating mi-aow. In an agony of strained listening George held his
+breath. But Mrs. Pinner heard nothing; moved steadily downstairs. He
+wiped his brow. This was the beginning of it.
+
+When Mrs. Pinner reappeared, jug of milk and covered dish on a tray,
+George's plan, after desperate searchings, had come to him.
+
+He gave it speech. “I want to arrange, Mrs. Pinner--”
+
+“If you wait till I've settled the tray, mister, I'll come close to you.
+I'm that hard of hearing you wouldn't believe.”
+
+George sprang from the basket; approached the table. His life depended
+upon keeping a distance between basket and Pinner.
+
+“I want to arrange to have this room as a private sitting-room.”
+
+It had never been so used before, but it could be arranged, Mrs. Pinner
+told him. She would speak to her 'usband about terms.
+
+“And I want to keep it very private indeed, I don't want anyone to enter
+it unless I am here.” George mounted his lie and galloped it, blushing
+for shame of his steed. “The fact is, Mrs. Pinner, I'm an inventor. Yes,
+an inventor. Oh, yes, an inventor.” The wretched steed was stumbling,
+but he clung on; spurred afresh. “An inventor. And I have to leave
+things lying about--delicate instruments that mustn't be disturbed.
+Awfully delicate. I shall be out all day. I shall be taking my invention
+into the open air to experiment with it. My invention--” He waved his
+hand at the basket.
+
+Mrs. Pinner quite understood; was impressed. “Oh, dear, yes, mister. To
+be sure. An inventor; fancy that, now!” She gazed at the basket. “And
+the invention is in there?”
+
+“Right in there,” George assured her.
+
+“You'll parding my asking, mister; but your saying you have to take it
+in the open hair--is it one of them hairships, mister?”
+
+“Well, it _is,_” George said frankly. This was a useful idea and he
+approved it. “It _is._ It's an airship.”
+
+“Well, I never did!” Mrs. Pinner admired, gazing at the basket. “A
+hairship in there!”
+
+“_Mi-aow!_” spoke the Rose--penetrating, piercing.
+
+Mrs. Pinner cocked her head on one side; looked under the table. “I
+declare I thought I heard a cat,” she puzzled. “In this very room.”
+
+George felt perfectly certain that his hair was standing bolt upright on
+the top of his head, thrusting at right angles to the sides. He forced
+his alarmed face to smile: “A cock crowing in the yard, I think, Mrs.
+Pinner.”
+
+Mrs. Pinner took the explanation with an apologetic laugh. “I'm that
+hard o' hearing you never would believe. But I could ha' sworn. Ill not
+keep you chattering, sir.” She raised the dish cover.
+
+A haddock was revealed. A fine, large, solid haddock from which a cloud
+of strongly savoured vapour arose.
+
+George foresaw disaster. That smell! that hungry cat! Almost he pushed
+Mrs. Pinner to the door. “That you, thank you. I have everything now. I
+will ring if--”
+
+“_Mi-aow!_”
+
+“Bless my soul!” Mrs. Pinner exclaimed. “There is a cat”; dropped on
+hands and knees; pushed her head beneath the sofa.
+
+George rushed for the basket. Wreaking his craven alarm upon the hapless
+prisoner, he shook it; with a horrible bump slammed it upon the floor;
+placed his foot upon it.
+
+Mrs. Pinner drew up, panting laboriously. “Didn't you hear a cat,
+mister?”
+
+George grappled the crisis. “I did not hear a cat. If there were a cat
+I should have heard it. I should have felt it. I abominate cats. I can
+always tell when a cat is near me. There is no cat. Kindly leave me to
+my breakfast.”
+
+Poor Mrs. Pinner was ashamed. “I'm sure I do beg you parding, mister.
+The fact is we've all got cats fair on the brain this morning. In this
+here new paper, mister, as perhaps you've seen, and they're giving us
+a free copy every day for a week, there's a cat been stole, mister. A
+hundred pounds reward, and as the paper says, the cat may be under your
+very nose. We're all a 'unting for it, mister.”
+
+She withdrew. George crossed the room; pressed his head, against the
+cold marble of the mantelpiece. His brows were burning; in the pit of
+his stomach a sinking sensation gave him pain. “All a 'unting for it!
+all a 'unting for it!”
+
+When the Rose had bulged her flanks with the complete haddock, when,
+responsive to a “Stuff your head in that, you brute,” the patient
+creature had lapped a slop-bowl full of milk, George again imprisoned
+her; rushed, basket under arm, for open country.
+
+Mr. Pinner in the bar-parlour, as George fled through, was reading from
+a paper to a stable hand, a servant girl, and a small red-headed Pinner
+boy: “It may be in John o' Groats,” he read, “or it may be in Land's
+End.” He thumped the bar. “'Ear that! Well, it may be in Dippleford
+Admiral.”
+
+It was precisely because it was in Dippleford Admiral that his young
+inventor lodger fled through the bar without so much as a civil “good
+morning.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the post-office, keeping a drumming foot on the terrified Rose,
+George sent a telegram to Mr. Marrapit.
+
+_“Think on track. Must be cautious. Don't tell Brunger.”_
+
+He flung down eightpence halfpenny; fled in the direction of a wood that
+plumed a distant hill. Fear had this man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Panic At Dippleford Admiral.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George left Dippleford Admiral that night.
+
+He left at great speed. There was no sadness of farewell. There was no
+farewell.
+
+Returning at seven o'clock to his sitting-room at the inn, melancholy
+beneath a hungry and brooding day in the woods with the Rose tethered
+to a tree by the length of two handkerchiefs, he ordered supper--milk,
+fish, and chops.
+
+Mrs. Pinner asked him if that would be all. She and 'usband were going
+to a chapel meeting; the servant girl was out; there would only be a
+young man in the bar.
+
+George took the news gratefully. His nerves had been upon the stretch
+all day. It was comforting to think that for a few hours he and this
+vile cat would have the house to themselves.
+
+Immediately Mrs. Pinner left the room he greedily fell to upon the
+chops. All day he had eaten nothing: the Rose must wait. Three parts of
+a tankard of ale was sliding at a long and delectable draught down upon
+his meal when the slam of a door, footsteps and a bawling voice in
+the yard told him that Mrs. Pinner and 'usband had started, chatting
+pleasantly, for their chapel meeting.
+
+The dish cleared, George arranged his prisoner's supper; stepped to the
+basket to fetch her to it. As he lifted her splendid form there came
+from behind him an exclamation, an agitated scuffling.
+
+In heart-stopping panic George dropped the cat, jumped around. The
+red-headed Pinner boy, whom that morning he had seen in the bar-parlour,
+was scrambling from beneath the sofa, arms and legs thrusting his
+flaming pate at full-speed for the door.
+
+“Stop!” George cried, rooted in alarm.
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy got to Ms feet, hurled himself at the door
+handle.
+
+“Stop!” roared George, struggling with the stupefaction that gripped
+him. “Stop, you young devil!”
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy twisted the handle; was half through the door
+as George bounded for him.
+
+“Par-par!” screamed the flaming head, travelling at immense speed down
+the passage. “Par-par! It ain't a hairship. It's a cat!”
+
+George dashed.
+
+“Par-par! Par-par! It's a cat!” The redheaded Pinner boy took the first
+short flight of stairs in a jump; rounded for the second.
+
+George lunged over the banisters; gripped close in the flaming hair;
+held fast.
+
+For a full minute in silence they poised--red-headed Pinner boy, on
+tip-toe as much as possible to ease the pain, in acute agony and great
+fear; George wildly seeking the plan that must be followed when he
+should release this fateful head.
+
+Presently, with a backward pull that most horribly twisted the
+red-headed face: “If you speak a word I'll pull your head off,” George
+said. “Come up here.”
+
+The pitiful procession reached the sitting-room. “Sit down there,”
+ George commanded. “If you make a sound I shall probably cut your head
+clean off. What do you mean by hiding in my room?”
+
+Between gusty pain and terror: “I thought it was a hairship.”
+
+“Oh!” George paced the room. What did the vile boy think now? “Oh, well,
+what do you think it is now?”
+
+“I believe it's the cat wot's in the piper.”
+
+“Oh, you do, do you?” Yes, this was a very horrible position indeed.
+“Oh, you do, do you? Now, you listen to me, my lad: unless you want your
+head cut right off you sit still without a sound.”
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy sat quite still; wept softly. Life, at the
+moment, was a bitter affair for this boy.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George paced. The hideous nightmares of the morning had returned
+now--snorting, neighing, trampling iron-shod; stampeding in hideous
+irresistible rushes. This was the beginning of the end. He was
+discovered--his' secret out.
+
+Flight--immediate flight--that was the essential course. Par-par, thanks
+to sweet heaven, was at a chapel meeting. The thing could be done.
+A timetable upon the mantelpiece told him that a down-train left the
+station at 8.35. It was now eight. Better a down-train than an up. The
+further from London the less chance of this infernal _Daily_ with its
+Country House Outrage. Examining the time-table he determined upon
+Temple Colney--an hour's run. He had been there once with Bill.
+
+But what of this infernal red-headed Pinner boy? In agony wrestling with
+the question, George every way ran into the brick wall fact that there
+was no method of stopping the vile boy's mouth. The red head must be
+left behind to shriek its discovery to par-par. All that could be done
+was to delay that shriek as long as possible.
+
+George packed his small hand-bag; placed upon the table money to pay his
+bill; lifted the crime-stained basket; addressed the red-headed Pinner
+boy:
+
+“Stop that sniffling. Take that bag. You are to come with me. If you
+make a sound or try to run away you know what will happen to you. What
+did I tell you would happen?”
+
+“Cut me 'ead off.”
+
+“Right off. Right off--_slish_! Give me your hand; come on.”
+
+Through a side door, avoiding the bar, they passed into the street.
+Kind night gave them cloaks of invisibility; no one was about. In a few
+minutes they had left the bold village street, were in timid lanes that
+turned and twisted hurrying through the high hedges.
+
+Half a mile upon the further side of the station George that morning had
+passed a line of haystacks. Now he made for it, skirting the railway by
+a considerable distance.
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy, exhausted by the pace of their walk, not
+unnaturally nervous, spoke for the first time: “Ain't you going to the
+station, mister?”
+
+“Station? Certainly not. Do you think I am running away?”
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy did not answer. This boy was recalling in
+every detail the gruesome story, read in a paper, of a bright young lad
+who had been foully done to death in a wood.
+
+George continued: “I shall be back with you at the inn this evening, and
+I shall ask your father to give you a good thrashing for hiding in my
+room.”
+
+In an earnest prayer the red-headed Pinner boy besought God that he
+might indeed be spared to receive that thrashing.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They reached the haystack. George struck a match; looked at his watch.
+In seven minutes the train was due.
+
+The ladder George had noticed that morning was lying along the foot of
+a stack. Uprearing it against one partially demolished, “Put down that
+bag,” he commanded. “Up with you!”
+
+Gustily sniffing in the huge sighs that advertised his terror, the
+red-headed Pinner boy obeyed. George drew down the ladder. “Stop up
+there; I shall be back in five minutes. If you move before then--”
+
+He left the trembling boy out of his own agitated fear to fill the
+unspoken doom. He walked slowly away in the direction opposite from the
+station until the haystack was merged and lost in the blackness that
+surrounded it. Then, doubling back, he made for the road; pounded along
+it at desperate speed.
+
+Most satisfactorily did that bounding, lurching, stumbling run along the
+dark, uneven lane punish this crime-steeped George. Well he realised,
+before he had sped a hundred yards, that guilt lashes with a double
+thong. She had scourged him mentally; now with scorpions she physically
+lashed him. As it had been racked throbbed that left arm encircling
+the basket wherein in wild fear the Rose clung to ease the dreadful
+bruisings that each oscillation gave her; as it were a ton-weight did
+that hand-bag drag his right arm, thud his thigh; as he were breathing
+fire did his tearing respirations sear his throat; as a great piston
+were driving in his skull did the blood hammer his temples.
+
+Topping a low rise he sighted the station lights below. Simultaneously,
+from behind a distant whistle there sprang to his ears the low rumble of
+the coming train.
+
+This history is not to be soiled with what George said at the sound.
+With the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination
+leapt from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red-headed
+Pinner boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack--from the roughness of
+the lane that laboured his passage to the speed of the oncoming train
+that hammered at his fate.
+
+He hurled himself down the rise; with his last breath gasped for a
+ticket; upon a final effort projected himself into the train; went prone
+upon a seat. He was away!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was when George was some fifteen minutes from Temple Colney that the
+red-headed Pinner boy, bolstered up with prayer, commended his soul to
+God; slipped with painful thud from the haystack; pelted for Par-par.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Disaster At Temple Colney.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Three days have passed.
+
+That somewhat pale and haggard-looking young man striding, a basket
+beneath his arm, up the main street of Temple Colney is George. The
+villagers stop to stare after him; grin, and nudge into one another
+responsive grins, at his curious mannerisms. He walks in the exact
+centre of the roadway, as far as he can keep from passers-by on either
+side. Approached by anyone, he takes a wide circle to avoid that person.
+Sometimes a spasm as of fear will cross his face and he will violently
+shake the basket he carries. Always he walks with giant strides. Every
+morning he shoots out of the inn where he is staying as though sped on
+the blast of some ghostly current of air; every evening, returning, he
+gives the impression of gathering himself together on the threshold,
+then goes bolting in at whirlwind speed. He is a somewhat pale and
+haggard young man.
+
+The villagers know him well. He is the young hairship inventor who has
+a private sitting-room at the Colney Arms. Certain of them, agog to pry
+his secret, followed him as he set out one day. They discovered nothing.
+For hours they followed; but he, glancing ever over his shoulder,
+pounded steadily on, mile upon mile--field, lane, high road, hill and
+dale. He never shook them off though he ran; they never brought him
+to standstill though indomitably they pursued. Towards evening the
+exhausted procession came thundering up the village street.
+
+It was a very pale and haggard young man that bolted into the Colney
+Arms that night.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Three days had passed.
+
+If George had the _Daily_ to curse for the miserable life of secrecy
+and constant agony of discovery that he was compelled to lead, he had
+it also to bless that his discovery by the red-headed Pinner boy had
+not long ago led to his being run to earth. In its anxiety to cap the
+satisfactory splash it was making over this Country House Outrage,
+the _Daily_ had overstepped itself and militated against itself. Those
+“Catchy Clues” were responsible. So cunningly did they inspire the taste
+for amateur detective work, so easy did they make such work appear, that
+Mr. Pinner, having thrashed silence into his red-headed son, kept that
+son's discovery to himself. As he argued it--laboriously pencilling down
+“data” in accordance with the “Catchy Clue” directions,--as he argued
+it--if he communicated his knowledge to the _Daily_ or to the local
+police, if he put them--(the word does not print nicely) on the scent,
+ten to one they would capture the thief and secure the reward. No, Mr.
+Pinner intended to have the reward himself. Therefore he hoarded his
+secret; brooded upon it; dashed off hither and thither as the day's news
+brought him a Catchy Clue that seemed to fit his data.
+
+But of this George knew nothing. Steeped in crime this miserable young
+man dragged out his awful life at Temple Colney: nightmares by night,
+horrors by day.
+
+Every morning with trembling fingers he opened his _Daily_; every
+morning was shot dead by these lines or their equivalent:
+
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  FRESH CLUE.
+
+  CAT SEEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+After much groaning and agony George would force himself to know the
+worst; after swearing furiously through the paragraphs of stuffing with
+which Mr. Bitt's cunning young man skilfully evaded the point, would
+come at last upon the “fresh clue” and read with a groan of relief that,
+so far as the truth were concerned, it was no clue at all.
+
+But the strain was horrible. All Temple Colney read the _Daily_; eagerly
+debated its “Catchy Clues.”
+
+Yet George could not see, he told himself, that he would better his
+plight by seeking fresh retreat. If the _Daily_ were to be believed, all
+the United Kingdom read it and discussed its Catchy Clues. He decided it
+were wiser to remain racked at Temple Colney rather than try his luck,
+and perhaps be torn to death, elsewhere.
+
+Twice he had been moved to abandon his awful enterprise--in the train
+fleeing from the red-headed Pinner boy; pounding across country pursued
+by curious inhabitants of Temple Colney. On these occasions this
+miserable George had been minded to cry defeated to the circumstances
+that struck at him, to return to Herons' Holt with the cat whilst yet he
+might do so without gyves on his wrists.
+
+But thought of his dear Mary hunted thought of this craven ending. “I'll
+hang on!” he had cried, thumping the carriage seat: “I'll hang on! I'll
+hang on! I'll hang on!” he had thumped into the table upon his weary
+return to the inn on the day he had been followed.
+
+He had cause for hope. When, on his second morning at Temple Colney, the
+_Daily_ had struck him to white agony by its newest headlines; cooling,
+he was able to find comfort in the news it gave to the world. “On the
+advice of the eminent detective, Mr. David Brunger, who has the case in
+hand, the reward has been raised to 125 pounds.”
+
+“Whoop!” cried George, spirits returning.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Three days had passed.
+
+Rain began to fall heavily on this afternoon. Usually--even had there
+been floods--George did not return to the inn until seven o'clock. The
+less he was near the abode of man the safer was his vile secret. But
+to-day, when the clouds told him a steady downpour had set in, he put
+out for his lodging before three. He was in high spirits. Success was
+making him very bold. At Temple Colney, thus far, no breath of suspicion
+had paled his cheek; at Herons' Holt events were galloping to the end he
+would have them go. That morning the _Daily_ had announced the raising
+of the reward to 150 pounds. True, the _Daily_ added that Mr. Marrapit
+had declared, absolutely and finally, that he would not go one penny
+beyond this figure. George laughed as he read. In four days his uncle
+had raised the offer by fifty pounds; at this rate--and the rate would
+increase as Mr. Marrapit's anguish augmented--the 500 pounds would soon
+be reached. And then! And then!
+
+Through the pouring rain George whistled up the village street, whistled
+up the stairs, whistled into the sitting--room. Then stopped his
+tune. The buoyant notes of triumph dwindled to a tuneless squeak, to a
+noiseless breathing--Bill Wyvern, seated at a table, sprung to meet him.
+
+“What ho!” cried Bill. “They told me you wouldn't be in before seven!
+What ho! Isn't this splendid?”
+
+George said in very hollow voice: “Splendid!” He put the basket on a
+chair; sat on it; gave Bill an answering, “What ho!” that was cheerful
+as rap upon a coffin lid.
+
+“Well, how goes it?” Bill asked eagerly.
+
+George put out a hand. “Don't come over here, dear old fellow. I'm
+streaming wet. Sit down there. How goes what?”
+
+“Why, the clue--your clue to this cat?”
+
+“Oh, the clue--the clue. Yes, I'll tell you all about that. Just wait
+here a moment.” He rose with the basket; moved to the door.
+
+“What on earth have you got in that basket?” Bill asked.
+
+“Eggs,” George told him impressively. “Eggs for my uncle.”
+
+“You must have a thundering lot in a basket that size.”
+
+“Three or four hundred,” George said. “Three or four hundred eggs.”
+
+He spoke in the passionless voice of one in a dream. Indeed he was in a
+dream. This horrible contingency had so set him whirling that of clear
+thought he was incapable. Moving to his bedroom he thrust the basket
+beneath the bed; came out; locked the door; took the key; returned to
+Bill.
+
+Bill came over and slapped him on the back. “Expect you're surprised to
+see me?” he cried. “Isn't this ripping, old man?”
+
+“Stunning!” said George. “Absolutely stunning.” He sank on a chair.
+
+Bill was perplexed. “You don't look best pleased, old man. What's up?”
+
+This was precisely what George wished to know. Terror of hearing some
+hideous calamity stayed him from putting the question. He gave a pained
+smile. “Oh, I'm all right. I'm a bit fagged, that's all. The strain of
+this search, you know, the--”
+
+“I know!” cried Bill enthusiastically. “I _know_. You've been splendid,
+old man. Finding out a clue like this and pluckily carrying it through
+all by yourself. By Jove, it's splendid of you!--especially when you've
+no reason to do much for your uncle after the way in which he's treated
+you. I admire you, George. By Gad, I _do_ admire you!”
+
+“Not at all!” George advised him. “By no means, old fellow.” He wiped
+his brow; his mental suffering was considerable.
+
+“I say, I can see you're pretty bad, old man,” Bill continued. “Never
+mind, I'm here to help you now. That's what I've come for.”
+
+George felt that something very dreadful indeed was at hand. “How did
+you find out where I was?” he asked.
+
+“From old Marrapit.”
+
+“Marrapit? Why, but my uncle won't let you come within a mile of him.”
+
+“Ah! that's all over now.” A very beautiful look came into Bill's eyes;
+tenderness shaded his voice: “George, old man, if I can track down the
+hound who has stolen this cat your uncle has practically said that he
+will agree to my engagement with Margaret.”
+
+George tottered across the room; pressed his head against the cold
+window-pane. Here was the calamity. He had thought of taking Bill into
+his confidence--how do so now?
+
+“I say, you do look bad, old man,” Bill told him.
+
+“I'm all right. Tell me all about it.”
+
+“Well, it's too good--too wonderful to be true. Everything is going
+simply splendidly with me. I'm running this cat business for the
+_Daily_--my paper, you know. It's made a most frightful splash and the
+editor is awfully bucked up with me. I'm on the permanent staff, six
+quid a week--eight quid a week if I find this cat. I'm working it from
+Herons' Holt, you know. I'm--”
+
+George turned upon him. “Are you 'Our Special Commissioner at Paltley
+Hill'?”
+
+“Rather! Have you been reading it? Pretty hot stuff, isn't it? I say,
+George, wasn't it lucky I chucked medicine! I told you I was cut out
+for this kind of thing if only I could get my chance. Well, I've got my
+chance; and by Gad, old man, if I don't track down this swine who's got
+the cat, or help to get him tracked down, I'll--I'll--” The enthusiastic
+young man broke off--“Isn't it great, George?”
+
+My miserable George paced the room. “Great!” he forced out. “Great!”
+ This was the infernal Special Commissioner whom daily he had yearned to
+strangle. “Great! By Gad, there are no words for it!”
+
+“I knew you'd be pleased. Thanks awfully--_awfully_. Well, I was telling
+you. Being down there for the paper I simply had to interview Marrapit.
+I plucked up courage and bearded him. He's half crazy about this
+wretched cat. I found him as meek as a lamb. Bit snarly at first, but
+when he found how keen I was, quite affectingly pleasant. I've seen
+him every day for the last four days, and yesterday he said what I told
+you--I came out with all about Margaret and about my splendid prospects,
+and, as I say, he practically said that if I could find the cat he'd be
+willing to think of our engagement.”
+
+“But about finding out where I was? How did you discover that?”
+
+“Well, he told me. Told me this morning.” Bill shuffled his legs
+uncomfortably for a moment, then plunged ahead. “Fact is, old man,
+he's a bit sick with you. Said he'd only had one telegram from you
+from Dippleford Admiral and one letter from here. Said it was
+unsatisfactory--that it was clear you were incapable of following up
+this clue of yours by yourself. You don't mind my telling you this, do
+you, old man? You know what he is.”
+
+George gave the bitter laugh of one who is misunderstood, unappreciated.
+“Go on,” he said, “go on.” He was trembling to see the precipice over
+which the end of Bill's story would hurl him.
+
+“Well, as I said--that it was clear you could not carry through your
+clue by yourself. So I was to come down and help you. That was about ten
+o'clock, and I caught the mid-day train--I've been here since two. Well,
+Brunger--the detective chap, you know--Marrapit was going to send him on
+here at once--”
+
+This was the precipice. George went hurtling over the edge with whirling
+brain: “Brunger coming down here?” he cried.
+
+“Rather! Now, we three together, old man--”
+
+“When's he coming?” George asked. He could not hear his own voice--the
+old nightmares danced before his eyes, roared their horrors in his ears.
+
+Bill looked at the clock. “He ought to be here by now. He ought to have
+arrived--”
+
+The roaring confusion in George's brain went to a tingling silence;
+through it there came footsteps and a man's voice upon the stairs.
+
+As the tracked criminal who hears his pursuer upon the threshold, as
+the fugitive from justice who feels upon his shoulder the sudden hand
+of arrest, as the poor wretch in the condemned cell when the hangman
+enters--as the feelings of these, so, at this sound, the emotions of my
+miserable George.
+
+A dash must be made to flatten this hideous doom. Upon a sudden impulse
+he started forward. “Bill! Bill, old man, I want to tell you something.
+You don't know what the finding of this cat means to me. It--”
+
+“I do know, old man,” Bill earnestly assured him. “You're splendid, old
+man, splendid. I never dreamt you were so fond of your uncle. Old man,
+it means even more to me--it means Margaret and success. Here's Brunger.
+We three together, George. Nothing shall stop us.”
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The sagacious detective entered. George gave him a limp, damp hand.
+
+“You don't look well,” Mr. Brunger told him, after greetings.
+
+“Just what I was saying,” Bill joined.
+
+Indeed, George looked far from well. Round-shouldered he sat upon the
+sofa, head in hands--a pallid face beneath a beaded brow staring out
+between them.
+
+“It's the strain of this clue, Mr. Brunger,” Bill continued. “He's on
+the track!”
+
+“You are?” cried the detective.
+
+“Right on,” George said dully. “Right on the track.”
+
+“Is it a gang?”
+
+“Two,” George answered in the same voice. “Two gangs.”
+
+The sagacious detective thumped the table. “I said so. I knew it. I told
+you so, Mr. Wyvern. But _two_, eh? _Two_ gangs. That's tough. One got
+the cat and the other after it, I presume?”
+
+“No,” said George. He was wildly thinking; to the conversation paying no
+attention.
+
+“No? But, my dear sir, one of 'em _must_ have the cat?”
+
+George started to the necessities of the immediate situation; wondered
+what he had said; caught at Mr. Brunger's last word. “The cat? Another
+gang has got the cat.”
+
+“What, three gangs!” the detective cried.
+
+“Three gangs,” George affirmed.
+
+“Two gangs you said at first,” Mr. Brunger sharply reminded him.
+
+My miserable George dug his fingers into his hair. “I meant three--I'd
+forgotten the other.”
+
+“Don't see how a man can forget a whole _gang_,” objected the detective.
+He stared at George; frowned; produced his note-book. “Let us have the
+facts, sir.”
+
+As if drawn by the glare fixed upon him, George moved from the sofa to
+the table.
+
+“Now, the facts,” Mr. Brunger repeated. “Let's get these gangs settled
+first.”
+
+George took a chair. He had no plan. He plunged wildly. “Gang A, gang B,
+gang C, gang D--”
+
+Mr. Brunger stopped short in the midst of his note.
+
+“Why, that's _four_ gangs!”
+
+The twisting of George's legs beneath the table was sympathetic with
+the struggles of his bewildered mind. He said desperately, “Well, there
+_are_ four gangs.”
+
+The detective threw down his pencil. “You're making a fool of me!” he
+cried. “First you said two gangs, then three gangs--”
+
+“You're making a fool of yourself,” George answered hotly. “If you knew
+anything about gangs you'd know they're always breaking up--quarrelling,
+and then rejoining, and then splitting again. If you can't follow, don't
+follow. Find the damned gangs yourself. You're a detective--I'm not. At
+least you say you are. You're a precious poor one, seems to me. You've
+not done much.”
+
+In his bewilderment and fear my unfortunate George had unwittingly
+hit upon an admirable policy. Since first Mr. Marrapit had called Mr.
+Brunger it had sunk in upon the Confidential Inquiry Agent that indeed
+he was a precious poor detective. In the five days that had passed he
+had not struck upon the glimmer of a notion regarding the whereabouts
+of the missing cat. This was no hiding in cupboard work, no marked coin
+work, no following the skittish wife of a greengrocer work. It was
+the real thing--real detective work, and it had found Mr. Brunger
+most lamentably wanting. Till now, however, none had suspected
+his perplexity. He had impressed his client--had bounced,
+noted, cross-examined, measured; and during every bounce, note,
+cross-examination and measurement fervently had prayed that luck--or the
+reward--would help him stumble upon something he could claim as outcome
+of his skill. George's violent attack alarmed him; he drew in his horns.
+
+“Ah! don't be 'ot,” he protested. “Don't be 'ot. Little
+misunderstanding, that's all. I follow you completely. Four gangs--_I_
+see. _Four_ gangs. Now, sir.”
+
+It was George's turn for fear. “Four gangs--quite so. Well, what do you
+want me to tell you?”
+
+“Start from the beginning, sir.”
+
+George started--plunged head-first. For five minutes he desperately
+gabbled while Mr. Brunger's pencil bounded along behind his splashing;
+words. Every time the pencil seemed to slacken, away again George would
+fly and away in pursuit the pencil would laboriously toil.
+
+“Four gangs,” George plunged along. “Gang A, gang B, gang C, gang D.
+Gang A breaks into the house and steals the cat. Gang B finds it gone
+and tracks down gang C.”
+
+“Tracks gang A, surely,” panted Mr. Brunger. “Gang A had the cat.”
+
+“Gang B didn't know that. I tell you this is a devil of a complicated
+affair. Gang B tracks down gang C and finds gang D. They join. Call 'em
+gang B-D. Gang A loses the cat and gang C finds it. Gang C sells it to
+gang B-D, which is run by an American, as I said.”
+
+“Did you?” gasped Mr. Brunger without looking up.
+
+“Certainly. Gang B-D hands it over to gang A by mistake, and gang A
+makes off with it. Gang C, very furious because it is gang A's great
+rival, starts in pursuit and gets it back again. Then gang B-D demands
+it, but gang A refuses to give it up.”
+
+“Gang C!” Mr. Brunger panted. “Gang C had got it from gang A.”
+
+“Yes, but gang A got it back again. Gang B-D--Look here,” George broke
+off, “that's perfectly clear about the gangs, isn't it?”
+
+“Perfectly,” said Mr. Brunger, feeling that his reputation was
+gone unless he said so. “Wants a little studying, that's all. Most
+extraordinary story I ever heard of.”
+
+“I'm dashed if I understand a word of it,” Bill put in. “Who _are_ these
+gangs?”
+
+George rose: “Bill, old man, I'll explain that another time. The fact
+is, we're wasting time by sitting here. I was very near the end when you
+two arrived. The cat is here--quite near here.”
+
+The detective and Bill sprang to their feet. George continued: “It's
+going to change hands either tonight or to-morrow. If you two will
+do just as I tell you and leave the rest to me, we shall bring off a
+capture. To-morrow evening I will explain everything.”
+
+The detective asked eagerly; “Is it a certainty?”
+
+“Almost. It will be touch and go; but if we miss it this time it is a
+certainty for the immediate future. I swear this, that if you keep
+in touch with me you will be nearer the cat than you will ever get by
+yourselves.”
+
+Sincerity shone in his eyes from these words. The detective and Bill
+were fired with zeal.
+
+“Take command, sir!” said Mr. Brunger.
+
+“All right. Come with me. I will post you for the night. We have some
+distance to go. Don't question me. I must think.”
+
+“Not a question,” said the detective: he was, indeed, too utterly
+bewildered.
+
+George murmured “Thank heaven!”; took his hat; led the way into the
+street. In dogged silence the three tramped through the rain.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+George led for the Clifford Arms, some two miles distant. For the
+present he had but one object in view. He must get rid of Bill and this
+infernal detective; then he must speed the cat from Temple Colney.
+
+As he walked he pushed out beyond the primary object of ridding himself
+of his companions; sought the future. In the first half-mile he decided
+that the game was up. He must deliver the Rose to his uncle immediately
+without waiting for the reward to be further raised. To hang on for
+the shadow would be, he felt, to lose the substance that would stand
+represented by Mr. Marrapit's gratitude.
+
+But this preposterous buoyancy of youth! The rain that beat upon his
+face cooled his brow; seemed to cool his brain. Before the first mile
+was crossed he had vacillated from his purpose. When he said to his
+followers “Only another half-mile,” his purpose was changed.
+
+This preposterous corkiness of youth! It had lifted him up from the sea
+of misfortune in which he had nigh been drowned, and now he was assuring
+himself that, given he could hide the Rose where a sudden glimmering
+idea suggested, he would be safer than ever before. The two men who
+were most dangerous to him--the detective and the _Daily's_ Special
+Commissioner at Paltley Hill, now slushing through the mud behind--were
+beneath his thumb. If he could keep them goose-chasing for a few days or
+so--!
+
+The turn of a corner brought them in view of the Clifford Arms. George
+pointed: “I want you to spend the night there and to stay there till I
+come to-morrow. A man is there whom you must watch--the landlord.”
+
+“One of the gangs?” Mr. Brunger asked, hoarse excitement in his voice.
+
+“Gang B--leader. Don't let him suspect you. Just watch him.”
+
+“Has he got the cat?”
+
+With great impressiveness George looked at the detective, looked at
+Bill. Volumes of meaning in his tone: “_Not yet!_” he said.
+
+Bill cried: “By Gad!” The detective rubbed his hands in keen
+anticipation.
+
+They entered the inn. Bill gave a story of belated tourists. A room
+was engaged. In a quarter of an hour George was speeding back to Temple
+Colney.
+
+At the post-office he stopped; purchased a letter-card; held his pen a
+while as he polished the glimmering idea that now had taken form; then
+wrote to his Mary:--
+
+“My dearest girl in all the world,--You've never had a line from me
+all this time, but you can guess what a time I've been having. Dearest
+darling, listen and attend. This is most important. Our future depends
+upon it. Meet me to-morrow at 12.0 at that tumbled-down hut in the copse
+on the Shipley Road where we went that day just before my exam. Make any
+excuse to get away. You must be there. And don't tell a soul.
+
+“Till to-morrow, my darling little Mary.--G.”
+
+He posted the card.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+Of Paradise Lost and Found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples from the lightest
+action that we may toss into the sea of life.
+
+Life is a game of consequences. A throws a stone, and the widening
+ripples wreck the little boats of X and Y and Z who never have even
+heard of A. Every day and every night, every hour of every day and
+night, ripples from unknown splashes are setting towards us--perhaps
+to swamp us, perhaps to bear us into some pleasant stream. One calls it
+luck, another fate. “This is my just punishment,” cries one. “By my
+good works I have merited this,” exclaims another; but it is merely the
+ripple from some distant splash--merely consequences. Consequences.
+
+A sleepy maid in Mr. City Merchant's suburban mansion leaves the
+dust-pan on the stairs after sweeping. That is the little action she has
+tossed into the sea of life, and the ripples will wreck a boat or two
+now snug and safe in a cheap and happy home many miles away. Mr. City
+Merchant trips over the dustpan, starts for office fuming with rage,
+vents his spleen upon Mr. City Clerk--dismisses him.
+
+Mr. City Clerk seeks work in vain; the cheap but happy home he shares
+with pretty little Mrs. City Clerk and plump young Master City Clerk is
+abandoned for a dingy lodging. Grade by grade the lodging they must seek
+grows dingier. Now there is no food. Now they are getting desperate.
+Now pneumonia lays erstwhile plump Master City Clerk by the heels and
+carries him off--consequences, consequences; that is one boat wrecked.
+Now Mr. City Clerk is growing mad with despair; Mrs. City Clerk is
+well upon the road that Master City Clerk has followed. Mr. City Clerk
+steals, is caught, is imprisoned--consequences, consequences; another
+boat wrecked. Mrs. City Clerk does not hold out long, follows Master
+City Clerk--consequences, consequences. Three innocent craft smashed up
+because the housemaid left the dustpan on the stairs.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will speed the ripples from the lightest
+action that we may toss into the sea of life. Solely and wholly because
+George abducted the Rose of Sharon, Miss Pridham, who keeps the general
+drapery in Angel Street, Marylebone Road, sold a pair of green knitted
+slippers, each decorated with a red knitted blob, that had gazed
+melancholy from her shop window for close upon two years.
+
+It was Mrs. Major who purchased them.
+
+Since that terrible morning on which, throat and mouth parched, head
+painfully throbbing through the overnight entertainment of Old Tom, Mrs.
+Major had been driven from Mr. Marrapit's door, this doubly distressed
+gentlewoman had lived in retirement in a bed-sitting-room in Angel
+Street. She did not purpose immediately taking another situation. This
+woman had sipped the delights of Herons' Holt; her heart was there, and
+for a month or two, as, sighing over her lot, she determined, she would
+brood in solitude upon the paradise she had lost before challenging new
+fortunes.
+
+The ripples of the abduction of the Rose reached her. This was a
+masterly woman, and instanter she took the tide upon the flood.
+
+Mrs. Major was not a newspaper reader. The most important sheet of the
+_Daily_, however, she one day carried into her bed-sitting-room wrapped
+about a quartern of Old Tom. It was the day when first “Country House
+Outrage” shouted from the _Daily's_ columns.
+
+Idly scanning the report her eye chanced upon familiar names. A common
+mind would have been struck astonished and for some hours been left
+fluttering. Your masterly mind grasps at once and together a solution
+and its possibilities. Without pause for thought, without even sniff of
+the new quartern of Old Tom, Mrs. Major sought pen and paper; wrote with
+inspired pen to Mr. Marrapit:
+
+“I do not even dare begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the
+right even to address you; but in the moment of your great tribulation
+something stronger than myself makes me take up my pen--”
+
+Here Mrs. Major paused; read what she had written; without so much as
+a sigh tore the sheet and started afresh. That “something stronger than
+myself makes me” she felt to be a mistake. Something decidedly stronger
+than herself sat in the quartern bottle a few inches from her nose, and
+it occurred to her that a cruel mind might thus interpret her meaning.
+She tore the sheet. This was a masterly woman.
+
+“I dare not even begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the right
+even to address you; but in the moment of your tribulation I feel that I
+must come forward with my sympathy. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, may I say with my
+aid? I feel I could help you if only I might come to dear, dear Herons'
+Holt. When I think of my angel darling Rose of Sharon straying far from
+the fold my heart bleeds. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I cannot rest, I cannot
+live, while my darling is wandering on the hillside, or is stolen, and
+I am unable to search for her. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, think of me, I implore
+you, not as Mrs. Major, but as one whom your sweet darling Rose loved.
+If the Rose is anywhere near Herons' Holt, she would come to me if I
+called her, I feel sure, more readily than she would come to anyone
+else except yourself, and you are not strong enough to search as I would
+search. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt in this terrible
+hour. Do not speak to me, do not look at me, Mr. Marrapit. I do not ask
+that. I only beg on my bended knees that you will let me lay myself at
+night even in the gardener's shed, so that I may be there to tend my
+lamb when she is found, and by day will be able to search for her. That
+is all I ask.
+
+“Of myself I will say nothing. I will not force upon you the
+explanations of that dreadful night which you would not take from my
+trembling lips. I will not tell you that, maddened by the toothache,
+I was advised to hold a little drop of spirit in the tooth, and that,
+never having touched anything but water since I and my dear little
+brother promised my dying mother we would not, the spirit went to my
+head and made me as you saw me. I will not write any of those things,
+Mr. Marrapit; only, oh, Mr. Marrapit, I implore you to let me come and
+look for my Rose. Nor will I tell you how fondly, since I left you, I
+have thought of all your nobility of character and of your goodness to
+me, Mr. Marrapit. Wronged, I bear no resentment. I have received too
+much kindness at your hands. Ever since I left you I have thought of
+none but the Rose and you. Shall I prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit--”
+
+Here again Mrs. Major paused; thoughtfully scratched her head with her
+penholder. Like authors more experienced, her emotions had driven her
+pen to a point demanding a special solution which was not immediately
+forthcoming. She had galloped into a wood. How to get out of it?
+
+Mrs. Major scratched thoughtfully; gazed at Old Tom; gazed round the
+room; on a happy inspiration gazed from the window. Miss Pridham's
+general drapery was immediately opposite. A bright patch of green in
+the window caught Mrs. Major's eye. She recognised it as the knitted
+slippers she had once or twice noticed in passing.
+
+The very thing! Laying down her pen the masterly woman popped across
+to Miss Pridham's; in two minutes, leaving that lady delighted and
+one-and-eleven-three the richer, was back with the green knitted
+slippers with the red knitted blobs.
+
+She took up her pen and continued:
+
+“Ever since I left I have thought of none but the Rose and you. Shall I
+prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I make so bold as
+to send you in a little parcel a pair of woollen slippers that I have
+knitted for you.”
+
+Mrs. Major examined them. Such sun as creeps into Angel Street,
+Marylebone Road, jealous of rival brightness had filched their first
+delicate tint of green, had stolen the first passionate scarlet of the
+red blobs. She continued:
+
+“They are a little faded because on every stitch a bitter tear has
+fallen. Yes, Mr. Marrapit, my tears of sorrow have rained upon these
+slippers as I worked. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, they are not damp, however.
+Every evening since they were finished I have had my little fire lighted
+and have stood the slippers up against the fender; and then, sitting on
+the opposite side of the hearth, just as I used to sit for a few minutes
+with you after we had brought in the darling cats, I have imagined that
+your feet were in the slippers and have imagined that I am back where I
+have left my bleeding heart. I never meant to dare send them to you, Mr.
+Marrapit, but in this moment of your tribulation I make bold to do so.
+Do not open the parcel, Mr. Marrapit, if you would rather not. Hurl it
+on the fire and let the burning fiery furnace consume them, tears and
+all. But I feel I must send them, whatever their fate.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt to find my darling
+Rose!--then without a word I will creep away and die.--LUCY MAJOR.”
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Upon the following morning there sped to Mrs. Major from Herons' Holt a
+telegram bearing the message “Come.”
+
+Frantic to clutch at any straw that might bring to him this Rose, Mr.
+Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major. He felt there to be much truth,
+in her contention that his Rose, if secreted near by, would come quicker
+at her call than at the call of another. His Rose had known and loved
+her for a full year. His Rose, refined cat, did not take quickly
+to strangers, and had not--he had noticed it--given herself to Miss
+Humfray. Therefore Mr. Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major.
+
+As to the remainder of her letter--it considerably perturbed him. Had
+he misjudged this woman, whom once he had held estimable? All the
+delectable peace of his household during her reign, as contrasted with
+the turmoil that now had taken its place, came back to him and smote his
+heart. He opened the slippers, noted the tear-stains. Had he misjudged
+her? What more likely than her story of the racking tooth that must
+be lulled with a little drop of spirit? Had he misjudged her? But as
+against that little drop of spirit, how account for the vast and empty
+bottle of Old Tom found in her room? Had he misjudged her?
+
+In much conflict of mind this man paced the breakfast room, a green
+knitted slipper with red knitted blob in either hand.
+
+It was thus that Margaret, entering, found him.
+
+With a soft little laugh, “Oh, father!” she cried, “what have you got
+there?”
+
+Mr. Marrapit raised the green knitted slippers with the red knitted
+blobs. “A contrite heart,” he answered. “A stricken and a contrite
+heart.”
+
+He resumed his pacing. Margaret squeezed round the door which happily
+she had left ajar; fled breakfastless. Quick at poetic image though she
+was, the symbol of a contrite heart in a pair of green knitted slippers
+with red knitted blobs was not clear to this girl. In her father it
+alarmed her. This great sorrow was perchance turning his brain.
+
+Mr. Marrapit laid the slippers upon his dressing-table; that afternoon
+greeted Mrs. Major with a circumspect reserve. Combining the vast and
+empty bottle of Old Tom with the fact that never had his judgment of man
+or matter failed him, he determined that Mrs. Major was guilty. But
+not wilfully guilty. Tempted to drown pain, she had succumbed; but the
+slippers were the sign of a contrite heart.
+
+The masterly possessor of the contrite heart betrayed no signs of its
+flutterings and its exultant boundings at being once more in paradise.
+This was a masterly woman, and, masterly, she grasped at once her
+position--without hesitation started to play her part.
+
+In Mr. Marrapit's study she stood humbly before him with bowed head;
+did not speak. Her only sounds were those of repressed emotion as Mr.
+Marrapit recited the history of the abduction. The white handkerchief
+she kept pressed against her chin punctuated the story with sudden
+little dabs first to one eye then the other. Little sniffs escaped her;
+little catches of the breath; tiny little moans.
+
+She choked when he had finished: “Let me see--my darling's--bed.”
+
+Mr Marrapit led the way. Above the silk-lined box whence George had
+snatched the Rose, the masterly woman knelt. She fondled the silken
+coverlet; her lips moved. Suddenly she dashed her handkerchief to her
+eyes; with beautiful moans fled hurriedly to the bedroom that had been
+allotted her.
+
+It was an exquisitely touching sight. Mr. Marrapit, greatly moved, went
+to his room; took out the green knitted slippers with the red knitted
+blobs. Had he misjudged this woman?
+
+Ten minutes later he again encountered Mrs. Major. Now she was girt
+against the weather and against exercise. Beneath her chin were firmly
+knotted the strings of her sober bonnet; a short skirt hid nothing
+of the stout boots she had donned; her hand grasped the knob of a
+bludgeon-like umbrella.
+
+The masterly woman had removed all traces of her emotion. In a voice
+humble yet strong, “I start to search, Mr. Marrapit,” she said. “I will
+find the Rose if she is to be found.”
+
+So deep sincerity was in her speech, so strong she seemed, so restful
+in this crisis, that Mr. Marrapit, watching her stride the drive,
+again fell to pacing and cogitation--had he misjudged her? Almost
+unconsciously he moved upstairs to his room; drew those green slippers
+with red blobs from their drawer.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Had Mr. Marrapit doubted the sincerity of Mrs. Major's search, assuredly
+he would have misjudged her. In her diary that night the masterly woman
+inscribed:
+
+“_Am here; must stick_.”
+
+Her best chance of sticking, as well she knew, lay in finding the Rose.
+Could she but place that creature's exquisite form in Mr. Marrapit's
+arms, she felt that her reward would be to win back to the paradise from
+which Old Tom had driven her.
+
+Therefore most strenuously she scoured the countryside; pried into
+houses; popped her head into stable doors. This woman nothing spared
+herself; in the result, at the end of two days, was considerably
+dejected. For it was clear to her that the Rose had not strayed, but had
+been stolen; was not concealed in the vicinity of Herons' Holt, but had
+been spirited to the safety of many miles. She was driven to accept
+Mr. Brunger's opinion--the Rose had been stolen by some eager and
+unscrupulous breeder to be used for gross purposes.
+
+It was upon the evening of the second day in paradise that this woman
+settled upon this gloomy conclusion. Gloomy it was, and desperately,
+sitting in her bedroom that night, the masterly woman battled for some
+way to circumvent it. To that entry made in her diary on the night of
+her arrival she had added two further sentences:
+
+_“Hate that baby-faced Humfray chit.”
+
+“Certain cannot stick unless find cat.”_
+
+Opening her diary now she gazed upon these entries; chewed them. They
+were bitter to the taste. To agony at what she had lost was added
+mortification at seeing another in her place; and rankling in this
+huge wound was the poison of the knowledge that she could not win
+back. Circumstances were too strong. The cat was not to be found,
+and--stabbing thought--“certain cannot stick unless find cat.”
+
+This way and that the masterly woman twisted in search of a means to
+circumvent her position. It might be done by accomplishing the overthrow
+of this baby-faced chit. If the baby-faced chit could be made to
+displease Mr. Marrapit and be turned out, it would surely be possible,
+being ready at hand, to take her place. But how could the baby-faced
+chit be made to err?
+
+This way and that Mrs. Major twisted and could find no means. Always she
+was forced back to the brick-wall fact--salvation lay only in finding
+the cat. That would accomplish everything. She would have succeeded
+where the baby-faced chit had failed; she would have proved her
+devotion; she, would have earned, not a doubt of it, the reward of
+re-entry into paradise that Mr. Marrapit in his gratitude would more
+than offer--would press upon her.
+
+But the cat was not to be found.
+
+Beating up against the desperate barrier of that thought, Mrs. Major
+groaned aloud as she paced the room, threw up her arms in her despair.
+The action caused her to swerve; with hideous violence she crashed her
+stockinged foot against the leg of the wash-stand.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples of the lightest
+action we may toss upon the sea of life. The stunning agony in this
+woman's toes, as, hopping to the bed, she sat and nursed them, with the
+swiftness of thought presented to her a solution of her difficulty that
+struck her staring with excitement.
+
+Her first thought in her throbbing pain was of remedy for the bruise.
+“Bruise” brought involuntarily to her mind the picture of a chemist's
+shop in the Edgware Road, not far from Angel Street, whose window she
+had seen filled with little boxes of “Bruisine,” the newest specific for
+abrasions. Thence her thoughts, by direct passage, jumped to the time
+when last she had noticed the shop--she had been returning from a stroll
+by way of Sussex Gardens. And it was while mentally retracing that walk
+down Sussex Gardens that Mrs. Major lit plump upon the solution of her
+difficulty. She had noticed, let out for a run from No. 506, an orange
+cat that was so precisely the image of the Rose of Sharon that she had
+stopped to stroke it for dear memory's sake. Often since then she had
+spoken to it; every time had been the more struck by its extraordinary
+resemblance to the Rose. She had reflected that, seen together, she
+could not have told them apart.
+
+Mrs. Major forgot the throbbing of her abrased toes. Her brows knitted
+by concentration of thought, very slowly the masterly woman concluded
+her disrobing. Each private garment that she stripped and laid aside
+marked a forward step in the indomitable purpose she had conceived. As
+her fingers drew the most private from her person, leaving it naked, so
+from her plan did her masterly mind draw the last veil that filmed it,
+leaving it clear. When the Jaeger nightdress fell comfortably about her,
+her purpose too was presentable and warm.
+
+Every day and every night, every hour of every day and night, ripples
+from unknown splashes are setting towards us. From this masterly
+woman, in process of toilet, ripples were setting towards a modest and
+unsuspecting cat lying in sweet slumber at 506 Sussex Gardens, off the
+Edgware Road.
+
+For the masterly woman had thus determined--she would have that cat that
+was the Rose's second self. The Rose was in the hands of some villain
+breeder and would never be returned; small fear of discovery under that
+head. This cat was the Rose's second self; differences that Mr. Marrapit
+might discover, lack of affection that he might notice, could be
+attributed to the adventures through which the Rose had passed since her
+abduction. Under this head, indeed, Mrs. Major did not anticipate great
+difficulty. Similar cats are more similar than similar dogs. They
+have not, as dogs have, the distinguishing marks of character and
+demonstrativeness. In any event, as the masterly woman assured herself,
+she ran no peril even if her plot failed. She would say she had found
+the cat, and if Mr. Marrapit were convinced it was not his Rose--well,
+she had made a mistake, that was all.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Upon the morrow, playing her hand with masterly skill, Mrs. Major
+sought interview with Mr. Marrapit. With telling dabs of her pocket
+handkerchief at her eyes, with telling sniffs of her masterly nose, she
+expressed the fear that she had outstayed his kindness in receiving her.
+He had granted her request--he had let her come to Herons' Holt; but two
+days had passed and she had not found his Rose. True, if she had longer
+she could more thoroughly search; but as an honest woman she must admit
+that she had been given her chance, had failed.
+
+Upon a wailing note she ended: “I must go.”
+
+“Cancel that intention,” Mr. Marrapit told her. Her honesty smote this
+man. Had he misjudged her?
+
+She smothered a sniff in her handkerchief: “I must go. I must go. I have
+seen that you regard me with suspicion. Oh, you have reason, I know; but
+I cannot bear it.”
+
+“Remove that impression,” spoke Mr. Marrapit. He _had_ misjudged this
+woman; he was convinced of it.
+
+Mrs. Major gave her answer in the form of two smothered sniffs and a
+third that, eluding her handkerchief, escaped free and loud--a telling
+sniff that advertised her distress; wrung Mr. Marrapit's emotions.
+
+He continued: “Mrs. Major, at a future time we will discuss the painful
+affair to which you make reference. At present I am too preoccupied
+by the calamity that has desolated my hearth. Meanwhile, I suspend
+judgment. I place suspicion behind me. I regard you only as she whom my
+Rose loved.”
+
+“Do you wish me to stay a little longer?” asked Mrs. Major, trembling.
+
+“That is my wish. Continue to prosecute your search.”
+
+Trembling yet more violently Mrs. Major said: “I will stay. I had not
+dared to suppose I might stop more than two days. I brought nothing with
+me. May I go to London to get clothes? I will return to-morrow morning.”
+
+“Why not to-night?”
+
+“Early to-morrow would be more convenient. I have other things to do in
+London.”
+
+“To-morrow, then,” Mr. Marrapit agreed.
+
+At the door Mrs. Major turned. Her great success at this interview
+emboldened her to a second stroke. “There is one other thing I would
+like to say, if I dared.”
+
+“Be fearless.”
+
+She plunged. “If Heaven should grant that I may find the Rose, I implore
+you not to distress me by offering me the reward you are holding out. I
+could not take it. I know you can ill afford it. Further than that, to
+have the joy of giving you back your Rose would be reward enough for me.
+And to know that she was safe with you, though I--I should never see her
+again, that would make me happy till the end of my days.”
+
+Her nobility smote Mr. Marrapit. Cruelly, shamefully, he _had_ misjudged
+her. Her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, very gently Mrs. Major closed
+the door; very soberly mounted the stairs.
+
+Out of earshot, she walked briskly to her room; drew forth her diary; in
+a bold hand inscribed:
+
+“_Absolutely certain shall stick._”
+
+The masterly woman lunched in town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Mrs. Major Finds The Lock.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+By six o'clock Mrs. Major had all ready for her adventure. In the little
+room at Angel Street she deposited a newly purchased basket; at eight
+o'clock started for Sussex Gardens.
+
+Twice, while passing down the terrace at about nine, she had seen the
+cat she now pursued let out for what was doubtless its nightly run.
+
+On each occasion she had observed the same order of events, and she
+judged them to be of regular occurrence. Out from No. 506 had stepped a
+tall man, long-haired, soft-hatted, poetically bearded. Behind him had
+followed the cat. The cat had trotted across the road to the gardens;
+the tall man had walked slowly round the enclosure. Returning, he had
+called. The cat had walked soberly forth from the railings and the pair
+had re-entered the house.
+
+II.
+
+Matters fell this night precisely as the sapient woman had conjectured.
+Shortly before nine she took up position against the railings in a dark
+patch that marked the middle point between two lamps, some doors
+above 506. No tremor agitated her form; in action this woman was most
+masterly.
+
+A church clock struck a full clear note, another and another. The
+after-humming of the ninth had scarcely died when the blackness that
+lay beneath the fanlight of 506 was split by a thin rod of yellow light.
+Instantly this widened, served for a moment to silhouette a tall figure,
+then vanished as the door slammed. The tall figure stepped on to the
+pavement; a cat at its feet trod sedately across the road. The tall
+figure turned; in a moment was meditatively pacing the pavement opposite
+where Mrs. Major stood.
+
+Mrs. Major gave him twenty yards. Then she hurried along the railings to
+where the cat had tripped. Six feet inwards, delicately scratching the
+soil beneath a bush, she espied it.
+
+The masterly woman pressed her face between the rails; stretched a
+snapping finger and thumb; in an intense voice murmured, “Tweetikins
+puss!”
+
+Tweetikins puss continued thoughtfully to turn the soil. This was a
+nicely mannered cat.
+
+“Tweety little puss!” cooed Mrs. Major. “Tweety pussikins! puss, puss!”
+
+Tweety pussikins turned to regard her. Mrs. Major moistened her finger
+and thumb; snapped frantically. “Puss, puss--tweety pussy!”
+
+Tweety pussy advanced till the snapping fingers were within an inch of
+its nose.
+
+“Pussikins, pussikins!” implored Mrs. Major.
+
+Pussikins very deliberately seated itself; coiled its fine tail about
+its feet; regarded Mrs. Major with a sphinx-like air.
+
+Mrs. Major pressed till the iron railings cut her shoulders. She
+stretched the forefinger of her extended arm; at great peril of slipping
+forward and rasping her nose along the rails effected to scratch the top
+of the sphinx's head.
+
+“Puss, puss! Tweety, _tweety_ puss!”
+
+By not so much as a blink did tweety puss stir a muscle.
+
+Mrs. Major was in considerable pain. Her bent legs were cramped; the
+railings bit her shoulder; her neck ached: “Tweety little puss! Tweety
+puss! Puss! _Drat_ the beast!”
+
+In great physical agony and in heightening mental distress--since
+time was fleeting and the cat as statuesque as ever,--Mrs. Major again
+dratted it twice with marked sincerity and a third time as a sharp sound
+advertised the splitting of a secret portion of her wear against the
+tremendous strain her unnatural position placed upon it. Unable longer
+to endure the pain of her outstretched arm, she dropped her hand to
+earth; with a masterly effort resumed her smiling face and silky tone.
+Repeating her endearing cooings, she scratched the soil, enticing to
+some hidden mystery.
+
+The demon of curiosity impelled this cat's doom. For a moment it
+eyed the scratching fingers; then stretched forward its head to
+investigation.
+
+The time for gentle methods was gone. Mrs. Major gripped the downy
+scruff of the doomed creature's neck; dragged the surprised animal
+forward; rudely urged it through the railings; tucked it beneath her
+cloak; sped down the road in the same direction that the tall figure had
+taken.
+
+But where the tall figure had turned round the gardens Mrs. Major kept
+straight. Along a main street, into a by-street, round a turning,
+across a square, up a terrace, over the Edgware Road--so into the
+bed-sitting-room at Angel Street.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Speeding by train to Herons' Holt upon the following morning, beside
+her the basket wherein lay the key that was to open paradise, Mrs. Major
+slightly altered her plans. It had been her intention at once to burst
+upon Mr. Marrapit with her prize--at once to put to desperate test
+whether or no he would accept it as the Rose. But before Paltley Hill
+was reached the masterly woman had modified this order. The cat she had
+abducted was so much the facsimile of the Rose that for the first time
+it occurred to her that, like the Rose, it might be valuable, and that a
+noisy hue and cry might be raised upon its loss.
+
+If this so happened, and especially if Mr. Marrapit were doubtful that
+the cat was his Rose, it would be dangerous to let him know that she
+had made her discovery in London. Supposing he heard that a London cat,
+similar to the Rose in appearance, were missing, and remembered that
+this cat--of which from the first he had had doubts--was filched from
+London? That might turn success into failure. The chances of such events
+were remote, but the masterly woman determined to run no risks. She
+decided that on arrival at
+
+Paltley Hill she would conceal her cat; on the morrow, starting out
+from Herons' Hill to renew her search, would find it and with it come
+bounding to the house.
+
+As to where she should hide it she had no difficulty in determining. She
+knew of but one place, and she was convinced she could not have known a
+better. The ruined hut in the copse off the Shipley Road, whither in the
+dear, dead days beyond recall she had stolen for Old Tommish purposes,
+was in every way safe and suitable. None visited there at ordinary
+times; now that the country-side was no longer being searched for the
+Rose save by herself, it was as safe as ever. She would leave her cat
+there this day and night.
+
+Upon this determination the remarkable woman acted; before proceeding to
+Herons' Holt secured her cat in that inner room of the hut where, but a
+few days previously, the Rose herself had lain.
+
+When she reached the house a maid told her that Mr. Marrapit was
+closeted with young Mr. Wyvern.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+During the afternoon Mrs. Major visited her cat, taking it milk. That
+evening, Mary and Margaret being elsewhere together, she was able to
+enjoy a quiet hour with Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He was heavily depressed: “A week has passed, Mrs. Major. Something
+tells me I never again will see my Rose. This day I have sent young Mr.
+Wyvern and Mr. Brunger after my nephew George. The clue he claims to
+know is my last chance. I have no faith in it. Put not your trust--” Mr.
+Marrapit allowed a melancholy sigh to conclude his sentence. This man
+had suffered much.
+
+Mrs. Major clasped her hands. “Oh, do not give up hope, Mr. Marrapit.
+Something tells me you _will_ see her--soon, very soon.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit sighed. “You are always encouraging, Mrs. Major.”
+
+“Something tells me that I have reason to be, Mr. Marrapit. Last night I
+dreamed that the Rose was found.” The encouraging woman leaned forward;
+said impressively, “I dreamed that I found her.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not respond to her tone. Melancholy had this man in
+leaden grip. “I lose hope,” he said. “Man is born unto trouble as the
+sparks fly upward. Do not trust in dreams.”
+
+“Oh, but I _do_!” Mrs. Major said with girlish impulsiveness. “I _do_.
+I always have. My dreams so often come true. Do not lose hope, Mr.
+Marrapit.” She continued with a beautiful air of timidity: “Oh, Mr.
+Marrapit, I know I am only here on sufferance, but your careworn air
+emboldens me to suggest--it might keep your poor mind from thinking--a
+game of backgammon such as we used to play before--” She sighed.
+
+“I should like it,” Mr. Marrapit answered.
+
+Mrs. Major arranged the board; drew Mr. Marrapit's favourite chair to
+the table; rattled the dice. After a few moves, “Oh, you're not beating
+me as you used to,” she said archly.
+
+“I am out of practice,” Mr. Marrapit confessed.
+
+Mrs. Major paused in the act of throwing her dice. “Out of practice! But
+surely Miss Humfray plays with you?”
+
+“She does not.”
+
+Mrs. Major gave a sigh that suggested more than she dared say.
+
+She sighed again when the game was concluded. Mr. Marrapit sat on.
+“Quite like old times,” Mrs. Major murmured. “Good night, Mr. Marrapit;
+and don't lose hope. Remember my dream.”
+
+“Quite like old times,” Mr. Marrapit murmured.
+
+The masterly woman ascended the stairs rubbing her hands.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Mrs. Major ate an excellent breakfast upon the following morning. She
+was upon the very threshold of winning into paradise, but not a tremor
+of nervousness did she betray or feel. This was a superb woman.
+
+At eleven she left the house and took a walk--rehearsing the manner
+in which she had arranged to burst in upon Mr. Marrapit with the cat,
+checking again the arguments with which she would counter and lull any
+doubts he might raise.
+
+At twelve she entered the hut.
+
+Mrs. Major was in the very act of leaving the building, the cat
+beneath her arm, when a sound of voices and footsteps held her upon the
+threshold. She listened; the sounds drew near. She closed the door; the
+sounds, now loud, approached the hut. She ran to the inner room; a hand
+was laid upon the outer latch. She closed the door; applied her eye to a
+crack; George and Mary entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Mrs. Major Gets The Key.
+
+
+George carried a basket. He laid it upon the floor. Then he turned and
+kissed his Mary. He put his arms about her; held her to him for a moment
+in a tremendous hug; pressed his lips to hers; held her away, drinking
+love from her pretty eyes; again kissed her and again hugged.
+
+She gasped: “I shall crack in half in a minute if you will be so
+ridiculous.”
+
+He laughed; let her free. He led to the tottering bench that stood
+across the room, sat her there, and taking her little gloved hand patted
+it between his.
+
+“Fine, Mary,” he said, “to see you again! Fine! It seems months!”
+
+“Years,” Mary whispered, giving one of the patting hands a little
+squeeze. “Years. And you never sent me a line. I've not had a word with
+you since you came up on the lawn that day and said you had passed your
+exam. You simply _bolted_ off, you know.”
+
+“You got my letter, though, this morning?” George said. He dropped
+her hand; fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. He was becoming a little
+nervous at the matter before him.
+
+Mary told him: “Well, that was _nothing_. It was such a _frantic_
+letter! What is all the mystery about?”
+
+“I'll tell you the whole story.” George got from the bench and began to
+pace, filling his pipe.
+
+With a tender little smile Mary watched her George's dear face. Then, as
+he still paced, lit his pipe, gustily puffed, but did not speak, a tiny
+troubled pucker came between her eyes. There was a suspicion of a silly
+little tremor in her voice when at last she asked: “Anything wrong, old
+man?”
+
+George inhaled a vast breath of smoke; let it go in a misty cloud. With
+a quick action he laid his pipe upon the table; sprang to her side.
+His right arm he put about her, in his left hand he clasped both hers.
+“Nothing wrong,” he cried brightly; “not a bit wrong. Mary, it's a game,
+a plot, a dickens of a game.”
+
+“Well, tell me,” she said, beaming.
+
+“It wants your help.”
+
+“Well, tell me, tell me, stupid.”
+
+“You will help?”
+
+“Of course, if I can. Oh, do tell me, Georgie!”
+
+“I'll show you, that's quicker.”
+
+He sprang to the basket; unstrapped the lid; threw it back. A most
+exquisite orange head upreared. A queenly back arched. A beautiful
+figure stepped forth.
+
+“_George!_” Mary cried. “George! _The Rose!_ You've found her!”
+
+George gave a nervous little crack of laughter. “I never lost her.”
+
+“Never lost her! No, but she's been--”
+
+“I've had her all the time!”
+
+“_All the_--”
+
+“I took her!”
+
+“You _took_ her! _You_--took her! Oh, George, speak sense! Whatever
+can you mean?” Mary had jumped to her feet when first the Rose stepped
+forth; now was close to her George--face a little white, perplexed;
+hands clasped.
+
+He cried: “Sweetest dove of a Mary, don't talk like that. Sit down and
+I'll tell you.”
+
+“But what have you done?--what have you _done?_”
+
+The true woman was in that question. How they jostle us, these women,
+with their timid little flutterings when we are trying to put a case
+before them in our manlike way!--first spoiling their palate with all
+the sugar, so that they may not taste the powder.
+
+“I'll tell you what I've done if you'll only sit down.”
+
+She went to the seat.
+
+“Now laugh, Mary. You simply must laugh. I can't tell you while you look
+like that. Laugh, or I shall tickle you.”
+
+She laughed merrily--over her first bewilderment. “But, Georgie, it's
+something fearful that you've done, isn't it?”
+
+He sat beside her; took her hands. “It's terrific. Look here. From the
+beginning. When I told old Marrapit I'd passed my exam. I asked for that
+500 pounds--you know--to start us.”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“He refused. He got in an awful state at the bare idea. I asked him
+to lend it--he got worse. Mary, he simply would not give or advance a
+penny: you know what that meant?”
+
+The dejected droop of her mouth gave answer.
+
+“Well, then, I concocted a plot. Old Wyvern helped me--Professor Wyvern,
+you know. I thought that if I took his cat, his beloved Rose, and lay
+low with her for a bit, he would--”
+
+“Oh, _George!_”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Nothing--finish.”
+
+“--He would be certain to offer a reward. And I guessed he wouldn't mind
+what he paid. So I thought I'd take the cat and hang on till he offered
+L500, or till I thought he'd be so glad to get the Rose back that he'd
+do what I want out of pure gratitude. Then I'd bring it back and get
+the money--say I'd found it, you see, and--and--wait a bit--for heaven's
+sake don't speak yet.” George saw his Mary was bursting with words; as
+he judged the look in her eyes they were words he had reason to fear.
+Shirking their hurt, he hurried along. “Don't speak yet. Get the money,
+and then we'd save up and pay him back and then tell him. There!”
+
+She burst out: “But, George--how _could_ you? Oh, it's wrong--it's
+_awful!_ Why, do you know what people would call you? They'd say you're
+a--yes, they'd say you're a--”
+
+He snatched the terrible word from her lips with a kiss.
+
+“They'd say I was a fool if I let Marrapit do me out of what is my own.
+That's the point, Mary. It's my money. I'm only trying to get what is my
+own. I felt all along you would see that; otherwise--” He hesitated.
+He was in difficulties. Manlike, he suddenly essayed to shoot the
+responsibility upon the woman. “--Otherwise I wouldn't have done it,” he
+ended.
+
+His Mary had the wit to slip from the net, to dig him a vital thrust
+with the trident: “If you thought that, why didn't you tell me?”
+
+The thrust staggered him; set him blustering: “Tell you! Tell you! How
+could I tell you? I did it on the spur of the moment.”
+
+“You could have written. Oh, Georgie, it's wrong. It _is_ wrong.”
+
+He took up the famous sex attack. “Wrong! Wrong! That's just like a
+woman to say that! You won't listen to reason. You jump at a thing and
+shut your eyes and your ears.”
+
+“I _will_ listen to reason. But you haven't _got_ any reason. If you
+had, why didn't you tell me before you did it?”
+
+He continued the sex assault; flung out a declamatory hand. “There you
+go! Why didn't I tell you? I've told you why. I tell you I did it on the
+spur of the moment--”
+
+But she still struggled. “Yes, that's just it. You didn't think. Now
+that you are thinking you must see it in its proper light. You _must_
+see it's wrong.”
+
+“I don't. I don't in the least.”
+
+“Well, why are you getting in such a state about it?”
+
+“I'm not getting in a state!”
+
+“You are.” His Mary fumbled at her waist-belt. “You
+are. You're--saying--all sorts--of--things.
+You--said--I--was--just--like--a--woman.” Out came this preposterous
+Mary's pocket handkerchief; into it went Mary's little nose.
+
+George sprang to her. “Oh, Mary! Oh, I say, don't cry, old girl!”
+
+The nose came out for a minute, a very shiny little nose. “I can't
+help crying. This is an--an _awful_ business.” The shiny little nose
+disappeared again.
+
+George tried to pull away the handkerchief, tried to put his face
+against hers. A bony little shoulder poked obstinately up and prevented
+him. He burst out desperately. “Oh, damn! Oh, what a beast I am! I'm
+always making you cry. Oh, damn! Oh, Mary! I can't do anything right.
+I've had an awful time these days--and I was longing to see you,--and
+now I've called you names and been a brute.”
+
+His Mary gulped the tears that were making the shiny little nose every
+minute more shiny. Never could she bear to hear her George accuse
+himself. Upon a tremendous sniff, “You haven't been a brute,” she said,
+“--a bit. It's my--my fault for annoying you when I don't properly
+understand. Perhaps I don't understand.”
+
+He put an arm about her. “You don't, Mary. Really and truly you don't.
+Let me tell you. Don't say a word till I've done. I'll tell you first
+why I've brought the Rose here. You see, I can't keep her anywhere
+else. I'm being chased about all over England. Bill and that infernal
+detective are after me now, and I simply must hide the beastly cat where
+it will be safe. Well, it's safest here--here, right under their noses,
+where nobody will ever look because everyone thinks it miles away by
+now. I can't stop near it, because I must be away on this clue they
+think I've got--especially now I've got mixed up with the detectives:
+see? So I want you just to come up from the house every day and feed the
+cat. You'll be perfectly safe, and it can't be for very long. You would
+do that, wouldn't you? Oh, Mary, think what it means to us!”
+
+She polished the shiny little nose: “I'd do anything that would help
+you. But, Georgie, it's not _right_; it's _wrong_. Oh, it is wrong! I
+don't care _what_ you say.”
+
+“But you haven't heard what I've got to say.”
+
+“I have. I've been listening for hours.”
+
+“No, no, Mary. No, I haven't explained yet. You're too serious about
+it. It isn't a bit serious. It's only a frightful rag. And nobody will
+suffer, because he'll get his money back. And, think--think what it
+means. Now, do listen!”
+
+She listened, and her George poured forth a flood of arguments that were
+all mixed and tangled with love. She could not separate the two. This
+argument that he was right was delectably sugared with the knowledge
+that the thing was done for her; that delicious picture of the future,
+when it was swallowed, proved to be an argument in favour of his
+purpose. Love and argument, argument and love--she could not separate
+them, and they combined into a most exquisite sweetmeat. The arm her
+George had about her was a base advantage over her. How doubt her George
+was right when against her she could feel his heart! How be wiser than
+he when both her hands were in that dear brown fist?
+
+She was almost won when with a “So there you are!” he concluded. She had
+been won if she had much longer remained beneath the drug of his dear,
+gay, earnest words.
+
+But when he ceased she came to. The little awakening sigh she gave was
+the little fluttering sigh of a patient when the anesthetic leaves the
+senses clear.
+
+She looked at her George. Horrible to dim the sparkling in those
+dear eyes, radiant with excitement, with love. Yet she did it. The
+goody-goody little soul of her put its hands about the little weakness
+of her and held it tight.
+
+She said: “I do, _do_ see what you mean, Georgie. But I do, _do_ think
+it's wrong.”
+
+And then the little hands and the brown fist changed places. For she
+put one hand below the fist, and with the other patted as she gave
+her little homily--goody-goody little arguments, Sunday-school little
+arguments, mother-and-child little arguments. And very timidly she
+concluded: “You are not angry, Georgie, are you?”
+
+This splendid George of hers gave her a tremendous kiss. “You're a
+little saint; you're a little idiot; you're a little angel; you're
+a little goose,” he told her. “But I love you all the more for it,
+although I'd like to shake you. I _would_ like to shake you, Mary.
+You're ruining the finest joke that ever was tried; and you're ruining
+our only chance of marrying; and goodness only knows what's going to
+happen now.”
+
+She laughed ever so happily. It was intoxicating to bend this dear
+George; intoxicating to have the love that came of bending him.
+
+“But I _am_ right, am I not?” she asked.
+
+George said: “Look here, saint and goose. I'm simply not going to chuck
+the thing and all our happiness like this. I'll make a bargain. Saint
+and goose, we'll say you are right, but you shall have one night to
+think over it. One night. And this afternoon you will go to Professor
+Wyvern and tell him everything and hear what he thinks about it--what an
+outsider thinks: see? Yes, that's it. Don't even spend a night over it.
+Have a talk with Professor Wyvern, and if you still think I ought to
+chuck it, write to me at once, and to-morrow I'll come down and creep
+in unto my uncle with the cat, and say: 'Uncle, I have sinned.' There,
+Mary, that's agreed, isn't it?”
+
+“That's agreed,” she joined. “Yes, that's fair.”
+
+He looked at his watch. “I must cut. I must catch the one-thirty train.
+I must calm Bill and the 'tec. in case you--Mary, _do_ weigh whatever
+Wyvern says, won't you?”
+
+She promised; gave her George her hope that the Professor would make her
+see differently.
+
+“That's splendid of you!” George cried. “Saint and goose, that's sweet
+of you. Mary, I'm sure he will. Look here, I must fly; come half-way
+to the station. The cat's all right here. Pop up and feed her this
+afternoon.”
+
+They pressed the door behind them; hurried down the path.
+
+It was precisely as they turned from the lane into the high-road, that
+Mrs. Major, a cat beneath her arm, went bounding wildly through the
+copse towards Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+George Has A Shot At Paradise.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two hours after George, leaving his Mary near Paltley Hill railway
+station, had got back to his inn at Temple Colney, a very agitated
+young man booked from Temple Colney to Paltley Hill and was now speeding
+between them in the train.
+
+He had the carriage to himself. Sometimes he sat, hands deep in pockets,
+legs thrust before him, staring with wide and frightened eyes at the
+opposite seat. Sometimes he paced wildly from door to door, chin sunk on
+breast, in his eyes still that look of frantic apprehension. Sometimes
+he would snatch from his pocket a telegram; glare at it; pucker his
+brows over it; groan over it.
+
+George was this feverish young man.
+
+On his table in his room at the inn he had found this telegram awaiting
+him. He had broken the envelope, had read, and immediately a tickling
+feeling over his scalp had sent a dreadful shiver through his frame:
+
+“_Return at once. Cat found.--Marrapit._”
+
+He had plumped into a chair.
+
+For a space the capacity for thought was gone. In his brain was only
+a heavy drumming that numbed. Beneath the window a laden cart went
+thumping by--thump, thump; thump, thump--cat found; cat found. The cart
+drubbed away and was lost. Then the heavy ticking of the clock edged
+into his senses--tick, tock; tick, tock--cat found; cat found.
+
+Then thought came.
+
+Cat found!--then all was lost. Cat found!--then some damned prowling
+idiot had chanced upon the hut.
+
+This miserable George had felt certain that Professor Wyvern's arguments
+would overcome his Mary's scruples. That little meeting with his Mary
+had made him the more desperately anxious for success so that he might
+win her and have her. And now--cat found!--all over. Cat found! His
+pains for nothing!
+
+Then came the support of a hope, and to this, hurrying back to the
+station, speeding now in the train, most desperately he clung. The
+Rose, he struggled to assure himself, had not been found at all. It was
+impossible that anyone had been to the hut. Some idiot had found a
+cat that answered to the Rose's description, and had telegraphed the
+discovery to his uncle; or someone had brought a cat to his uncle and
+his uncle was himself temporarily deluded.
+
+Wildly praying that this might be so, George leaped from the train at
+Paltley Hill; went rushing to the hut. Outside, for full ten minutes he
+dared not push the door. What if he saw no Rose? What if all were indeed
+lost?
+
+He braced himself; pushed; entered.
+
+At once he gave a whoop, and another whoop, and a third. He snapped his
+fingers; cavorted through the steps of a wild dance that considerably
+alarmed the noble cat that watched him.
+
+For there was the Rose!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When George had indulged his transports till he was calmer, he took a
+moment's swift thought to decide his action.
+
+Since someone was bouncing a spurious Rose on his uncle, he must delay,
+he decided, no longer--must dash in with the true Rose at once. Surely
+his uncle's delight would be sufficient to arouse in him the gratitude
+that would produce the sum necessary for Runnygate!
+
+Previously, when he had reflected upon the plan he should follow on
+restoring the cat, he had been a little alarmed at the difficulties
+he foresaw. Chief among them was the fact that his uncle, and the
+detective, and heaven knew who else besides, would require a plausible
+and circumstantial story of how the Rose had been found--might wish to
+prosecute the thief. How to invent this story had caused George enormous
+anxiety. He shuddered whenever he thought upon it; had steadily put it
+behind him till the matter must be faced.
+
+But this and all other difficulties he now sent flying. The relief of
+freedom from the badgering he had endured since he abducted the Rose;
+the enormous relief of finding that the Rose was not, after all, gone
+from the hut; the tearing excitement of the thought that he had his very
+fingers upon success--these combined to make him reckless of truth and
+blind to doubts. He relied upon his uncle's transports of delight on
+recovering the Rose--he felt that in the delirious excitement of that
+joy everything must go well and unquestioned with him who had brought it
+about. As to his Mary's scruples--time enough for them when the matter
+was done.
+
+This was George's feeling at the end of his rapid cogitation. A
+heartless chuckle he gave as he thought of Bill and Mr. Brunger at
+the inn, closely dogging the landlord; then he seized the cat and in a
+second was bounding through the copse to Herons' Holt as Mrs. Major, a
+short space ago, had bounded before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The maid who opened the door told George that the master awaited him in
+the study.
+
+Nothing of George's excitement had left him during the rush down to the
+house. His right arm tucked about the cat he carried, with his left hand
+impulsively he pushed open the door; with a spring eagerly entered.
+
+Even as he stepped over the threshold the bubbling words that filled his
+mouth melted; did not shape. In the atmosphere of the apartment there
+was that sinister element of some unseen force which we detect by medium
+of the almost atrophied sense that in dogs we call instinct. As dogs
+will check and grow suspicious in the presence of death that they cannot
+see, but feel, so my George checked and was struck apprehensive by the
+sudden sensation of an invisible calamity.
+
+The quick glance he gave increased the sudden chill of his spirits.
+He saw Mr. Marrapit standing against the mantelshelf--dressing-gowned,
+hands behind back, face most intensely grim; his glance shifted and he
+froze, for it rested upon Mrs. Major--hidden by a table from the waist
+downwards, prim, bolt upright in a chair, face most intensely grim; his
+eyes passed her and now goggled in new bewilderment, for they took in
+his Mary--seated upon the extreme edge of the sofa, a white tooth upon
+lower lip, face most intensely woebegone.
+
+George stood perfectly still.
+
+Like the full, deep note of a huge bell, Mr. Marrapit's voice came
+booming through the fearful atmosphere.
+
+“Well?” boomed Mr. Marrapit.
+
+The cat beneath George's arm wriggled.
+
+Boom and wriggle touched George back to action from the fear into which
+the invisible something and the fearful panorama of faces had struck
+him.
+
+After all--let have happened what might have happened--he had the cat!
+
+He swung the creature round into his hands; outstretched it. He took a
+step forward. “Uncle!” he cried, “uncle, I have found the Rose!”
+
+“Hem!” said Mrs. Major on a short jerk.
+
+From Mary there came a violent double sniff.
+
+George stood perfectly still; the unseen horror he felt to be rushing
+upon him, but it remained invisible. With considerably less confidence
+he repeated:
+
+“The Rose, uncle.”
+
+“Hem!” said Mrs. Major on a yet shorter jerk; from Mary a double sniff
+yet more violent.
+
+Mr. Marrapit raised a white hand.
+
+“Hark!” said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Alarmed, his nerves unstrung, with straining ears George listened. The
+tense atmosphere made him ajump for outward sounds.
+
+“Hark!” boomed Mr. Marrapit; lowered the warning hand; at George
+directed a long finger. “Are you not afraid that you will hear upon the
+threshold the footsteps of the young men who will come in, wind you up,
+and carry you out?”
+
+“What on earth--?” George asked.
+
+Mr. Marrapit poked the extended finger towards him. “Ananias!” he
+boomed. He poked at my quivering Mary. “Sapphira!”
+
+“Hem!” said Mrs. Major. “Hem!”
+
+George recovered. “Is this a joke?” he asked. “I tell you--look for
+yourself--I have found the Rose.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit stooped to Mrs. Major's lap, hidden by the table. With a
+most queenly creature in his arms he stood upright. “Here is the Rose,”
+ said he.
+
+Instantly George forgot all that had immediately passed. Instantly
+he remembered that a bogus Rose was what he fully expected to see.
+Instantly fear fled. Instantly assurance returned.
+
+In a full and confident note, “Uncle,” he said, “you have been
+deceived!”
+
+His words let loose a torrent upon him.
+
+Mr. Marrapit with one arm clasped to his breast the cat he had raised
+from Mrs. Major's lap. Alternately raising and lowering the other hand,
+his white hair seeming to stream, his eyes flashing, he took on, to
+George's eyes, the appearance of an enraged prophet bellowing over the
+cities of the Plain.
+
+“I _have_ been deceived!” he cried. “You are right. Though you have the
+forked tongue of an adder, yet you speak truly. I have been deceived.
+Woe is me for I have been most wickedly deceived by those who eat of my
+bread, who lie beneath my roof. I have cherished vipers in my bosom, and
+they have stung me. Bitterly have I been deceived.”
+
+He paused. A low moan from Mrs. Major, handkerchief to eyes, voiced the
+effect of his speech upon her; in racking sniffs Mary's emotion found
+vent. But upon George the outburst had a cooling result--he was certain
+of his ground.
+
+He said solidly: “That's all rot.”
+
+“Rot!” cried Mr. Marrapit.
+
+“Yes, rot. You work yourself up into such a state when you get like
+this, that you don't know what you're talking about--vipers and all that
+kind of thing. When you've calmed down and understand things, perhaps
+you'll be sorry. I tell you you've been deceived. That's not the Rose
+you've got hold of. This is the Rose. Someone has made a fool of you.
+Someone--”
+
+Between two violent sniffs, “Oh, George, don't, don't!” came from his
+Mary.
+
+Startled, George checked.
+
+“Monster, be careful,” said Mr. Marrapit. “Beware how much deeper you
+enmire yourself in the morass of your evil. Put down that miserable
+creature you hold. I place Mrs. Major's Rose beside it. Look upon them.”
+
+George looked. With staring eyes he gazed upon the two cats. With arched
+tails they advanced to exchange compliments, and the nearer they stood
+together the less Rose-like became the cat he had brought into the room.
+For the cat that Mr. Marrapit had produced--Mrs. Major's cat, as he
+called it--was the Rose herself; could be none other, and none other
+(when thus placed alongside) could be she.
+
+Struck unconscious to his surroundings by this appalling spectacle,
+George slowly stooped towards the cats as though hypnotised by the
+orange coats. His eyes goggled further from his head; the blood went
+thumping in his temples. He was aghast and horror-struck with the
+stupefaction that comes of effort to disbelieve the eyes. But he did
+disbelieve his eyes. How possibly trust them when from the Rose's very
+bed he had taken the Rose herself and held her till now when he produced
+her? He did disbelieve his eyes.
+
+He gave Mrs. Major's cat a careless pat. By an effort throwing a
+careless tone into his voice, “A very good imitation,” he said. “Not at
+all unlike the Rose!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit became an alarming sight. He intook an enormous breath that
+swelled him dangerously. He opened his lips and the air rushed out with
+roaring sound. Again he inspired, raised his clenched hands above his
+head, stood like some great tottering image upon the brink of internal
+explosion.
+
+As upon a sudden thought, he checked the bursting words that threatened
+from his lips; allowed his pent-up breath to escape inarticulate; to his
+normal size and appearance shrank back when it was gone.
+
+With an air of ebbing doubt, “Not at all unlike?” he questioned.
+
+George replied briskly. He forced himself to take confidence, though
+every moment made yet more difficult the struggle to disbelieve what his
+eyes told him. “Not at all unlike,” he affirmed. “Very similar, in fact.
+Yes, I should say very similar indeed.”
+
+Still in the same tone of one who is being reluctantly convinced, Mr.
+Marrapit again played Echo's part: “Very similar indeed? You grant
+that?”
+
+“Certainly,” George admitted frankly. “Certainly. I do not wonder you
+were mistaken.”
+
+“Nor I,” Mr. Marrapit smoothly replied. “Indeed, in Mrs. Major's cat I
+detect certain signs which my Rose has long borne but which she has no
+longer, if the cat you bring is she?”
+
+“Eh?” said George.
+
+“Certain signs,” Mr. Marrapit repeated, with the smoothness of flowing
+oil, “which I recollect in my Rose. The mark, for example, where her
+left ear was abrased by Mr. Wyvern's blood-thirsty bull-terrier.”
+
+George stooped to the cats. Pointing, he cried triumphantly: “Yes, and
+there is the mark!”
+
+“Yes,” Mr. Marrapit pronounced mildly. “Yes, but you are now looking at
+Mrs. Major's cat.”
+
+“Hem!” said Mrs. Major. “Hem!”
+
+Like one who has stepped upon hot iron George started back, stared
+aghast. A further “hem,” with which a chuckle was mixed, came from Mrs.
+Major; from my collapsed Mary upon the edge of the sofa a sniff that was
+mingled groan and sob.
+
+George put a hand to his head. This young man's senses were ajostle and
+awhirl. Well he remembered that mark which by disastrous blunder he had
+indicated on Mrs. Major's cat; vainly he sought it on his own. Yet his
+was the Rose. Was this a nightmare, then, and no true thing? He put his
+hand to his head.
+
+“Looking at Mrs. Major's cat,” repeated Mr. Marrapit, his tone smooth as
+the trickle of oil.
+
+George fought on. “Quite so. Quite so. I know that. That is what makes
+it so extraordinary--that this cat which you call Mrs. Major's and think
+is the Rose should have the very mark that our Rose had.”
+
+“But our Rose has not--if that is she.”
+
+“Ah! not now,” George said impressively. “Not now. It healed. Healed
+months ago. Don't you remember my saying one morning, 'The Rose's ear is
+quite healed now'?”
+
+“I do not, sir,” snapped Mr. Marrapit, with alarming sharpness.
+
+“Oh!” said George. “Oh!”
+
+“Hem!” fired Mrs. Major. “Hem! Hem!”
+
+“That tail,” spoke Mr. Marrapit, a sinister hardness now behind the
+oiliness. “Mark those tails.”
+
+George marked. To this young man's disordered mind the room took on the
+appearance of a forest of waving tails.
+
+“Well?” rapped Mr. Marrapit. “You note those tails? Mrs. Major's cat has
+a verdant tail, a bush-like tail. Yours has a rat tail. Do you recollect
+my pride in the luxuriousness of the Rose's tail?”
+
+George blundered along the path he had chosen. “Formerly,” he said, “not
+latterly. Latterly, if you remember, there was a remarkable falling off
+in the Rose's tail. Her tail moulted. It shed hairs. I remember worrying
+over it. I remember--”
+
+A voice from the sofa froze him. “Oh, George, don't, don't!” moaned his
+Mary.
+
+Recovering his horror, he turned stiffly upon her. “If you mean me, Miss
+Humfray, you forget yourself. I do not understand you. Kindly recollect
+that I have another name.”
+
+The hideous frown he bent upon his Mary might well have advertised
+the sincerity of his rebuke. He faced Mr. Marrapit, blundered on. “I
+remember noticing how thin the Rose's tail was getting.” He gathered
+confidence, pushed ahead. “You have forgotten those little points, sir.
+Upset by your loss you have jumped at the first cat like the Rose that
+you have seen.” He took new courage, became impressive. “You are making
+a fearful mistake, sir--an awful mistake. A mistake at which you will
+shudder when you look back--”
+
+“Incredible!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit, swelling as a few moments earlier he had swollen, this
+time burst to speech. He raised his clenched fists; in immense volume of
+sound exploded. “Incredible!”
+
+George misinterpreted; was shaken, but hurried on. “It is. I admit it.
+It is an incredible likeness. But look again, sir.”
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave instead a confused scream.
+
+Alarmed, George made as if to plunge on with further protests. “George!
+George!” from his Mary checked him. Furious, he turned upon her; and in
+that moment Mr. Marrapit, recovering words, turned to Mrs. Major.
+
+“As you have restored my treasure to my house, Mrs. Major, so now
+silence this iniquitous man by telling him what you have told me. I
+implore speed. Silence him. Utterly confound him. Stop him from further
+perjury before an outraged Creator rains thunderbolts upon this roof.”
+
+With a telling “Hem!” the masterly woman cleared for action. “I will,
+Mr. Marrapit,” she bowed. She murmured “Rosie, Rosie, ickle Rosie!” The
+cat Mr. Marrapit had lifted from her lap sprang back to that enticing
+cushion.
+
+Gently stroking its queenly back, to the soft accompaniment of its
+majestic purr, in acid-tipped accents she began to speak.
+
+She pointed at the cat that now sat at George's crime-steeped boots.
+“When I was out this morning I found that cat in a little copse on the
+Shipley Road. At first I thought it was our darling Rose. Suddenly I
+heard voices. I did not wish to be seen, because, dear Mr. Marrapit, if
+it was the Rose I had found, I wanted to bring it to you alone--to be
+the first to make you happy. So I slipped into a disused hut that stands
+there. Footsteps approached the door and I went into an inner room.”
+
+Mrs. Major paused; shot a stabbing smile at George.
+
+And now my miserable George realised. Now, visible at last, there rushed
+upon him, grappled him, strangled him, the sinister something whose
+presence he had scented on entering the apartment. No sound came from
+this stricken man. He could not speak, nor move, nor think. Rooted he
+remained; dully gazed at the thin lips whence poured the flood that
+engulfed and that was utterly to wreck him.
+
+The masterly woman continued. She indicated the rooted figure in the
+middle of the room, the collapsed heap upon the sofa's edge. “Those two
+entered. He had a basket. Oh, what were my feelings when out of it he
+took our darling Rose!”
+
+For the space of two minutes the masterly woman advertised the emotions
+she had suffered by burying her face in the Rose's coat; rocking gently.
+
+Emerging, she gulped her agitation; proceeded. “I need not repeat again
+all the dreadful story I heard, Mr. Marrapit? Surely I need not?”
+
+“You need not,” Mr. Marrapit told her. “You need not.”
+
+With a masterly half-smile, expressive of gratitude through great
+suffering, Mrs. Major thanked him. “Indeed,” she went on, “I did not
+hear the whole of it. It was so dreadful, I was so horrified, that I
+think I fainted. Yes, I fainted. But I heard them discuss how he had
+stolen the Rose so they might marry on the reward when it was big
+enough. He had kept the darling till then; now it was her turn to take
+charge of it--”
+
+Mrs. Major ceased with a jerk, drew in her legs preparatory to flight.
+
+For the rooted figure had sprung alarmingly to life. George would not
+have his darling Mary blackened. He took a stride to Mrs. Major; his
+pose threatened her. “That's untrue!” he thundered.
+
+“Ho!” exclaimed Mrs. Major. “Ho! A liar to my face! Ho!”
+
+“And you are a liar,” George stormed, “when you say--”
+
+“Silence!” commanded Mr. Marrapit. “Do not anger heaven yet further. Can
+you still deny--?”
+
+“No!” George said very loudly. “No! No! I deny nothing. But that woman's
+a liar when she says Miss Humfray discussed the business with me, or
+that it was Miss Humfray's turn to take the damned cat. Miss Humfray
+knew nothing about it till I told her. When she heard she said it was
+wrong and tried to make me take the cat back to you.”
+
+In his wrath George had advanced close to Mrs. Major. He stretched a
+violent finger to an inch from her nose. “That's true, isn't it? Have
+the grace to admit that.”
+
+Indomitable of purpose, the masterly woman pressed back her head as far
+as the chair would allow, tightened her lips.
+
+The violent finger followed. “Say it's true!” George boiled.
+
+His Mary implored: “Oh, George, don't, don't!”
+
+The furious young man flamed on to her. “Be quiet!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit began a sound. The furious young man flamed to him: “You be
+quiet, too!” He thrust the dreadful finger at Mrs. Major. “Now speak the
+truth. Had Miss Humfray anything to do with it?”
+
+This tremendous George had temporary command of the room. The masterly
+woman for once quailed. “I didn't hear that part,” she said.
+
+George drew in the fearful finger. “That's as good as the truth--from
+you.” He rounded upon Mr. Marrapit. “You understand that. This has been
+my show.”
+
+“A blackguard show,” pronounced Mr. Marrapit. “A monstrous and an
+impious show. A--”
+
+“I don't want to hear that. Whatever it is you are the cause of it. If
+you had done your duty with my mother's money--”
+
+A figure passed the open French windows along the path. Mr. Marrapit
+shouted “Fletcher!” The gardener entered.
+
+“But you've betrayed your trust,” George shouted. He liked the fine
+phrase and repeated it. “You've betrayed your trust!”
+
+Mr. Marrapit assumed his most collected air. “Silence. Silence, man of
+sin. Leave the house. Return thanks where thanks are due if I do not
+hound the law upon you. Take that girl. That miserable cat take. Hence!”
+
+Mary got to her feet, put a hand on her George's arm. “Do come, dear.”
+
+The wild young man shook her off. “I'll go when it pleases me!” he
+shouted at Mr. Marrapit.
+
+“You shall be arrested,” Mr. Marrapit returned. He addressed Mary.
+“Place that cat in that basket Carry it away.”
+
+George stood, heaving, panting, boiling for effective words, while
+his Mary did as bade. Awful visions of her George, fettered between
+policemen, trembled her pretty fingers. At last she had the basket
+strapped, raised it.
+
+“Come, George,” she said; and to Mr. Marrapit, “I'm so sorry, Mr.
+Marrapit. I--”
+
+It gave her furious George a vent. “Sorry! What are you sorry about?
+What have you done?” He roared over to Mrs. Major: “What other lies have
+you been telling?” He lashed himself at Mr. Marrapit. “Set the law on
+me? I jolly well hope you will. It will all come out then how you've
+behaved--how you've treated me. How you've betrayed--”
+
+“Fletcher,” Mr. Marrapit interrupted, “remove that man. Take him out.
+Thrust him from the house.”
+
+“Me?” said Mr. Fletcher. “Me thrust him? I'm a gardener, I am; not a--”
+
+“Duty or dismissal,” pronounced Mr. Marrapit. “Take choice.” He turned
+to the window. “Come, Mrs. Major.”
+
+George dashed for him. “You're not going till I've done with you!”
+
+Violence was in his tone, passion in his face.
+
+Alarmed, “Beware how you touch me!” called Mr. Marrapit; caught Mr.
+Fletcher, thrust him forward. “Grapple him!” cried Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Mr. Fletcher was violently impelled against George; to save a fall
+clutched him. “Don't make a scene, Mr. George,” he implored.
+
+George pushed him away. Mr. Fletcher trod back heavily upon Mr.
+Marrapit's foot. Mr. Marrapit screamed shrilly, plunged backwards into a
+cabinet, overturned it, sat heavily upon its debris.
+
+A laugh overcame George's fury. He swung on his heel; called “Come” to
+his Mary; stalked from the house.
+
+As they passed through the gate, “Oh, Georgie!” his Mary breathed. “Oh,
+Georgie!”
+
+He raged on to her: “What on earth made you say you were sorry? You've
+no spirit, Mary! No spirit!”
+
+The tremendous young man stalked ahead with huge strides.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In deep melancholy, sore beneath the correction Mr. Marrapit had heaped
+upon him, Mr. Fletcher wandered from the study; turned as he reached the
+path. “Me grapple him!” said Mr. Fletcher. “Me a craven! Me thrust
+him from the house! It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a
+Ju-jitsu.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Agony In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Silent, gloom-ridden, my sniffing Mary, my black-browed George laboured
+to the station. Silent they sat upon a bench waiting the London train.
+
+George bought his Mary a piece of chocolate from the automatic machine;
+she was a forlorn picture as with tiny nibbles she ate it, tears in her
+pretty eyes. In the restaurant George bought himself a huge cigar. This
+man was a desperate spectacle as with huge puffs he smoked, hands deep
+in pockets, legs thrust straight, brows horribly knitted.
+
+They had no words.
+
+The train came in. George found an empty compartment; helped his poor
+Mary to a corner; roughly dumped the cat-basket upon the rack; moodily
+plumped opposite his Mary.
+
+They had no words.
+
+It was as the train moved from the third stop that Mary, putting a giant
+sniff upon her emotions, asked her George: “Wher--where are we going,
+dear?”
+
+It was not until the fifth stop that George made answer. “Those
+Battersea digs,” he told her.
+
+They had no words.
+
+At Queen's Road station gloomily they alighted; silently laboured to the
+house of Mrs. Pinking.
+
+George answered her surprise. “Miss Humfray will have these rooms again,
+Mrs. Pinking, if you will be so kind; and I--” He checked. “Could you
+let us have some tea, Mrs. Pinking? Afterwards I'll have a talk with
+you. We've got into a--We're very tired. If you could just let us have
+some tea, then I'll explain.”
+
+In silence they ate and drank. George was half turned from the table,
+gloomily gazing from the window. Tiny sniffs came from his Mary; he had
+no words for her; looked away.
+
+But presently there was a most dreadful choking sound. He sprang
+around. Most painfully his Mary was spluttering over a cup of tea. With
+trembling hands she put down the cup; her face was red, convulsively
+working.
+
+George half rose to her. “Don't cry, darling Mary-kins. Don't cry.”
+
+She set down the cup; swallowed; gasped, “I'm not crying--I'm
+la-laughing,” and into a pipe of gayest mirth she went.
+
+Gloom gathered its sackcloth skirts; scuttled from the room.
+
+George roared with laughter; rocked and roared again. When he could
+get a catch upon his mirth there was the clear pipe of his Mary's glee,
+clear, compelling, setting him off again. When she would gasp for breath
+there was her dear George, head in those brown hands, shaking with
+tremendous laughter--and she must start again.
+
+She gasped: “George! If you could have seen yourself standing there
+telling those awful stories--!”
+
+He gasped: “When I mistook the cats--!”
+
+She gasped: “Mr. Marrapit's face--!”
+
+He gasped: “Mrs. Major's--!”
+
+The exhaustion of their mirth gave them pause at last. George wiped his
+running eyes; Mary tremendously blew her little nose, patted her gold
+hair where it eagerly straggled.
+
+“I feel better after that,” George said.
+
+She told him, “So do I--heaps. It's no good being miserable over what is
+past, is it, dear?”
+
+“Not a bit; not the slightest. Come and sit on the sofa and let's see
+where we are.” She put that golden head upon his manly shoulder; he
+fetched his right arm about her; she nursed her hands upon the brown
+fist that came into her lap; that other brown hand he set upon the
+three.
+
+Together they viewed their prospects--gloomy pictures.
+
+“But we're fairly in the cart,” George summed up. “We are, you know.”
+
+His ridiculous Mary gave him that lovers' ridiculous specific. “We've
+got each other,” she told him, snuggling to him.
+
+George kissed her. He fumbled in his pockets. “I've got just about three
+pounds--over from what Marrapit gave me for the clue-hunting. I say,
+Mary, it's pretty awful.”
+
+She snuggled the closer.
+
+Early evening, tip-toeing through the window, was drawing her dusky
+hangings about the room when at length George withdrew the brown hands;
+stirred.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon a little sigh Mary let go the string that held the dreams she had
+been dreaming. Like a great gay bundle of many-coloured toy balloons
+suddenly released, they soared away. She came to the desperate present;
+noted her George filling his pipe.
+
+He got upon his legs; paced the floor, puffing.
+
+It was his characteristic pose when he was most tremendous. She watched
+this tremendous fellow adoringly.
+
+He told her: “I've settled it all, Marykins. I've fixed it all up. We'll
+pull through right as rain.” He caught the admiring glance in his Mary's
+eye; inhaled and gusted forth a huge breath of smoke; repeated the fine
+sentence. “We'll pull through right as rain.”
+
+“Dear George!” she softly applauded.
+
+He pushed ahead. “There's this locum tenens I was going to take up in
+the North. I haven't offed that yet--haven't refused it, I mean. Well,
+I shall take it. The screw's pretty rotten, but up in the North--in the
+North, you know--well, it's not like London. It's cheap--frightfully
+cheap. You can live on next to nothing--”
+
+She pushed out the irritating, practical, womanish side of her. “_Can_
+you? How do you _know_, Georgie?”
+
+We men hate these pokes at our knowledge; women will not understand
+generalisations. George jerked back: “How do I _know_? Oh, don't
+interrupt like that, Mary. Everybody knows that living is cheap in the
+North--in the _North_.”
+
+“Of course,” she excused herself. “Of course, dear, I see.”
+
+“Well, where was I? Frightfully cheap, so the screw won't matter. I'll
+take the job, dearest. I'll take it for next month. And--listen--we'll
+marry and go up there together and live in some ripping little rooms.
+There!”
+
+She was flaming pink; could only breathe: “Georgie, _dear!_”
+
+He stopped his pacing to give her a squeezing hug, a kiss upon the
+top of the gold hair. Then he went through the steps of a wild dance.
+“Marry!” he cried. “Marry, old girl, and let everybody go hang! We'll
+have to work it through a registrar. I'm not quite sure how it's done,
+but I'll find out tomorrow. I know you both have to have been resident
+in the place for a week or so--I'll fix all that. Then we'll peg along
+up in the North; and we'll look out for whatever turns up, and we'll
+save, and in time we'll buy a practice just like Runnygate.”
+
+Now he sat beside his Mary again; with a tremendous brush painted in
+more details of this entrancing picture. Every doubt, every difficulty
+he threw to tomorrow--that glad sea in which youth casts its every
+trouble. Was he sure he still had the refusal of this locum?--rather!
+but he would make certain, tomorrow. Was he sure they both could live
+upon the salary?-rather! he would prove it to-morrow. Could they really
+get married at a registrar's within a few days?-rather! he'd fix that up
+to-morrow. As to the money necessary for the marriage, necessary to tide
+over the days till the locum was taken up, why, he knew he could borrow
+that--from the Dean or from Professor Wyvern--to-morrow.
+
+They were upon the very crest and flood of their delight when George
+noted the gathering dusk.
+
+“I say, it's getting late!” he exclaimed. “I must fix it up with Mrs.
+Pinking. We've made no arrangement with her yet.”
+
+Mary agreed: “Yes, dear.” She went on, pretty eyes shining, face aglow:
+“Oh, Georgie, think of the last time you brought me here! I had nothing
+to expect but going out to work again; and you weren't qualified. And
+now--now, although we've lost our little Runnygate home” (she could not
+stop a tiny sigh), “we're actually going to be married in a few days!
+Georgie, I shan't sleep for hoping everything will turn out all right
+to-morrow.”
+
+“It will,” George told her. “It will. Right as rain, old girl.”
+
+Her great sigh of contentment advertised the drink she took of that
+sparkling future. “Think of us being together always in a week or
+so--belonging! Where will you stay till then? Quite close. Get a room
+quite close, Georgie?”
+
+He stared at her. “Why, you old goose, I'm not going.”
+
+She echoed him: “Not going?”
+
+“Of course not. I'm going to get a bedroom here, and we'll have all our
+meals and everything in here. We're not going to part again, Marykins.
+Not much!”
+
+That maddening handicap beneath which the sweetest women trudge shackled
+Mary, deluged this joy.
+
+“Oh, Georgie!” she said; and again trembled, “Oh, Georgie!”
+
+My impulsive George scented the damp. “Well?” he asked. “Well?
+Whatever's--?”
+
+“Oh, Georgie, you can't have a room here. We can't have all our meals
+together here?”
+
+He realised the trouble. He broke out: “Why ever not? Why ever--?”
+
+“It wouldn't be _right_! Georgie, it _wouldn't_ be right!”
+
+Her impulsive George choked for words. “Not right! 'Pon my soul, Mary, I
+simply don't understand you sometimes. Not _right! Why_ isn't it right?”
+
+It was so difficult to tell. “You don't understand, dear--”
+
+“No, I'm damned if I do. I'm sorry, Mary, but you are so funny, you
+women. It's so exasperating after the--the devil of a day I've had. Just
+when I've fixed up everything you turn round and”--he threw out an angry
+hand--“_Why_ isn't it right?”
+
+This poor little Mary clung to her little principles. “Don't you see?
+we're engaged, dear; and being engaged, we oughtn't to live alone like
+this. People would--”
+
+He began to rave. Certainly he had had a devil of a day; and this was a
+maddening buffet.
+
+“People!” he cried. “People! People! You're always thinking of people,
+you women! Who's to know? Who on earth's to know?”
+
+The instinct of generations of training gave her the instinctive reply
+in the instinctive sweet little tone: “We should know, Georgie,” she
+said.
+
+He flung up his arms: “Oh, good God!”
+
+He swallowed his boiling irritation; laughed 'spite himself; went to
+his Mary. “Mary, don't be such an utter, utter goose. It's too, too
+ridiculous.”
+
+She took his kiss; but she held her stupid little ground.
+
+“It wouldn't be right, Georgie, _really_!”
+
+Her George clanged the bell with a furious stroke that brought Mrs.
+Pinking in panic up the stairs. Holding himself very straight, speaking
+in sentences short and hard, paying to his Mary no smallest attention,
+he made the arrangements. Miss Humfray would take on her bedroom again.
+By the week. If Mrs. Pinking would be so kind as to allow them the same
+terms. He thanked her. That was settled, then. He would look in in the
+morning. He would say good night, Mrs. Pinking.
+
+Mrs. Pinking gave him good night; busied herself with the tea-things.
+
+Her presence enabled this brutal George to preserve his stony bearing;
+denied his pretty Mary opportunity to melt him with her tears.
+
+Hard as flint, “Well, good night,” he said to her. “I'll look in
+to-morrow morning.”
+
+Upon a little sniff, “Good night,” she whispered; strangled an “Oh,
+George! George!”
+
+She followed him to the door. He was down the stairs before she could
+command her voice for: “Where shall you go, George?”
+
+With the reckless fury of one who sets forth to plunge into the river,
+he called back, “I? I? Oh, _anywhere--anywhere_. Who cares where _I_
+go?”
+
+The hall door slammed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late into that night while a young woman sobbed her pretty eyes out upon
+a pillow in a back room of Meath Street, Battersea, a young man, who
+furiously had been pacing London, paced and repaced the street from end
+to end, gazing the windows of the house where she lay. This young man
+muttered, gesticulated, groaned. “Oh, damn!” was his song. “Oh, Mary!
+Oh, what a cursed brute I am!”
+
+It was a bitter ending to a fearful day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George spent the night--such of it as remained after his bitter moanings
+outside his Mary's lodging--with the Mr. Franklyn who had accompanied
+him on that little “stroll up west” that had terminated in the cab
+adventure nearly three months before. Of all his student friends who
+would give him a bed, Mr. Franklyn, because in a way associated with
+his Mary, had come most prominently into his mind. That same association
+gave him a lead from which to pour out his reply to Mr. Franklyn's
+rallying, as they sat at supper, upon his gloom.
+
+“You remember that day after the July exam, when we went up west
+together?” he began.
+
+Mr. Franklyn remembered; in some gloom shook his head over the
+recollection. “That waitress you left me with in the shop,” said Mr.
+Franklyn sadly, “she--”
+
+“Oh, hang the waitress! Listen, Franklyn, After I left you I turned
+up past the Marble Arch--” He proceeded with some account of the love
+between him and his Mary; skipped all details relating to the cat; came
+to the impending marriage; sought advice upon the prospects of a man
+marrying on a locum's earnings.
+
+Mr. Franklyn listened with great sympathy. “It's a rum thing you should
+be placed like that, George,” he said. “I'm in just the same position.”
+
+George exclaimed eagerly--in love, youth warms to a companion--“You
+are!”
+
+“Well, not exactly,” Mr. Franklyn admitted. “Very nearly. I've got
+myself into a brute of a fix over a girl in the lager-beer garden at
+Earl's Court. She--”
+
+George bounced from the table, seized his hat. “Who cares a damn about
+your lager-beer girls?” he shouted; slammed from the house.
+
+It was then, while Mr. Franklyn laboriously indited a letter in reply to
+one received from the lager-beer girl's mother, that George paced Meath
+Street.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+At breakfast with Mr. Franklyn upon the following morning, he was in
+brighter trim--apologised for his over-night abruptness; apologised for
+the hasty meal he was making; announced that he was off to see his Mary.
+
+As he lit his pipe, “I'll see you at hospital this morning some time,
+old chap,” he said. “I shall dash in to fix up with the Dean about
+taking Bingham's place in that practice up in Yorkshire.”
+
+Mr. Franklyn prodded for another slice of bacon. “You can't, old chap,”
+ he remarked. “That's filled.”
+
+George shouted: “Filled! What do you mean?”
+
+“Why, taken--gone. Simpson's got it--ten days ago.”
+
+An icy chill smote my poor George. After the dreadful loss of
+Runnygate everything had depended upon this appointment with its salary
+considerably above the average.
+
+“Simpson! Simmy got it!” he shouted. “What the blazes does Simmy mean by
+taking it? He knew I was after it.”
+
+“My good lad, you never came near the place after you'd qualified. If
+Simmy hadn't taken it someone else would. Bingham was in a hurry.”
+
+Blankly George stared before him. At length, “I suppose there are
+several other jobs going?” he asked.
+
+“None on the Dean's list,” said Mr. Franklyn. “I was looking at it last
+night.”
+
+Beneath this new distress George postponed the burning desire to clasp
+his Mary in his arms and beg forgiveness. He hurried to hospital; made
+for the Dean's office. Here disaster was confirmed. Simpson had already
+taken the Yorkshire place; the Dean had no other posts on his lists.
+“Only this Runnygate practice,” he said. “I haven't seen you since you
+qualified. Can you raise the price?”
+
+George, rising and making for the door, could only shake his head. There
+was something at his throat that forbade speech. Runnygate and all that
+Runnygate meant--the dear little home, the tight little practice, the
+tremendous future--was a bitter picture now that it was so utterly lost;
+now that even this place in Yorkshire was also gone.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“Great pity!” the Dean told him. “I've kept it for you. Lawrence, the
+man who's leaving it, is coming to see me at five this evening. I shall
+have to help him find another purchaser.”
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The infernal something in George's throat gripped the harder as he took
+his way to his Mary. He cursed himself for that hideous cat enterprise.
+Had he never undertaken it, had he continued instead to entreat and
+implore, there was always the chance that his uncle would have relented
+and advanced the money sufficient for Runnygate.
+
+As things were, he stood for ever damned in his uncle's eyes; further,
+by his folly he had encompassed his darling Mary's ejection from a home
+where she might comfortably have stayed till he was in position to marry
+her; further, he had just missed the assistantship which, to his present
+frame of mind, seemed the sole post in the world that would give him
+sufficient upon which to call his Mary wife.
+
+The desperate thoughts augmented his fearful remorse at his treatment
+of her overnight. Arrived at Meath Street, admitted by Mrs. Pinking, he
+bounded up the stairs, tremendous in his agony of love.
+
+His Mary had her pretty nose pressed flat against the window. With dim
+eyes she had been gazing for her George in the opposite direction from
+that he had approached.
+
+He closed the door behind him.
+
+“Mary!” he called, arms outstretched.
+
+Into them she flung herself.
+
+They locked in a hug so desperate as only love itself could have borne.
+
+He poured out his remorse; beside him on the sofa she patted those brown
+hands. He told his gloomy tale; she patted the more lovingly--assured
+him that, if the Yorkshire place had failed, something equally good
+would turn up.
+
+But he was in desperate despondency. “It's all that infernal cat, Mary,”
+ he groaned; she kissed that knotted forehead.
+
+He asked her: “By the way, where's that other brute?--the beast we
+brought here with us?”
+
+She peered low. “I've just fed the poor thing.”
+
+Attracted by her movement, that orange cat which had wrought the fearful
+disaster came forth from beneath the table.
+
+“G-r-r-r!” George growled; stamped his foot.
+
+The orange cat again took shelter.
+
+“Ah, don't frighten it, dear,” Mary told him. “It's done no harm.”
+
+George rose. He was too tremendously moved to contain himself while
+seated. “Done no harm!” he cried. He took a step to the window. “Done
+no--” He stopped short. “Oh, Lord! I say, Mary! Oh, Lord! here's Bill!”
+
+Mary fluttered to his side; saw Bill Wyvern disappear beneath the porch
+of the door.
+
+A knock; shuffling in the passage; footsteps up the stairs.
+
+“By Gad! I'd forgotten all about old Bill,” George said.
+
+Then Bill entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The most tremendous crises between man and man commonly begin with
+exchange of the customary banalities. Charlotte Corday gave Marat
+_“Bonsoir, citoyen,”_ ere she drove her knife. This was no cloak to hide
+her purpose. We are so much creatures of convention that the man who
+sets out, hell in breast, to avenge himself upon another, cannot forbear
+to give him greeting before ever he comes upon the matter between them.
+
+George, involuntarily straightening his back as he remembered how
+desperately he had hoodwinked this Bill, had upon a fool's errand packed
+him to that inn, as involuntarily passed him the customary words.
+
+“Hullo, Bill!” he said. “How on earth did you know I was here?”
+
+He awaited the burst of reproach; the torrent of fury.
+
+These did not come. About Bill's mouth, as from George to Mary he
+glanced, there were the lines of amusement; no menace lay in his clear
+blue eyes.
+
+“Went to look for you at the hospital,” Bill replied. “Met that man
+Franklyn, and he told me you very probably were here.”
+
+George pushed ahead with the banalities. “Surprised to see Miss
+Humfray here?” he asked. “You met her, of course, at my uncle's
+while--while”--this was dangerous ground, and he hurried over it--“while
+I was away,” he said quickly; blew his nose.
+
+Bill told him: “Yes. Not a bit surprised.” The creases of amusement
+became more evident. He shook Mary's hand.
+
+“Ah!” George said. “Um! Quite so. Sit down, Bill.”
+
+They took seats. Constraint was upon these people; each sat upon the
+extreme edge of the chair selected.
+
+After a pause, “You've been to Herons' Holt, then?” George remarked.
+
+“Yesterday. Yesterday night.”
+
+“Ah! Yesterday. Thursday, so to speak. Um! Margaret quite well?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+The deadly pause came on again. Mary looked appealing to her George.
+George, his right boot in a patch of sunlight, earnestly was watching it
+as, twisting it this way and that, the polish caught the rays.
+
+It lay with herself to make a thrust through this fearful silence. Upon
+a timid little squeak she shot out: “Mr. Marrapit quite well?”
+
+“Quite,” Bill told her. “Quite. A little bit--” He checked; again the
+silence fell.
+
+Mary no longer could endure it. Impulsively leaning forward, arms
+outstretched, hands clasped, “Oh, Mr. Wyvern!” she cried. “You're _not_
+angry with George, _are_ you? He _couldn't_ help sending you to that
+inn, _could_ he?”
+
+Constraint fled. “Of course I'm not,” Bill declared. “Not a bit. I've
+come here to congratulate you both. I--”
+
+George sprang forward; grasped Bill's hand. “Good old buck!” he cried.
+“Good old Bill! I'm awfully sorry, Bill. You're a stunner, Bill. Isn't
+he a stunner, Mary?”
+
+“He _is_ a stunner,” Mary agreed.
+
+The stunner, red beneath this praise, warmly returned George's grip.
+When they released, “I say, George, you _are_ an ass, you know,” he
+said. “Why on earth didn't you tell me what you were up to?”
+
+“You weren't there, old man, when it began. You were in London. How on
+earth was I to know your paper would come plunging into the business?”
+ The memory of the pains that paper had caused him swept all else from
+George's mind. Indignation seized him. “It was a scandalous bit of work,
+Bill. 'Pon my soul it's simply shameful that a newspaper can go and
+interfere in a purely private matter like that. Yes, it is, Mary. Don't
+you interrupt. Bill understands. I don't blame you, Bill; you were doing
+your duty. I blame the editor. What did he want to push into it for? I
+tell you that paper drove me up and down the country till I was pretty
+well dead. It's all very well for you to grin, Bill.”
+
+“I'm not grinning.”
+
+“You are grinning.” George threw a bitter note into his declamations.
+“Of course, you can afford to grin. What was agony to me was hot
+stuff for you. I expect you've made your reputation over this show.
+Everything's turned out all right for you--”
+
+Bill took that bitter note. “Rather!” he broke in. “Rather! I pulled it
+off, didn't I? I found the rotten cat, didn't I? I wasn't made a fool of
+for two days in a country inn, was I? I've not got the sack all through
+you, have I?”
+
+George instantly forgot his personal sorrows. “Oh, I say, Bill, you
+haven't, have you?”
+
+Bill, not expecting the interruption, confessed a little lamely: “No,
+I haven't. I _haven't_--as it turns out. But I might have--if it wasn't
+for--” He paused a moment; sadly said, “Anyway, just as I thought I'd
+got her, I've lost Margaret again.”
+
+In those fierce days when her Bill was the Daily Special Commissioner,
+Margaret had confided in Mary the promise Mr. Marrapit had made should
+Bill find the cat. Now Mary was filled with sympathy. “Oh, Mr. Wyvern!”
+ she cried, “I _am_ sorry! What has happened? How do you know? Do tell us
+everything of when you went to Herons' Holt last night.”
+
+Bill took a chair. He said gloomily: “There's not much to tell. I felt
+I couldn't wait at that infernal inn any longer, so I left the detective
+in charge, went to the inn where we'd found George, didn't see him, and
+came back to Herons' Holt. I saw old Marrapit for about two minutes in
+the hall. He foamed at me all about George, foamed out that I was one of
+George's friends, and foamed me out of the door before I could get in a
+word. Said I never was to come near the place again. I asked him about
+Margaret, and he had a kind of fit--a kind of fit.”
+
+George said softly: “I know what you mean, old man.”
+
+“A kind of fit,” Bill gloomily repeated. Then he struck one clenched
+fist into the palm of the other hand. “And hang it!” he cried, “I've won
+her! According to the bargain old Marrapit made with me, I've won her.
+If it had not been for me you wouldn't have taken the cat to that hut
+in the wood, and if you hadn't taken it there Marrapit wouldn't have it
+_now_. It's through me he got it, isn't it?”
+
+“Bill,” George told him, “it is. You rotted my show all right. No
+mistake about that.”
+
+It was a fearful situation as between these two young men. In silence,
+in gloom, they gazed each upon the ground.
+
+Bill took a glance at George's face; turned hurriedly from the despair
+there stamped; set his eyes upon my pretty Mary. He gave a sigh.
+
+“But, George, old man, you've come out of it the better,” he said.
+“You've lost the money you wanted, but you've got your--you've got Miss
+Humfray. I've lost my--I've lost Margaret.”
+
+In great melancholy George rose; crossed to his Mary; sat upon the arm
+of her chair; caressed her pretty shoulders.
+
+“You don't know what you're talking about, Bill. Bill, we're in a most
+fearful hole. We haven't got a sou, and I've got no work. You're doing
+well. You're making money. You're bound to get Margaret in time. As for
+us--”
+
+Bill was deeply stirred. “I say, I am sorry,” he told them. He sat up
+very straight. “Look here, don't get down on your luck. Come out and
+have lunch with me and tell me just how you're fixed. If a small loan
+will do you any good I'm certain my guv'nor will stand it. He likes
+you awfully, George. Come on. I shan't see you again otherwise for some
+time. I'm off on another Special Commissioner job for the _Daily_, you
+know.”
+
+George gave a slight shudder. “Oh? Thank goodness, I'm not the object of
+it this time. What is it?”
+
+“What is it? Why, you've seen the _Daily_ this morning, haven't you?”
+
+“I'll never open the infernal thing again.”
+
+Bill did not heed the aspersion. “It's really rather funny, you know,”
+ he went on. “Look here.” He tugged at his pocket; produced a _Daily_.
+
+A pencil dislodged by the paper fell to the ground; rolled beneath the
+table.
+
+Bill stooped after it. The cat that lay there, disturbed, walked
+forth--arching its proud orange back.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+With eyes that goggled tremendously Bill stared at it; with a finger
+that shook he pointed at it; turned his head to George. “George,” he
+asked, “whose cat is that?”
+
+George looked at Mary; gave a bitter little laugh. “I suppose it's
+ours,” he replied. “Eh, Mary?”
+
+A sad little smile his Mary gave, “I suppose it is,” she agreed.
+
+From one to the other Bill looked, suspicion in those goggling eyes.
+
+“You _suppose_ it is?” he emphasised. Again he swiftly looked from
+George to Mary; again stared at the splendid orange form. “George,” he
+said sharply--“George, what is that cat's name?”
+
+George regarded him with a whimsical smile. “Bill, you old duffer, you
+don't think it's the Rose, do you?”
+
+Yet more sharply than before Bill spoke. “George, is that cat's name
+Abishag?”
+
+“_Abishag?_ What an awful--”
+
+Bill turned from him with an impatient gesture. He called to the cat,
+“Abishag! Abishag!”
+
+With upreared tail the fine creature trotted to him.
+
+“Good Lord!” George broke out. “Is that _your_ cat, Bill?”
+
+Bill turned upon him. “_My_ cat! You know thundering well it's not my
+cat.”
+
+“But it knows you, Mr. Wyvern,” Mary told him wonderingly.
+
+There was sorrow, a look of pity in this young man's eyes as
+reproachfully he regarded my Mary.
+
+He swung round upon George. “George, you've made a fool of me once--”
+
+“I don't know what on earth's the matter with you,” George told him.
+
+With knitted brows Bill for a moment searched his face. “I ask you
+point-blank,” he said slowly. “Did you steal this cat, George?”
+
+George struck the stern young man upon the back. “Is _that_ what you're
+driving at, you old ass? Stole it! D'you suppose I'll ever _touch_ a
+cat again? That's the infernal cat Mrs. Major left in that hut when she
+hooked off the Rose. Marrapit told you, didn't he?”
+
+Into a chair Bill collapsed--legs thrust straight before him, head
+against the cushioned back. He gasped. “George, this is a licker, a
+fair licker.” Enormously this staggered man swelled as he inhaled a
+tremendous breath; upon a vast sigh he let it go. “That cat--” he said.
+He got to his legs and paced the room; astonished, Mary and George
+regarded him. “That cat--I'll bet my life that's the cat!”
+
+
+
+III.
+
+My Mary was trembling before this fearful agitation. For support she
+took her George's hand. “Oh, Mr. Wyvern!” she cried, “whatever is
+it? Have we got into another awful trouble through those dreadful,
+_dreadful_ cats?”
+
+“Look at the _Daily_,” Bill said. “Look at the _Daily_. George, give me
+a cigarette. I must smoke. This is an absolute licker.”
+
+My frightened Mary jumped for the paper where it had fallen; spread
+it upon the table; opened it. “Oh, George!” she cried. “Oh, George!”;
+pressed a pretty finger upon these flaming words:
+
+  ANOTHER CAT OUTRAGE.
+
+  AMAZING STORY.
+
+  MR. VIVIAN HOWARD'S FAMOUS PET
+
+  STOLEN WHILE BACK TURNED.
+
+  “DAILY” OFFER.
+
+  500 POUNDS FOR OUR READERS.
+
+My Mary's golden head, my George's head of brown, pressed and nudged as
+with bulging eyes they read the crisp, telling paragraphs that followed
+in a column of leaded type.
+
+Readers of the _Daily_, it appeared, would be astonished to learn
+that the abduction of Mr. Marrapit's famous cat, the Rose of
+Sharon--concerning the recovery of which all hope had now been
+abandoned--had been followed by a similar outrage of a nature even more
+sensational, more daring.
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard, the famous author and dramatist, whose new novel,
+“Amy Martin,” _Daily_ readers need not be reminded, was to start in the
+_Daily_ as a feuilleton on Monday week, had been robbed of his famous
+cat “Abishag the Shunamite.”
+
+The whole reading public were well aware of Mr. Howard's devotion to
+this valuable pet. Scarcely a portrait of Mr. Howard was extant that did
+not show Abishag the Shunamite by his side.
+
+It was a melancholy coincidence that in the interview granted to the
+_Daily_ by Mr. Howard last Saturday he had told that Abishag had sat
+upon his table while every single word of the manuscript of “Amy
+Martin” was penned. He had admitted that she was his mascot. Without
+her presence he could not compose a line. _Daily_ readers would imagine,
+then, Mr. Howard's prostration at his appalling loss.
+
+The occurrence had taken place on Monday night. As _Daily_ readers were
+well aware, Mr. Howard had for some weeks been staying at the house of
+his widowed mother in Sussex Gardens. Nightly at nine it had been his
+custom to stroll round the gardens before settling down for three hours'
+work upon “Amy Martin.” During his stroll Abishag would slip into the
+gardens, meeting her master upon his completion of the circuit.
+
+According to this practice, Mr. Howard, on Monday night, had followed
+his usual custom. He believed he might possibly have walked a little
+slower than usual as he was pondering deeply over his final revise of
+the proof of “Amy Martin.” Otherwise his programme was identical with
+its usual performance. But upon his return the cat was not to be found.
+
+Theories, suggestions, investigations that had already been made,
+followed. The _Daily_ abundantly proved that the cat had not strayed
+but had been deliberately stolen by someone well acquainted with Mr.
+Howard's nightly promenade; pointed out that this second outrage showed
+that no one possessing a valuable cat was safe from the machinations of
+a desperate gang; asked, Where are the police? and concluded with the
+pica sub-head:
+
+  “DAILY” OFFER.
+
+The _Daily,_ it appeared, on behalf of the whole reading public of Great
+Britain, the Colonies, America, and the many Continental countries
+into whose tongues Mr. Howard's novels had been translated, offered 500
+pounds to the person who would return, or secure the return of, Abishag
+the Shunamite, and thus restore peace to the heart of England's premier
+novelist, whose new story, “Amy Martin,” would start in the _Daily_ on
+Monday week.
+
+A sketch-map of Sussex Gardens, entitled “Scene of the Outrage,” showed,
+by means of dotted lines, (A) Route taken by Mr. Vivian Howard; (B)
+Route into Gardens taken by cat; (C) Supposed route taken by thief.
+
+Mr. Henry T. Bitt had achieved a mammoth splash.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The golden head and the head of brown lifted simultaneously from the
+paper; stared towards Bill, pacing, smoking.
+
+Tremendous possibilities flickered in George's mind; made his
+voice husky. “Bill,” he asked, “do you believe that cat is this
+Abishag--Vivian Howard's Abishag?”
+
+Bill nodded absently. This man's thoughts were afar--revolving this
+situation he had named “licker.” “Look at the description,” he said.
+“Look at the cat. It knows its name, doesn't it? I've seen a life-size
+painting of Abishag. It's a cert.”
+
+George dropped upon the sofa; his thoughts, too, rushed afar.
+
+Tremendous possibilities danced a wild jig in his Mary's pretty head;
+trembled her voice. “Oh, Mr. Wyvern!” she appealed, “what does it mean?
+What does it mean--for us?”
+
+“It's a licker,” Bill told her. “It's a fair licker.”
+
+Mary dropped by her George's side; to his her thoughts rushed.
+
+Presently Bill threw away his cigarette; faced George. He said slowly:
+“Mrs. Major must have stolen this cat, George. But how did she get it?
+She's been at Herons' Holt the last week.”
+
+Mary gave a little jump. “Oh, Mr. Wyvern, she went up to town on Monday
+till Tuesday.”
+
+Bill struck a hand upon the table. “That fixes it. By gum, that
+fixes it! I tell you what it is, George. I tell you what it is. I
+believe--yes, I believe she'd seen this cat before, knew it was like the
+Rose, and meant to have palmed it off on old Marrapit herself so as to
+get him to take her back. Margaret told me all about her getting the
+sack. I bet my life that's it. By gum, _what_ a splash for the _Daily!_”
+ And upon this fine thought the young man stood with sparkling eyes.
+
+George timidly touched the castles he had been building: “Bill, where do
+I--where do Mary and I come in?”
+
+Bill clapped his hands together. “Why, my good old buck, don't you
+see?-don't you realise?-you get this L500. Just do you, eh?”
+
+_“Runnygate!”_ George burst out with a violent jerk; clasped his Mary in
+an immense hug.
+
+_“Runnygate!”_ came thickly from his Mary, face squashed against this
+splendid fellow.
+
+When they unlocked my blushing Mary suddenly paled: “Oh, but you, Mr.
+Wyvern--you found it really.”
+
+“Not much,” Bill declared. “Not likely. You found it. I couldn't have
+the reward, anyway. I'm one of the staff.” He repeated the fine words:
+“One of the _staff_.”
+
+She made to thank him. “Besides,” he interrupted her, “I'll make a lot
+out of it. I'm doing awfully well. The chief was awfully pleased with
+the way I ran that Rose of Sharon job. Of course this is twice as big a
+splash, because Vivian Howard's mixed up in it. Look what a boost it
+is for our new serial--look what a tremendous ad. it is for the paper!
+Directly Howard came to us the editor dropped the Rose like a hot coal;
+plumped for this and put me in charge. Now I've pulled it off, just
+think how bucked up he'll be! It's a licker, George--a licker all
+round.”
+
+“Bill,” George said, “I can't speak about it. My head's whirling. I
+believe it's a dream.”
+
+Indeed this George had rushed through so much in the past hours, was
+now suddenly come upon so much, that the excitement, as he attempted
+realisation, was of stunning effect. He sat white, head in hands.
+
+“Jolly soon show you!” Bill cried. “Come to the office straight away.
+Bring the cat. I was to meet the chief and Vivian Howard there at
+twelve.”
+
+George sprang to his feet; ruddy again of face. “Come on!” he cried.
+“Bill, if it isn't his Abishag, if there's any hitch, I'll--I'll--oh,
+Mary, don't build too highly on this, old girl!”
+
+“Shall I come, Georgie?”
+
+George hesitated. “Better not. Better not, if you don't mind. I couldn't
+bear to see your face if Vivian Howard says it isn't the cat.”
+
+White-faced, between tears and smiles, his Mary waved from the window as
+George, cat under arm, turned the corner with Bill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Excursions In A Newspaper Office.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Silent, white and stern of face, occupied with immense thoughts, the
+young men sat as the cab they had found outside Battersea Park station
+sped them towards Fleet Street.
+
+They were upon the Embankment, rattling beneath Hungerford Bridge, when
+from the tangle of his plans Bill at last drew a thread; weaved it to
+words. “George, we mustn't tell the chief anything about your being
+mixed up with the other cat outrage--the Rose. It might be awkward.”
+
+George shifted the hand that firmly held Abishag on the seat between
+them; squeezed that fine creature's head to him with his arm; with his
+handkerchief wiped his sweating palms.
+
+“It's _going_ to be awkward,” he said--“damned awkward! I see that. Oh,
+Bill!”
+
+He groaned. This young man was in desperate agitation.
+
+“Buck up,” Bill told him. “This is a cert. Safe as houses.”
+
+“All very well for you, Bill. I seem to have been living one gigantic
+lie all the past week.”
+
+“Well, you have, you know,” Bill granted. “By gum, you have! But you
+aren't now. You didn't steal _this_ cat. You found it just as anyone
+else might have found it. All I tell you is: Don't say anything about
+the Rose. Don't open your mouth, in fact. Leave the gassing to me.”
+
+It was upon this repeated injunction that my poor George tottered up the
+stairs of the _Daily_ office, cat in arm, in Bill's wake.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Bill rapped upon Mr. Bitt's door; poked in his head at the answering
+call; motioned my trembling George to wait; stepped over the threshold.
+
+Mr. Bitt sat behind a broad table; before him, deep in an armchair,
+smoking a cigarette, lay Mr. Vivian Howard.
+
+“Ah! Wyvern,” spoke Mr. Bitt. “Mr. Howard, this is Mr. Wyvern, one of my
+brightest young men. From to-day he takes in hand this business.”
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard did not rise; stretched a white hand to Bill. This
+man had an appreciation of the position he had won. This man stood for
+English literature. Within a wide estimate of public opinion, and
+within that immense estimate of him that was his own, this man stood for
+literature. In a manner worthy of his proud standing this man comported
+himself. The talents that were his belonged to the nation, and very
+freely he gave them to the people. This man did not deny himself to the
+crowd as another might have denied himself. Of him it never could be
+said that he missed opportunity to let the public feed upon him. This
+man made such opportunities. Where excitement was, there this man,
+pausing between his novels, would step in. If a murder-trial had the
+public attention this man would write upon that trial; if interest
+were fixed upon a trade dispute this man would by some means draw that
+interest upon himself. Nothing was too small for this man. Walking the
+public places he did not shrink from recognition; he gladly permitted
+it. Not once but many times, coming upon a stranger reading one of
+his novels, he had announced himself; autographed the copy. This man's
+character was wholly in keeping with his gifts.
+
+Yet beautifully he could preserve the dignity that was his right.
+Preserving it now, he gave his hand to Bill but did not move his
+position.
+
+“It is a great pleasure to me to meet you, sir,” Bill told him.
+
+“You have only lately joined the ranks of journalism, Mr. Bitt tells
+me,” Mr. Vivian Howard graciously replied. “It is the stepping-stone to
+literature. Never forget that. Never lose sight of that. I shall watch
+your career with the greatest interest.”
+
+Mr. Bitt broke in a trifle impatiently: “Well, well, we must keep to
+business just now. Mr. Howard will kindly give us a daily interview,
+Wyvern, until the feuilleton starts, or until the cat is found. You'd
+better--”
+
+Bill took a pace back; faced them both. “No need,” he cried in bursting
+words. “The cat is found!”
+
+The cigarette dropped from Mr. Vivian Howard's lip to his waistcoat. He
+brushed at it violently; burnt his fingers; brushed again; swore with
+a ferocity that would have astonished his admirers; sprang to his feet
+amid a little shower of sparks and cloud of ash. “Found!” he exclaimed;
+jabbed a burnt finger in his mouth and thickly repeated, “Found!”
+
+Mr. Bitt simultaneously rose. “Found?” cried Mr. Bitt. “What the--”
+
+“I have the finder here,” Bill told them; stepped to the door.
+
+On legs that shook my agitated George advanced.
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard drew forth his suffering finger with a loud pop; made
+three hasty strides to George; took the cat. “Abishag!” he cried in
+ecstasy, “Abishag!”
+
+In very gloomy tones Mr. Bitt announced that he was bust. “Well, I'm
+bust!” he said. “I'm bust. It _is_ your cat, eh?”
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard nodded the head he was bending over his Abishag.
+
+Bill signalled to George a swift wink. George drew a handkerchief; wiped
+from his face the beaded agony.
+
+Mr. Bitt dropped heavily into his seat. “Of course I'm very glad, Mr.
+Howard,” he announced stonily. “_Very_ glad. At the same time--at the
+same _time_--” He turned upon George with a note that was almost savage.
+“You, sir!” he cried.
+
+George started painfully.
+
+“How the--How did you come to find this cat?”
+
+George forced his pocket handkerchief into his trousers pocket; rammed
+it down; cleared his throat; ran a finger round the inside of his
+collar; cleared again; said nothing.
+
+Bill hurried to the rescue. “Like this, sir. Let me tell you. This
+gentleman was at Paltley Hill, a place on the South-Western. He used to
+live there. He found the cat in a deserted kind of hut, took charge of
+it. I happened to meet him and brought him along. By Jove, sir, only
+published this morning and found within a few hours! It's pretty good,
+isn't it?”
+
+Mr. Bitt spoke with great disgust. “Pretty _good!_” he cried bitterly.
+“Pretty _good!_” He had no fit words in which to express his feeling.
+“Kindly step in there a moment,” he addressed George.
+
+George trembled into the adjoining room indicated; closed the door.
+
+Mr. Bitt turned to Mr. Vivian Howard. “It will always be a great
+pleasure to me,” he told the great novelist, “to think that the _Daily_
+was the means of restoring your cat.”
+
+“I never shall forget it,” Mr. Vivian Howard assured him. The famous
+author placed himself upon the couch, caressed Abishag the Shunamite
+upon his lap. “Never shall forget it. It was more than good of you,
+Mr. Bitt, to take up the matter and offer so handsome a reward. It was
+public-spirited.”
+
+Mr. Bitt's deprecatory little laugh had a rueful note.
+
+He nerved himself to step upon the delicate ground that lay between him
+and his purpose. This man had not known Mr. Vivian Howard sufficiently
+long to put to him directly that the reward was offered, and gladly
+agreed to by Mr. Howard, for purposes of respective self-advertisement
+agreeable at once to the paper and to the man who stood for English
+literature. He nerved himself:
+
+“When you say public-spirited, Mr. Howard, you use the right term. I do
+not attempt to deny that I fully appreciated that this reward for your
+cat, and the interview you agreed to give us, would greatly benefit
+our paper. Why should I deny it? We editors must be business men first,
+nowadays; journalists afterwards. But I do ask you to believe me, Mr.
+Howard, that in offering this reward, in arousing this interest, I had
+in view also a matter that has been my aim since I was at College.”
+
+Mr. Bitt's college was Rosa Glen College, 156 Farmer Road, Peckham; but
+he preferred the briefer designation.
+
+“The aim,” he continued, gathering courage as he detected in Mr. Vivian
+Howard's face a look which seemed to show that the famous author was
+advancing upon the delicate ground to meet him, “the aim of attracting
+the people to good literature.”
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard, as standing for that literature, took the implied
+compliment with a bow. “I congratulate you, Mr. Bitt.”
+
+“Now, the _Daily_ is young,” Mr. Bitt earnestly continued. “The
+_Daily_ has yet to make its way. If your 'Amy Martin' starts in normal
+circumstances a week hence, it will mean that this contribution to our
+highest literature will fall only to a comparatively small circle
+of people. But if--but if, as I had hoped, we had morning by morning
+attracted more and more readers by the great interest taken in your
+loss, 'Amy Martin' would then have introduced our best fiction to a
+public twice or thrice as large as our present circulation represents.”
+
+“You mean--?” the great author inquired.
+
+“I mean,” Mr. Bitt told him, “that for this reason I cannot but
+regret that the excitement aroused should disappear with our issue of
+to-morrow. I mean, Mr. Howard, that for the reason I have named I
+do think it is almost our _duty_--our _duty_, for the reason I have
+named--to conceal the cat's recovery for--er--for a day or so.”
+
+Mr. Bitt blew his nose violently to conceal his agitation. This man was
+now in the precise centre of the delicate ground; was in considerable
+fear that it might open and swallow him.
+
+But Mr. Vivian Howard's reply made that ground of rock-like solidity.
+
+“As you put the matter, Mr. Bitt, I must say I agree. It would be false
+modesty on my part to pretend I do not recognise the worth of 'Amy
+Martin,' and the desirability of introducing it as widely as possible.
+Certainly that could best have been accomplished by Abishag not having
+been recovered so soon. But as it is--I do not see what can be done. You
+do not, of course, suggest deliberate deception of the public?”
+
+“Certainly _not!_” cried Mr. Bitt with virtuous warmth. Since this was
+precisely what he did suggest and most earnestly desired, he repeated
+his denial: “Certainly _not_! At the same time--”
+
+“One moment,” Mr. Vivian Howard interrupted. “This cat was obviously
+stolen by someone and placed in the hut where it was found. Very well.
+We prosecute. We prosecute, and I could give you every morning my views
+on the guilt or otherwise--”
+
+Mr. Bitt shook his head. “I had thought of that. It won't do. It won't
+do, Mr. Howard. For one thing, a rigorous prosecution and sentence might
+create bad feeling against the paper. You have no idea how curious the
+public is in that way. For another, you, as the injured party, ought
+not to comment; and certainly I could not publish your views. The matter
+would be _sub judice_ directly arrest was made; and I once got into very
+serious trouble over a _sub judice_ matter--very serious trouble indeed.
+I shall not touch the law, Mr. Howard. It is unwise. At the same time,
+I think the thief should be made to suffer--be given a thorough fright.
+Now, if we inform the public that practically our Special Commissioner
+has his hand on the cat--which will be perfectly true--and is almost
+certain as to the identity of the thief--if we keep this up for the
+few days necessary for the publication of those magnificent articles
+of yours on 'What my Loss means to Me,' we shall be accomplishing three
+excellent objects. We shall be terrifying an evil-doer--we may take it
+for granted he reads the _Daily_; we shall be giving the public those
+articles which most certainly ought not to be lost to literature; and we
+shall be widening the sphere of influence of 'Amy Martin.'”
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard did not hesitate. “It is impossible to override your
+arguments, Mr. Bitt. I think we shall be doing _right_.”
+
+Mr. Bitt concealed his immense joy. “I am convinced of it, Mr. Howard,”
+ he said. “_Convinced_. The modern editor and the man of letters of your
+standing have enormous responsibilities.”
+
+Impelled by the virtuous public duty they were performing, the two men
+silently grasped hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A Perfectly Splendid Chapter.
+
+
+Mr. Bitt turned to Bill; indicated the door behind which my poor George
+was wrestling in prayer. “The only difficulty is with that chap in
+there. He knows the cat is found! How can we--”
+
+“If you will leave that to me, sir,” Bill told him, “I think I can
+arrange it without difficulty.”
+
+“Or danger?” added Mr. Vivian Howard, who, standing for English
+literature, would not lightly imperil his integrity.
+
+“Or the least danger,” Bill affirmed. “He's a kind of friend of
+mine--did I mention that, sir? I'll fix it up in a minute.”
+
+He stepped briskly to George; closed the door behind him.
+
+George said faintly: “Say it quick, Bill. Quick.”
+
+“You've got it, old man. Got it.”
+
+George rose to his feet; stretched his arms aloft; wildly waved them.
+The tremendous shout for which he opened his mouth was stayed upon his
+lips by Bill's warning finger. He hurled himself on a couch; rolled in
+ecstasy.
+
+Rapidly Bill outlined the proposals. Then he struck a heavy hand upon
+George's shoulder. “And I've got it too!” he cried in an exultant
+whisper. “I've got it too! I've got Margaret!”
+
+“Margaret! However--?”
+
+“Like this. Plain as a fiddle-stick. To-morrow, when we get out this
+story about practically having our hand on the thief, I shall go bang
+down to Marrapit with the paper and tell him I know it was Mrs. Major
+who took the cat. You can imagine the state that'll put 'em both in.
+Then--then, my boy, I shall say 'Let Margy and me carry on and fix it
+up forthwith, and I'll promise Mrs. Major shall never hear a word more
+about the matter.' He'll agree like a shot. The chief's not going to
+prosecute, you see; so neither Mrs. Major nor you ever will hear a word
+more. George, we've done it! Done it! You've got your Mary and I've got
+my Margy!”
+
+With swelling bosoms, staring eyes, upon this tremendous happening the
+two young men clasped hands; stood heavily breathing. These men were
+glimpsing heaven.
+
+When they unlocked, George said: “There's one thing, Bill. Go in and
+tell that precious pair they can hold over the discovery till they
+please and that I shall never breathe a word. But tell 'em this: I don't
+agree unless I have my cheque right away.”
+
+Bill advised no stipulations.
+
+George stood firm: “I don't care a snap, Bill. I will have it now. I've
+been badgered about quite enough. I want to feel safe. I'll either lose
+it all or have it all. No more uncertainty. Anything might happen during
+the week, for all I know.”
+
+Bill took the message.
+
+Upon immediate payment Mr. Bitt at first stuck. “He might turn back on
+us, or start blackmailing us. He may have stolen the cat himself for all
+we know.”
+
+“All the more likely, in that case, to keep his mouth shut,” commented
+Mr. Vivian Howard. Despite he stood for literature, this man had strong
+business instincts.
+
+Bill urged compliance. He knew this finder of the cat; would speak for
+him as for himself.
+
+Mr. Bitt put a quill into his inkstand; took George's name; wrote a
+slip; handed it to Bill. “Take that to the cashier, Wyvern. He'll give
+you the cheque. Clear your friend out. Eh? No--no need for me to see him
+again. Of course you must get his story of how he found the cat, to use
+when the 'What my Loss means to Me' articles run out. Then come back and
+we'll fix up to-morrow's account.”
+
+A cabman drove to St. Peter's Hospital a seemingly insane young man,
+who bounded into the cab with a piece of paper in his hand; who sang and
+rattled his heels upon the foot-board, shouted to passers-by; who paid
+with two half-crowns; who bounded, paper still fluttering in hand, up
+the steps of the Dean's entrance with a wild and tremendous whoop.
+
+George had scarcely explained to the Dean an incoherent story of L500
+won through a newspaper competition, when the Mr. Lawrence, M.R.C.S.,
+L.R.C.P., whose practice was at Runnygate, arrived.
+
+Informally the purchase was at once arranged; a further meeting settled.
+George bolted to another cab; drove to Meath Street by way of the
+florist near Victoria Station; took aboard an immense basket of flowers.
+
+At the house he gathered the flowers beneath his arm; on the way
+upstairs shifted them to his hands; flung wide the door.
+
+His Mary, white, a tooth on a trembling lip, her pretty hands clasped,
+was before him. In a great whirling shower he flung the blossoms about
+her; then took her in his arms.
+
+“Runnygate, Mary! Darling old girl, Runnygate!”
+
+He kissed his Mary.
+
+Last Shots from the Bridge.
+
+If you had patience for another peep from the bridge that I can build,
+you might catch a glimpse or so.
+
+Bending over you might see Bill seated at the editor's table of the
+editor's room of a monstrously successful monthly magazine of most
+monstrous fiction that Mr. Bitt's directors have started; Margaret, that
+sentimental young woman, by her husband's side is correcting the
+proofs of a poem signed “Margaret Wyvern.” It is of the most exquisite
+melancholy.
+
+Bending over you might see George upon one of the summer evenings when,
+his duties through, he is taking his Mary for a drive in the country
+behind that rising seaside resort Runnygate. They are plunging along in
+a tremendous dogcart drawn by an immense horse. George is fully occupied
+with his steed; Mary, peeping at constant intervals through the veil
+that hides the clear blue eyes and the ridiculous little turned-up nose
+of her baby, at every corner says: “Oh, George! Georgie, do be careful!
+We were on _one_ wheel then, I _know_ we were!” But along the level the
+wind riots at her pretty curls as she sits up very straight and very
+proud, smiling at this splendid fellow beside her.
+
+Bending over you might see the garden of Herons' Holt, Mr. Fletcher
+leading from the house the fat white pony and tubby wide car which Mrs.
+Marrapit, formerly Mrs. Major, has prevailed upon her husband to buy.
+The pony has all the docile qualities of a blind sheep, but Mr. Fletcher
+is in great terror of it. When, while being groomed, it suddenly lifts
+its head, Mr. Fletcher drops his curry-comb and retires from the stall
+at great speed. “It's 'ard,” says Mr. Fletcher--“damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a 'orse-breaker.”
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger, by
+Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Once Aboard the Lugger--, by A. S. M. Hutchinson
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: right; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; margin-left: 0.8em; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger, by
+Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Once Aboard The Lugger
+
+Author: Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6410]
+This file was first posted on December 8, 2002
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Skip Doughty, Charles Aldarondo and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER&mdash;
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      THE HISTORY OF GEORGE AND HIS MARY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By A. S. M. Hutchinson
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_TOC"> DETAILED CONTENTS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS NOVEL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>BOOK I.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> <b>BOOK II.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> <b>BOOK III.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_NOTE"> Notes On The Building Of Bridges. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> <b>BOOK IV.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> <b>BOOK V.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> <b>BOOK VI.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0044"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_TOC" id="link2H_TOC"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DETAILED CONTENTS.
+    </h2>
+    <div class="middle">
+      The Author's Advertisement Of His Novel <br /> BOOK I. <br /> <i>Of George.</i>
+      <br /> I. Excursions In A Garden <br /> II. Excursions In Melancholy <br />
+      III. Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped <br /> IV. Excursions In A
+      Hospital <br /> V. Upon Life: And May Be Missed <br /> VI. Magnificent
+      Arrival Of A Heroine <br /> VII. Moving Passages With A Heroine <br /> VIII.
+      Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine <br /> BOOK II. <br /> <i>Of his
+      Mary.</i> <br /> I. Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine <br /> II.
+      Excursions In Vulgarity <br /> III. Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine
+      <br /> IV. Excursions In A Nursery <br /> V. Excursions At A Dinner-Table
+      <br /> BOOK III. <br /> <i>Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: Of Love
+      and of War.</i> <br /> I. Notes On The Building Of Bridges <br /> II.
+      Excursions Beneath The Bridge <br /> III. Excursions In Love <br /> IV.
+      Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter <br /> V. Beefsteak For 14 Palace
+      Gardens <br /> VI. A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens <br /> BOOK IV. <br /> <i>In
+      which this History begins to rattle.</i> <br /> I. The Author Meanders Upon
+      The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will <br /> Lose Nothing By Not
+      Accompanying Him <br /> II. An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About
+      Sausages <br /> III. Alarums And Excursions By Night <br /> IV. Mr. Marrapit
+      Takes A Nice Warm Bath <br /> V. Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large
+      Sweet <br /> VI. The Girl Comes Near The Lugger <br /> BOOK V. <br /> <i>Of
+      Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: Of George in Torment.</i> <br /> I. Prosiness
+      Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped <br /> II. Margaret
+      Fishes; Mary Prays <br /> III. Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit <br /> IV. The
+      Rape Of The Rose <br /> V. Horror At Herons' Holt <br /> VI. A Detective At
+      Herons' Holt <br /> VII. Terror At Dippleford Admiral <br /> VIII. Panic At
+      Dippleford Admiral <br /> IX. Disaster At Temple Colney <br /> BOOK VI.
+      <br /> <i>Of Paradise Lost and Found.</i> <br /> I. Mrs. Major Bids For
+      Paradise <br /> II. Mrs. Major Finds The Lock <br /> III. Mrs. Major Gets
+      The Key <br /> IV. George Has A Shot At Paradise <br /> V. Of Twin Cats: Of
+      Ananias And Of Sapphira <br /> VI. Agony In Meath Street <br /> VII. Mr.
+      William Wyvern In Meath Street <br /> VIII. Abishag The Shunamite In Meath
+      Street <br /> IX. Excursions In A Newspaper Office <br /> X. A Perfectly
+      Splendid Chapter <br /> <i>Last Shots from the Bridge</i> <br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS NOVEL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This book has its title from that dashing sentiment, &ldquo;Once aboard the
+      lugger and the girl is mine!&rdquo; It is not to be read by those who in their
+      novels would have the entertainment of characters that are brilliant or
+      wealthy, noble of birth or admirable of spirit. Such have no place in this
+      history. There is a single canon of novel-writing that we have sedulously
+      kept before us in making this history, and that is the law which instructs
+      the novelist to treat only of the manner of persons with whom he is well
+      acquainted. Hence our characters are commonplace folks. We have the
+      acquaintance of none other than commonplace persons, because none other
+      than commonplace persons will have acquaintance with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there are no problems in this history, nor is the reader to be tickled
+      by any risks taken with nice deportment. This history may be kept upon
+      shelves that are easily accessible. It is true that you will be invited to
+      spend something of a night in a lady's bedroom, but the matter is carried
+      through with circumspection and dispatch. There shall not be a blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it is our purpose in this advertisement so clearly to give you the
+      manner of our novel that without further waste of time you may forego the
+      task of reading so little as a single chapter if you consider that manner
+      likely to distress you. Hence something must be said touching the style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cannot see (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a story
+      should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to come and
+      go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something of these
+      privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this history we have
+      taken them. You may swing your legs or divert your attention as you read;
+      but we too must be permitted to swing our legs and slide off upon matters
+      that interest us, and that indirectly are relevant to the history. Life is
+      not compounded solely of action. One cannot rush breathless from hour to
+      hour. And, since the novel aims to ape life, the reader, if the aim be
+      true, cannot rush breathless from page to page. We can at least warrant
+      him he will not here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the limitations of our history; and we admit them to be
+      considerable. Upon the other hand, the print is beautifully clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As touching the title we have chosen, this was not come by at the cost of
+      any labour. Taken, as we have told, from that dashing sentiment, &ldquo;Once
+      aboard the lugger and the girl is mine!&rdquo; it is a label that might be
+      applied to all novels. It is a generic title for all modern novels, since
+      there is not one of these but in this form or that sets out the pursuit of
+      his mistress by a man or his treatment of her when he has clapped her
+      beneath hatches. This is a notable matter. The novelist writes under the
+      influences and within the limitations of his age, and the modern novelist
+      correctly mirrors modern life when he presents woman as for man's pursuit
+      till he has her, and for what treatment he may will when he captures her.
+      The position is deplorable, is productive of a million wrongs, and,
+      happily, is slowly changing; but that it exists is clear upon the face of
+      our social existence, and is even advertised between the sexes in love:
+      &ldquo;You are mine&rdquo; the man says, and means it. &ldquo;I am yours&rdquo; the woman
+      declares, and, fruit of generations of dependence, freely, almost
+      involuntarily, gives herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of this problem (upon which we could bore you to distraction) we are
+      nothing concerned in our novel. Truly we offer you the pursuit of a girl;
+      but my Mary would neither comprehend this matter nor wish to be other than
+      her George's. From page 57 she waves to us; let us hurry along.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  <i>.... Who so will stake his lot,
+  Impelled thereto by nescience or whim,
+  Cupidity or innocence or not,
+  On Chance's colours, let men pray for him.</i>
+                         RALPH HODGSON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Of George.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In A Garden.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Christopher Marrapit is dozing in a chair upon the lawn; his darling
+      cat, the Rose of Sharon, is sleeping on his lap; stiffly beside him sits
+      Mrs. Major, his companion&mdash;that masterly woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we approach to be introduced, it is well we should know something of
+      Mr. Marrapit. The nervous business of adventuring into an assembly of
+      strangers is considerably modified by having some knowledge of the first
+      we shall meet. We feel more at home; do not rush upon subjects which are
+      distasteful to that person, or of which he is ignorant; absorb something
+      of the atmosphere of the party during our exchange of pleasantries with
+      him; and, warmed by this feeling, with our most attractive charm of manner
+      are able to push among the remainder of our new friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unhappily, the friendly chatter of the neighbourhood, which should supply
+      us with something of the character of a resident, is quite lacking at
+      Paltley Hill in regard to Mr. Marrapit. Mr. Marrapit rarely moves out
+      beyond the fine wall that encircles Herons' Holt, his residence; with
+      Paltley Hill society rarely mixes. The vicar, with something of a frown,
+      might tell us that to his divers parochial subscription lists Mr. Marrapit
+      has consistently, and churlishly, refused to give a shilling. Professor
+      Wyvern's son, Mr. William Wyvern, has been heard to say that Mr. Marrapit
+      always reminded him &ldquo;of one of the minor prophets&mdash;shaved.&rdquo; Beyond
+      this&mdash;and how little helpful it is!&mdash;Paltley Hill society can
+      give us nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a lower social grade of the district, however, much might be learned.
+      In the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours of Paltley Hill, Mr.
+      Marrapit is considerably discussed. Nicely mannered as we are, servants'
+      gossip concerning one in our own station of life is naturally distasteful
+      to us. At the same time it is essential to our ease on being introduced
+      that we should know something of this gentleman. Assuring ourselves,
+      therefore, that we shall not be prejudiced by cheap chatter, let us hear
+      what the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours have to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let it, at least, be written down; we shall know how to value such stuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Material for this gossip, then, is brought into the kitchens, the
+      cottages, and the bar-parlours by Mr. Marrapit's domestic staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Armitage, his cook, has given tales of his &ldquo;grimness&rdquo; to the cottages
+      where her comfortable presence is welcomed on Sunday and Thursday
+      afternoons. She believes, however, that he must be a &ldquo;religious
+      gentleman,&rdquo; because (so she says) &ldquo;he talks like out of the Bible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This would seem to bear out Mr. William Wyvern's allusion to the minor
+      prophet element of his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the habit of Clara and Ada, his maids, squeezing at the gate from
+      positions dangerous to modesty into which their ardent young men have
+      thrust them&mdash;it is their habit, thus placed, to excuse themselves
+      from indelicate embraces by telling alarming tales of Mr. Marrapit's
+      &ldquo;carrying on&rdquo; should they be late. He is a &ldquo;fair old terror,&rdquo; they say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The testimony of Mr. Fletcher, his gardener, gloomy over his beer in the
+      bar-parlours, seems to support the &ldquo;stinginess&rdquo; that the vicar has
+      determined in Mr. Marrapit's character. Mr. Fletcher, for example, has
+      lugubriously shown what has to be put up with when in the service of a man
+      who had every inch of the grounds searched because a threepenny bit had
+      been dropped. &ldquo;It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard,&rdquo; Mr Fletcher said on that
+      occasion. &ldquo;I'm a gardener, I am; not a treasure-'unter.&rdquo; Murmurs of
+      sympathy chorused endorsement of this view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally there are the words of Frederick, son of Mrs. Armitage, and
+      assistant to Fletcher, whose pleasure it is to set on end the touzled hair
+      of the youth of Paltley Hill by obviously exaggerated stories of Mr.
+      Marrapit's grim rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'E's a tryant,&rdquo; Frederick has said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is an epitome of the kitchen gossip concerning Mr. Marrapit; it is
+      wholesome to be away from such tattling, and personally to approach the
+      lawn whereon its subject sits.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      This lawn, a delectable sight on this fine July afternoon, is set about
+      with wire netting to a height of some six feet. By the energies of Mr.
+      Fletcher and Frederick the sward is exquisitely trimmed and rolled; and
+      their labours join with the wire netting to make the lawn a safe and
+      pleasant exercise ground for Mr. Marrapit's cats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back in the days of Mr. Marrapit's first occupancy of Herons' Holt, this
+      man was a mighty amateur breeder of cats, and a rare army of cats
+      possessed. Regal cats he had, queenly cats, imperial neuter cats; blue
+      cats, grey cats, orange cats, and white cats&mdash;cats for which nothing
+      was too good, upon which too much money could not be spent nor too much
+      love be lavished. Latterly, with tremendous wrenchings of the heart, he
+      had disbanded this galaxy of cats. Changes in his household were partly
+      the cause of this step. The coming of his nephew, George, had seriously
+      upset the peaceful routine of existence which it was his delight to lead;
+      and a reason even more compelling was the gradual alteration in his
+      attitude towards his hobby. This man perceived that the fancier's eye with
+      which he regarded his darlings was becoming so powerful as to render his
+      lover's eye in danger of being atrophied. The fancier's eye was lit by the
+      brain&mdash;delighted only in &ldquo;points,&rdquo; in perfection of specimen; the
+      lover's eye was fed by the heart&mdash;glowed, not with pride over breed,
+      but with affection for cats as cats. And Mr. Marrapit realised that for
+      affection he was coming to substitute pride&mdash;that he was outraging
+      the animals he loved by neglecting the less admirable specimens for those
+      perfectly moulded; that even these perfect types he was abusing by his
+      growing craze for breeding; polygamy in cats, he came to believe,
+      desecrated and eventually destroyed their finer feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore&mdash;and the coming of his nephew George quickened his
+      determination&mdash;Mr. Marrapit dispersed his stud (the word had become
+      abhorrent to him), keeping only four exquisite favourites, of which the
+      Rose of Sharon&mdash;that perfect orange cat, listed when shown at the
+      prohibitive figure of 1000 pounds, envy and despair of every cat-lover in
+      Great Britain and America&mdash;was apple of his eye, joy of his
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the resolve to keep but these four exquisite creatures that
+      encompassed the arrival in Mr. Marrapit's household of Mrs. Major, now
+      seated beside him upon the lawn&mdash;that masterly woman. The fine
+      cat-house was pulled down, the attendant dismissed. A room upon the ground
+      floor, having a southern aspect, was set apart as bed-chamber and
+      exclusive apartment for the four favourites, and Mr. Marrapit sought about
+      for some excellent person into whose care they might be entrusted. Their
+      feeding, their grooming, constant attention to their wants and the sole
+      care of their chamber, should be this person's duties, and it was not
+      until a point some way distant in this history that Mr. Marrapit ceased
+      daily to congratulate himself upon his selection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major, that masterly woman, was a distressed gentlewoman. The death
+      of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning, seems to
+      have given her her first chance of displaying those strong qualities which
+      ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she was of those to whom
+      plan of action comes instantly upon the arrival of opportunity. With
+      lightning rapidity this woman welded chance and action; with unflagging
+      energy and with dauntless perseverance used the powerful weapon thus
+      contrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The case of her husband's death may be instanced. Her hysterical distress
+      on the day of the funeral (a matter that would have considerably surprised
+      the late Mr. Major) was exchanged on the following morning for acute
+      physical distress resulting from the means by which, overnight, she had
+      tried to assuage her grief. Noticing, as she dressed, the subdued and
+      martyrlike air that her face wore, noticing also her landlady's evident
+      sympathy with the gentle voice and manner which her racking head caused
+      her to adopt, Mrs. Major saw at once the valuable aid to her future which
+      the permanent wearing of these characteristics might be. From that moment
+      she took up the role of distressed gentlewoman&mdash;advertised by
+      tight-fitting black, by little sighs, and by precise, subdued voice,&mdash;and
+      in this guise sought employment at an Agency. The agency sent her to be
+      interviewed by Mr. Marrapit. Ushered into the study, she, in a moment of
+      masterly inspiration, murmured &ldquo;The sweet! Ah, the sweet!&rdquo; when viciously
+      scratched by the Rose of Sharon, and upon those words walked directly in
+      to Mr. Marrapit's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He required a lady&mdash;a <i>lady</i> (Mrs. Major smiled deprecatingly)
+      who should devote herself to his cats. Did Mrs. Major like cats? Ah, sir,
+      she adored cats; her late husband&mdash;Words, at the recollection, failed
+      her. She faltered; touched an eye with her handkerchief; wanly smiled with
+      the resigned martyrdom of a true gentlewoman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As so-often in this life, the unspoken word was more powerful than
+      mightiest eloquence. Mr. Marrapit is not to be blamed for the inference he
+      drew. He pictured the dead Mr. Major a gentleman sharing with his wife a
+      passion for cats; by memory of which fond trait his widow's devotion to
+      the species would be yet further enhanced, would be hallowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is the further thought in this connection that once more, as so
+      often in this life, the unspoken word had saved the lie direct. Once only,
+      in point of fact, had Mrs. Major seen her late husband directly occupied
+      with a cat, and the occasion had been the cause of their vacating their
+      lodgings in Shepherd's Bush precisely thirty minutes later. Mr. Major,
+      under influence of his unfortunate malady, with savage foot had sped the
+      landlady's cat down a flight of stairs; and the landlady had taken the
+      matter in peculiarly harsh spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this, however, lay deeply hidden beneath Mrs. Major's unspoken word.
+      The vision of a gentle Mr. Major that Mr. Marrapit conjured sealed the
+      liking he had immediately taken to Mrs. Major, and thus was she installed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman, upon this July afternoon, desisted from her
+      crocheting; observed in the dozing figure beside her signs of movement;
+      turned to it, ready for speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This she saw. From the reluctant rays of a passing sun a white silk
+      handkerchief protected a nicely polished head&mdash;a little bumpy,
+      fringed with soft white hair. Beneath the head a long face, sallow of hue;
+      in either cheek a pit; between them a dominating nose carrying eyeglasses.
+      A long, spare body in an alpaca coat; long thin legs; brown morocco
+      slippers without heels&mdash;upon the lap the peerless Rose of Sharon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time for the Rose to go in,&rdquo; Mrs. Major softly suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Rose,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit, passing a hand gently over the creature's
+      exquisite form, &ldquo;is, I fear, still ailing. Her sleep is troubled; she
+      shivers. Her appetite?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is still poorly.&rdquo; The expression was that of a true distressed
+      gentlewoman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has need,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit said, &ldquo;of the most careful attention, of the
+      most careful dieting. Tend her. Tempt her. Take her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will, Mr. Marrapit.&rdquo; Mrs. Major gathered the Rose against her bosom.
+      &ldquo;You will not stay long? It is growing chilly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall take a brief stroll. I am perturbed concerning the Rose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me bring you a cap, Mr. Marrapit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unnecessary. Devote yourself, I pray, to the Rose. I am anxious. Nothing
+      could console me should any evil thing come upon her. I am apprehensive. I
+      look to you. I will take a stroll.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the wire fence Mr. Marrapit and Mrs. Major parted. The masterly
+      woman glided swiftly towards the house; Mr. Marrapit, with bent head,
+      passed thoughtfully along an opposite path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And immediately the sleeping garden awoke to sudden activity.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      First to break covert was Frederick, Mr. Fletcher's assistant. Abnormally
+      steeped in vice for one so young (this wretched boy was but fourteen),
+      with the coolness of a matured evil-doer Frederick extinguished his
+      cigarette-end by pressing it against his boot-heel; dropped it amongst
+      other ends, toilsomely collected, in a tin box; placed the box in its
+      prepared hole; covered this with earth and leaves; hooked a basket of
+      faded weeds upon his arm, and so appeared in Mr. Marrapit's path with bent
+      back, diligently searching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit inquired: &ldquo;Your task?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weedin',&rdquo; said Frederick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weeding what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weeds,&rdquo; Frederick told him, a little surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit rapped sharply: &ldquo;Say 'sir'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said Frederick, making to move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit peered at the basket. &ldquo;You have remarkably few.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ain't never many,&rdquo; Frederick said with quiet pride&mdash;&ldquo;there
+      ain't never many if you keep 'em down by always doin' your job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit pointed: &ldquo;They grow thick at your feet, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In round-eyed astonishment Frederick peered low. &ldquo;They spring up the
+      minute your back's turned, them weeds. They want a weed destroyer what you
+      pours out of a can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the weed-destroyer,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit said sternly. &ldquo;Be careful. It
+      is very true that they spring up whenever <i>my</i> back is turned. Be
+      careful.&rdquo; He passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blarst yer back,&rdquo; murmured Frederick, bending his own to the task.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A few yards further Mr. Marrapit again paused. Against a laurel bush stood
+      a pair of human legs, the seat of whose encasing trousers stared gloomily
+      upwards at the sky. With a small twig he carried Mr. Marrapit tapped the
+      seat. Three or four raps were necessary; slowly it straightened into line
+      with the legs; from the abyss of the bush a back, shoulders, head,
+      appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the ostrich with buried head believes itself hid from observation,
+      so it was with Mr. Fletcher, needing peace, a habit to plunge head and
+      shoulders into a bush and there remain&mdash;showing nothing against the
+      sky-line. Long practice had freed the posture from irksomeness. As a young
+      man Mr. Fletcher had been employed in a public tennis-court, and there had
+      learned the little mannerism to which he now had constant resort. In those
+      days the necessity of freeing himself from the constant annoyance of nets
+      to be tightened, or of disputes between rival claims to courts to be
+      settled, had driven him to devise some means of escape. It was essential
+      to the safety of his post, upon the other hand, that he must never allow
+      it to be said that he was constantly absent from his duties. Chance gave
+      him the very means he sought. Bent double into a bush one day, searching a
+      tennis ball, he heard his name bawled up and down the courts; he did not
+      stir. Those who were calling him stumbled almost against his legs; did not
+      observe him; passed on calling. Thereafter, when unduly pressed, it became
+      Mr. Fletcher's habit to bury head and arms in a bush either until the hue
+      and cry for him had lulled, or until exasperated searchers knocked against
+      his stern; in the latter event he would explain that he was looking for
+      tennis balls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The habit had persisted. Whenever irritated or depressed (and this man's
+      temperament caused such often to be his fate), he would creep to the most
+      likely bush and there disappear as to his upper half. It is a fine thing
+      in this turbulent life thus to have some quiet refuge against the
+      snarlings of adversity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher drew up now and faced Mr. Marrapit; in his hand a snail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said gloomily: &ldquo;Another one&rdquo;; held it towards his master's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is an example of how one deception leads to another. This was no
+      fresh snail; often before Mr. Marrapit had seen it. To lend motive to his
+      concealment Mr. Fletcher carried always with him this same snail; needing
+      peace he would draw it from his pocket; plunge to consolation; upon
+      discovery exhibit it as excuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is an abominable smell here,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher inhaled laboriously. &ldquo;It's not for me to say what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adjust that impression. Yours is the duty. You are in charge here. What
+      is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's them damn cats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are insolent, sir. Your insolence increases. It grows unendurable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher addressed the snail. &ldquo;He asts a question. I beg not to answer
+      it. He insists. I tell him. I'm insolent.&rdquo; He sighed; the tyranny of the
+      world pressed heavily upon this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit advertised annoyance by clicks of his tongue: &ldquo;You are
+      insolent when you swear in my presence. You are insolent when you impute
+      to my cats a fault that is not theirs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't blamin' the cats. It's natural to them. Whenever the wind sets
+      this way I notice it. It's blamin' me I complain of. I don't draw the
+      smell. I try to get away from it. It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard. I'm a
+      gardener, I am; not a wind-shaft.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever Mr. Marrapit had occasion to speak with Mr. Fletcher, after the
+      first few exchanges he would swallow with distinct effort. It was wrath he
+      swallowed; and bitter as the pill was, rarely did he fail to force it
+      down. Mr. Fletcher spoke to him as no other member of his establishment
+      dared speak. The formula of dismissal would leap to Mr. Marrapit's mouth:
+      knowledge of the unusually small wage for which Mr. Fletcher worked caused
+      it to be stifled ere it found tongue. Thousands of inferiors have daily to
+      bow to humiliations from their employers; it is an encouraging thought for
+      this army that masters there be who, restrained by parsimony, daily writhe
+      beneath impertinences from valuable, ill-paid servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit swallowed. He said: &ldquo;To the smell of which I complain my cats
+      are no party. It is tobacco. The air reeks of tobacco. I will not have
+      tobacco in my garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice, with a roaring sound, Mr. Fletcher inhaled. He pointed towards an
+      elm against the wall: &ldquo;It comes from over there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ascertain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gardener plunged through the bushes; nosed laboriously; his
+      inhalations rasped across the shrubs. &ldquo;There's no smoking here,&rdquo; he
+      called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Someone, in some place concealed, indubitably smokes. Yourself you have
+      noticed it. Follow the scent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Exertion beaded upon Mr. Fletcher's brow. He drew his hand across it;
+      thrust a damp and gloomy face between the foliage towards his master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to know,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;if this is to be one of my regular jobs for
+      the future? Was I engaged to 'unt smells all day? It's 'ard-damn 'ard. I'm
+      a gardener, I am; not a blood-'ound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Marrapit had passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn 'ard,&rdquo; Mr. Fletcher repeated; drew the snail from his pocket;
+      plunged to consolation.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A short distance down the garden Mr. Marrapit himself discovered the
+      source of the smell that had offended him. Bending to the left he came
+      full upon it where it uprose from a secluded patch of turf: from the
+      remains of a pipe there mounted steadily through the still air a thin wisp
+      of smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outraged, Mr. Marrapit stared; fuming, turned upon the step that sounded
+      on the path behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The slim and tall young man who approached was that nephew George, whose
+      coming into Mr. Marrapit's household had considerably disturbed Mr.
+      Marrapit's peace. Orphaned by the death of his mother, George had gone
+      into the guardianship of his uncle while in his middle teens. The
+      responsibility had been thrust upon Mr. Marrapit by his sister. Vainly he
+      had writhed and twisted in fretful protest; she shackled him to her desire
+      by tearful and unceasing entreaty. Vainly he urged that his means were not
+      what she thought; she assured him&mdash;and by her will bore out the
+      assurance&mdash;that with her George should go her money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the will, when read, in some degree consoled Mr. Marrapit for the
+      sniffling encumbrance he took back with him to Herons' Holt after the
+      funeral. It was a simple and trustful will&mdash;commended George into the
+      keeping of her brother Christopher Marrapit; desired that George should be
+      entered in her late husband's&mdash;the medical&mdash;profession; and for
+      that purpose bequeathed her all to the said brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George was eighteen when Mr. Marrapit entered him at St. Peter's Hospital
+      in mild pursuit of the qualification of the Conjoint Board of Surgeons and
+      Physicians. &ldquo;I am entering you,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit had said, consulting notes
+      he had prepared against the interview&mdash;&ldquo;I am entering you at enormous
+      cost upon a noble career which involves, however, a prolonged and highly
+      expensive professional training. Your mother wished it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit did not add that George's mother had expressly paid for it.
+      This man had the knowledge that Youth would lose such veneration for
+      Authority as it may possess were Authority to disclose the motives that
+      prompt its actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued: &ldquo;For me this involves considerable self-denial and patience.
+      I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to your books,
+      your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you are a man. The
+      idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern life must be sternly
+      faced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not flinch,&rdquo; George had replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For your personal expenses I shall make you a small allowance. You will
+      live in my house. Your wants should be insignificant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a faint voice George squeezed in: &ldquo;I have heard that one can work far
+      better by living near the hospital in digs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elucidate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Digs&mdash;lodgings. I have heard that one can work far better by living
+      near the hospital in lodgings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adjust that impression,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit had told him. &ldquo;You are
+      misinformed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George struggled: &ldquo;I should have the constant companionship of men
+      absorbed in the same work as myself. We could exchange views and notes in
+      the evenings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your books seek that companionship. With them compare your views. Let
+      your notes by them be checked. They are infallible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said no more. At that moment the freedom of hospital as against the
+      restraint of school, was a gallant steed upon which he outrid all other
+      desires. The prospect of new and strange books in exchange for those he so
+      completely abhorred, was an alluring delight. It is not until the bargain
+      is complete that we discover how much easier to polish, and more
+      comfortable to handle, are old lamps than new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit had referred to his notes: &ldquo;In regard to the allowance I
+      shall make you. I earnestly pray no spur may be necessary to urge you at
+      your tasks. Yet, salutary it is that spur should exist. I arrange,
+      therefore, that in the deplorable event of your failing to pass any
+      examination your allowance shall be diminished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will it be correspondingly increased when I pass first shot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fearful possibilities of this suggestion Mr. Marrapit had hesitated to
+      accept. Speculation was abhorrent to this man. Visions of success upon
+      success demanding increase upon increase considerably agitated him. Upon
+      the other hand, the sooner these successes were won, the sooner, he
+      reflected, would he be rid of this incubus, and, in the long-run, the
+      cheaper. He nerved himself to the decision. &ldquo;I agree to that,&rdquo; he had
+      said. &ldquo;The compact is affirmed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wretched compact for George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sum had not yet been fixed. George, standing opposite his uncle,
+      twisted one leg about the other; twined his clammy hands; put the awful
+      question: &ldquo;By how much will the allowance be increased or cut down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By two pounds a quarter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George plunged: &ldquo;So if I fail in my first exam. I shall get eleven pounds
+      at the quarter? if I pass, fifteen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Horror widened Mr. Marrapit's eyes; shrilled his voice: &ldquo;What is the
+      colossal sum you anticipate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you said fifty-two pounds a year-a pound a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A monstrous impression. Adjust it. Four pounds a quarter is the sum. You
+      will have no needs. It errs upon the side of liberality&mdash;I desire to
+      be liberal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George twisted his legs into a yet firmer knot: &ldquo;But two failures would
+      wipe it bang out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look you to that,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit told him. &ldquo;The matter is settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was further pursued by George when outside the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simply to spite that stingy brute,&rdquo; vowed he, &ldquo;I'll pass all my exams,
+      with such a rush that I'll be hooking sixteen quid a quarter out of him
+      before he knows where he is. I swear I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a rash oath. When Youth selects as weapon against Authority some
+      implement that requires sweat in the forging Authority may go unarmed. The
+      task of contriving such weapons is early abandoned. In three months
+      George's hot resolve was cooled; in six it was forgotten; at the end of
+      three years, after considerable fluctuation, his allowance stood at minus
+      two pounds for the ensuing quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit, appealed to for advance, had raved about his study with
+      waving arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The continued strain of renewing examination fees consequent on your
+      callous failures,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;terrifies me. I am haunted by the spectre
+      of ruin. The Bank of England could not stand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still George argued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a whirlwind of words Mr. Marrapit drove him from the study: &ldquo;Precious
+      moments fly even as you stand here. To your books, sir. In them seek
+      solace. By application to them refresh your shattered pocket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shamefully was the advice construed. George sought and found solace in his
+      books by selling his Kirke, his Quain and his Stone to Mr. Schoole of the
+      Charing Cross Road; his microscope he temporarily lodged with Mr. Maughan
+      in the Strand; to the science of bridge he applied himself with a skill
+      that served to supply his petty needs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding, his career at St. Peter's was of average merit. George
+      was now in the sixth year of his studies; and by the third part of his
+      final examination, was alone delayed from the qualification which would
+      bring him freedom from his uncle's irksome rule.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      His attempt at this last examination had been concluded upon this July day
+      that opens our history, and thus we return to Mr. Marrapit, to George, and
+      to the line of smoke uprising from the tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit indicated the smouldering wedge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George bent forward. &ldquo;Tobacco,&rdquo; he announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My nose informed me. My eyes affirm. Yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My simple rule. In the vegetable garden you may smoke; here you may not.
+      Is it so hard to observe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite forgot myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit cried: &ldquo;Adjust that impression. You forgot me. Consistently
+      you forget me. My desires, my interests are nothing to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a rotten thing to make a fuss about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is why I make a fuss. It <i>is</i> a rotten thing. A disgusting and
+      a noisome thing. Bury it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Into a bed of soft mould George struck a sullen heel; kicked the tobacco
+      towards the pit. Mr. Marrapit chanted over the obsequies: &ldquo;I provide you
+      with the enormous expanse of my vegetable garden in which to smoke. Yet
+      upon my little acre you intrude. I am Naboth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ahab straightened his back; sighed heavily. Naboth started against the
+      prick of a sudden recollection:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had forgotten. Your examination?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George half turned away. The bitterest moment of a sad day was come. He
+      growled:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pipped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Pipped?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pilled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Pilled?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Spun?&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit put his hands to his head: &ldquo;I shall go mad. My brain reels
+      beneath these conundrums. I implore English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The confession of defeat is a thousandfold more bitter when made to unkind
+      ears. George paled a little; spoke very clearly: &ldquo;I failed. I was referred
+      for three months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Job,&rdquo; groaned Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;I expected this. The strain is
+      unendurable. It is unnatural. The next chance shall be your last. What is
+      the fee for re-examination?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five guineas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tottered away up the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In Melancholy.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Gloom brooded over Herons' Holt that evening. Gloom hung thickly about the
+      rooms: blanketed conversation; veiled eyes that might have sparkled;
+      choked appetites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless this was an atmosphere in which one member of the household
+      felt most comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret, Mr. Marrapit's only child, was nineteen; of sallow complexion,
+      petite, pretty; with large brown eyes in which sat always a constant quest&mdash;an
+      entreaty, a wistful yearning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hers was a clinging nature, readily responsive to the attraction of any
+      stouter mind. Enthusiasm was in this girl, but it lay well-like&mdash;not
+      as a spring. To stir it the influence of another was wanted; of itself,
+      spontaneous, it could not leap. Aroused, there was no rush and surge of
+      emotion&mdash;it welled, rose deeply; thickly, without ripple; crestless,
+      flinging no intoxicating spume. Waves rush triumphant, hurtling forward
+      the stick they support: the pool swells, leaving the stick quiescent,
+      floating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is a clammy thing to
+      attract. A curate with a glimpse at Shelley's mind once roused Margaret's
+      enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly about him that he came
+      near to damning Shelley and all his works; threw up his hat when
+      opportunity put out a beckoning finger and drew him elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father; but she clung to him
+      despite his oppressive foibles, because this was her nature. She loved
+      church; incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound. She &ldquo;wrote
+      poetry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons' Holt upon this evening, she sat
+      brooding upon her cousin George's failure until a beautiful picture was
+      hatched. He had gone to his room directly after dinner; during the meal
+      had not spoken. She imagined him seated on his bed, hands deep in pockets,
+      chin sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that old devil despair. She knew
+      that latterly he had worked tremendously hard. He had told her before the
+      examination how confident of success he was, had revealed how much in the
+      immediate prospect of freedom he gloried. She recalled his gay laugh as he
+      had bade her good-bye on the first day, and the recollection stung her
+      just as, she reflected, it must now be stinging him.... Only he must a
+      thousand times more fiercely be feeling the burn of its venom....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake into herself a
+      profounder sense of her cousin's misfortune. By ten she was plunged in a
+      most pleasing melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if they
+      imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke lightness of
+      heart in the majority. Only the surface of their spirits ripples under
+      such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce the counterpart of a hearty
+      laugh in your vigorous animal, a feast on melancholy must be provided.
+      This is a quality that is common among the lower classes who find their
+      greatest happiness in funerals. The sombre trappings; white handkerchiefs
+      against black dresses; tears; the mystery of gloom&mdash;these trickle
+      with a warm glow through all their senses. They are as aroused by grief,
+      unpleasant to the majority, as the drunkard is quickened by wine, to many
+      abhorrent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of melancholy in which
+      she was now wrapped brought an added boon&mdash;arrayed in it she was best
+      able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many of her
+      brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at the heart
+      she could be most merry&mdash;tinkling out her laughing little lines just
+      as martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite of, they were
+      devilishly racked.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A manuscript returned by the last
+      post emphasised her gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kissing her father good-night, Margaret crept to her room, aching with
+      desire to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She undressed, read a portion of the <i>Imitation</i>, then to her table
+      by the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two hours brought relief. Margaret placed her poem in an envelope against
+      its presentation to George in the morning, then from her window leaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From her thoughts at once George sped; they rushed across the sleeping
+      fields to cling about the person of that Mr. William Wyvern who had spoken
+      of Mr. Marrapit as reminding him of a minor prophet&mdash;shaved. This was
+      Margaret's nightly practice, but to-night this girl was most exquisitely
+      melancholy, and with melancholy her thoughts of her William were tinged.
+      She had not seen him that day; and now she brooded upon the bitter
+      happening that had forced all her meetings with her lover to be snatched&mdash;fugitive,
+      secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Mr. William Wyvern was not allowed at Herons' Holt. When love first
+      sent its herald curiosity into William's heart, the young man had sought
+      to relieve its restlessness by a visit ostensibly on George, really upon
+      Margaret, and extremely ill-advised in that at his heels gambolled his
+      three bull-terriers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Korah, Dathan, and Abiram these were named, and they were abrupt dogs to a
+      point reaching brusqueness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door, as William had approached, beamed Mr. Marrapit; upon the
+      drive the queenly Rose of Sharon sat; and immediately tragedy swooped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dogs sighted the Rose. Red-mouthed the shining pack flew at her.
+      Dignity fell before terror: wildly, with streaming tail, she fled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Orange was the cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white ribbon
+      magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt about the
+      house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her pursuers&mdash;heavily
+      labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the doorway moaned Mr.
+      Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief each time the
+      parti-coloured ribbon flashed before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Mr. Fletcher the end had come. Working indoors, aroused by the din,
+      the gardener burst out past his master just as the ribbon fluttered into
+      sight upon the completion of its fourth circuit. Like a great avalanche it
+      poured against his legs; as falls the oak, so pressed he fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each eager jaw snapped once. Korah bit air, Dathan the cat's right ear.
+      She wrenched; freed; sprang high upon the porch to safety, blood on her
+      coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abiram put a steely nip upon Mr. Fletcher's right buttock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William called off his dogs; stood aghast. Mr. Marrapit stretched
+      entreating arms to his adored. Mr. Fletcher writhed prone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The torn Rose slipped to Mr. Marrapit's bosom. Clasping her he turned upon
+      William&mdash;&ldquo;You shall pay for this blood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William stammered: &ldquo;I'm very sorry, sir. If&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again enter my gates. I'll have your curs shot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Curs was unfortunate; the evil three were whelped of a mighty strain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your fool of a man hadn't got in the way, the cat would have escaped,&rdquo;
+       William hotly cried. Indignant he turned. Banishment was nothing then; in
+      time it came to be a bitter thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit had raged on to Mr. Fletcher, yet writhing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear that?&rdquo; he had cried. &ldquo;Dolt! You are responsible for this!&rdquo; He
+      touched the blood-flecked side, the abrased ear; clasped close the Rose;
+      called for warm water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher clapped a hand to his wound as shakily he rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I go to rescue his cat!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I'm near worried to death by 'ounds.
+      I'm a dolt. I'm responsible. It's 'ard,&mdash;damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I
+      am; not a dog muzzle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A dimness clouded Margaret's beautiful eyes as this bitter picture&mdash;she
+      had watched it&mdash;was again reviewed. She murmured &ldquo;Oh, Bill!&rdquo;;
+      stretched her soft arms to the night; moved her pretty lips in a message
+      to her lover; snuggled between the sheets and made melancholy her
+      bedfellow.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      By seven she was up and in the fresh garden. George was before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She cried brightly: &ldquo;Why, how early you are!&rdquo; and ran to him&mdash;very
+      pretty in her white dress: at her breast a rose, the poem fluttering in
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; for once before you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George's tone did not give back her mood, purposely keyed high. She played
+      on it again: &ldquo;Turning a new leaf?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drummed at the turf with his heel: &ldquo;Yes&mdash;for to-day.&rdquo; He threw out
+      a hand towards her: &ldquo;But in the same old book. I've had eight&mdash;nine
+      years of it, and now there are three more months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor George! But only three months, think how they will fly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was desperately gloomy: &ldquo;I haven't your imagination. Each single day of
+      them will mean a morning&mdash;here; a night&mdash;here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, is it so hard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, now. It's pretty deadly now. You know, when I wasn't precisely
+      killing myself with overwork, I didn't mind so much. When it was three or
+      four years, anyway, before I could possibly be free, a few extra months or
+      so through failing an exam, didn't trouble me. But this is different. I
+      was right up against getting clear of all this&rdquo;&mdash;he comprehended
+      garden and house in a sweep of the hand&mdash;&ldquo;counted it a dead certainty&mdash;and
+      here I am pitched back again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, George, you did work so hard this time. It isn't as though you had
+      to blame yourself.&rdquo; She put a clinging hand into his arm. &ldquo;You can suffer
+      no&mdash;remorse. That is what makes failure so dreadful&mdash;the
+      knowledge that things might have been otherwise if one had liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George laughed quite gaily. Gloom never lay long upon this young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a sweet little person,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You ought to be right, but you
+      are wrong. When I didn't work I didn't mind failing. It's when I've tried
+      that I get sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret's eyes brightened. There was melancholy here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know what you mean. I know so well. I have felt that. You mean the&mdash;the
+      haunting fear that you may never be able to succeed; that you have not the&mdash;the
+      talent, the capacity.&rdquo; She continued pleadingly: &ldquo;Oh, you mustn't think
+      that. You can&mdash;you <i>will</i> succeed next time, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; responded George brightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret was quite pained. She would have had him express doubt,
+      despondently sigh; would have heartened him with her poem. The confident
+      &ldquo;rather!&rdquo; jarred. She hurried from its vigour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She asked: &ldquo;What had you intended to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was to have got a <i>locum tenens</i>. I think it would have developed
+      into a permanency. A big, rough district up in Yorkshire with a man who
+      keeps six horses going. His second assistant&mdash;a pal of mine&mdash;wants
+      to chuck it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Oh, partly because he's fed up with it, partly because he wants a
+      practice of his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! ... But, George, don't you want a practice of your own? You don't
+      want to be another man's assistant, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George laughed. &ldquo;I can't choose, Margi. You know, if you imagine there are
+      solid groups of people all over England anxiously praying for the arrival
+      of a doctor, you must adjust that impression, as your father would say.
+      These things have to be bought. I've got about three pounds, so I'm not
+      bidding. They seldom go so cheap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret never bantered. She had no battledore light enough to return an
+      airy shuttlecock. Now, as always, when this plaything came buoyantly
+      towards her she swiped it with heavy force clean out of the conversational
+      field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said gravely: &ldquo;Ah, I know what you mean. You mean that father ought to
+      buy you a practice&mdash;ought to set you up when you are qualified. I
+      can't discuss that, can I? It wouldn't be loyal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. I don't ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They moved towards the sound of the breakfast bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think,&rdquo; Margaret continued, &ldquo;that father ought to buy you a practice
+      because your mother left him money for the purpose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know she left him nearly five thousand pounds for my education and all
+      that. I think I may have cost him three thousand, possibly four&mdash;<i>so</i>
+      I think I am entitled to something, <i>but</i> I shan't get it, <i>therefore</i>
+      I don't worry. My hump is gone; in three months I shall be gone. Forward:
+      I smell bacon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret smiled the wan smile of an invalid watching vigorous youth at
+      sport. Firmly she banged the shuttlecock out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How bright you are!&rdquo; she told him. &ldquo;Look, here is a little poem I wrote
+      for you last night. It's about failure and success. Don't read it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George was very fond of his cousin. &ldquo;Oh, but I must!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I think
+      this was awfully nice of you. He's not down yet. Let's sit on this seat
+      and read it together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not aloud. It's a silly little thing&mdash;really.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;aloud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smoothed the paper. She pressed against him; thrilled as she regarded
+      the written lines. George begged her read. She would not&mdash;well, she
+      would. She paused. Modesty and pride gathered on her cheeks, tuned her
+      voice low. She read:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;So you have tried&mdash;So you have known
+  The burning effort for success,
+  The quick belief in your own prowess and your skill,
+  The bitterness of failure, and the joy
+  Of sweet success.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Burning effort,'&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;That's fine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you like that. And 'quick belief'&mdash;you know what I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet warmed again over her words.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;So you have tried&mdash;
+  So you have known
+  The blind-eyed groping towards the goal
+  That flickers on the far horizon of Attempt,
+  Gleaming to sudden vividness, anon
+  Fading from sight.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sort of blank verse, isn't it?&rdquo; George asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sort of,&rdquo; the poet allowed. &ldquo;Not exactly, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; George agreed firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret breathed the next fine lines.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;So you have tried&mdash;
+  So you have known
+  The bitter-sweetness of Attempt,
+  The quick determination and the dread despair
+  That grapple and possess you as you strive
+  For imagery.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      George questioned: &ldquo;Imagery...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That verse is more for me than you,&rdquo; the poet explained. &ldquo;'For imagery'&mdash;to
+      get the right word, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;It does for me too&mdash;in exams, when one is
+      floored, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Margaret admitted doubtfully. &ldquo;Ye-es. Don't interrupt between the
+      verses, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now emotion swelled her voice.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Success be yours!
+  May you achieve
+  To heights you do not dream you'll ever touch;
+  The power's to your hand, the road before you lies&mdash;
+  Forward! The gods not always frown; anon
+  They'll kindly smile.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's splendid!&rdquo; George cried. He put a cousinly arm about the
+      poet; squeezed her to him. &ldquo;Fancy you writing that for me! What a
+      sympathetic little soul you are&mdash;and how clever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Breathless she disengaged herself: &ldquo;I'm so glad you like it. It's a silly
+      little thing&mdash;but it's <i>real</i>, isn't it? Come, there's father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused against denial of the poem's silliness, affirmation of its
+      truth; but George, moody beneath Mr. Marrapit's eye, glinting behind the
+      window, had moved forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret thrust the paper in her bosom, tucked in where heart might warm
+      against heart's child. Constantly during breakfast her mind reverted to
+      it, drummed its rare lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Yet Margaret had called her poem silly. Here, then, was mock-modesty by
+      diffidence seeking praise. But this mock-modesty, which horribly abounds
+      to-day, is only natural product of that furious modesty which has come to
+      be expected in all the arts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Modesty should have no place in true art. The author or the painter, the
+      poet or the composer should be impersonal to his work. That which he
+      creates is not his; it is a piece of the art to which he is servant, and
+      as such (and such alone) he should regard it. His in the making and the
+      moulding, thereafter it becomes the possession of the great whole to which
+      it belongs. If it adorns that whole he may freely admire it; for he is
+      impersonal to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unquestionably (or unconsciously) we accept this principle in regard to
+      human life. The child belongs not to the mother who conceived it but to
+      the race of which it is an atom. It hinders or it betters the race. The
+      race judges it. By the race it is honoured or condemned; and to it the
+      mother becomes impersonal. As it bears itself among its fellows, so she
+      judges it&mdash;as the artist's work bears itself in the great art it
+      joins, so should he judge it. And if the mother joins in his fellows'
+      praise of her child, and if she proclaims her pride in it, is she called
+      wanting in modesty?&mdash;and if the artist joins in praise of his work,
+      and if he freely names it good, must he then be vain, boastful? The race
+      grants that the mother who gave it this specimen of its kind has a first
+      right to show her pride&mdash;to the artist who gives a fair specimen to
+      his art we should allow a like voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in demanding modesty&mdash;in naming impersonality conceit&mdash;we
+      have produced also mock-modesty; and because, as a people, we have little
+      appreciation of the arts, hence little knowledge, hence no standard by
+      which to judge, we continually mistake the one form of modesty for the
+      other. Modesty we suspect to be mock-modesty, and mock-modesty we take to
+      be pleasing humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming to literature alone, the author should be impersonal to his work
+      and must not cry that the writer is no judge of his own labour. Letters is
+      his trade; and just as the mason well knows whether the brick he has laid
+      helps or hinders, beautifies or insults the house, so the writer should be
+      full cognisant whether his work helps make or does mar the edifice called
+      literature. Nor must the term literature be denied to the ruck of modern
+      writing. All that is written to interest or to instruct goes to make the
+      literature of our day. We have introduced new expressions just as we have
+      contrived new expressions in architecture; and as in the latter case so in
+      the former the bulk of these is ephemeral. Nevertheless they are a part of
+      literature, and all efforts in them better or sully the pages which in our
+      day we are adding to the book of literature. From this book the winds of
+      cycles to come will blow all that is unworthy&mdash;only the stout leaves
+      will endure; but, no less because you write for the supplement than if you
+      have virtue sufficient for the bound volume, remember that in every form
+      of writing there are standards of good, and that every line printed helps
+      raise or does tarnish the letters of our day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In A Hospital.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      By the half-past nine train George went to town; an hour later was at St.
+      Peter's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the bar of the Students' Club a throng of young men of his year
+      loudly hailed him. He joined them; took with a laugh the commiserations on
+      his failure; wrung the hands of those who had been successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The successful young gentlemen were standing drinks-each man his round.
+      There was much smoke and much laughter. Amusing experiences were narrated.
+      You gathered that all who had passed their examination had done so by
+      sheer luck, by astonishing flukes. Not one had ever worked. Each had been
+      &ldquo;ragged&rdquo; on a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. To the
+      brilliancy with which he had gulled or bluffed his examiner, to the
+      diplomacy with which he had headed him off the matters of which he knew
+      absolutely less than nothing-to these alone were his success due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is ever Youth's account of battle with Age. Youth is a devil of a
+      smart fellow, behind whom Age blunders along in the most ridiculous
+      fashion. Later this young blood takes his place in the blundering ranks
+      and then does learn that indeed he was right&mdash;Age knows nothing. For
+      with years we begin to realise our ignorance, and the lesson is not
+      complete when the grave slams the book. A few plumb the depths of their
+      ignorance before death: these are able to speak&mdash;and these are the
+      teachers of men. We get here one reason why giants are fewer in our day:
+      with the growth of man's imaginings and his inventions there is more
+      vanity to be forced through; the truths of life lie deeper hid; more
+      phantasms arise to lure us from the quest of realities; the task of
+      striking truth accumulates.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Soon after midday the party broke up. Its members lunched early; visiting
+      surgeons and physicians went their rounds at half-past one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George strolled to the Dean's office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woebegone-looking youth in spectacles stood before the table; opposite
+      sat the Dean. He looked up as George entered, and nodded: he was fond of
+      George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along in,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I shan't be a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the sad youth. &ldquo;Now your case, Mr. Carter,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is
+      quite unique. In the whole records of the Medical School&rdquo;&mdash;he waved
+      at a shelf of fat volumes&mdash;&ldquo;in the whole records of the Medical
+      School we have nothing in the remotest degree resembling it. You have
+      actually failed twice in&mdash;in&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dean searched wildly among a litter of papers; baffled, threw out an
+      emphasising hand, and repeated, &ldquo;<i>Twice</i>! Other hospitals, Mr.
+      Carter, may have room for slackers&mdash;we have not. We have a record and
+      a reputation of which we are proud. You are in your second year. How old
+      are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint whisper said, &ldquo;Nineteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dean started. &ldquo;Nineteen! Oh, dear me, dear me! this is worse than I
+      thought&mdash;far worse. I am afraid, Mr. Carter, I shall have to write to
+      your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Guttural with emotion, Mr. Carter gasped: &ldquo;I mean to work&mdash;indeed I
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the Dean frantically searched on his desk to discover the subject in
+      which Mr. Carter had failed; again was unsuccessful. Deep thought ravelled
+      his brow. His fingers drummed indecision on the table. It was a telling
+      picture of one struggling between duty and kindliness&mdash;masterly as
+      the result of long practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Carter,&rdquo; the Dean summed up, &ldquo;I will consider your case more fully
+      to-night. Against my better judgment I may perhaps decide not on this
+      occasion to communicate with your father. But remember this. At the very
+      outset of your career you have strained to breaking-point the confidence
+      of your teachers. Only by stupendous efforts on your part can that
+      confidence be restored. These failures, believe me, will dog you from now
+      until you are qualified&mdash;nay, will dog your whole professional
+      career. That will do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a convulsion of relief and of agitation beneath this appalling prospect
+      the dogged man quavered thanks; stumbled from the room.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George laughed. &ldquo;Same old dressing-down,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Don't you ever alter
+      the formula?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very effective,&rdquo; the Dean replied. &ldquo;That's the sixth this morning.
+      Unfortunately I couldn't remember in what subject that boy had failed; so
+      he didn't get the best part&mdash;the part about that being the one
+      subject of all others which, if failed in, predicted ruin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was biology in my case,&rdquo; George told him. &ldquo;I trembled with funk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think most of you do. It's fortunate that all you men when you first
+      come up are afraid of your fathers. It gives us a certain amount of hold
+      over you. If the thing were done properly, both at the 'Varsities and the
+      hospitals, there would be a system of marks and reports just as at
+      schools. You are only boys when you first come up, and you should be
+      treated as boys; instead, you are left free and irresponsible. It ruins
+      dozens of men every year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that's why I'm here now,&rdquo; George responded. &ldquo;You know I got
+      ploughed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dean told George how sorry he had been to hear it. He questioned: &ldquo;Bad
+      luck, I suppose? I thought it was a sitter for you this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, rotten luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's unfortunate, you know. You would have got a house appointment. I'm
+      afraid you will miss that mow. There will be a crowd of very hot men up
+      with you in October, junior to you, who will get the vacancies. What will
+      you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George shrugged and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dean frowned; interpreted the shrug. &ldquo;Well, you should care,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;You ought to be looking around you. Won't your uncle help you to buy a
+      partnership?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are on worse terms than ever after this failure. Not he.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're not trying to be on good terms, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a remarkably silly young man. You want balance, Leicester, you
+      want balance. It would be the making of you to have some serious purpose
+      in life. You will run against something of the kind soon&mdash;you'll get
+      engaged, perhaps, and then you'll regret your happy-go-lucky ways.&rdquo; He
+      fumbled amongst a pile of correspondence and drew out a letter. &ldquo;Now, look
+      here, I was thinking of you only a few moments ago. Here's a letter from a
+      man who&mdash;who&mdash;where is it?&mdash;Ah, yes&mdash;If you could
+      raise 400 pounds by the time you are qualified I could put you on to a
+      splendid thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the remotest chance,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;The serious purpose must wait. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dean waved a hand that asked silence; consulted the letter. &ldquo;This is
+      from a man in practice at a place called Runnygate&mdash;one of these
+      rising seaside resorts&mdash;Hampshire&mdash;great friend of mine. He's
+      got money, and he's going to chuck it&mdash;doesn't suit his wife. I told
+      him I'd find a purchaser if he would leave it with me. Merely nominal&mdash;only
+      400 pounds. He says that in a year or so there'll be a small fortune in
+      the practice, because a company is taking the place over to develop it.
+      You shall have first refusal. Come now, pull yourself together,
+      Leicester.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George laughed. He stood up. &ldquo;Thanks, I refuse now. What on earth's the
+      good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rubbish,&rdquo; said the Dean. &ldquo;Think over that serious interest in life. You
+      never know your luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George moved to the door. &ldquo;I know my luck all right,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;Never
+      mind, I'm not grumbling with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Upon Life: And May Be Missed.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the ante-room, as it were, of a very short chapter, we must make ready
+      to receive our heroine. She is about to spring dazzling upon our pages;
+      will be our close companion through some moving scenes. We must collect
+      ourselves, brush our hair, arrange our dress, prepare our nicest manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as in ante-rooms there are commonly papers laid about to beguile the
+      tedium, and as the faint rustle of our heroine's petticoats is warning
+      that George's assertion that he knew his luck is immediately to be
+      disproved, let us make a tiny little paper on the folly of such a
+      statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For of his luck man has no glimmer of prescience. Day by day we rattle the
+      box, throw the dice; but of how these will fall we have no knowledge. We
+      only hope with the gambler's feverishness; and it is this very hazard that
+      keeps us crowding and pushing to hold our place at the tables where
+      fortune spins. Grow we sick of the game, sour with our luck, weary of the
+      hazard, and relinquish we our place at the table, we are pushed back and
+      out&mdash;elbowed, thrown, trampled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are all treasure-seekers set on a treasure-island in a boundless sea.
+      Cruelly marooned we are&mdash;flung ashore without appeal, and here
+      deserted until the ship that disembarked us suddenly swoops and the
+      press-gang snatches us again aboard&mdash;again without heed to our
+      desire. Whence the ship brought us we do not know, and whither it will
+      carry us we do not know; there is none to prick a return voyage disclosing
+      the ultimate haven, though pilots there be who pretend to the knowledge&mdash;we
+      cannot test them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our
+      thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a pick;
+      the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised, we set
+      to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some seek to
+      break new ground, but what the pick will next turn up no one knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it is this uncertainty, this hazard, that keeps us hammer, hammer,
+      hammering; that keeps us, some from brooding against the marooners, their
+      wanton desertion of us, our ultimate fate at their hands; others from
+      making ready against the return voyage as entreated by the pilots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly, when the pick strikes a pocket, we turn to carousing; cease
+      cocking a timid eye at the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now our heroine is beckoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant
+      case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers, surgeons
+      and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of the subject.
+      He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts&mdash;three more months
+      of dependency&mdash;to take greater interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's side
+      until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the cause,
+      &ldquo;Clumsy beast,&rdquo; said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: &ldquo;Come on,
+      Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's eye;
+      a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the nose. &ldquo;Tea,&rdquo;
+       said he; &ldquo;it is going to rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He addressed the pretty waitress: &ldquo;I have no wish to seem inquisitive, but
+      which table do you attend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl jerked her chin: &ldquo;What's that to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much,&rdquo; Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, &ldquo;that, until I know, here,
+      beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, all of 'em.&rdquo; She whisked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're badly snubbed, Franklyn,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;This rain is nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A summer shower crashed down as he spoke; a mob of shoppers, breathless
+      for shelter, drove them inwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George,&rdquo; said Mr. Franklyn, seating himself, &ldquo;your base mind thinks I
+      have designs on this girl. I grieve at so distorted a fancy. The child
+      says prettily that she attends 'all of 'em.' It is a gross case of
+      overwork into which I feel it my duty more closely to inquire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George laughed. &ldquo;Do you always spend your afternoons like this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that
+      day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will be a sad
+      wrench to leave the dear old home.&rdquo; He continued, a tinge of melancholy in
+      his voice: &ldquo;You know, I am the last of the old brigade. The medical
+      student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; he is a rabbit.
+      Alone, undismayed, I uphold the old traditions. I am, so to speak, one of
+      the old aristocracy. Beneath the snug characteristics of the latter-day
+      student&mdash;his sweet abhorrence of a rag, his nasty delight in plays
+      which he calls 'hot-stuff,' his cigarettes and his chess-playing&mdash;beneath
+      these my head, like Henley's, is bloody but unbowed. Forgive a tear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shower ceased; the tea was finished; the pretty waitress was coyly
+      singeing her modesty in the attractive candle of Mr. Franklyn's
+      suggestions. George left them at the game; strolled aimlessly towards the
+      Marble Arch; beyond it; to the right, and so into a quiet square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here comes my heroine.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The hansom, as George walked, was coming towards him&mdash;smartly, with a
+      jingle of bells; skimming the kerb. As it reached him (recall that shower)
+      the horse slipped, stumbled, came on its knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down came the shafts; out shot the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doors were wide; the impetus took her in her stride. One tiny foot
+      dabbed at the platform's edge; the other twinkled&mdash;patent leather and
+      silver buckle&mdash;at the step, missed it, plunged with a giant stride
+      for the pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mercy!&rdquo; she cried, and came like a shower of roses swirling into George's
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Completely he caught her. About his legs whipped her skirts; against him
+      pressed her panting bosom; his arms&mdash;the action was instinctive&mdash;locked
+      around her; the adorable perfume of her came on him like breeze from a
+      violet bed; her very cheek brushed his lips&mdash;since the first kiss it
+      was the nearest thing possible to a kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She twisted backwards. Modesty chased alarm across her face&mdash;caught,
+      battled, overcame it; flamed triumphant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fright at her accident drove her pale; shame at the manner of her descent&mdash;leg
+      to the knee and an indelicacy of petticoats&mdash;agitated she had
+      glimpsed it as she leapt&mdash;flushed her crimson from the line of her
+      dress about her throat to the wave of her hair upon her brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She twisted back. &ldquo;Oh, what must you think of me?&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He simply could not say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Moving Passages With A Heroine.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George could not say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His senses were washed aswim by this torrent of beauty poured unexpected
+      through eyes to brain. It surged the centres to violent commotion, one
+      jostling another in a whirlpool of conflict. Out of the tumult alarm
+      flashed down the wires to his heart&mdash;set it banging; flashed in wild
+      message to his tongue&mdash;locked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He
+      loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a moment
+      the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down the street,
+      a murderer with bloody hand, a liar with false words suddenly pumped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later the driver is calm and aghast at the ruin he has contrived.
+      Why, before God, did he pull the leg lever?&mdash;the arm lever?&mdash;the
+      tongue lever? In an instant's action he has accomplished calamity; where
+      sunshine laughed now darkness heaps; where the prospect smiled disaster
+      now comes rolling up in thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes
+      temporarily idiot&mdash;stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out
+      some stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have
+      fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an
+      intolerable fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what must you think of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That pause followed while the driver in George's brain stood gapingly
+      inactive; and then came laughter to him like a draught of champagne. For
+      the girl put up her firm, round chin and laughed with a clear pipe of glee&mdash;a
+      laugh to call a laugh as surely as a lark's note will set a hedge in song;
+      and it called the laugh in George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;I am thinking the nicest things of you. But have you dropped
+      from the skies?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From a <i>cab</i>,&rdquo; she protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to the road; back to George in dismay, for the catapult, its
+      bullet shot, had bolted up the street&mdash;was gone from view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&mdash;I <i>was</i> in a cab?&rdquo; she implored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George said: &ldquo;It <i>looked</i> like a cab. But a fairy-car, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pucker of her brows darkened the quick mirth that came to her eyes. She
+      cried: &ldquo;Oh, don't joke. She will be killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were not alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;oh, no! What has happened to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had better follow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She corrected his number. &ldquo;Yes, I had better. Thank you so much for your
+      help.&rdquo; She took a step; faltered upon it with a little exclamation of
+      pain; put a white tooth on her lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have hurt your foot?&rdquo; George said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My ankle, I think. Oh dear!&rdquo; and then again she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came even then to George that certainly she would have made her fortune
+      were she to set up a gloom-exorcising bureau&mdash;waiting at the end of a
+      telephone wire ready to rush with that laugh to banish the imps of
+      melancholy. Never had he heard so infectious a note of mirth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what must you think of me?&rdquo; she ended. &ldquo;I simply cannot help
+      laughing, you know&mdash;and yet, oh dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put the tips of the fingers of a hand against her lower lip, gazed
+      very anxiously up the road, and then again she gave that clear pipe of
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help it,&rdquo; she told him imploringly. &ldquo;I simply cannot help
+      laughing. It is funny, you know. She was scolding me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Scolding</i>!&rdquo; George exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That beauty should be scolded!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scolding&mdash;yes. Oh, I'm only a&mdash;well, scolding me, and I was
+      wishing, <i>wishing</i> I could escape. And then suddenly out I shot. And
+      then I look around and she's&mdash;&rdquo; A wave of her hand expressed a
+      disappearance that was by magic agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, <i>scolding</i>?&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;Need you trouble? She will be all
+      right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I must. I live with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will she trouble about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she will return for me. Please, <i>please</i> go&mdash;would you
+      mind?&mdash;to the corner, and see if there has been an accident.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From that direction a bicyclist approached. George hailed. &ldquo;Is there a cab
+      accident round the corner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth stared; called &ldquo;Rats!&rdquo;; passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George interpreted: &ldquo;It means No. Do you think if you were to take my arm
+      you could walk to the turning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite naturally she slipped a white glove around his elbow. The contact
+      thrilled him. &ldquo;No nice girl, you know, would do this,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;with a
+      perfect stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George bent his arm a little, the better to feel the pressure of those
+      white fingers. &ldquo;I am not really perfect,&rdquo; he told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took his mood. &ldquo;Nor I really nice,&rdquo; she joined. &ldquo;In fact, I'm horrible&mdash;they
+      tell me. But I think it is wise to follow, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Profoundly wise. Who says you are horrible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave no answer. Glancing, he saw trouble shade her eyes, tremble her
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That beauty should know distress!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very slightly he raised his forearm so that the lock of his elbow felt her
+      hand. He had no fine words. This George was no hero with exquisite ways.
+      He was a most average young man, and nothing could he find but most
+      painfully average words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, what's up?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke defiantly; but some stupid something that she hated yet could
+      not repress trembled her lips, robbed her tone of its banter. &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;Why, <i>you</i> would say something was up if you'd just been
+      shot plump out of a cab, wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you were laughing a minute ago.&rdquo; He looked down at her, but she
+      turned her face. &ldquo;Now, now, I believe&mdash;&rdquo; He did not name his thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up. Her pretty face was red. He saw little flutters of eyelids,
+      flutters round the eyes, flutters at the mouth. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;oh, yes,
+      and I don't know why. I'm&mdash;I believe&mdash;&rdquo; She tried to laugh, but
+      the little flutterings clouded the smile like soft, dark wings flickering
+      upon a sunbeam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe&mdash;it's ridiculous to a perfect&mdash;imperfect&mdash;stranger&mdash;I
+      believe I'm nearly&mdash;crying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this inept George could only return: &ldquo;I say&mdash;oh, I say, can I
+      help you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped; from his arm withdrew her hand. &ldquo;Please&mdash;I think you had
+      better go. Please go. Oh, I shall hate myself for behaving like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So unhappy she was that George immediately planned her a backdoor of
+      excuse. &ldquo;But you have no occasion to blame yourself,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;You've
+      had an adventure&mdash;naturally you're shaken a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was relieved to think he had misunderstood her agitation. &ldquo;Yes, an
+      adventure,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that's it. And I haven't had an adventure for
+      years, so naturally&mdash;But, please, I think you had better go. If my&mdash;my
+      friend saw me with you like this she would be angry&mdash;oh, very angry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why? She saw you fall. She saw me save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't understand. She is not exactly my friend; she is my&mdash;my
+      employer. I'm a mother's-help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mirth that never lay deep beneath those blue eyes of hers was
+      sparkling up now; the soft, dark wings were fluttering no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued: &ldquo;A mother's-help. Doesn't that sound wretched? I'm terribly
+      slow at learning the mother's-help rules, but I'm positive of this rule&mdash;mothers'
+      helps may not shoot out of cabs and leave the mother; it's such little
+      help&mdash;you must see that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will be less help still if you stay here for ever with your hurt
+      ankle&mdash;you must see that? I must stay with you or see you to your
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she answered, it was upon another change of mood. The soft, dark
+      wings were fluttering again; and it was the banter of George's tone that
+      had recalled them. For this was an adventure&mdash;and she had not known
+      adventure for years; for these were flippant exchanges arising out of gay
+      young hearts, and they recalled memories of days when such harmless
+      bantering was of her normal life; for there had been sympathy in George's
+      stammering inquiries, and it recalled the time when she lived amidst
+      sympathy and amidst love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soft, dark wings fluttered again: &ldquo;I am very grateful to you for
+      helping me,&rdquo; she told him. &ldquo;You must not think me ungrateful; only, I
+      think you had better go. In my position I am not free to&mdash;to do as I
+      like, talk where I will. You understand?&rdquo; Her voice trembled a little, and
+      she repeated: &ldquo;You understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said, &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      And that was all that passed upon this meeting. A cab swung round the
+      opposite corner; pulled up with a rattle; turned towards them; was
+      alongside. Within, a brow of thunder sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cabman called, &ldquo;I knowed you was all right, miss,&rdquo; raised the trap,
+      and cheerfully repeated the information to his fare: &ldquo;I knowed she was all
+      right, mum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mum addressed gave no congratulation to his prescience. He shut the
+      lid; winked at George; behind his hand communicated, &ldquo;Not 'arf angry, she
+      ain't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl ran forward; agitation bound up her hurt ankle. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried,
+      &ldquo;I am so glad you are safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thunder-figure addressed said: &ldquo;Please get in. I have had a severe
+      shock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gentleman&mdash;&rdquo; The girl half turned to George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please get in&mdash;instantly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scarlet the girl went. &ldquo;Thank you very much,&rdquo; she said to George; climbed
+      in beside the cloud of wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion slammed the door; dabbed at George a bow that was like a
+      sharp poke with a stick; called, &ldquo;Drive on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George stepped into the road, held half a crown to the driver: &ldquo;The
+      address?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stooped. With a tremendous wink answered, &ldquo;Fourteen Palace
+      Gardens, St. John's Wood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Away with a jingle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George did not return to St. Peter's that afternoon; watched the cab from
+      view; walked back to Waterloo; thence took train to Paltley Hill with mind
+      awhirl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recovering from stunning shock the mind first sees a blur of events&mdash;formless,
+      seething, inextricably tangled. Deep in this boiling chaos is one fact
+      struggling more powerfully than the rest to cool and so to shape itself.
+      It kicks a leg free here, there an arm, then another leg. Its exertions
+      cause the whole more furiously to agitate&mdash;the brain is afire. Very
+      suddenly this struggling fact jumps free. Laid hold of it is a cold spoon
+      which, plunged back into the seething cauldron, arrests the turmoil of its
+      contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or again, recovering from sudden shock the mind first sees a great
+      whirling, blinding cloud of dust which hides and wreathes about the sudden
+      topple of masonry that has provoked it. Here the slowly emerging fact may
+      be likened to a clear gangway through the ruin up which the fevered owner
+      may walk to investigate the catastrophe's cause and extent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So now with George. If not dazed by stunning shock, he was at least awhirl
+      by set back of the swift sequence of events which suddenly had buffeted
+      him; and it was not until strolling up from Paltley Hill railway station
+      to Herons' Holt that one cooling fact emerged from which he might make an
+      ordered examination of what had passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The address that the cabman had given him was this fact&mdash;14 Palace
+      Gardens, St. John's Wood. Here was the gangway through the pile of
+      disorder, and here George resolutely made a start of examining events in
+      place of wildly beating about through the dust of aimless conjectures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He visualised this Palace Gardens residence. A gloomy house, he suspected,&mdash;prison-like;
+      its inhabitants warders, the girl their captive. A beautiful picture was
+      thus presented to this ridiculous young man. For if the girl were indeed
+      captive, warder-surrounded, how gratefully her heart must press towards
+      him who was no turnkey! The more irksomely her captors held her, the more
+      warmly would she remember him. Subconsciously he hoped for a rattle of
+      chains, a scourging with whips. Every bond, every stroke would speed her
+      spirit to the recollection of their meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this delectable picture soon faded. Love&mdash;and this ridiculous
+      George vowed he was in love&mdash;love is a mental see-saw. The
+      nicely-balanced mind is set suddenly oscillating: now up, commandingly
+      above the world, intoxicated with the rush and the elevation; now down to
+      depths made horribly deep by contrast, wretchedly jarred by the bump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A new thought impelled a downward jolt of this kind. Failing a gloomy 14
+      Palace Gardens, supposing the girl to be happily situated, it was horribly
+      improbable that she would give him a moment's thought. This was a most
+      chilling idea. Shivering beneath the douche, George's mind ran back along
+      the episode of their meeting to discover arguments that would build up the
+      chains and the whips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Memories banked high on either side. In search of his desire George
+      gathered them haphazard, closely examined each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an unsatisfactory business. Here was a memory. She had said
+      so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that might mean anything. He flung it down;
+      took another. She had said so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that might have
+      meant nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was very disturbing. He must systematically go through the whole pile
+      of memories&mdash;upon an ordered plan reconstruct each step of the
+      episode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first attempt it was a wretched business. Never was builder set to work
+      with bricks so impossible as the bricks of conversation with which this
+      reconstruction must be done. Each that the girl had supplied might
+      dovetail in as he would have it go; upon the other hand it fitted equally
+      well when twisted into the form in which, for all he knew, she might have
+      constructed it. The bricks George had himself supplied he found even more
+      disconcerting&mdash;they were stupid, ugly, laughable. He shoved them in,
+      and they grinned at him&mdash;mocked him. None the less he persevered&mdash;he
+      must get his answer; he must see both what she had thought of him and if
+      she were likely still to be thinking of him. And at last the whole passage
+      was reconstructed. He examined it, and once more down came the see-saw
+      with a most shattering bump: he had made himself an idiot, and stood
+      champion idiot if he believed she were likely to remember him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a crash George sent the whole pile flying. Let him wander blindly in
+      the dust of imaginings rather than be tortured by the grim austerity of
+      ordered facts. More than this, there was one most comfortable memory to
+      which he desperately clung&mdash;that falter in her voice when she had
+      said &ldquo;You understand?&rdquo; Whenever, during that evening, doubt stirred and
+      bade him recognise himself for a fool, George flattened the ugly spectre
+      with the arm he contrived out of this memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lusty weapon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a fresh vexation that lies in wait for all new lovers tore him when he
+      got to bed. In the darkness he set his mind solely to recalling the girl's
+      face. The picture tantalisingly eluded him. Generalities he could recall.
+      She was fair, very, very fair; her hair was shining golden; but how was it
+      arranged? In desperation he squirmed off to her eyes&mdash;blue; no, grey;
+      no, blue. Damn it, he would forget whether she were black or white in a
+      minute. Her chin? Ah, he had that!&mdash;white and firm and round. And her
+      nose?&mdash;small, and a trifle tip-tilted. And her mouth?&mdash;her
+      mouth, oh, heaven, he could not fix her mouth! The distracted young man
+      tossed upon his pillow and went elsewhere. Distinctly he could remember
+      her little feet with those silver buckles, quite different from any other
+      feet. And she held herself slim and supple. Held herself? Why, good
+      heavens! she was tall, and he had been thinking of her as short! This was
+      appalling! He might meet her and pass her by. He might ... he rushed into
+      troubled slumber.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The night gave him little rest. Whilst his body lay heavy, his brain,
+      feverishly active, chased through the hours glimpses of the queen of his
+      adventure. By early morning he was prodded into consciousness, and awaked
+      to find himself instantly confronted with a terrible affair. Into his
+      life, so he assured himself, had come a serious interest such as that
+      which the Dean had hoped for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, lying abed with fresh morning smiling in through the open window,
+      for the first time he looked forward, following the face he had pursued
+      through his dreams, into the future. Its chambers he found ghastly barren.
+      He visualised it as a vast unfurnished house. To the merry eye with which
+      two days ago he had looked upon the world, the picture, had he then
+      conjured it, would have given him no gloom. He would have thought it a
+      fine thing, this empty house that was his own&mdash;empty, but
+      representing freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The matter was different now. Into this empty house had danced the girl.
+      Her gay presence discovered its barrenness. There was not a chair on which
+      she could sit, not a dish in the larder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George recalled that tight little practice at Runnygate that might be had
+      for 400 pounds; went down to breakfast rehearsing a scene with his uncle;
+      was moody through the meal.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The breakfast dragged past its close. Mr. Marrapit spoke. &ldquo;The moments
+      fly,&rdquo; he observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret said earnestly: &ldquo;Oh, yes, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was addressing George.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ur!&rdquo; said George, suddenly aroused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit looked at his watch; repeated his observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George read his meaning. &ldquo;I thought of going up by the later train
+      to-day,&rdquo; he explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dangerous thought. Crush it.&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit continued: &ldquo;Margaret, Mrs.
+      Major, I observe you have concluded&rdquo;; and when the two had withdrawn
+      addressed himself again to George: &ldquo;A dangerous thought. You recall our
+      conversation of the day before yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet by later trains, by idleness, you deliberately imperil your future?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George did not answer the question. This was the very opportunity for
+      which he had wished. &ldquo;I would like to talk about my future,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not dwell upon it,&rdquo; replied Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have to. I shall pass all right this time. I want to know&mdash;the
+      fact is, sir, I know I have slacked in the past; I am a man now, and I&mdash;I
+      regret it. I fully realise my responsibilities. You may rely that I shall
+      make a certainty of the October examination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Commendable,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit criticised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what help I may expect when I qualify.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you.&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit threw martyrdom into his tone. &ldquo;I am so
+      little,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;in your confidence. Your expectations when qualified
+      may be enormous. I am not favoured with them.&rdquo; He sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George said: &ldquo;I mean what help I may expect from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The piece of toast rising to Mr. Marrapit's mouth slowly returned towards
+      his plate: &ldquo;Reiterate that. From <i>me</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From you,&rdquo; said George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The toast dropped from trembling fingers. &ldquo;<i>I</i>?&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit dragged
+      the word to tremendous length. &ldquo;I? Is it conceivable that you expect money
+      from me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only shudder. Might I inquire the amount?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Dean told me of a practice I could have for 400 pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tea!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Marrapit on a gasp. &ldquo;I must steady myself! Tea!&rdquo; He
+      paused; gulped a cup; with alarmed eyes stared at George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The affair was going no better than George had expected. He remembered the
+      face that was dear to him; nerved himself to continue. &ldquo;I would pay it
+      back,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Will you lend me the 400 pounds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have air!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. &ldquo;I reel before
+      this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have supported you.
+      Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I totter always through
+      life with you upon my bowed back? I am Sinbad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no need to exaggerate or make a scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I impel the scene?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only asked you a question,&rdquo; George reminded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have aroused a spectre,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I may understand that I need expect nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not answer you. I am shaken. I tremble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George rose. Though what hope he had possessed was driven by his uncle's
+      attitude, he was as yet only upon the threshold of his love. Hence the
+      refusal of what he suddenly desired for that love's sake was not so bitter
+      an affair as afterwards it came to be. &ldquo;This is ridiculous,&rdquo; he said;
+      moved to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To me a tragedy,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit declaimed from the window, &ldquo;old as
+      mankind; not therefore less bitter&mdash;the tragedy of ingratitude. At
+      stupendous cost I have supported, educated, clothed you. You turn upon me
+      for more. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless
+      child! I am Lear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George tried a thrust: &ldquo;I always understood my mother left you ample for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adjust that impression. She left me less than a sufficiency&mdash;nothing
+      approaching amplitude. To the best of my ability I have fulfilled my task.
+      It has been hard. I do not complain. I do not ask you for repayment of any
+      excess that may have been incurred. But I am embittered by yet further
+      demands. I have been too liberal. Had I meted out strict justice as I have
+      striven to mete out kindness, my grey hairs would not be speeding in
+      poverty to the grave. I am Wolsey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon Wolsey George slammed the door; started for the station.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Palace Gardens, St. John's Wood, was his aim. There could be no work, nor
+      even thought of work, until again he had met his lady. Yet how to meet her
+      cost him another of the wrestles with conjecture that had been his lot
+      since the cab carried her away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first it was easy work. He would call, he decided, with polite
+      inquiries; and as he pictured the scene his spirits rose. The
+      thunder-figure that had poked a bow at him from the cab would come
+      dragonish into the drawing-room where he waited. Her he would charm with
+      the suavity of his manners; she would doff the dragon's skin; would say
+      (he had read the scene in novels), &ldquo;You would like to see Miss So-and-so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl would come in ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With her appearance in his thoughts George's mind swung from coherent
+      reasoning into a delectable phantasy ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden thought swept the filmy clouds-landed him with a bump upon hard
+      rock. He was not supposed to know their address. How, to the dragon, could
+      he explain the venal trick by which he had acquired it? Now he beheld a
+      new picture. Himself in the drawing-room; to him the dragon; her first
+      words, &ldquo;How did you know where we lived?&rdquo;; his miserable answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was very unpleasant. As a red omnibus took him on towards St. John's
+      Wood he decided that the meeting must be otherwise effected. The girl must
+      sometimes go out. She had called herself a mother's-help; it suggested
+      children; and, if children, doubtless her task to take them walking. Well,
+      he would take up a post near to the house, and wait&mdash;just wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then there came a final thought that struck him cold and staring. What
+      if she did not live at the house?&mdash;was merely about to visit there
+      when the accident befell the cab?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sorely agitated young man that stepped off the 'bus and struck up
+      Palace Gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Of his Mary.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      AS that cab swung round the corner bearing away the nameless haunter of
+      George's dreams, she to the red wrath beside her turned, and, &ldquo;Oh, Mrs.
+      Chater,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I hope you are not hurt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By a mercy Mrs. Chater was not hurt. By a special intervention of
+      Providence she had escaped a fearful death. Whether she would ever recover
+      from the shock was another matter. Whether the shock would prove to be
+      that sudden strain on her heart which she had been warned would end
+      fatally, might at any moment be proved. Much anybody, except her darling
+      children, would care if she were brought home dead in this very cab. Never
+      had she known a heart to act as hers was acting now&mdash;thumping as if
+      it would burst, first quickly then slowly. Perhaps Miss Humfray would feel
+      it, and give her opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant Chaters had been
+      nourished; the massive bosom was advertisement that they had done well.
+      Beneath the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently contracted
+      and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though Mrs. Chater said it
+      throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The agitated woman panted, &ldquo;Can it go on like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I hardly&mdash;&rdquo; Miss Humfray shifted her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Stupid!</i> Take off your glove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous and clumsy the girl
+      struggled with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss <i>Humfray!</i> How slow you are! <i>Pull</i> it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A crack answered the jerk, and
+      the glove split away in her hand. &ldquo;<i>There!</i> Not my fault. Next time,
+      perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently large. Oh, my poor heart! Now,
+      feel. <i>Press!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her throat. She pressed, as
+      bid, into that heaving blouse; said she could feel it. It was not very
+      violent, she thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater lay back and closed her eyes&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> was not able to jump out, you see,&rdquo; said Mrs. Chater, sinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you don't think I <i>jumped</i> out&mdash;and left you? I <i>wouldn't</i>.
+      Besides, it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would have prevented
+      me in any case. I was thrown. I thought I was going to be killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were with a young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He caught me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying. That lump in her
+      throat seemed to be squeezing tears from her eyes&mdash;silly tears. She
+      did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy, yet could not but reflect what
+      disregard for her the utter absence of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts yet
+      more dangerously squeezed the tears. She was a paid <i>thing</i>, that was
+      all&mdash;not even a servant. Mrs. Chater was on kindly terms with her
+      servants&mdash;had experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded it
+      by the familiarity that was too useful to produce contempt&mdash;knew her
+      maids' young men, entered into their quarrels with their young men, read
+      their young men's letters.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner, the girl felt
+      herself friendless, outcast, alone. Again she told herself that she did
+      not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy; yet it was the studied withholding of it&mdash;studied
+      or callous because so natural, the merest conventionalism, to have asked,
+      &ldquo;Were you hurt?&rdquo;&mdash;that made her acutely feel her position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet to be wounded because
+      it was not hers. A ridiculous paradox&mdash;and brightly she tried to
+      smile at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were swelling now,
+      her face turned against the window towards the pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of a nice-looking little
+      old man with a grey moustache and military air. The tall, slim girl was
+      laughing down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily, just as&mdash;Her
+      mind swung off, and the tears must be blinked again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They reminded her, those two, of herself and her father. Such familiar
+      friends as they looked so she had been with Dad who idolised her and whom
+      she had idolised. Just like that&mdash;arm in arm, joking, &ldquo;ragging&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      used to walk with him round about the home in Ireland&mdash;the world to
+      one another and none else in the world, except the mother who was so
+      intimately and inseparably of them that years past her death they still
+      spoke of her as if she were alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, long after her death, it would be: &ldquo;Dad, we can't go home by the
+      hill; mother never lets Grizzle do that climb after a long day.&rdquo; And:
+      &ldquo;Mary, your mother won't like you being so late; we must turn back.&rdquo; And:
+      &ldquo;Mary, there's the pig by mother's almond tree; run and shoo him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Partly this refusal to recognise that, though dead, Mother was actually
+      gone from them, no longer was sharing their little jokes and duties, was
+      because death came with such steady, appreciable, unfrightening steps.
+      First the riding stopped, and then the walks made shorter and shorter;
+      then the strolls in the garden stopped, and then carrying the couch out
+      under the trees&mdash;and none of them very fearful, because prepared: it
+      was to be&mdash;almost the very day could have been named. Thus, when it
+      came, though the blow swooped heavy, terrific, she never seemed actually
+      to have left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, dear dears,&rdquo; she had said with a little smile and a little
+      sigh, &ldquo;we have been happy ... only a little way away....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But with Dad it was different. Somehow, looking back on it, one had
+      supposed that nothing would ever touch the cheery little man; that she and
+      he would go on and on and on&mdash;well, till they grew very old together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing could ever touch him....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a wicked beauty, eh, Mary?&rdquo; he had said when the man brought round
+      the half-broken filly that its owner &ldquo;funked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she had laughed and said: &ldquo;Yes, an angel in a temper&mdash;what a run
+      you will have, Dad!&rdquo; and had waved from the gate as the angel in a temper
+      curveted away around the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing could ever touch him....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the man on a bicycle&mdash;with a dent in his hat, she noticed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can come quickly, missy. Top of the Three Finger field he lays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bare-backed she had galloped Grizzle there, and as she sped could not for
+      the life of her think of aught else than the dent in the man's hat; rode
+      up Three Finger Lane wondering how it came there; approached the little
+      group wondering why he did not push it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as she galloped up they took off their hats. Someone who had been on
+      his knees stood upright&mdash;she saw the stain of wet earth where he had
+      been kneeling; forgot the dented hat; wondered if he knew of the Marvel
+      Cleaning Pad that had done so wonderfully with Dad's breeches when he took
+      a toss last Friday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him home
+      ... could do no good&mdash;now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her
+      because of the pain.... Better come away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ... all
+      crumpled up....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as
+      the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over the
+      twisted face.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but to which
+      memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin touched the
+      earth seven feet down....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of documents;
+      interminable writing of signature; interminable making of lists. And then
+      the word LOT. &ldquo;Lot I,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lot 2,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lot 50,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lot 200&rdquo;&mdash;a hammerlike
+      word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep, producing grotesque
+      nightmares, as &ldquo;Lot 12, a polished oak coffin, finished plain, brass
+      Handles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No! No! That was not to be sold!&mdash;leaden hands holding her down;
+      stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then sudden consciousness&mdash;only a dream! Bolt upright in bed staring
+      into the darkness. A dream? How much of it a dream? Was it all a dream?
+      The fevered brain would fetch her from her bed, groping to Dad's room,
+      striking a match&mdash;no familiar form upon the bed; a big white ticket&mdash;&ldquo;Lot
+      56.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Back to the hot, crumpled couch, there, tossing, to lie attempting a
+      grasp, a realisation of what it all meant....
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A dark little office in Dublin.... So much the &ldquo;Lots&rdquo; had fetched, so much
+      the balance at the bank; no investments, it was to be feared; no
+      insurance, my dear Miss Humfray; so much the bills and other claims on the
+      estate.... &ldquo;Don't wish to be bothered with figures? Of course not, my
+      dear.... And then we come to the balance&mdash;I'm afraid a few pounds,
+      practically nothing....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      On the steamer bound for Holyhead.... During the crossing the stifling
+      weight that had benumbed her intellect ever since the man with the dent in
+      his hat came riding up the drive seemed suddenly to lift. Whipped away
+      perhaps by the edged wind that rushed past her from England to Ireland
+      sinking in the sea&mdash;a wind to cut you to the bone; discovering
+      sensation in every marrow; stinging her to clear thought.... That idyllic
+      life with Mother and Dad&mdash;the world to one another and none else in
+      the world beside&mdash;had been rather the creation of circumstance than
+      of design. Dad's people were furious when he married Mother; in defiance
+      of hers, Mother married Dad. Relations on either side had shrieked their
+      disapproval of the match, then left the couple to their own adventures. A
+      thing to laugh at in those days, but bringing now to the child that was
+      left the realisation of not a support in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother's sisters had written after the funeral inviting her to come to
+      them in England &ldquo;while she looked about her.&rdquo; She could recall every
+      sentence of that letter. It had burned. Each word, each comma was fresh
+      before her eyes as the cab jolted on to Palace Gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have been our pleasure constantly to have entertained you during
+      your mother's life-time,&rdquo; they had written, &ldquo;but she wilfully flouted our
+      desires at her marriage and thereafter utterly ignored us. The fault for
+      the rift between us was of her making, not ours; we sent her an Easter
+      card one year, and had no reply; though we have no doubt that your father,
+      not that we would say a word against him now, influenced her against her
+      better judgment. However....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had written back a hysterical letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your letter came just after I had returned from burying my dear, dear
+      father, who worshipped my darling mother. If I were begging in the street,
+      starving, dying, I would not touch a crumb or a penny of yours. You are
+      wicked&mdash;yes, you are wicked to write to me as you have written....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      She could not stay in Ireland. Her only friends there lived about the dear
+      home that was now no longer a home but a &ldquo;desirable residence with some
+      acres of garden and paddock.&rdquo; Her only friends there were friends who had
+      been shared with Mother and Dad&mdash;whose presence now would be constant
+      reminder of that happy participation now lost. One and all offered her
+      hospitality, but she must refuse. &ldquo;No, no silly idea of being a burden to
+      you, dear, dear Mrs. Sullivan&mdash;only I can't, can't live anywhere near
+      where we used to live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Years before a great friend of hers had married an English clergyman; had
+      written often to her from London of the numerous activities in which she
+      was engaged&mdash;principal among them a kind of agency and home for
+      gentlewomen. &ldquo;Governesses, dear, and all that kind of thing ... poor
+      girls, many of them, who have suddenly had to earn a living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The correspondence had died, as do so many, from the effects of undue
+      urgency at the outset; but she had the address, and was certain there of
+      welcome and of aid. &ldquo;Poor girls who have suddenly had to earn a living.&rdquo;
+       The words took on a new meaning: she was of these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Euston she drove to the address. Her friend had gone. Yes, the
+      present occupant remembered the name. The present occupant had been there
+      two years; had taken over the lease from the former tenant because the
+      lady was ill and had been ordered abroad. That was all the present
+      occupant knew; saw her to the door; closed it behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alone in London. &ldquo;Alone in London&rdquo;&mdash;it had been one of Dad's jokes;
+      he had written a burlesque on it, and they had played it one Christmas to
+      roars of fun. O God! what a thing at which to laugh now that the
+      realisation struck and one stood on the pavement in the dark with this
+      great city roaring at one!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cabmen, she had heard, were brutes; but the man who had brought her to the
+      house must be appealed to.... Where could she get the cheapest lodging of
+      some kind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How did he know? What was she wanting to pay? ...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great city roared at her. Her head swum a little. An idler or two took
+      up a grinning stand: the thing looked like a cab-fare dispute.... What was
+      she wanting to pay? ... Well, as little as possible. &ldquo;I have never been in
+      London before, and I don't know anybody. My friend here has gone. I have
+      just arrived from Ireland.&rdquo; She began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He from his box in a moment. &ldquo;From Ireland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, he was from Ireland! ... Not likely she was from Connemara? ... She
+      was? ... From Kinsloe? ... Why, he knew it well; he was from Ballydag!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rolled his tongue around other names of the district; she knew them
+      all; could almost have laughed at the silly fellow's delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, the honour it would be if she would come and let his missus make her
+      up a bed! &ldquo;Don't ye cry, missie. Don't ye take on like that. It's all
+      right ye are now.&rdquo; He put a huge, roughly great-coated arm about her&mdash;squeezed
+      her, she believed; helped her into the cab.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Missus in the clean little rooms over the rattling mews was no less
+      delighted. From Kinsloe? Why, missie saw that canary?&mdash;that was a
+      present from Betty Murphy in Kinsloe, not three months before!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The canary, aroused by the attention paid it, trilled upward in a mounting
+      ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her head ...
+      louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and cage
+      became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have carried her to
+      the bed in which she awoke.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Friends in Ireland had given her the addresses of friends in London on
+      whom she must call. She visited some houses; then in a sudden wild despair
+      tore the list. Either these people were dense of comprehension or she
+      clumsy of explanation. To make them realise her position she found
+      impossible. They were warmly kind, sympathetic&mdash;cheery in that
+      lugubrious fashion in which we are taught to be &ldquo;bright&rdquo; with the
+      afflicted. But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment they
+      would warmly cry, &ldquo;Oh, but you must not think of that yet, Miss Humfray
+      ... after all you have been through.... You must keep quiet for a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One and all gave her the same words. An impulse took her to kick over the
+      tea-table&mdash;anything to arouse these people from their stereotyped
+      mood of sympathy with a girl suddenly bereaved,&mdash;and to cry, &ldquo;But
+      don't you <i>understand</i>? I am living over a mews&mdash;over a <i>mews</i>
+      with twelve pounds and a few shillings, and then <i>nothing</i>&mdash;nothing
+      at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wise, perhaps, had she indulged the outburst without the action; wiser had
+      she written to some of the friends in Ireland, asked to go back to one of
+      them for a while. But the dull grief beneath which she still lay benumbed
+      prevented her from other course than tonelessly accepting the proffered
+      sympathy; and the thought of returning to Ireland was impossible. She tore
+      the list of London friends; appealed to Tim and Missus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim was helpful. He had taken fares to an Agency in Norfolk Street&mdash;an
+      Agency for &ldquo;Disturbed Gentlewomen,&rdquo; he called it; there took her one
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Distressed Gentlewomen,&rdquo; she found the brass plate to read&mdash;&ldquo;The
+      Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed Gentlewomen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A lymphatic-looking young woman, assisting the growth of a singularly
+      stout face by sucking a sweet, and wearing brown holland sleeve protectors
+      hooked up with enormous safety-pins, received her in the room marked
+      &ldquo;Enquiries&rdquo;; put her into that labelled &ldquo;Waiting.&rdquo; Here were two copies of
+      the <i>Christian Herald</i>, some emigration pamphlets, a carafe of water
+      covered by an inverted tumbler dusty with disuse, and three elderly
+      females&mdash;presumably gentlewomen, possibly distressed, but not
+      advertising either condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due time her turn for the room marked &ldquo;Private&rdquo;; interrogation by Miss
+      Ram, a short, thin lady in black, who bowed more frequently than she
+      spoke, possessing a range of inclinations of the head each of which had
+      unmistakable meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Position sought?&mdash;Oh, anything; governess, companion. Last situation?&mdash;None;
+      she was inexperienced. Capabilities?&mdash;Equally lacking, as discovered
+      by a probing cross-examination. Salary required?&mdash;Oh, anything;
+      whatever was usual; a <i>home</i>&mdash;that was the chief object in view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram entered the details in a severe-looking book with a long thin pen&mdash;could
+      hold out but faint hopes. The applicants whom she was accustomed to suit
+      were &ldquo;in nine and ninety cases out of one hundred cases&rdquo; accomplished in
+      the domestic or scholastic arts. However. Yes, Miss Humfray should call
+      every morning. Better still, stay in the waiting-room. Be On the Spot&mdash;that
+      was the first requisite for success, as Miss Humfray would find whether in
+      a situation or awaiting a situation; be On the Spot.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IX.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      On the Spot. A nightmare week in the dingy waiting-room ... thoughts
+      probing the mind, stabbing the heart.... Nine till one, a cup of tea and a
+      roll at an A.B.C. shop, an aimless walk in the park; two till six,
+      good-night to the stout young woman named Miss Porter in &ldquo;Enquiries,&rdquo; home
+      to the rattling mews and to Missus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Spot. Occasional interviews. &ldquo;Miss Humfray, a lady will see you.&rdquo;
+       ... &ldquo;Oh, too young&mdash;far too young.&rdquo; ... &ldquo;Thank you, that will do,
+      Miss Humfray.&rdquo; ... &ldquo;Oh, not my style at all.&rdquo; ... &ldquo;Thank you, that will
+      do, Miss Humfray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Spot. Fortunately On the Spot one day&mdash;a Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, as
+      nursery governess, Streatham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week very much On the Spot with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton. Nursery governess
+      was a comprehensive word in the Eyton-Eyton vocabulary; covered every duty
+      that in a nursery must be performed. One must do the nursery fire, sweep
+      the nursery floor, bring up and carry down the nursery meals&mdash;servants,
+      you see, object to waiting upon one whom, as Mrs. Eyton-Eyton with a
+      careless laugh pointed out, they regard as one of themselves. Quickly the
+      lesson was appreciated that while a servant must never be &ldquo;put upon,&rdquo; the
+      same consideration need not be extended to a lady. Servants are rare in
+      the market, young ladies cheap.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      X.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The lesson of dependence, subserviency, Mary found harder in the learning;
+      did not study it; therein reaped disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She arrived on a Tuesday. Upon that day of the following week Mrs.
+      Eyton-Eyton paid to the nursery one of her rare visits, beautifully
+      gowned, the hired victoria waiting to take her a round of calls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lunch, delayed not to disturb the midday sleep of Masters Thomas and
+      Richard Eyton-Eyton, was not cleared&mdash;Master Thomas still struggling
+      with a plate of sago pudding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Betwixt her children Mrs. Eyton-Eyton&mdash;beautifully gowned, hired
+      victoria in waiting&mdash;took her seat; Mary hovered behind&mdash;and
+      catastrophe swooped. Master Thomas grabbed for a glass of milk; Mary
+      strove to restrain him. There was an awkward struggle, her elbow&mdash;or
+      his&mdash;caught the plate of pudding, tipped the sticky mass into the
+      silken lap of Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, beautifully gowned, hired victoria in
+      waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Infuriated, Mrs. Eyton-Eyton turned upon Mary. &ldquo;Oh, you little fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rebuke that should have been taken with downcast eyes, murmured
+      apologies, was otherwise received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Eyton! How dare you call me a fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause of blank amazement; sago-messed table-napkin in the scented hand;
+      sago creeping down the silken skirt. That a nursery governess&mdash;not
+      even a servant&mdash;should so presume!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray! You forget yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!-No! It is you who forget yourself. How dare you speak to me like
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another moment of utter bewilderment; small Eyton-Eytons gazing
+      round-eyed; the girl white, heaving; the woman dully red. Then &ldquo;Pack your
+      boxes, Miss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      XI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      She was upon the platform at Victoria Station, a porter asking commands
+      for her box, before she realised what she had done. A few pounds in her
+      purse, and infinitely worse off now than a week before. Then she had no
+      &ldquo;character&rdquo;; now employment was to be sought with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton as her
+      &ldquo;last place.&rdquo; She would not go back to Missus and Tim. Though they had
+      tried to conceal it, secretly, she had seen, they were relieved when she
+      left. They had not accommodation for her; latterly she had dispossessed of
+      his bed a sailor son on leave from his ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She left her box in the cloak-room; turned down Wilton Road from the
+      station; penetrated the narrow thoroughfares between Lupus Street and the
+      river; secured a bedroom with Mrs. Japes at six shillings a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received a
+      furious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel line of
+      red ink ruled through the page that began &ldquo;Name: Mary Humfray,&rdquo; and ended
+      &ldquo;Salary:&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't know a soul in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have a reputation
+      for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A bow closed the interview.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was her landlady's husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, who
+      dealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shops that
+      had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and her
+      presumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she found
+      Mrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs. Up
+      to her room&mdash;the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents
+      scattered across the floor, the little case in which with her pictures of
+      Mother and Dad she kept her money gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which Mrs. Japes's property
+      had also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ... had done
+      time ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she'd best go ...
+      of course she could tell the police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered and
+      frightened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new landlady
+      into the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe....
+      Answering of advertisements found in the public library in Great Smith
+      Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Always the
+      same outcome. ... Experience?&mdash;None. References?&mdash;None....
+      &ldquo;Thank you; I'm afraid&mdash;I'm sure it's all right, but one has to be so
+      careful nowadays. Good morning.&rdquo; ... Always the same outcome.... The idea
+      of writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ... That life, those friends,
+      seemed of a period that was dead, done, gone&mdash;ages and ages ago....
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow&mdash;a gentlemanly-looking
+      person of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to an address
+      copied from the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>. Why, by an extraordinary
+      coincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!&mdash;flat,
+      rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help. Might
+      he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though putting
+      now and then curious little questions which she could not understand....
+      Hadn't he seen her at the Oxford one night? ... Assuredly he had not; what
+      was the Oxford?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, evidently pleased. &ldquo;Gad, you do keep it up!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand why I can't use the lift?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They're beastly
+      particular here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thus to
+      a door where he took out a latch-key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, took her,
+      trembling her limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it is the wrong number!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had turned the key. &ldquo;Lord! you do keep it up!&rdquo; he laughed, his hand
+      suddenly about her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, let me go&mdash;let me go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, chuck it, you little ass!&rdquo; His arm was about her waist now, dragging
+      her; his face close.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched from
+      his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered his wits;
+      across the hall and running&mdash;shaking, hysterical&mdash;down the
+      street.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thereafter men were a constant horror to her&mdash;adding a new and most
+      savage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair that
+      bayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, she
+      went again to Miss Ram at the Agency&mdash;almost upon her knees, crying,
+      trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat to the
+      man in Wilton Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grim
+      exterior; had never realised the actual circumstances; would do what she
+      could; no need to be frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. No
+      sharpness, no slight now could prick her spirit; she had learned too well;
+      she would not face those streets again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds were healing
+      now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at present discomforts.
+      It was only now and again&mdash;as now&mdash;that she, driven by some
+      sudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander&mdash;bruising itself
+      in those dark passages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob; was
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater said: &ldquo;Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In Vulgarity.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A violent dispute with the cabman set that disturbed heart yet more wildly
+      thumping in Mrs. Chater's bosom; the sight of her husband uneasily mooning
+      in the dining-room heated her wrath to wilder bubblings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater&mdash;a 'oly dam' terror in Mincing Lane, if his office-boy may
+      be quoted&mdash;was an astonishingly mild man in his own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said brightly, noting with a shiver the gusty stress of his wife's
+      deportment: &ldquo;You <i>drove</i> up, my dear?&mdash;And quite right, too,&rdquo; he
+      hastily added, upon a sudden fear that his remark might be interpreted as
+      reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; Mrs. Chater's nose went into the brandy-and-soda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you from the window,&rdquo; her husband beamed. He repeated, &ldquo;The
+      window,&rdquo; and nervously pointed at it. There was a strained atmosphere in
+      the room, and he was a little frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Oh!</i>&rdquo; Out from the brandy-and-soda came the nose; down went the
+      glass with an emphasising bang: &ldquo;<i>Oh!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater gave a startled little jump. He saw, immediately he had spoken,
+      the misfortune into which his admission had plunged him; the bang of the
+      glass twanged his already apprehensive nerves, and he jerked out,
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my dear,&rdquo; without any clear grasp as to what he was affirming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had been a <i>man</i>,&rdquo; said Mrs. Chater, speaking with a slow and
+      extraordinary bitterness&mdash;&ldquo;if you had been a <i>man</i>, you would
+      have come out and helped me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you had got out when I came to the window, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the <i>cabman</i>, I mean.&rdquo; Mrs. Chater fired the word with alarming
+      ferocity. &ldquo;With the <i>cabman</i>. Did you not see that violent brute
+      insulting me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was precisely because he had observed the episode that Mr. Chater had
+      kept well behind the curtain; but he did not adduce the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly did not,&rdquo; he affirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the same
+      thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut
+      outside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. Making me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater implored: &ldquo;Oh, my dear, don't drag that up again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I <i>do</i> drag it up!&rdquo; Mrs. Chater a little unnecessarily cried. &ldquo;I
+      <i>do</i> drag it up, and I shall always drag it up&mdash;making me a fool
+      as you did! I was ashamed of you. I was&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket handkerchief:
+      &ldquo;I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I never understood the
+      circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was very much pushed about.
+      If I had known the circumstances&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: &ldquo;Circumstances!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; the agitated man replied, ticking off the points on soft
+      fingers, &ldquo;my dear, I had gone to the window of Swan and Edgar's, leaving
+      you, as you expressly desired, to pay the man <i>yourself</i>. When I came
+      <i>back</i> to you, what I gathered was that the man was entitled to a
+      further <i>sixpence</i> and that you had no <i>change</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater lashed herself with the recollection: &ldquo;Nothing of the kind!&rdquo;
+       she burst. &ldquo;Nothing of the kind! What did the man say to you when you
+      asked what was the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I really and truly do forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the hundredth time, then, let me tell you. He said that if you pushed
+      your ugly mug into it he would knock off your blooming head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he say <i>mug?</i>&rdquo; asked Mr. Chater, assuming the air of one who,
+      knowing this at the time, would have committed a singularly ferocious
+      murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well you know that he <i>did</i> say mug&mdash;<i>ugly</i> mug. Was <i>that</i>
+      a thing for a man of spirit to take quietly? Was <i>that</i> a thing for a
+      wife to hear bawled at her husband in the open street with the
+      commissionaire grinning behind his hand? To my dying day I shall never
+      forget my humiliation when you handed him sixpence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unhappy husband murmured: &ldquo;I do so wish you could, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfect
+      tactician, and hurled in the attack upon another quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said: &ldquo;Ah, now insult me! Insult me before Miss Humfray! That's right!
+      <i>That's</i> right! That's what I'm accustomed to. We all have our cross
+      to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from my husband is
+      mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice which implied
+      that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyes tightly
+      closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered nerves, swallowed
+      it with the air of one draining a poison flask by way of happy release
+      from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and, before her amazed husband
+      could open his lips, hammered in the attack from a third quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little you would have cared,&rdquo; cried she, &ldquo;if a miracle had not saved my
+      life this afternoon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater stood aghast. &ldquo;My dearest! Saved you! From what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His dearest bitterly inquired: &ldquo;What does it matter to you? You take no
+      interest. If my battered corpse&mdash;&rdquo; Swept to tremendous heights by the
+      combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her two
+      brandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. &ldquo;If my battered
+      corpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this very
+      afternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater, apprehension creeping among the roots of his hair, affirmed
+      that he would have dropped dead in the precise spot at which he happened
+      to be standing at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater trumpeted &ldquo;Never!&rdquo;&mdash;dropped to her chair, and continued.
+      &ldquo;You would have been glad.&rdquo; Her voice shook. &ldquo;Glad&mdash;and in all this
+      wide world only my Bob and my blessed lambs in the nursery would have wept
+      o'er my body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of so melancholy a character was the picture thus presented to her mind,
+      augmenting her previous agitation, that the tumult within her welled
+      damply through her eyes, with noisy distress through her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Patting her distressed back, imploring her to calm, Mr. Chater begged some
+      account of the catastrophe from which she had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between convulsive sobs she told him, he bridging the hiatuses of emotion
+      with &ldquo;Oh-dear-oh-dears,&rdquo; in which alarm and sympathy were nicely mingled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painting details with a masterly hand, &ldquo;And there was I alone,&rdquo; she
+      concluded&mdash;&ldquo;alone, at the mercy of a wild horse and a drunken
+      cabman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Miss Humfray was with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray managed to jump out and leave me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through all this scene&mdash;in one form or another a matter of daily
+      occurrence, and therefore not to arouse interest&mdash;Mary had stood
+      waiting its cessation and her orders. Mr. Chater turned upon her.
+      Naturally disposed to be kind to the girl, he yet readily saw in his
+      wife's statement a way of escape from the castigation he had been
+      enduring. As the small boy who has been kicked by the bully will with
+      delighted relief rush to the bully's aid when the kicks are at length
+      turned to another, urging him on so that he may forget his first prey, so
+      Mr. Chater, delighted at his fortune, eagerly joined in turning his wife's
+      wrath to Mary's head. For self-preservation, at whatever cost to another,
+      is the most compelling of instincts: its power great in proportion as we
+      have allowed our fleshly impulses to master us. If, when they prompt, we
+      coldly and impersonally regard them, find them unworthy and crush them
+      back humiliated, they become in time disciplined&mdash;wither and die. In
+      proportion as we permit them, upon the other hand, they come in time to
+      drive us with a fierceness that cannot be checked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater had disciplined no single impulse that came to him with his
+      flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In pious horror he turned upon the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Managed to jump out!&rdquo; he exclaimed, speaking as one re-echoing a horror
+      hardly to be believed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Managed to jump out! Miss Humfray, I would not have thought it of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cried: &ldquo;Mr. Chater, I fell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Disregarding, and with a deeper note of pained reproach, he continued: &ldquo;So
+      many ties, I should have thought, would have bound you to my wife in such
+      an emergency&mdash;the length of time you have been with us; the
+      unremitting kindness she has shown you, treating you as one of ourselves,
+      in sickness tending you, bountifully feeding and clothing you, going out
+      of her way to make you happy. Oh, Miss Humfray!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The strain on his invention paused him. Mrs. Chater, moved by this
+      astonishing revelation of her love, assumed an air in keeping&mdash;an air
+      of some pain but no surprise at such ingratitude. She warmed to this
+      husband who, if no hero in the matter of ferocious cabmen, could at least
+      champion her upon occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary cried: &ldquo;But I did not jump out! Indeed I did not, Mr. Chater; I
+      fell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater said <i>&ldquo;Fell!&rdquo;</i> With sublime forbearance she added, &ldquo;Never
+      mind; the incident is past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Chater, you must know that I fell out. I was leaning out&mdash;you
+      had asked me to see the name of the street&mdash;when the horse stumbled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is curious,&rdquo; said Mrs. Chater, with a pained little smile, &ldquo;that you
+      managed to 'fall out' before the horse could recover and bolt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very, very curious,&rdquo; Mr. Chater echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How hateful they were, the girl felt. She broke out: &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray, that is enough. Help me upstairs. I will lie down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater jumped brightly to the bell. &ldquo;My dear, do; I will send you a
+      hot-water bottle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife recalled the shortcomings for which she had been taking him to
+      task. &ldquo;Send a fiddlestick,&rdquo; she rapped; &ldquo;on a boiling day like this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took Mary's arm; leaning heavily, passed from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted,
+      eau-de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull the
+      tumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched it in
+      the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she had
+      learned to take buffetings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be dispassionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upon a
+      wounded spirit&mdash;to regard this Mary with the comically twitching face
+      whom now she saw in the glass as a second person whose sufferings might be
+      coldly regarded and dissected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to be
+      philosophic upon the cares of another&mdash;nothing so easy as to wax
+      impatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden by
+      troubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, we can
+      school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as one person,
+      and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chiding that figure
+      out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With some success Mary had studied the art; now gave that
+      Mary-in-the-glass who stood before her a healthy reproof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ridiculous thing you did,&rdquo; Mary-in-the-glass was told&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      ridiculous thing you did to make yourself miserable was to go thinking
+      about&mdash;about Ireland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mouth of Mary-in-the-glass ominously twitched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you go again. And it is so absolutely forbidden to think about
+      that. Whatever's the use of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary-in-the-glass could adduce no reason, and must be prodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it do you any good? Does it do <i>them</i> any good, do you suppose,
+      to know that you can never think of them without making yourself unhappy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary-in-the-glass attempted a weak quibble; was instantly snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not saying you are <i>never</i> to think of them. Goodness knows what
+      I should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you are
+      happy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you choose to
+      be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whining
+      anywhere near them&mdash;understand? You only make them unhappy and make
+      your troubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs. Chater,
+      you must be a wretched sort of person. Her face when the cab brought her
+      back! And trying to feel her heart! And her rage with that little worm of
+      a Mr. Chater! Can't you see the fun of it instead of crying over it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary-in-the-glass could. The successive recollections induced the
+      prettiest dimples on her face. She was at once forgiven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, to snuggle back into her and to merge into her again was just now
+      very desirable to the censorious Mary-outside-the-glass. For, merged in
+      her sentimental and romantic personality, a most delectable line of
+      thought could be pursued&mdash;a delectable line, since along this trail
+      was to be encountered that stranger who had caught her in her wild
+      ejection from the cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sinking in a chair, Mary adventured upon it; she was instantly met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary-outside-the-glass essayed her best to prevent the interview. &ldquo;Poof!&rdquo;
+       Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young person, sneered. &ldquo;Poof! You little
+      idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five minutes, whom you will
+      never again see, and from whose recollections you have most certainly
+      passed unless to be recalled as a joke&mdash;perhaps to some other girl!&rdquo;
+       (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters these Marys-outside-the-glass.)
+      &ldquo;Why, you must be a donkey to think about him! For goodness' sake come
+      away before you make yourself too utterly ridiculous! You won't. Well,
+      perhaps you will try to recall the figure you must have cut in his eyes?
+      Do you remember what you must have looked like as you shot out of the cab
+      like a sack of straw? Pretty sight, eh? And can you imagine the expression
+      on your face as you banged into his arms? Charming you must have looked,
+      mustn't you? And can you by any means realise the idiot you must have
+      looked when Mrs. Chater came up and swept you off like an escaped puppy,
+      recaptured and in for a whipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you? You
+      didn't happen to peep back through the little window at the back of the
+      cab and see him laughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have looked....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on. This was the attitude of that cold, calculating, dispassionate
+      Mary-outside-the-glass. But Mary smothered the voice&mdash;would not hear
+      a word of it. Completely she became Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental
+      young woman, and in that personality tripped along the path of thought
+      where stood her stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Delectably she relived the encounter. Paced down the street, took again
+      his arm; without a fault recalled his words, without a check gave her
+      replies; recalled the pitch of his voice to the nicest note, struck again
+      the light in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now why? She had met other men; in Ireland had thrice wounded her tender
+      heart by negations that had caused three suitors most desperate anguish.
+      None had awakened in her a deeper interest; and yet here was a stranger&mdash;suddenly
+      encountered, as suddenly left&mdash;who in her mind had appropriated a
+      track which she was eager to make a well-beaten path. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, was no prober of
+      emotions. They veiled the hard business of commonplace life; and amid them
+      mistily she now floated afar into dim features where her stranger,
+      stranger no more, walked with her hand in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was attempt at first to construct an actual re-encounter.
+      Mary-in-the-glass, that romantic young woman, very speciously pointed out
+      that in London when once you see a man you may reasonably suppose that you
+      will again meet him. For in London one does not aimlessly wander; one has
+      some set purpose and traverses a thousand times the same streets, crossing
+      daily at the same points as though upon the pursuit of a chalked line.
+      Mary-in-the-glass, therefore, constructing a re-encounter, happened to be
+      strolling along the scene of the accident, and lo! there was he!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unhappily this vision was transient. Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold
+      young woman, got in a word here that erased the picture. The square where
+      the cab crashed was too far afield to take the children for their walk;
+      holiday was a boon rarely granted and never granted at the particular hour
+      of the catastrophe&mdash;the only time of day at which, according to the
+      chalked-line theory, she might reasonably expect to find the stranger in
+      the same spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mary did not brood long upon this melancholy obstacle; drove away
+      Mary-outside-the-glass; became again Mary-in-the-glass. And they are
+      impossible creatures these Marys-in-the-glass. They will approach an
+      unbridged chasm across which no Mary-out-side could by any means
+      adventure, and, floating the gulf, will deliriously roam in the fields
+      beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So now. And in that dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her stranger
+      sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all the favourite
+      spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in them; introduced other
+      persons, and marked their comment on her dear companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was he whom she made to do mighty deeds in those misty fields; of
+      herself hers were merely a girl's gentle fancies, held modest by her sex's
+      natural desire to be loved for itself alone&mdash;not for big behaviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In A Nursery.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The loud bang of a door was the gong that called Mary back from those
+      pleasant fields. They whirled from her, leaving her in sudden realisation
+      of the material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness!&rdquo; cried she, and fell to scattering her outdoor finery at a
+      speed dangerous under any but the deftest fingers. Into a skirt of black
+      and a simple blouse she slipped, and down, skimming the stairs, to where
+      her charges bided their bedtime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening the nursery door she paused upon the threshold with a little &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+       of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between the lips
+      of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon the window-pane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bob Chater turned at her entry. &ldquo;I've been waiting for you a long
+      time,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She asked, &ldquo;Whatever for?&rdquo; and in her tone there was a chill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids tubbed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't think you meant it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bob Chater laughed. &ldquo;Well, now you see that I did. I've been looking
+      forward to this all day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Plainly she was perturbed. She said: &ldquo;Mr. Chater, I really would rather
+      you did not, if you don't mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be the
+      bitterest disappointment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man, black-eyed,
+      dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would not catch his mood. &ldquo;I am sure when I ask you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know,&rdquo; he laughed; &ldquo;'cause I ain't
+      going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and Angela,
+      her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, be decent to a fellow, Miss Humfray,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Look here, I
+      hadn't seen the kids for two years when I came back yesterday. They hardly
+      remember their kind big brother.&rdquo; He addressed the small girl whose round
+      eyes, moving from speaker to speaker since Mary had entered, were now upon
+      him. &ldquo;Do you, Angela?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;hate&mdash;you,&rdquo; Angela told him, in the slow utterance of one
+      giving completest effect to a carefully weighed sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With equal impressiveness, David, seated beside her, lent his authority to
+      the statement. &ldquo;I&mdash;hate&mdash;you&mdash;too,&rdquo; he joined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bob Chater laughed a little stupidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary cried: &ldquo;Oh, Angela! Oh, David! How can you speak like that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is perfectly abom'able,&rdquo; Angela said, unmoved. &ldquo;He made Davie cry. He
+      trod on Davie's beetle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cracked corpse of a mechanical beetle, joy of David's heart, was
+      produced in evidence; its distressed owner reddening ominously at this
+      renewed recollection of the calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary took the sad pieces tenderly. &ldquo;Silly children! He never meant to
+      break it. Oh, such silly children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Angela protested, &ldquo;He did! He did! He put his foot over it while it was
+      running, and stopped it. He told David to get it away if he could, and
+      David bit his leg, and he said 'Damn you!' and crushed it crack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary whipped a glance at the murderer. She ignored the evidence.
+      &ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Why, what fun! To-morrow we'll play hospital like
+      we did when Christabel broke her arm. We'll make Mr. Beetle just as well
+      as ever he was before!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be doctor!&rdquo; cried David, transported into delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and Angela nurse. Look, we'll put poor Mr. Beetle on the mantelpiece
+      to-night, right out of the draughts. If he got a draught into that crack
+      in his back, goodness knows what wouldn't happen. He must eat slops like
+      Christabel did. <i>What</i> fun! Now, bed&mdash;<i>bustle!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their adored Mary had restored confidence. They clung about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a pure accident,&rdquo; explained Mr. Bob Chater, gloomily watching this
+      scene. &ldquo;I'll buy you another to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; Mary cried. &ldquo;Think of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David reflected upon it without emotion. He regarded his big brother
+      sullenly; sullenly said, &ldquo;I don't want another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary cried brightly: &ldquo;Rubbish! Come, kiss your brother good-night, and say
+      'thank you!' Both of you. Quick as lightning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They hung back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary had obtained so complete a command of their affections that her word
+      was the wise law which, ordinarily, they had come unquestioningly to
+      accept. In their short lives David and Angela had experienced a procession
+      of nurses, of nursery-governesses, of lady-helps, each one of whom
+      received or gave her month's notice within a few weeks of arrival, and
+      against whom they had conducted a sullen or a violent war. From the first
+      it had been different with Miss Humfray. As was their custom (for this
+      constant change tried tempers) upon the very day of her arrival they had
+      met her with frank hostility, had declared mutiny at her first command.
+      But her reception of this attitude they found a new and astonishing
+      experience. She had not been shocked, had not been angry, had ventured no
+      threat to tell their mother. Instead, at the outbreak of defiance, she
+      went into the gayest and most infectious laughter, kissed them&mdash;and
+      they had capitulated before they realised the event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second attempt at mutiny, made upon the following day, met with a
+      reception equally novel. Again this pretty Miss Humfray had laughed, but
+      this time had fully sympathised with their view of the point at issue and
+      had made of the affair a most entrancing game. She, behold, was a pirate
+      captain; they were the rebellious crew. In five minutes they had marooned
+      her upon the desert island represented by the hearthrug; had rowed away
+      with faces which, under her instructions, were properly stern; and only
+      when she waved the white flag of truce had they taken her aboard again.
+      Meanwhile the subject of the quarrel had been forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never a dispute arose thereafter. They idolised this pretty Miss Humfray:
+      whatsoever she said was clearly right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, however, was a dangerous conflict of opinion. They hung back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quickly,&rdquo; Mary repeated. &ldquo;Kiss him, and say thank-you quickly, or there
+      will be no story when you are in bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a terrific price to pay; their troubled faces mirrored the conflict
+      of decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David found solution. In his slow, solemn voice, &ldquo;You kiss him first,&rdquo; he
+      said. Miss Humfray always took their medicine first, and David argued from
+      the one evil necessity to this other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bob Chater laughed delightedly. &ldquo;That's a brilliant idea!&rdquo; he cried;
+      came two strides towards Mary; put a hand upon her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So sudden, so unexpected was his movement, that by the narrowest chance
+      only did she escape his purpose. A jerk of her head, and he had mouthed at
+      the air two inches from her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her arm free. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried; and in the exclamation there was
+      that which would have given a nicer man pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bob Chater was nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air had
+      made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who worked
+      for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be agreeable to her&mdash;at
+      all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped affairs that this was the
+      first time his theory had found disproof. He saw she was offended; so much
+      the more tickling; conquest was thereby the more enticing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed; said he was only &ldquo;rotting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary did not reply. The command to kiss their brother went by default; she
+      hurried her charges through the door to the adjoining night nursery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were started upon undressing she came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going to let me see you tub them?&rdquo; Bob asked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Busy replacing toys in cupboards, she did not reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not angry, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Chater discarded the laugh from his tone. &ldquo;If you are angry, I'm very
+      sorry. You must have known I was only fooling. It was only to make the
+      kids laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So far as was possible she kept her back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The continued slight pricked him. His voice hardened. &ldquo;When I have the
+      grace to apologise, I think you might have the grace to accept it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary said in low tones: &ldquo;If you meant only to make them laugh, of course I
+      believe you. It is all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. Well, now, may I see them tubbed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told you I would rather not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dash it all, Miss Humfray, you're rather unkind, aren't, you? Here have I
+      been away nearly two years&mdash;I've been travelling on the Continent for
+      the firm-you know that, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said she had heard Mr. and Mrs. Chater talking of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and yet you won't let me come near my darling little sister and my
+      sweet little brother to tell 'em all about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'm not keeping you from them, Mr. Chater. You have had plenty of
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time! Why, I only got back yesterday!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been in here this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they were shy. They're better when you are here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had finished her task, and she turned to him. &ldquo;Mr. Chater, you know I
+      could not keep David and Angela from you even if I dreamed of doing such a
+      thing. Only, I say I would rather you did not come in while I bath them,
+      that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Chater would not like it for one thing, I feel sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all rot. Mother wouldn't mind&mdash;anyway, I do as I like in
+      this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From all she had heard of Mrs. Chater's beloved Bob, Mary guessed this to
+      be true. Long prior to his arrival she had been prejudiced against him;
+      acquaintance emphasised the prophetic impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another night, then,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt he was winning. No girl withstood him long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, to-night. Another thing&mdash;I want to know you better. This
+      arrangement is all new to me. There was a nurse here in your place when I
+      went. I've hardly spoken to you. Have you ever been abroad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll tell you&mdash;and the kids&mdash;some of my adventures while
+      you're tubbing 'em. Lead on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was at the night-nursery door. Evidently this man would not see her
+      conventional reason for not wishing him at the tubbing. Angela had grown a
+      biggish girl since he went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said, &ldquo;Please not to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm jolly well coming,&rdquo; he chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lesson of dependence was wilfully forgotten. Mary agreed with Angela
+      and David: she hated this Bob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said sharply, &ldquo;you are not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thrown his cigar into the grate; taken out another; stooped to the
+      hearth to scratch a match. His back was to her; to him all her tone
+      conveyed was that a &ldquo;rag&rdquo; was on hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll see,&rdquo; he laughed; struck the match.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped swiftly within the door; closed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Chater laughed again; ran across.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lock clicked as she turned the key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me in!&rdquo; he cried, rattling the handle. &ldquo;Let me in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The splash of water answered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thumped the panel. &ldquo;Open the door!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Angela,&rdquo; he heard her say, &ldquo;quick as lightning with that chimmy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob's face darkened; he damned beneath his breath. Then with a laugh he
+      turned away. &ldquo;I'm going to have some fun with that girl,&rdquo; he told himself;
+      and on the way downstairs, her pretty face and figure in his mind, pleased
+      himself with vicious anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions At A Dinner-Table.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Two distressing reasons combined to compel Mrs. Chater to give Mary place
+      at the evening meal. There was the aggravating fact that mothers'-helps,
+      just as if they were ordinary people, must be fed; there was also the
+      contingency that servants most strongly objected to serving a special meal&mdash;even
+      &ldquo;on a tray&rdquo;&mdash;to one who was not of the family, yet who had airs above
+      the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Except, then, when there were guests Miss Humfray must be accommodated at
+      late dinner. Mrs. Chater considered it annoying, yet found in it certain
+      comfortable advantages&mdash;as sympathy from friends: &ldquo;Mustn't it be
+      rather awkward sometimes, Mrs. Chater?&rdquo; A plaintive shrug would illustrate
+      the answer: &ldquo;Well, it is, of course, very awkward sometimes; but one must
+      put up with it. That class of person takes offence so easily, you know;
+      and I always try to treat my lady-helps as well as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you do, Mrs. Chater. How grateful they should be!&rdquo; And this time
+      a sad little laugh would illustrate: &ldquo;Oh, one hardly expects gratitude
+      nowadays, does one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary at dinner must observe certain rules, however. Certain dishes&mdash;a
+      little out of season, perhaps, or classed as luxuries&mdash;were borne
+      triumphantly past her by a glad parlour-maid acting upon a frown and a
+      glance that Mrs. Chater signalled. Certain occasions, again, when private
+      matters were to be discussed, were heralded by &ldquo;Miss Humfray,&rdquo; in an
+      inflexion of voice that set Mary to fold her napkin and from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl greeted these early dismissals with considerable relief. Dinner
+      was to her a nightly ordeal whose atmosphere swept appetite sky-high&mdash;took
+      the savour from meats, dried the throat.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Descending to the dining-room upon this evening, her normal shrinking from
+      the meal was considerably augmented. On the previous night&mdash;the first
+      upon which Mr. Bob Chater's legs had partnered hers beneath the table&mdash;his
+      eyes (like some bold gallant popping out on modesty whenever it dared peep
+      from the doorway) had captured her glance each time she ventured look up
+      from her plate. The episode of the nursery was equivalent to having
+      slapped the gallant's face, and the re-encounter was proportionately
+      uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking her place she was by sheer nervousness impelled to meet his gaze&mdash;so
+      heavily freighted it was as to raise a sudden flush to her cheek. Her eyes
+      fled round to Mrs. Chater, received a look that questioned the blush,
+      drove it duskier; through an uncomfortable half-hour she kept her face
+      towards her plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was illuminative of the relations between husband and wife that Mrs.
+      Chater carved; her husband dealt the sweets. The carving knife is the
+      domestic sceptre of authority: when it is wielded by the woman, the man,
+      you will find, is consort rather than king.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon the previous evening Mr. Bob Chater had led the conversation.
+      To-night he was indisposed for the position&mdash;would not take it
+      despite his mother's desperate attempts to board the train of his ideas
+      and by it be carried to scenes of her son's adventures. A dozen times she
+      presented her ticket; as often Bob turned her back at the barrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a rare event this refusal of his to carry passengers. So loudly did
+      he whistle as a rule as to attract all in the vicinity, convinced that
+      there was an important train by which it would be agreeable to travel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Mr. Bob Chater was a loud young man, emanating a swaggering air that
+      the term &ldquo;side&rdquo; well fitted. To have some conceit of oneself is an
+      excellent affair. The possession is a keel that gives to the craft a
+      dignified balance upon the stream of life&mdash;prevents it from being
+      sailed too close to mud; helps maintain stability in sudden gale. Other
+      craft are keelless&mdash;they are canoes; bobbing, unsteady, likely to
+      capsize in sudden emergency; prone to drift into muddy waters; liable to
+      be swept anywhither by any current. Others, again&mdash;and Mr. Bob Chater
+      was of these&mdash;are over-freighted upon one quarter or another: they
+      sail with a list. Amongst well-trimmed boats these learn in time not to
+      adventure, since here they are greeted with ridicule or with contempt; yet
+      among the keelless fleets they have a position of some authority; holding
+      it on the same principle as that by which among beggars he who has a coin&mdash;even
+      though base&mdash;is accounted king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob Chater's list was ego-wards. His mighty &ldquo;I&rdquo;&mdash;I am, I do, I say, I
+      know, I think&mdash;bulged from him, hanging from his voice, his glance,
+      his gesture, his walk. In it Mrs. Chater bathed; to be carried along in
+      the train of his mighty &ldquo;I&rdquo; was delectable to her. But to-night she could
+      not effect the passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A final effort she made to get aboard. &ldquo;And in St. Petersburg!&rdquo; she
+      tempted. &ldquo;I wonder if you ever saw the <i>Tsar</i> when you were in St.
+      Petersburg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob drove her back: &ldquo;St. Petersburg's a loathsome place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater tried to squeeze through. &ldquo;So <i>gay</i>, they say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob slammed the gate. &ldquo;I wish you'd <i>tell</i> me something instead of
+      expecting <i>me</i> to do all the talking. I want to hear all that's been
+      going on here while I've been away, but I'm hanged if I can find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little mortified, Mrs. Chater said: &ldquo;I've hardly seen you, dear, except
+      at meals&rdquo;&mdash;then threw the onus for her son's lack of local gossip
+      upon her husband. Addressing him, &ldquo;You've been with Bob all the morning,&rdquo;
+       she told him. &ldquo;I wonder you haven't given him all the news. But, there! I
+      suppose you've done nothing but question him about what business he's
+      done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater, startled at the novelty of being drawn into table conversation
+      while his son and his wife were present, dropped his spoon with a splash
+      into his soup, wiped his coat, frowned at the parlour-maid, cleared his
+      throat, and, to gain time to determine whether he had courage to say that
+      which was burning within him, threw out an &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; for his pursuing wife to
+      Worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater pounced upon it; shook it. &ldquo;What I said was that I suppose
+      you've been doing nothing but question poor Bob about what he has done for
+      the firm while he's been away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater nerved himself to declare his mind. &ldquo;There wasn't very much to
+      question him about,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words&mdash;outcome of views forcibly expressed by his partners in
+      Mincing Lane that morning&mdash;were the foolhardy action of one who pokes
+      a tigress with a stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tigress shook herself. &ldquo;Now, I wonder what you mean by <i>that</i>?&rdquo;
+       she challenged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Chater dropped the stick; precipitantly fled. &ldquo;Of course it was all
+      new to Bob,&rdquo; he granted, throwing a bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very much to his alarm the tigress ignored the bone; rushed after him.
+      &ldquo;All you seem to think about,&rdquo; cried she, &ldquo;is making the boy slave. He's
+      never had a proper holiday since he left school, and yet the very first
+      time he goes off to see the world you must be fidgeting yourself to death
+      all the time that he's not pushing the firm sufficiently; and immediately
+      he comes back you must start cross-examining just as if he was an
+      office-boy&mdash;not a word about his health or his pleasure. Oh, no! of
+      course not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Squirming in misery, Mr. Chater remarked that he had his partners to
+      consider. &ldquo;I'm only too glad that Bob should enjoy himself&mdash;only too
+      glad. But you must remember, my dear, that part of his expenses for this
+      trip was paid for by the firm&mdash;the <i>firm</i>. He was to call on
+      foreign houses&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tigress opened her mouth for fresh assault. Mr. Chater hurriedly
+      thrust in a bone. &ldquo;I don't say he hasn't done a great deal for us&mdash;not
+      at all; I'd be the last to say that. What I say is that in duty to my
+      partners I must take the first opportunity to ask him a few questions
+      about it. Bob sees that himself; don't you, Bob?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do let's keep shop off the table,&rdquo; Bob snarled. &ldquo;Fair sickens me this
+      never getting away from the office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are!&rdquo; Mrs. Chater cried. &ldquo;There you are! Always business,
+      business, business&mdash;that's what <i>I</i> complain of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With astounding recklessness Mr. Chater mildly said: &ldquo;My dear, you started
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater quivered: &ldquo;Ah, put it on me! Put it on me! Somehow you always
+      manage to do that. Miss Humfray, when you've <i>quite</i> finished your
+      soup <i>then</i> perhaps Clarence can take the plates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary's thoughts, to the neglect of her duty, had crept away beneath cover
+      of these exchanges. Now she endured the disaster of amid silence clearing
+      her plate with four pairs of eyes fixed upon her. Clarence removed the
+      course; Mr. Chater, leaping as far as possible from the scene of his
+      ordeal, broke a new topic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He enticed tentatively: &ldquo;I saw a funny bit in the paper this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tigress paused in the projection of another spring; sniffed
+      suspiciously. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About that young Lord Comeragh,&rdquo; Mr. Chater hurried on, delighted with
+      his success. &ldquo;He was up at Marlborough Street police-court this morning&mdash;at
+      least his butler was; of course his lordship wouldn't go himself&mdash;charged
+      with furiously driving his motorcar; and who do you think was in the car
+      with him at the time? Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater, naming a young lady who nightly advertised a pretty leg from
+      the chorus of a musical comedy, announced that she would not be surprised
+      if that was the person. Being told that it was none other, and that Mr.
+      Chater had heard in the City that morning that Lady Comeragh was taking
+      proceedings and had named the nicely-legged young lady the cause of
+      infidelity, became highly astonished and supremely diverted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conversation of a most delectable nature was by this means supplied. A pot
+      of savoury gossip, flavoured with scandal, was upon the table; and Mary,
+      lost to sight behind the cloud of steam that uprose as the three leaped
+      about it, finished her dinner undisturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A nod bade her leave before dessert. As she passed out the signaller
+      spoke. &ldquo;I want to see you,&rdquo; Mrs. Chater said. &ldquo;Wait for me in the
+      drawing-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The command was unusual, and Mary, waiting as bid, worried herself with
+      surmises upon it. She prayed it did not mean she was to soothe Mr. Bob
+      Chater's digestion with lullabies upon the piano; that it boded an
+      unpleasant affair she was assured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not err. Mrs. Chater came to her, dyspeptic-flushed, sternly
+      browed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray, I have one thing to say to you, no more. No explanations,
+      no excuses, please. I hear you have been trying to entertain my son in the
+      nursery this evening. If that, or anything like it, occurs again&mdash;You
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Chater&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A massive hand signalled Stop. &ldquo;I said 'not a word.' That is all. Good
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mary, crimson, to her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: of Love and of War.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_NOTE" id="link2H_NOTE"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Notes On The Building Of Bridges.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Within the limits of this short section of our story we shall cram two
+      months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as
+      they plod through it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is well within our power, since the position of the novelist in
+      regard to his characters may be compared with that of the destiny which in
+      the largest comedy moves to and fro mankind its actors. As destiny moves
+      its puppets, so the novelist moves his&mdash;upraising, debasing;
+      favouring, tormenting; creating, wiping from the page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And of the pair the novelist is the more just. Has villainy in a novel
+      ever gone unpunished? Has virtue ever failed of its reward? Your novelist
+      is of all autocrats the most zealous of right and wrong. Villain may
+      through two-thirds of his career enjoy his wicked pleasures, exceedingly
+      prosper despite his baseness; but ever above him the cold eye of his judge
+      keeps watch, and in the end he is apportioned the most horrible deserts
+      that any could wish. Virtue may by the gods be hounded and harried till
+      the reader's heart is wrung. But spare your tears; before Finis is
+      written, down swoops the judge; the dogs are whipped off; Virtue is led to
+      fair pastures and there left smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Contrasted with this autocrat of the printed page, the destiny whose
+      comedy began with the world and is indefinitely continued makes sorry
+      show. Here the wicked exceedingly flourish and keep at it to the end of
+      their chapter; here virtue, battling with tremendous waves of adversity,
+      is at last engulfed and miserably drowned. Truly, their fit rewards are
+      apportioned, we are instructed, after death. But there is something of a
+      doubt; the novelist, in regard to his characters, takes no risks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon another head, moreover, the novelist shows himself the more kindly
+      autocrat. There is his power, so freely exercised, to bridge time. Whereas
+      destiny makes us to watch those in whom we are interested plod every inch
+      and step of their lives-over each rut, through each swamp, up each
+      hill,-the novelist, upon his characters coming to places dull or too
+      difficult, immediately veils from us their weary struggles. Destiny will
+      never grant such a boon: we must watch our friends even when they bore us,
+      even when they cause us pain. Yet this boon is the commonest indulgence of
+      the novelist-as it now (to become personal) is mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bridge two months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And you must imagine this bridge as indeed a short and airy passage across
+      a valley, down into which the persons of our story must carefully climb,
+      across which they must plod, and up whose far side they must laboriously
+      scramble to meet us upon the level ground. For we are much in the
+      position, we novel readers, of village children curiously watching a
+      caravan of gipsies passing through their district. The gipsies (who stand
+      for our characters) plod wearily away along a bend of dusty road. The
+      children cease following, play awhile; then by a short-cut through the
+      fields overtake the travellers as again they come into the straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So now with you and me. We have no need to follow our gipsies down the
+      valley that takes two months in the traversing: we skip across the bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, leaning over, we may take a shot or two at them as here and there
+      they come into view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions Beneath The Bridge.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Thus we see the meeting again of George and Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the agitated young man on the day following the cab accident had
+      alighted from the omnibus at the bottom of Palace Gardens he was opposite
+      No. 14 by half-past ten; waiting till eleven; going, convinced she did not
+      live there; returning, upon the desperate hope that indeed she did;
+      waiting till twelve&mdash;and being most handsomely rewarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face signalled that she saw him, but her eyes gave no recognition&mdash;quickly
+      were averted from him; the windows behind her had eyes, she knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My agitated George, who had made a hasty step at the red flag that
+      fluttered on her cheeks, as hastily stepped away beneath the chill of her
+      glance; in tremendous perturbation turned and fled; in tremendous
+      perturbation turned and pursued. In Regent's Park he saw her produce a
+      brilliant pair of scarlet worsted reins, gay with bells; heard her hiss
+      like any proper groom as tandemwise she harnessed David and Angela, those
+      restive steeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The equipage was about to start&mdash;she had cracked her whip, clicked
+      her tongue&mdash;when with thumping heart, with face that matched the
+      flaming reins, hat in hand he approached; spoke the driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her steeds turned about; with wide, unblinking eyes, searched his face and
+      hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your faces are very red,&rdquo; Angela said. &ldquo;Are you angry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have got very red faces,&rdquo; David echoed. &ldquo;Are you in a temper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary told them No; George said they were fine horses; felt legs; offered
+      to buy them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words purchased their hearts, which were more valuable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the drive they would return to the stable, which was this seat, Mary
+      told him; she could not stay to speak to him any longer. George declared
+      he was the stable groom and would wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away they dashed at handsome speed, right round the inner circle; returned
+      more sedately, a little out of breath. There had been, moreover, an
+      accident: leader, it appeared, had fallen and cut his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shied at a motor,&rdquo; David explained, proud of the red blood now that the
+      agony was past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George unharnessed them; dressed the wounds; scolded the coachman because
+      no feed had been brought for the horses; promised that to-morrow he would
+      bring some corn&mdash;bun corn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come to-morrow?&rdquo; Angela asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George glanced at Mary. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he told them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tremendous joy. Well delighted, they ran to a new game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every to-morrow ran but to three: George and Mary had by then exchanged
+      their histories. The pending examination was discussed, and Mary simply
+      would not speak to him if, wasting his time, he came daily to idle with
+      the children (so she expressed it). She would abandon the Park, she told
+      him&mdash;would take her charges to a Square gardens of which they had the
+      entry, where George might not follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George did not press the point. As he wrestled out the matter in the hours
+      between their meetings she was a fresh incentive to work. But once a week
+      he must be allowed to come: here he was adamant, and she gladly agreeable.
+      Saturday mornings was the time arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary had been fearful at this first re-encounter that it would be the
+      last. The children would certainly tell their mother; Mrs. Chater would
+      certainly make an end to the acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask them not to tell,&rdquo; George had suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impossible to think of such a thing: it would be to teach them deceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll ask them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that would be just as bad. No&mdash;if they tell, it cannot be
+      helped. And after all&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, after all...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all&mdash;what would it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said: &ldquo;It would matter to me&mdash;a lot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at her, but she was looking after Angela and David. He asked:
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't it matter to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed a little; answered, with her eyes still averted towards the
+      children, &ldquo;Why&mdash;why, of course I should mind. I mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there are meanings for which it is difficult to find clothes in which
+      they may decently take the air; and here the wardrobe of Mary's mind stood
+      wanting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George enticed. &ldquo;Do you mean you would be sorry not to&mdash;not to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He also found his wardrobe deficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mary sent out her meaning, risking its decency. &ldquo;Why, yes, I would be
+      sorry not to see you again; why should I mind saying so? I have liked
+      meeting you.&rdquo; And, becoming timid at its appearance, she hurried after it
+      a cloak that would utterly disguise it. &ldquo;I meet so few people,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But George was satisfied; she had said she would mind&mdash;nay, even
+      though she had not spoken it, her manner assured him that indeed she would
+      regret not again meeting him. It was a thought to hug, a memory to spur
+      his energies when they flagged over his studies; it was a brush to paint
+      his world in lively colours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor, as the future occurred, need either have had apprehension that the
+      children would tell their mother and so set up an insurmountable barrier
+      between them. A previous experience had warned Angela that it were wise to
+      keep from her mother joys that were out of the ordinary run of events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning homeward that day, a little in advance of Mary, she therefore
+      addressed her brother upon the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Davie, I hope that man will come to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We won't tell mother, Davie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because mother'll say No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she <i>always</i> says No, stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Davie, you <i>are</i> stupid! I don't know why; I only <i>know</i>.
+      Don't you remember that lady that used to talk to Miss Humf'ay and play
+      with us? Well, when we told mother, mother said No, didn't she? and the
+      lady played with those abom'able red-dress children that make faces
+      instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he play with the abom'able red-dress children that make faces if we
+      tell mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of <i>course</i> he will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They always <i>do</i>, stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Angela ran back. &ldquo;Oh, Miss Humf'ay, Davie is so <i>irrating!</i> He will
+      say <i>Why</i> ....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a lesson for parents in that conversation, I suspect.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Leaning from our bridge we may content ourselves with a hurried shot at
+      George, laboriously toiling at his books, sedulously attending his
+      classes, with his Mary spending glorious Saturday mornings that, as they
+      brought him nearer to knowledge of her, sent him from her yet more
+      fevered; and, straining towards another point, we will focus for an
+      instant upon Margaret his cousin, and Bill Wyvern, her adored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. William Wyvern had most vigorously whacked about among events since
+      that evening when his Margaret had composed her verses for George. At that
+      time a fellow-student with George at St. Peter's Hospital, he had now
+      abandoned the profession and was started upon the literary career (as he
+      named it) that long he had wished to follow. The change had been come by
+      with little difficulty. Professor Wyvern&mdash;that eminent biologist
+      whose fame was so tremendous that even now a normally forgetful Press yet
+      continued to paragraph him while he spent in absent-minded seclusion the
+      ebb of that life which at the flood had so mightily advanced knowledge&mdash;Professor
+      Wyvern was too much attached to his son, too docile in the hands of his
+      loving wife, to gainsay any wish that Bill might urge and that Mrs. Wyvern
+      might support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill achieved his end: the stories he had had printed in magazines,
+      secretly shown to his proud mother, were now brought forth and chuckled
+      over with glee by the Professor. The famous biologist struggled through
+      one of the stories, vowed he had read them all, cheerily patted Bill's arm
+      with his shaky old hand, and cheerfully abandoned the hope he had held of
+      seeing his son a great surgeon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Bill's burning ambition to obtain a post upon a paper. Not until
+      later did he learn that it is the men outside the papers who must have a
+      turn for stringing sentences; that those inside are machines, cutting and
+      serving the material with no greater interest in it than has the
+      cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals. Meanwhile, the glimpse we
+      may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging along his pen until clean paper
+      became magic manuscripts; living upon a billow of hope when the envelopes
+      were sped, submerged beneath oceans of gloom when they were returned;
+      trembling into Fleet Street deliciously to inhale the thick smell of
+      printer's ink that came roaring up from a hundred basements; with goggle
+      eyes venerating the men who with assured steps passed in and out the
+      swing-doors of castles he burned to storm; snatching brief moments for the
+      boisterous society of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, those rare bull-terriers;
+      and finally, expending with his Margaret moments more protracted&mdash;stealthy
+      meetings, for the most part&mdash;in Mr. Marrapit's shrubbery.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      But two more peeps from our bridge need we take, and then our characters
+      will be ready to meet us upon the further side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glance from here will reveal to us Mrs. Major, that masterly woman,
+      inscribing in her diary:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Getting on with Mr. M. Should sue. Precip. fat.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fill out the abbreviations to which Mrs. Major, in her diary, was prone,
+      and we have:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Getting on with Mr. Marrapit. Should succeed. Precipitancy fatal.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Succeed in what? To what would precipitancy of action be irreparable?
+      Listen to a conversation that may enlighten us&mdash;spoken upon the lawn
+      of Herons' Holt; Mr. Marrapit in his chair making a lap for the Rose of
+      Sharon; Mrs. Major on a garden seat, crocheting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stealthy peep assuring her that his eyes were not closed, Mrs. Major
+      nerved herself with a deep breath; with a long sigh let it escape in the
+      form, &ldquo;A year ago!&rdquo;&mdash;dropped hands upon her lap and gazed wistfully
+      at the setting sun. She had seen the trick very successfully performed
+      upon the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit turned his eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You spoke, Mrs. Major?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With an admirable start Mrs. Major appeared to gather in wandering
+      fancies. &ldquo;I fear I was thinking aloud, Mr. Marrapit. I beg pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not. There is no occasion. You said 'A year ago.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I, Mr. Marrapit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause followed. The wistful woman felt that, were the thing to be done
+      properly, the word lay with her companion. To her pleasure he continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day, then, is an anniversary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of a happy event, I trust?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major clasped her hands; spoke with admirable ecstasy. &ldquo;Oh, Mr.
+      Marrapit, of a golden&mdash;golden page in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elucidate,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major put into a whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The day I came here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit slowly moved his head towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were averted. &ldquo;The time has passed swiftly,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major breathed: &ldquo;For me it has flown on&mdash;on&mdash;&rdquo; She searched
+      wildly for a metaphor. &ldquo;On wings,&rdquo; she concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again there was a pause, and again Mrs. Major felt that for this passage
+      to have fullest effect the word lay with Mr. Marrapit. But Mr. Marrapit,
+      himself considerably perturbed, did not speak. The moments sped. Fearful
+      lest they should distance beyond recovery the sentiments she felt she had
+      aroused, Mrs. Major hastened to check them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said musingly: &ldquo;I wonder if they are right?&rdquo;&mdash;sighed as though
+      doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To whom do you refer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the people who say that time flies when it is spent in pleasant
+      company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are correct,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit affirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do not doubt it for my part, Mr. Marrapit. I never knew what
+      happiness was until I come here&mdash;came here. But if&mdash;&rdquo; The
+      masterly woman paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Continue&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hard word was softly spoken. Mrs. Major's heart gave two little
+      thumps; her plan clear before her, pushed ahead. &ldquo;But if to you also, Mr.
+      Marrapit, the time has seemed to fly, then&mdash;then Mr. Marrapit, my
+      company has&mdash;has been agreeable to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly there was a softness in Mr. Marrapit's tones as he made answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has, Mrs. Major,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it has. Into my establishment you have
+      brought an air of peace that had for some time been lacking. Prior to your
+      arrival, I was often worried by household cares that should not fall upon
+      a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Earnestly Mrs. Major replied: &ldquo;Oh, I <i>saw</i> that. I strove to lift
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have lifted them. You have attended not only my cats but my kitchen.
+      I am now able often to enjoy such evenings as these. This peace around us
+      illustrates the tranquillity you have brought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tranquillity was at that moment disastrously shattered. A bed of
+      shrubbery lay within a few feet of where they sat. What had appeared to be
+      a gnarled stump in its midst now quivered, broadened, fell into a line
+      with the straightening back of Mr. Fletcher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit was startled and annoyed. &ldquo;What are you doing there, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snailin',&rdquo; said Mr. Fletcher gloomily; exhibited his snail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snail elsewhere. Do not snail where I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I snails where there's snails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cease snailing. You must have been there hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if I have? This garden's fair planted with snails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snail oftener. Depart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher moved a few steps; then turned. &ldquo;I should like to ast if this
+      is to be part of my regular job. First you says 'cease snailin',' then you
+      says 'snail oftener,' then you says 'snail elsewhere.' Snails take
+      findin'. They don't come to me; I has to go to them. It's 'ard&mdash;damn
+      'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a lettuce-leaf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gloomily withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit's face was angrily twitching. The moment was not propitious
+      for continuing her conversation, and with a little sigh Mrs. Major
+      withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was upon that night that she inscribed in her diary:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Getting on with Mr. M. Should suc. Precip. fat.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A last peep, ere we hurry across the bridge, will disclose to us Mr. Bob
+      Chater still pressing upon Mary the attentions which her position, in
+      relation to his, made it so difficult for her to escape. Piqued by her
+      attitude towards him, he was the more inflamed than ordinarily he would
+      have been by the fair face and neat figure that were hers. Yet he made no
+      headway; within a month of the date of his return to Palace Gardens was as
+      far from conquest as upon that night in the nursery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a City friend, Mr. Lemuel Moss, dining at 14 Palace Gardens with him
+      one night, he explained affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dam' pretty girl, that governess of yours, or whatever she is,&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Moss, biting the end from a cigar in the smoking-room after dinner. &ldquo;Lucky
+      beggar you are, Bob. My mater won't have even a servant in the place that
+      wouldn't look amiss in a monkey-house. Knows me too well, unfortunately,&rdquo;
+       and Mr. Moss, taking a squint at himself in the overmantel, laughed&mdash;well
+      enough pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob pointed out that there was not so much luck about it as Mr. Moss
+      appeared to think. &ldquo;Never seen such a stand-offish little rip in all my
+      life,&rdquo; he moodily concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, isn't she&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob understood the unvoiced question. &ldquo;Won't even let a chap have two
+      minutes' talk with her,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let alone anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Moss stretched himself along the sofa; rejoined: &ldquo;Oh, rats! Rats! You
+      don't know how to manage 'em&mdash;that's what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know as well as you, and a dashed sight better, I don't mind betting,&rdquo;
+       Bob returned with heat. In some circles it is an aspersion upon a man's
+      manliness to have it hinted that a petticoat presenting possibilities has
+      not been ruffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it don't look much like it. I caught her eye in the passage when we
+      were coming downstairs, and you don't tell me&mdash;not much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you though?&rdquo; Bob said. Himself he had never been so fortunate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No mistake about it. Why, d'you mean to say you've never got as far as
+      that, even?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you she won't look at me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Moss laughed. Enjoyed the &ldquo;score&rdquo; over his host for a few moments, and
+      then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you what it is, old bird,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you're going the wrong way
+      about it. I know another case just the same. Chap out Wimbledon way. His
+      people kept a girl&mdash;topper she was, too&mdash;dark. He was always
+      messing round just like you are, and she was stand-offish as a nun. One
+      night he came home early, a bit screwed&mdash;people out&mdash;girl in.
+      Met her in the drawing-room. Almost been afraid to speak to her before.
+      Had a bit of fizz on board him now&mdash;<i>you</i> know; didn't care a
+      rip for anybody. Gave her a smacking great kiss, and, by Gad!&mdash;well,
+      she <i>was</i> all right. Told him she'd always stood off up to then
+      because she was never quite sure what he meant&mdash;afraid he didn't mean
+      anything, and that she might get herself into no end of a row if she
+      started playing around. Same with this little bit of goods, I'll lay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob was interested. &ldquo;Shouldn't be surprised if you're right,&rdquo; he said; and
+      moodily cogitated upon the line of action prescribed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Moss offered to bet that where girls were concerned he was never far
+      wrong. &ldquo;Slap-dash style is what they like,&rdquo; he remarked, and with a
+      careless &ldquo;It's all they understand&rdquo; dismissed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It remained, however, in Bob's mind throughout the evening; sprang
+      instantly when, after breakfast upon the following day, he caught a
+      glimpse of Mary as he prepared for the City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing for a moment in the hall, it occurred to him that this very
+      evening offered the opportunity he sought. Mr. and Mrs. Chater were to
+      dine at the house of a neighbour. The invitation had included Bob&mdash;fortunately
+      he had refused it. Returning to the morning-room, &ldquo;I shan't be in
+      to-night,&rdquo; he told his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I needn't order any dinner for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; He hung about irresolute, then lit a cigar, and between the puffs,
+      &ldquo;Shall you be late?&rdquo; he asked carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure to be,&rdquo; Mrs. Chater told him. &ldquo;It's going to be a big bridge drive,
+      you know. We shan't get back before midnight. Don't sit up for us, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob inhaled a long breath from his cigar, exhaled it deliciously. The
+      chance for the slap-dash style was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll be later than you. Lemmy Moss has got a bachelors' party on.
+      We're going to have a billiard match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's capital then, dear. I shall let the servants go to Earl's Court&mdash;I've
+      promised them a long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob whistled gaily as he mounted his 'bus for the City. The opportunity
+      was surely exceptional.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eight o'clock he returned; noiselessly let himself in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gas in the hall burned low. Beneath the library door gleamed a
+      stronger light. Bob turned the handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was curled in a big chair with a book. Certainly the opportunity was
+      exceptional.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the noise of his entry she sprang to her feet with a little cry. &ldquo;Oh,
+      dear!&rdquo; she exclaimed: &ldquo;what a fright you gave me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob pushed the door. He laughed. &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo;; came towards her. &ldquo;Are you all
+      alone? What a shame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Minnie is in the kitchen, I think. Mrs. Chater said you wouldn't be in
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you think I came?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a nervous little laugh and made to pass him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob fell back a pace, guarding the door. &ldquo;Don't you think that was
+      thoughtful of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what you mean. There was no need.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! No need! You all alone like this when all the rest are enjoying
+      themselves!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So was I. A long evening with a book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had fallen back as he, speaking, had slowly advanced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the great chair in which she had been seated was alone between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, books! Books are rot.&rdquo; He stepped around the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She fell back; was cornered between the hearth and a low table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob dropped into the chair; boldly regarded her; his eyes as expressive of
+      his slap-dash intentions as he could make them: &ldquo;Look here, I want you to
+      enjoy yourself for once. I'm going to take you to a music-hall or
+      somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stretched a foot; touched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back close against the mantelpiece, her agitation very evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don't that please you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know it is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob paid no regard. This was that same diffidence with which the chap near
+      Wimbledon had had to contend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll come out of the show early and have a bit of supper and be back
+      before half-past eleven. Who's to know? Now, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very kind of you. I know you mean it kindly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'd rather not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was desperately afraid. Her face, the shaking of her hand where it was
+      pressed back against the wall, and the catch in her voice advertised her
+      apprehension. She was afraid of this big young man confidently lolling
+      before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said weakly: &ldquo;It would not be right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob sat up. &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; he laughed. His hands were upon the arms of the
+      chair, and he made to pull himself up towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw her mistake. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she cried hurriedly&mdash;&ldquo;no; I would not go
+      with you in any case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A shadow flickered upon Bob's face. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean what I say. Please let me pass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be friends with you. Why can't you let me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please let me pass. Mr. Chater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob lay back. He said with a laugh, &ldquo;Well, I'm not stopping you, am I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated a moment. The passage between the table and the long chair
+      was narrow. But truly he was not stopping her&mdash;so far as one might
+      judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her skirts about her with her left hand; stepped forward; was
+      almost past the chair before he moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he flung out a hand and caught her wrist, drawing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now!&rdquo; he cried, and his voice was thick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a half-sound of dismay&mdash;of fear; tried to twist free. Bob
+      laughed; pulled sharply on her arm. She was standing sideways to him&mdash;against
+      the sudden strain lost her balance and half toppled across the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Bob reflected, when afterwards feeding upon the incident, had he not
+      been as unprepared as she for her sudden stumble, he would have made&mdash;as
+      he put it&mdash;a better thing of it. As it was, her face falling against
+      his, he was but able to give a half kiss when she had writhed herself free
+      and made across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that embrace of her had warmed Bob's passions. Springing up, he caught
+      her as she fumbled with the latch; twisted her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment they struggled, he grasping her wrists and pressing towards
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the intention of encircling her waist he slipped his hold. But panic
+      made her the quicker. Her outstretched arms held him at bay for a
+      breathing space; then as he broke them down she dealt him a swinging blow
+      upon the face that staggered him back a step, his hand to his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he kissed me! He kissed me!&rdquo; Mary cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob said very slowly, &ldquo;You&mdash;infernal&mdash;little&mdash;liar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater glowered upon Mary with cruel eyes. &ldquo;It was a fortunate
+      thing,&rdquo; she said coldly, &ldquo;that a headache brought me home. Go to your
+      room, miss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We may hurry across the bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In Love.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Saturday was the day immediately following this scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George, on a 'bus carrying him towards Regent's Park, was in spirit at one
+      with the gay freshness that gave this September morning a spring-like air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week of torrid heat, in which London crawled, groaned, and panted, had
+      been wiped from the memory by an over-night thunderstorm that burst the
+      pent-up dams of heaven and loosed cool floods upon the staring streets. No
+      misty drizzle nor gusty shower it had been, but a strong, straight,
+      continuous downpour, seemingly impelled by tremendous pressure. Dusty
+      roofs, dusty streets, dusty windows it had scoured and scrubbed and
+      polished; torrents had poured down the gutters&mdash;whenever temporarily
+      the pressure seemed to relax, the ears of wakeful Londoners were sung to
+      by the gurgle and rush of frantic streams driving before them the
+      collected debris of many days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this morning, in the result, a tempest might have swept the town and
+      found never a speck of dust to drive before it. The very air had been
+      washed and sweetened; and London's workers, scurrying to and from their
+      hives, seemed also to have benefited by some attribute of the downpour
+      that tinted cheeks, sparkled eyes, and, rejuvenating limbs, gave to them a
+      new sprightliness of movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George, from his 'bus, caught many a bright eye under a jaunty little hat;
+      gave each back its gleam from the depths of gay lightness that filled his
+      heart. Nearing the Park he alighted; made two purchases. From a
+      confectioner bun-corn for David and Angela, those ramping steeds; from a
+      florist the reddest rose that an exhaustive search of stock could
+      discover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary had from him such a rose at their every meeting. She might not wear
+      it back to Palace Gardens&mdash;it would not flourish beneath Mrs.
+      Chater's curiosity; but while they were together she would tuck it in her
+      bosom, and George tenderly would bear it home and set it in a vase before
+      him to lend him inspiration as he worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is almost certain that such a part is one for which flowers were
+      especially designed.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Those splendid steeds, David and Angela, having been duly exercised,
+      groomed, and turned out to browse upon bun-corn, George rushed at once
+      upon the matter that was singing within him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where he sat with his Mary they were sheltered from any but chance
+      obtrusion. She had taken off her gloves, and George gave her hands, as
+      they lay in her lap, a little confident pat. It was the tap of the baton
+      with which the conductor calls together his orchestra&mdash;for this was a
+      song that George was about to tune, very confident that the chords of both
+      instruments that should give the notes were in a harmony complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;Mary, do you know what I am going to talk about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been a little silent that morning, he had thought; did not answer
+      now, but smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid a hand upon both hers. &ldquo;You must say 'yes.' You've got to say
+      'yes' about twenty times this morning, so start now. Do you know what I'm
+      going to talk about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No objections this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed; gave her hand a little smack of reproof. (You who have loved
+      will excuse these lovers' absurdities.) &ldquo;No, no; you are only to say 'yes'
+      when I tell you. No objections to the subject this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary told him &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't have a better morning for it, could we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a little catch at her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George dropped the banter in his tone. &ldquo;Nothing wrong to-day, is there,
+      dear? Nothing up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How sadly wrong everything in truth was she had determined not to tell him
+      until she more certainly knew its extent. She shook her head; reassuringly
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's all right&mdash;there couldn't be on a morning like this.
+      Now we've got to begin at the beginning. Mary, I planned it all out last
+      night&mdash;all this conversation. We've got to begin at the beginning&mdash;Do
+      you know I've never told you yet that I love you? You knew it, though,
+      didn't you, from the first, the very first? Tell me from when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George, this is awfully foolish, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind. It's jolly nice. It's necessary, too. I've read about it.
+      It's always done. Tell me from when you knew I loved you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After last Saturday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mary! Much earlier than <i>that</i>! You must have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I thought perhaps you&mdash;you cared after that first day when you
+      came here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not before that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;Come, how <i>could</i> I? Why, I'd hardly seen you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I did, anyway,&rdquo; George told her. &ldquo;I loved you from the very minute
+      you shot out of the cab that day. There! But even this isn't the proper
+      thing. I've been promising myself all night to say four words to you&mdash;just
+      four. Now I'm going to say them: Mary, I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked in his eyes for a moment, answering the signal that shone
+      thence; and then she laughed that clear pipe of mirth which was so
+      uniquely her own possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, you mustn't do that,&rdquo; George cried. He was really perturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help it. You are so utterly foolish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not. It's the proper thing. I tell you I've planned it all out. I
+      love you. I've never said it to you before. Now it's your turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what on earth am I to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got to say that you love me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're making a farce of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I tell you I've planned it all out. I can't go on till you've said
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't expect me to say: 'George, I love you.' It's ridiculous. It's
+      like a funny story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind what it's like. Do be serious, Mary. How can I be sure you
+      love me if you won't tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first moment since its happening the thought of Bob Chater and of
+      Mrs. Chater passed completely from Mary's mind. She looked around: there
+      was no soul in sight. She listened: there was no sound. She clasped her
+      fingers about his; leaned towards him, her face upturned....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her upon the lips....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plans,&rdquo; said George after a moment, &ldquo;have all gone fut. I never
+      thought of that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's much better,&rdquo; Mary said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other's not a patch upon it,&rdquo; said George.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      You must conjecture of what lovers think when, following their first kiss,
+      they sit silent. It is not a state that may be written down in such poor
+      words as your author commands. For the touch of lips on lips is the key
+      that turns the lock and gives admission to a world dimly conceived, yet
+      found to have been wrongly conceived since conceived never to be so
+      wonderful or so beautiful as it does prove. Nor, ever again, once the
+      silence is broken and speech is found, has that world an aspect quite the
+      same. For the door that divides this new world from the material world can
+      never from the inside be closed. It is at first&mdash;for the space of
+      that silence after the first kiss&mdash;pushed very close by those who
+      have entered; but, soon after, the breath of every rushing moment blows it
+      further and further ajar. Drab objects from the outer world drift across
+      the threshold and obtrude their presence&mdash;vagabond tramps in a
+      rose-garden, unpleasant, marring the surroundings, soiling the atmosphere.
+      Cares drift in, worldly interests drift in; in drift smudgy, soiled,
+      unpleasant objects brushing the door yet wider upon its hinges till it
+      stands back to its furthest extent and the interior becomes at one with
+      the outer world. The process is gradual, indiscernible. When completed the
+      knowledge of what has been done dawns suddenly. One knocks against an
+      intruder especially drab, starts into wakefulness to rub the bruise, and
+      looking around exclaims, &ldquo;And this is love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, it was love. But a rose-garden will not long remain beautiful if no
+      care is taken of what may intrude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we but stand sentinel at the door, exercising a nice discretion, the
+      garden may likely remain unsoiled, its air uncontaminated.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George said that though across the first portion of the scheme he had so
+      laboriously planned he had been shot at lightning speed by the vehicle of
+      Mary's action, its latter portion yet remained to be discussed. &ldquo;We've got
+      to marry, dearest&mdash;and as quick as quick. We can't go on like this&mdash;seeing
+      each other once a week. No, not even if it were once a day. It's got to be
+      always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always and always, dear,&rdquo; Mary said softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Women are more intoxicated than men by the sudden atmosphere of that new
+      world. The awe of it was still upon her. The light of love comes strongly
+      to men, with the sensation of bright sunshine; to women as through stained
+      glass windows, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She continued: &ldquo;Fancy saying 'always' and being glad to say it! I never
+      thought I could. Do you know&mdash;will this frighten you?&mdash;I am one
+      of those people who dread the idea of 'always.' I never could bear the
+      idea of looking far, far ahead and not seeing any end. It frightened me.
+      Ever since father died, I've been like that&mdash;even in little things,
+      even in tangible things. When we go to the seaside in the summer I never
+      can bear to look straight across the sea. That gives me the idea of always&mdash;of
+      long, long miles and miles without a turn or a stop. I want to think every
+      day, every hour, that what I am doing can't go on&mdash;mustchange. It
+      suffocates me to think otherwise. I want to jump out, to scream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she gave that laugh that seldom failed to come to her relief, and
+      said: &ldquo;It's a sort of claustrophobia&mdash;isn't that the word?&mdash;on a
+      universal scale. But why is it? And why am I suddenly changed now? Why
+      does the thought of always, always, endless always with you, bring a sort
+      of&mdash;don't laugh, dear&mdash;a sort of bliss, peace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This poor George of mine, who was no deep thinker, nevertheless had the
+      reason pat. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think because the past has all been unhappy and because this, you know,
+      means happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little sigh; told him: &ldquo;Yes, that's it&mdash;happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      And now they fell to making plans as mating birds build nests. Here a bit
+      of straw and there a tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred of wool&mdash;George
+      would do this and George would do that; here the house would be and thus
+      would they do in the house. Probabilities were outraged, obstacles
+      vaulted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castles that are builded in the air spring into being quicker than
+      Aladdin's palace&mdash;bricks and mortar, beams and stones are
+      featherweight when handled in the clouds; every piece is so dovetailed,
+      marked and numbered that like magic there springs before the eye the
+      shining whole&mdash;pinnacled, turreted, embattled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Disaster arrives when the work is completed. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; we say, standing
+      back, a little flushed and out of breath with the excitement of the thing.
+      &ldquo;There! There's a place in which to live! Could any existence be more
+      glorious?&rdquo; And then we advance a step and lean against the walls to survey
+      the surrounding prospect. It is the fatal action. The material body
+      touches the aerial structure and down with a crash the castle comes&mdash;back
+      we pitch into the foundations, and thwack, bump, thwack, comes the masonry
+      tumbling about us, bruising, wounding.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George had built the castle. Mary had sat by twittering and clapping her
+      hands for glee as higher and higher it rose. He knew for a fact, he told
+      her, that his uncle had not expended upon his education much more than
+      half the money left him for the purpose. He was convinced that by hook or
+      by crook he could obtain the 400 pounds that would buy him the practice at
+      Runnygate of which the Dean had told him. They would have a little house
+      there&mdash;the town would thrive&mdash;the practice would nourish&mdash;in
+      a year&mdash;why, in a year they would likely enough have to be thinking
+      of getting a partner! And it would begin almost immediately! In three
+      weeks the examination would be held. He could not fail to pass&mdash;then
+      for the 400 pounds and Runnygate!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, unhappily, George leaned against this castle wall; provoked the
+      crash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till then, dear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you will stay with these Chater people. I
+      know you hate it; but it will be only a short time, a few weeks at most.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly her gay twittering ceased. Trouble drove glee from her eyes.
+      Memory chased dreams from her brain. Distress tore down the gay colours
+      from her cheeks. She clasped her hands; from her seat half rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried; and again, &ldquo;Oh! I had forgotten!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgotten? Forgotten what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest, I should have told you at the beginning, but I could not. I
+      wanted to wait until I knew. I have not seen her yet this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My startled George was becoming pale. &ldquo;Knew what? Seen whom? What do you
+      mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said, &ldquo;No, I won't tell you. I won't spoil all this beautiful morning
+      we have spent. I will wait till next week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, what do you mean? Wait till next week? No. You must tell me now.
+      How could I leave you like this, knowing you are in some trouble? What has
+      happened? You must tell. You must. I insist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I will.&rdquo; Her agitation, as her mind cast back over the events of the
+      previous night, was enhanced by the suddenness of the change from the
+      sunshine in which she had been disporting to the darkness that now swept
+      upon her. She was as a girl who, singing along a country lane, is suddenly
+      confronted from the hedgeside by some ugly tramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said, &ldquo;You know that young Mr. Chater?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dark imaginings clouded upon George's brow. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes; well&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night&mdash;&rdquo; And then she gave him the history of events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This simple George of mine writhed beneath it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a poison torturing his system, twisting his brow, knotting his
+      hands. Her presence, when she finished, did not stay his cry beneath his
+      rackings: he was upon his feet. &ldquo;By Gad,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I'll thrash the life
+      out of him! The swine! By Gad, I'll kill him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid a hand upon his arm. &ldquo;Georgie, dear,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;Don't, don't
+      take it like that. I haven't finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roughly he turned upon her. &ldquo;Well, what else? What else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't seen him since. He went away early this morning for the
+      week-end. And I have not seen Mrs. Chater again either. I am to see her
+      this afternoon. She sent me word to take the children as usual and that
+      she would see me at three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My poor George bitterly broke out: &ldquo;Oh! Will she? That's kind of her!
+      That's delightful of her! Are you going to see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I shall see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Of course'! 'Of course'! I don't know what you mean by talking in that
+      tone. You won't stay there another minute! That's what you'll tell her if
+      you insist upon seeing her. If you had behaved properly you'd have walked
+      out of the house there and then when it happened last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Spite of her trouble Mary could not forbear to laugh. &ldquo;Dearest, how could
+      I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But this furious young man could not see her point. His fine passion swept
+      him above contingencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, this morning,&rdquo; he laid down. &ldquo;The first thing this morning
+      you should have gone.&rdquo; He supplied detail: &ldquo;Packed your box, and called a
+      cab and gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His dictatory air drew from her another sad little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, George, dear,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;gone where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bucket of water dashed upon his flames, and for a moment they
+      flickered beneath it&mdash;then roared again: &ldquo;<i>Where? Anywhere!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;you are stupid! You don't see&mdash;you don't
+      understand! Easy to say 'anywhere,' but where&mdash;<i>where</i>? I have
+      no money. I have no friends&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The knowledge of her plight and her outlook crowded upon her speech; broke
+      her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her distracted George in a moment had her hands in his. &ldquo;Oh, my dear,&rdquo; he
+      cried, &ldquo;what a fool I am! What a beast to storm like that! I was so wild.
+      So mad. Of course you had to think before you moved. You were right, of
+      course you were right. But, my darling, I'm right now. You see that, don't
+      you? You can't stay a moment longer with those beasts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he laughed grimly. &ldquo;Especially,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;after what I'm going
+      to do to Master Bob.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She too laughed. The thought of Bob learning manners beneath the tuition
+      of those sinewy brown hands that were about hers was very pleasant to her.
+      But it was a pleasure that must be denied&mdash;this she saw clearly as
+      the result of weary tossings throughout the night; and now she set about
+      the task of explaining it to George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said: &ldquo;Oh, my dear, you're not right. Georgie, I can't go&mdash;if
+      Mrs. Chater will let me stay I must stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to be calm, to understand these women, to understand his Mary.
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest, because I must bridge over the time until you are ready to take
+      me. You see that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. But why there? You can easily get another place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, easily! If you had been through it as I have been! The first thing
+      they ask you for is a reference from your former situation. Think what a
+      reference Mrs. Chater would give me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He would not agree. He plunged along in his blundering, man fashion: &ldquo;In
+      time you could get a place where they would not ask questions&mdash;or
+      rather&mdash;yes, of course this is it. Tell them frankly all that
+      happened. Who could see you and not believe you? Tell them everything.
+      There must be some nice people in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be. But they don't want helps or governesses&mdash;in my
+      experience.&rdquo; The little laugh she gave was sadly doleful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still angry. &ldquo;You can't generalise like that. There are thousands
+      who would believe you and be glad to take you. Suppose you have to wait a
+      bit&mdash;well, you have a little money that she must give you; and I&mdash;oh,
+      curse my poverty!&mdash;I can borrow, and I can sell things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The help that a man would give a woman so often has lack of sympathy; he
+      is unkind while meaning to be kind. George's obdurateness, coming when she
+      was most in need of kisses, hurt her. Trouble welled in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't do that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;For one thing, we want all our money. Why
+      throw it away to get me out of a place in which I shall only be for a few
+      weeks longer? Another thing&mdash;another thing&mdash;&rdquo; She dragged a
+      ridiculous handkerchief from her sleeve; dabbed her brimming eyes.
+      &ldquo;Another thing&mdash;I'm afraid to risk it. I'm afraid to be alone and
+      looking for a place again. There&mdash;now you know. I'm a coward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She fell to sniffing and sobbing; and her wretched George, cursing himself
+      for the grief he had evoked, cursing Bob Chater, cursing Mrs. Chater,
+      cursing his uncle Marrapit, put his arms about her and drew her to him.
+      She quivered hysterically, and he frantically moaned that he was a beast,
+      a brute, unworthy; implored forgiveness; entreated calm; by squeezing her
+      with his left arm and with his right hand dabbing her eyes with her
+      handkerchief, screwed to a pathetic little damp ball, strove to stem the
+      flood that alarmingly welled from them.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was an awful position for any young man; and just as my poor George,
+      distinguished in nothing, inept, bewildered, was in a mood murderous to
+      the whole world save this anguished fairy, a wretched old gentleman must
+      needs come sunning himself down the path, making for this seat with
+      hobbling limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He collapsed upon it, and then, glancing to his right, was struck with
+      palpitations by sight of the heaving back of a young woman over whose
+      shoulder glared at him with hideous ferocity the face of a young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, dear me,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;nothing wrong, sir, I trust?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away!&rdquo; roared my distracted George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; inquired the old gentleman, horribly startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away! Go away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire of those baleful eyes, of that bellowing voice, struck terror
+      into the aged heart. He clutched his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear, oh dear,&rdquo; said he; hobbled away at a speed dangerous to his life
+      and limbs to seek protection of a park-keeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sobs grew longer, less hysterical: changed into long &ldquo;ohs&rdquo; of misery;
+      died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, there,&rdquo; said George, patting, dabbing. &ldquo;There, there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a final frantic sniff she recovered her self-possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a little f&mdash;fool,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a brute,&rdquo; said George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bitter knowledge nerved each to better efforts. Calm reigned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary said, &ldquo;Now you must listen and believe, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me have your hand, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it with a little confiding, snuggling movement, and she
+      continued: &ldquo;You must believe, because I have thought it all out, whereas
+      to you it is new. If I were a proper-spirited girl&rdquo;&mdash;she rebuked his
+      negation with a gesture&mdash;&ldquo;if I were a proper-spirited girl I know I
+      should leave Mrs. Chater at once&mdash;walk out and not care what I might
+      suffer rather than stay where I had been insulted. Girls in books would do
+      it. Oh, Georgie, this isn't books. This is real. I have been through it,
+      and I would die sooner than face it again. You know&mdash;I have told you&mdash;what
+      it is like being alone in cheap lodgings in London. Afraid of people,
+      dear. Afraid of men, afraid of women. I couldn't, could not go through it
+      again. And after all-don't you see?&mdash;if Mrs. Chater will let me stay,
+      what have I to mind? I shall be better off than before, if anything. Mrs.
+      Chater has always been&mdash;well, sharp. She may be a little worse&mdash;there's
+      nothing in that. But this Bob Chater, since he came, has been the worst
+      part of it. And as things are now, his mother watchful and he&mdash;what
+      shall I say? angry, ashamed&mdash;why, he will pay no further attention to
+      me. Come, am I not right? Isn't it best?&mdash;if only she will let me
+      stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;I don't like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest, nor I. But we can't, can't have what we like, and this will be
+      the best of the nasty things. For so short a time, too. I'm quite bright
+      about it. Am I not? Look at me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George looked. Then he said, &ldquo;All right, old girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clapped her hands. &ldquo;Only one thing more. You mustn't seek out&mdash;you
+      mustn't touch the detestable Bob.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the gloom of one relinquishing life's greatest prize George said, &ldquo;I
+      suppose I mustn't.&rdquo; He added, &ldquo;I tell you what, though. You mustn't
+      interfere with this. I'll save it up for him. The day I take you out and
+      marry you I'll pull him out&mdash;and pay him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They parted upon the promises that Mary would write that evening to tell
+      him of the result of her interview with Mrs. Chater, and that, in the
+      especial circumstances, he might come to see her in the Park for just two
+      minutes on Monday morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And each went home, thinking, not of that portending interview with Mrs.
+      Chater, but upon the love they had declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At ten o'clock that night Mary took up her pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, my dear, to tell you that it is all right. I may stay. I had lunch
+      with the children in the nursery, and just as we had finished a maid came
+      to say that Mrs. Chater would see me in the study. Down I crawled, wishing
+      that I was the heroine of a novel who would have passed firmly down the
+      stairs and into the room, 'pale, but calm and serene.' Oh! I was pale
+      enough, I feel sure. But as to serene!&mdash;my heart was flapping about
+      just like a tin ventilator in a wind, and I was jumpy all over. You see
+      what a coward am I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her. Of that I am convinced. She
+      sat, enormous, thunder-browed, bolt upright in a straight chair. I stood
+      and quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books the consciousness of
+      virtue gives one complete self-possession in the face of any accusation,
+      however terrible. In books it is the accuser of the innocent who is ill at
+      ease. Oh, don't believe it! Mrs. Chater had the self-possession, I had the
+      jim-jams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I have not seen you since last night,' she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave a kind of terrified little squeak. I had no words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Your version of what happened I do not wish to hear,' she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This relieved me, because for the life of me I could not have told her
+      had she wished to hear it. So I gave another little mouse-squeak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'My son has told me.' Her voice was like a deep bell. 'How you can
+      reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you have received at my
+      hands, here beneath my roof'&mdash;she was very dramatic at this point&mdash;'I
+      do not know.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor did I&mdash;but not in the way she meant. I was thinking how ignoble
+      was my meek attitude in light of what had happened. But you don't know
+      what it was like, facing that woman and dreading the worse fate of being
+      turned out into this awful London again. Another wretched little squeak
+      slipped out of me, and she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'My boy,' said she, 'has implored me to overlook this matter. My boy has
+      declared there were faults on both sides' (!!!!). 'If I acted rightly as a
+      mother, what would I do?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't tell her, Georgie. Could I tell her that if she acted rightly as
+      a mother she would box her boy's fat ears until his nose bled? I couldn't.
+      I squeaked instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'If I acted rightly as a mother,' said she, 'I would send you away. I am
+      not going to.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I squeaked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I choose to believe that your behaviour in this matter was a slip. I
+      believe the episode will be a lesson to you. That is all. Go.' I goed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George, when he had read thus far, was broadly grinning. Obviously Mrs.
+      Chater was not such a bad sort after all. If&mdash;as no doubt&mdash;she
+      implicitly believed her son's version of the incident, then her attitude
+      towards Mary was, on the whole, not so bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his Mary, when she had written thus far, laid down her pen, put her
+      pretty head upon the paper and wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear!&rdquo; she choked. &ldquo;There, that will make you think it was all
+      right. You shall never know&mdash;never&mdash;what really happened. Oh,
+      Georgie, Georgie, come very quick and take me away! How can I go on living
+      with these beasts? Oh, Georgie, be quick, be quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then this silly Mary with handkerchief, with india-rubber, and with
+      pen-knife erased a stain of grief that had fallen upon her pretty story;
+      sniffed back her tears; lifted again her pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now she wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been so
+      very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference between
+      that first portion so neatly penned&mdash;parti-coloured words showing
+      where the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled and planned at
+      every syllable&mdash;and this where emotion sped the thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that's all right&rdquo; (she wrote), &ldquo;and now we've only got to wait, a few,
+      few weeks. Dearest, will they fly or will they drag? What does love do to
+      time, I wonder&mdash;whip or brake?&mdash;speed or pull? Georgie mine, I
+      feel I don't care. If the days fly I shall be riding in them&mdash;galloping
+      to you, wind in the face; shouting them on; standing up all flushed with
+      the swing and the rush of it; waving to the people we go thundering past
+      and gazing along the road where soon I will see you&mdash;nearer and
+      nearer and nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if the days creep? Well, at first, after that picture, the thought
+      seems melancholy, unbearable. But that is wrong. The realisation will not
+      be unbearable. If they creep, why, then I shall lie in them, very
+      comfortable, very happy; dreaming of you, seeing you, speaking with you,
+      touching you. Yes, touching you. For, my dear, you are here in the room
+      with me as I write. I look up just to my right, and there you are, Georgie
+      mine; sitting on the end of my bed, smiling at me. You have not left me,
+      my dear, since we parted on the seat this morning. Why, I cannot even
+      write that it is only in imagination that I see you. For me it is not
+      imagination. I do, do see you, Georgie mine. You are part of me, never to
+      leave me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How new, how different, love makes life! Everything I do, everything I
+      see, everything I hear has a new interest because it is something to share
+      with you, something to save up and tell you. I am in trouble (you
+      understand that I am not, shall never be again; this is only illustration&mdash;you
+      must read it 'if I were in trouble'). I am in trouble, and you are sharing
+      it with me, sympathising so that trouble is an unkind word for what is
+      indeed but an opportunity acutely to feel the joy of loving and being
+      loved. I am happy, and the happiness is a thousandfold increased because
+      it comes to me warmed through you. I am amused, and it is something to
+      tell you and to laugh at the more heartily by the compelling sound of your
+      own laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything is new. Why, my very clothes are new. Look, here in my left
+      hand is my handkerchief. Only a handkerchief this morning, and to other
+      eyes still but a handkerchief. But to mine! Why, you have had it in your
+      hand and indeed it speaks to me of you. Here you laid your arm, this was
+      the side upon which you touched me as we sat together, here in my hair
+      your fingers caressed me&mdash;each and all they are new&mdash;different
+      from this morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you thinking me silly when I write like this, or are you dreadfully
+      bored with it? I can't help it, Georgie; love means so much more to us
+      women than to you men. It is essentially different. When a man in love
+      thinks of the woman he thinks of her as 'mine,' and that thrills him&mdash;possession.
+      But when the woman thinks of him she thinks of herself as 'his,' and that
+      moves every fibre of her, strikes every chord&mdash;capitulation. The man
+      expresses love by saying 'You are mine'; the woman by 'I am yours.' That
+      is how it is with me. I sing to myself that I am yours, yours, yours. I
+      want you to have every bit of me. I want you to know every thought I have.
+      If I had bad thoughts, I would tell them you. If I had desires, I would
+      make them known and would not blush. I want you to see right into my very
+      heart. I want to lay everything before you&mdash;to come to you bound and
+      naked. That is what love is with women, dear. Some of us resist it, school
+      it otherwise&mdash;but I do not think they are happy; not really happy. It
+      is our nature to be as I have said, and to fight against nature is
+      wearying work, leaving marks: it is to get tossed aside out of the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you thinking me unutterably tiresome and foolish?&mdash;but you will
+      not think that; because you love me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, let me write that again!-because you love me. And let me write this:
+      I love you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, is not that curious?&mdash;the precious joy of saying 'I love
+      you,' and the constant yearning to hear it said. Not lovers alone have
+      this joy and this desire. Mothers teach their babies to say 'I love you,
+      mother,' and constantly and constantly they ask, 'Do you love me, baby? '&mdash;yes,
+      and are not satisfied until they have the assurance. And babies, too, will
+      get up suddenly from their toys to run to say, 'Mother, I <i>do</i> love
+      you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why is it? Why is love so doubted that it must for ever be declared? So
+      doubted that even those who do love must constantly be proclaiming the
+      fact to the object of their affections, impelled either by the
+      subconscious fear that that object mistrusts the devotion, or by the
+      subconscious fear that they themselves are under delusion and must protest
+      aloud&mdash;just as a child upon the brink of being frightened in the dark
+      will say aloud, 'I'm not afraid!' Why is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Actions are allowed to proclaim hate, deeds suffice to advertise
+      sympathy, but love must be testified by bond. To what crimes must love
+      have been twisted and contorted that it should come to such a pass? How
+      often must it have been used as disguise to be now thus suspected?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never knew I thought of things like this, did you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear dear, I who am so frivolous think of yet deeper things. And I
+      would speak of them to you tonight, for I would have you know my heart and
+      mind as, dearest (how dear to think!), you know my face. Yes, of deeper
+      things. I suppose clever people would laugh at the religion my mother and
+      father lived in, taught me, died in, and now is mine. They believed&mdash;and
+      I believe&mdash;in what I have heard called the Sunday School God! the God
+      who lives, who listens, and to whom I pray. I have read books attempting
+      to shatter this belief&mdash;yes, and I think succeeding because written
+      with a cunning appeal only to the intelligence of man. Can such a Being as
+      God exist? they ask. And since man's intelligence can only grasp proved
+      facts, proofs are heaped upon proof that He cannot. The impossibilities
+      are heaped until man must&mdash;of his limitations&mdash;cry that it is
+      impossible. But in my belief God is above the possibilities&mdash;not to
+      be judged by them, not to be reduced to them. I suppose such a belief is
+      Faith&mdash;implicit Faith&mdash;the Faith that we are told makes all
+      things possible. Well, fancy, for the sake of having a 'religion' that
+      comes into line with 'reason,' abandoning the sense of comfort that comes
+      after prayer! Fancy receiving a 'reasoned' belief and paying for it the
+      solace of entreating help in the smallest trouble and in the largest!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, my dear dear, that I pray for you every night?&mdash;for
+      your health, your happiness, and your success?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you know a little more of me. Is there more to learn, I wonder? Not
+      if I can make it clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The candle is in a most melancholy condition: in the last stage of
+      collapse. I have prodded it out from its socket with my knife and set it
+      flabbily on a penny&mdash;so it must work to its very last drop of life.
+      That will not be long delayed. I shall suddenly be plunged into darkness
+      and must undress in the dark. I shall be smiling all the time I am
+      undressing, my thoughts with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At eleven&mdash;ten minutes' time&mdash;I am to be leaning from the
+      window gazing at Orion as you too&mdash;so we agreed&mdash;will be gazing.
+      Each will know the other has his thoughts, and we will say 'good-night.'
+      How utterly foolish! How contemptibly absurd, common!&mdash;and how
+      mystically delightful! You and I with Orion for the apex of eye's sight
+      and our thoughts flying from heart to heart the base!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Georgie mine, if we had never met could we have ever been so happy?
+      Impossible! Impossible! Before I pray for you to-night, I thank God for
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have kissed the corner where I shall just be able to squeeze in&mdash;good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was her letter-disloyal to women in its exposure of those truths of
+      women's love which are theirs by the heritage of ages, by their daily
+      training from childhood upward, and against which they should most
+      desperately battle; simple in its ideas of religion; silly in its baby
+      sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was my Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Friday was the night of the incident in the library between Bob Chater and
+      Mary; Saturday the exchange of love in the Park between Mary and her
+      George; Saturday evening the writing of Mary's letter; upon Monday George
+      read it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it was Monday morning, and precisely at ten o'clock three persons set
+      out for the same seat in Regent's Park&mdash;the mind of each filled with
+      one of the others, empty of all thought of the third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary&mdash;accompanied by David and Angela&mdash;carried towards the seat
+      the image of her George, but had no heed of Mr. Bob Chater's existence;
+      she was the magnet that drew Bob, ignorant of George; George sped to his
+      Mary and had no thought of Bob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young men were handicapped in point of distance. Mary, with but a
+      short half-mile to go, must easily be first to make the seat; Bob, coming
+      to town from a week-end up the river, would occupy little short of an
+      hour. George from Herons' Holt to that dear seat, allowed full
+      seventy-five minutes.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon the whole, Mr. Bob Chater had not enjoyed his week-end; ideally
+      circumstanced, for once the attractions it offered had failed to allure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Lemmy Moss, in the tiny riparian cottage he rented for the summer
+      months, was the most excellent of hosts; Claude Avinger was widely known
+      as a rattling good sort; the three young ladies who came down early on
+      Sunday morning and had no foolish objections to staying indecorously late,
+      were in face, figure and morals all that Bob, Lemmy, and Claude could
+      desire. Yet throughout that day in the cushioned punt Bob won more pouts
+      than smiles from the lady who fell to his guardianship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Disgustedly she remarked to her friends on the home journey, &ldquo;Fairly
+      chucked myself at him, the deadhead &ldquo;&mdash;wherein, I apprehend, lay her
+      mistake. For whether a man's assault upon a woman be dictated by love or
+      desire, its vehemence is damped by acquiescence, spurred by rebuff.
+      Doubtless for our lusty forefathers one-half the fascination of obtaining
+      to wife the naked ladies who caught their eye lay in the tremendous
+      excitement of snatching them from their tribes; while for the ladies, the
+      joy of capture comprised a great proportion of the amorous delights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The characteristics remain. Maidens are more decorously won to-day; their
+      tribes do not defend them; but they do the fighting for themselves. The
+      sturdier the defence they are able to make, the greater the joy of at
+      length being won; while, for the suitor, the more pains he hath endured in
+      process of conquest the more keenly doth he relish his captive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So with Bob. The young lady fairly chucking herself at him in the punt he
+      could not forbear to contrast with the enticing reserve of Mary. The more
+      playfully (or desperately, poor girl) she chucked herself at him, the more
+      did her charms cloy as against those of that other prize who so stoutly
+      kept him at arm's-length. Nay, the more strenuously did she seek to entice
+      his good offices, the more troubled was he to imagine why another of her
+      sex should so slightingly regard him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, as the day wore on, was Bob thrice impelled towards Mary&mdash;by
+      initial attraction of her beauty; by natural instinct to show himself
+      master where, till now, he had been bested; and by the stabbings of his
+      wounded vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday morning, then, he caught the ten o'clock train to town, hot in
+      the determination immediately to see her and instantly to press his suit.
+      He would try, he told himself, a new strategy. Bold assault had been
+      proved ill-advised; for frontal attack must be substituted an advance more
+      crafty. Its plan required no seeking. He would play&mdash;and, to a
+      certain extent, would sincerely play&mdash;the part of penitent. He would
+      apologise for Friday's lapse; would explain it to have been the outcome of
+      sheer despair of ever winning her good graces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to where he would find her he had no doubts. Dozing one day over a
+      book, he had not driven David and Angela from the room until they had
+      forced upon him a wearisome account of the secluded seat they had
+      discovered in Regent's Park. His patience in listening was an example of
+      the profit of casting one's bread upon the waters; for, making without
+      hesitation for the seat, he discovered Mary.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The children, as he approached, were standing before her. David had
+      scratched his finger, and the three were breathlessly examining the
+      wounded hand for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was explaining that
+      the place of the wound was over the home of very big drops of &ldquo;blug,&rdquo;
+       which could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window; when Angela,
+      turning at footsteps, exclaimed: &ldquo;Oh, dear, oh, dear, what <i>shall</i> we
+      do? Here's Bob!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alarm drummed in Mary's heart: fluttered upon her cheeks. She had felt, as
+      she told her George, so certain that from Bob she had now not even
+      acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion set her mind
+      bounding into disordered apprehensions&mdash;stumbling among them,
+      terrified, out of breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning, she could but sit
+      dumbly staring at him-questioning, incapable of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Angela that answered his salutation: &ldquo;Oh, why <i>have</i> you come
+      here? You spoil <i>everything</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hook!&rdquo; said Bob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David asked: &ldquo;What's hook?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I tell you to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob exclaimed: &ldquo;Hasn't mother told you not to say 'Why' like that? Run
+      away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted instead an observant
+      poke: &ldquo;Miss Humfray doesn't want to speak to you. She hates you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross
+      ill-mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to his
+      mother. The belief that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary's mouth
+      served further to harden his tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;Look here, you run away when I tell you, or I'll see you don't
+      come out here any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob swallowed. It was necessary before he spoke to clear his tongue of the
+      emotions that surged upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angela, in the pause, entreated David: &ldquo;Oh, don't keep saying 'Why?',
+      David,&rdquo; and before he could ask the reason she addressed Bob: &ldquo;We won't go
+      for you. If Miss Humf'ay tells us to go, <i>then</i> we will go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob looked at Mary. &ldquo;I only want to speak to you for a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary had
+      struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have been
+      chance, not deliberate&mdash;how should he have known where to seek them?
+      Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to take the
+      apology with which doubtless he had come&mdash;well to be on good terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by these supports, &ldquo;Shoo!&rdquo; she cried to her charges. &ldquo;Don't you
+      hear what your brother asks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do <i>you</i> want us to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shoo! shoo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Laughing, they shoo'd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob let them from earshot. &ldquo;I want to say how sorry I am about Friday
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have forgotten all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know that you have forgiven me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you I have forgotten it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it.&rdquo; He took a seat beside
+      her; repeated: &ldquo;You can't have forgotten it. How can you have forgotten a
+      thing that only happened three days ago?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the sense that I have wiped it out&mdash;I do not choose to remember
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want to
+      know that you forgive me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him: &ldquo;Yes, then&mdash;oh yes, yes.&rdquo; His persistence alarmed her,
+      set her again to flight among her apprehensions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when you say it like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her breath came in jerks, responsive to the unsteady flutters of her
+      heart. She made an effort for control; for the first time turned to him:
+      &ldquo;Mr. Chater, please go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her words pricked every force that had him there&mdash;desire, obstinacy,
+      wounded vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you say that?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You happened to be passing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing of the kind,&rdquo; he told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come purposely?&rdquo; One foothold that seemed safe was proving
+      false.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. I tell you&mdash;why won't you believe me?&mdash;that I have
+      been ashamed of myself ever since that night. At the first opportunity I
+      have come straight to tell you so, I ought to be in the City. I could not
+      rest until I had made my apology.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you have made it&mdash;I don't mean to say that sharply. I think&mdash;I
+      think it is very nice of you to be so anxious, and I freely accept your
+      apology. But don't you see that you are harming me by staying here? I beg
+      you to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I harming you? Am I so distasteful to you that you can't bear me
+      near you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the personal note that of all her apprehensions had given Mary
+      greatest alarm. &ldquo;Surely you see that you are harming me&mdash;I mean
+      hurting me&mdash;I mean, yes, getting me into trouble by staying like this
+      with me. Mrs. Chater might have turned me off on Saturday&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I spoke for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; The words choked her, but she spoke them&mdash;&ldquo;I am grateful to
+      you for that. But if she found me talking to you again&mdash;especially if
+      she knew you came here to see me, she would send me away at once. She told
+      me so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is she to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The children&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take care of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't prevent it. In any case&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob said bitterly: &ldquo;In any case! Yes, that's it. In any case you hate the
+      sight of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cried: &ldquo;Oh, why will you speak like that? I mean that in any case it
+      is not right. I promised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob laughed. &ldquo;If that's all, it is all right. You didn't promise for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes no difference. You say you are sorry&mdash;I believe you are
+      sorry. You can only show it one way. Mr. Chater, please leave me alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her pretty appeal was fatal to her desire. It enhanced her graces. In both
+      phrase and tone it was different from similar request in the petulant
+      mouths of those ladies amongst whom Bob purchased his way. Dissatisfied,
+      they would have said &ldquo;Oh, chuck it! Do!&rdquo; But &ldquo;Mr. Chater, please leave me
+      alone!&rdquo;&mdash;that had the effect of moving Mr. Chater a degree closer
+      along the seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said: &ldquo;You shan't have cause to blame me. Look here, you haven't asked
+      me to explain my conduct on Friday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't wish you to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you want to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you curious?&rdquo; His voice was low with a note of intensity. This was
+      love-making, as he knew the pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on: &ldquo;I'm sure you're curious. Look here, I'm going to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going,&rdquo; she said; made to rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught her hand where it lay on her lap; pressed her down. &ldquo;You're not.
+      If you do I shall follow&mdash;but I won't let you,&rdquo; and he pressed again
+      in advertisement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now she was alarmed&mdash;not for the result of this interview, but for
+      its very present perils. Fear strangled her voice, but she said, &ldquo;Let me
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must hear me, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must stay to hear me.&rdquo; He believed a fierce assault would now win the
+      heights. He released her hand; but she was still his prisoner, and he
+      leant towards her averted head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to tell you why I behaved like that that night. It was because
+      I could not contain myself any longer. You had always been so icy to me;
+      kept me at arm's-length, barely let me speak to you; and all the time I
+      was burning to tell you that I loved you&mdash;there, you know it now. On
+      that night you were still cold when you might have been only barely civil
+      and I could have contained myself. But you would not give me a word, and
+      at last all that was in me for you burst out and I could not hold myself.
+      It was unkind; it was frightening to you, perhaps; but was it a crime?&mdash;is
+      it a crime to love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His flow checked, waiting an impulse from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was but capable of a little &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;&mdash;the crest of a gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He misread her emotion. &ldquo;Has it all been pretence, your keeping me from
+      you like this? I believe it has. But now that you know you will be kind.
+      Tell me. Speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by her silence he took her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That touch acted as a cold blast upon her fevered emotions. Now she was
+      calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook off his hand. &ldquo;Have you done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone more than the question warned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said; sullen wrath gathering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, never speak to me again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't be friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends! With you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her meaning&mdash;that he had lost&mdash;stung him; her tone&mdash;that
+      she despised him&mdash;was a finger in the wound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gripped her arm. &ldquo;You little fool! How are you going to choose? If I
+      want to be friends with you, how are you going to stop it? By God, if you
+      want to be enemies it will be the worse for you. If I can't be friends
+      with you at home, I'll get you turned out and I'll make you be friends
+      outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was trying to twist her arm from his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gripped closer. &ldquo;No, I don't mean that. I love you&mdash;that's why I
+      talk so when you rebuff me. I'll not hurt you. We shall&mdash;I will be
+      friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His right arm held her. He slipped his left around her, drew her to him,
+      and with his lips had brushed her cheek before she was aware of his
+      intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The insult swept her free of every thought but its memory. By a sudden
+      motion she slipped from his grasp and to her feet; faced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You beast!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You beast!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He half rose; made a half grab at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped back a pace; something in her action reminded him of that
+      stinging blow she had dealt him in the library; he dropped back to his
+      seat and she turned and fled up the path whither Angela and David had
+      toddled.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was while Bob sat gazing after her, indeterminate, that he felt a hand
+      from behind the seat upon his shoulder; looked up to see a tall young man,
+      fresh faced, but fury-browed, regarding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your name?&rdquo; asked George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil's that to do with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of the first question had been of passion restrained. The passion
+      broke now from between George's clenched teeth, flamed in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tightened his grip upon the other's shoulder so that he pinched the
+      flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lot to do with me,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Is it Chater?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if it is? Let me go, damn you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let you go! I've been itching for you for weeks! What have you been
+      saying to Miss Humfray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn you! Take off your hand! She's a friend of yours, is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My furious George choked: &ldquo;Engaged to me.&rdquo; Further bit upon his passion he
+      could not brook. He brought his free hand down with a crash upon the face
+      twisted up at him; relaxed his hold; ran round the seat&mdash;those brown
+      hands clenched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Bob Chater at no time had aching desire for a brawl, he was at least no
+      coward: here the events he had suffered well sufficed to whip his blood to
+      action. He sprang to his feet, was upon them as George, sideways to him,
+      came round the arm of the seat; lunged furiously and landed a crack upon
+      the cheekbone that spun George staggering up the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good blow, a lusty blow&mdash;straight from the shoulder and with
+      body and leg work behind it; a blow that, happier placed, might well have
+      won the battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A ring upon Bob's finger cut the flesh he struck, and he gave a savage
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; of triumph as he saw George go spinning and the red trickle come
+      breaking down his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great ridge in the gravel marked the thrust of foot with which George
+      stayed his stagger, from which he impelled the savage spring that brought
+      him within striking distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no science. This was no calmly prepared fight with cool brains
+      directing attack, searching weak points, husbanding strength, deft in
+      defence. Here was only the animal instinct to get close and wound; to
+      grapple and wound again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George it was that provoked this spirit. Till now he had not seen this
+      flushed face before him. But he had for many days conjured it up in his
+      fancy&mdash;sharpening upon it the edge of his wrath, bruising himself
+      against the wall of wise conduct that kept him from meeting and visiting
+      upon it the distress his Mary had endured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that he saw it in the flesh (and it was not unlike his conception), he
+      came at it with the impulse of one who, straining against a rope, rushes
+      headlong forward when a knife parts the bond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impulse thus given more than countered the greater bulk and reach that
+      should have told in Bob's scale. Bob felt his wits and his courage
+      simultaneously deserting him before the pell-mell of blows that came
+      raining against his guard. Whensoever he effected a savage smash that
+      momentarily checked the fury, it served but to bring back this seemingly
+      demented young man with a new rush and ardour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob gave step by step, struck short-arm, felt the faint saltness of blood
+      upon his lips, staggered back before a tremendous hit between the eyes,
+      stumbled, tripped, fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up!&rdquo; George bellowed; waited till Bob came rushing, and sent him
+      reeling again with a broken tooth that cut the brown knuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob lacked not courage and had proved it, for he was sorely battered. But
+      the pluck in him was whipped and now venom alone bade him make what hurt
+      he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heavy stick was leaning against the seat. He seized it; swung it high;
+      crashed a blow that must have split the head it aimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George slipped aside; the blow missed. He poised himself as Bob, following
+      the impulse, went staggering by; put all his weight behind a crashing hit
+      and sent him spinning prone with a blow that was fittingly final to the
+      exhibition of lusty knocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob propped himself on one arm, rose to his feet; glared; hesitated&mdash;then
+      fell to brushing his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a masterly white flag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had enough?&rdquo; George panted. &ldquo;Had enough? Are you whipped, you swine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob assiduously brushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you're better, let me know,&rdquo; George cried; turned and hurried up the
+      path whither Mary had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The forced draught of fury, pain, and exertion sent Bob's breath roaring
+      in and out in noisy blasts&mdash;now long and laboured, now spasmodic
+      quick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He examined his bill of health and damage. Face everywhere tender to the
+      touch; clothes dust-covered and torn; both knees of trousers rent; silk
+      hat stove in when in a backward rush he had set his foot upon it. His
+      tongue discovered a broken tooth, his handkerchief a bleeding nose, his
+      fingers blood upon his chin, trickling to his shirt front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So well as might be he brushed his person; straightened his hat; clapped
+      handkerchief to his mouth; past staring eyes, grinning faces, hurried out
+      of the Park to bury himself in a cab.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      From a window Mrs. Chater saw the bruised figure of her darling boy
+      alight; with palpitating heart rushed to greet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bob! My boy! My boy! What has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her boy brushed past; bounded to his room. Laboriously, sick with fear,
+      the devoted mother toiled in pursuit&mdash;found him in his room tearing
+      off his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy! My boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her boy bellowed: &ldquo;<i>Hot water!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Can a mother's tender care cease towards the child she bare?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! needless to ask such a question, you for whom is pictured this devoted
+      woman plunging at breakneck speed for the bathroom, screaming as she runs:
+      &ldquo;Susan! Kate! Jane! Jane! Kate! Susan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doors slammed, cries echoed, stairs shook, as trembling servants rushed
+      responsive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crashing of cans, rushing of water, called them to the bathroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, m'am! What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Water flew in sprays as the agonised mother tested its temperature with
+      her hands; cans rattled as she kicked them from where, in dragging one
+      from the shelf, the others had clattered about her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jane, Kate, and Susan clustered in alarm about the door: &ldquo;Oh, m'am! M'am!
+      Whatever is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater gave no reply. Her can full, she plunged through them. This
+      way and that they dodged to give her passage; dodge for dodge, demented,
+      hysterical, she gave them&mdash;slopping boiling water on to agonised
+      toes; bursting through at last; thundering up the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three plunged after her: &ldquo;Oh, m'am! M'am! Whatever is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The devoted woman paused at the head of the stairs; screamed down orders:
+      &ldquo;Sticking-plaster! Lint! Cotton-wool! Mr. Bob has had an accident!
+      Hot-water bottles! Ice! Doctor! Go for the doctor, one of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A figure with battered face above vest and pants bounded from its room.
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; Bob roared. &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; Mrs. Chater echoed, not knowing to what the negative applied, but
+      hysterically commanding it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; screamed the agitated servants, one to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no doctor!&rdquo; bellowed Bob; grabbed the can from his mother; shot back
+      to his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doctor!&rdquo; Mrs. Chater screamed to the white-faced pack upon the stairs;
+      fled after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy! Tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her boy raised his dripping face from the basin. &ldquo;For God's sake shut the
+      door!&rdquo; he roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did. &ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo; she trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's that damned girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray! Done that to you! Oh, your poor face! Your poor face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&mdash;no! Do be quiet, mother! Some infernal man she goes about with
+      in the Park! I spoke to him and he set on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The infamous creature! The wicked, infamous girl! A bad girl, I knew it!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agitated tapping at the door: &ldquo;The cotton-wool m'am.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sticking-plaster,
+      m'am.&rdquo; &ldquo;'Ot bottle, m'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away!&rdquo; roared Bob. &ldquo;Go away! O-oo, my face!&rdquo; He hopped in wrath and
+      pain. &ldquo;Send those damned women away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater rushed to the door. Passing, she for the first time caught
+      full sight of her son's face now that the hot water had exposed its wreck.
+      &ldquo;Oh, your eyes! Your poor eyes! They're closing up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob staggered to the mirror; discovered the full horror of his marred
+      beauty. &ldquo;Curse it!&rdquo; he groaned and gave an order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater flew to the telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the office of Mr. Samuel Hock, purveyor of meat, by appointment, to the
+      Prince of Wales, the telephone bell sharply rang. Mr. Hock stepped to the
+      receiver, listened, then bellowed an order into the shop:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of beefsteak to 14 Palace Gardens, sharp!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      With tremendous strides, with emotion roaring in and out his nostrils in
+      gusty blasts of fury, my passionate George encompassed the Park this way
+      and that until he came at length upon his trembling Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Save for that first blow where Bob's ring had marked his cheek he had
+      suffered but little in the fight&mdash;sufficiently, notwithstanding,
+      coupled with his colossal demeanour, for Mary's eyes to discover that
+      something was amiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came to him; cried at a little distance: &ldquo;Oh, dearest, I&mdash;I could
+      not meet you at the seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she saw more clearly. She asked: &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; and stood with
+      quivering lip recording the flutters of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George took one hand; patted it between both his. For the moment his
+      boiling anger cooled beneath grim relish of his news. &ldquo;I've pretty well
+      killed that Chater swine,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Chater?&mdash;you've met Mr. Chater?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now emotion boiled again in her turbulent George. He said: &ldquo;I saw you run
+      from him. I saw&mdash;what had he been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Georgie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, never mind. I'd rather not hear. I've paid him for it, whatever it
+      was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fought? Oh, and your face&mdash;and your hand bleeding too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears stood in this ridiculous Mary's eyes. Women so often cry at the
+      wrong moment. They should more closely study their men in the tremendous
+      mannish crises that come to some of us. This was no moment for tears; it
+      was an hour to be Amazon. To be hard-eyed. To count the scalps brought
+      home by the brave&mdash;in delight to squeal over them; in pride to clap
+      the hands and jump for joy at such big behaviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My Mary erred in every way. Her moistening eyes annoyed George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't make a fuss about that, Mary,&rdquo; he cried irritably. &ldquo;It's
+      nothing. Master Bob won't be able to see for a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, George, why did you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the tremendous young man flamed. &ldquo;Why did I do it? 'Pon my soul,
+      Mary, I simply don't understand you sometimes. You've made me stand by and
+      see you insulted for a month, and then I see him catch hold of you, and
+      you run, and I go and thrash him, and you say, 'Why did you do it?' <i>Do</i>
+      it? <i>Do</i> it? Why, good Lord, what would you have had me do&mdash;apologise
+      for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away, dropped his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My unfortunate George groaned aloud: sprang to her. &ldquo;Mary, darling,
+      dearest, you know I didn't mean that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept her face from him; her pretty shoulders heaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cried in misery, striving to see her face: &ldquo;What a brute I am! What a
+      brute! Mary, Mary, you know I didn't mean that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gasped: &ldquo;You ge-get angry so quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know. I'm not fit&mdash;I couldn't help&mdash;Mary, do look
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She swallowed a sob; gave him her little hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He squeezed it, squeezed it as it were between his love for her and the
+      tremendous passion that was consuming him. Contrition at his sharp words
+      to her hammered the upper plate, wrath at the manner of her reception of
+      his news was anvil beneath. The poor fingers horribly suffered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are conditions of the male mind&mdash;and this George was in the
+      very heart of one&mdash;when softness in a woman positively goads to fury.
+      The mind is in an itching fever, and&mdash;like a bull against a gate-post&mdash;requires
+      hard, sharp corners against which to rub and ease the irritation. Comes
+      the lord and master home sulky or in fury, the wise wife will meet him
+      with a demeanour so spiked that he may scratch his itching at every turn.
+      To be soft and yielding is the most fatal conduct; it is to send the
+      lumbering bull crashing through the gate-post into the lane to seek solace
+      away from the home paddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unversed in these homely recipes, this simple Mary had at least the wit
+      not to cry &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; in pain and move her hand. They found a seat, and for
+      good five minutes this turbulent George sat and threshed in his wrath like
+      a hooked shark&mdash;this little hand the rope that held him. Soon its
+      influence was felt. His tuggings and boundings grew weaker. The venom
+      oozed out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He uncovered the crushed fingers; raising, pressed them to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He groaned. &ldquo;Now you know me at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She patted those brown hands; did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the awful temper I've got,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;Uncontrollable&mdash;angry
+      even with you&mdash;foul brute&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I annoyed you, Georgie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung out an accusatory hand against himself. &ldquo;How? By being sweet and
+      loving! Why, what a brute I must be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him: &ldquo;You shan't call yourself names. In fact, you mustn't.
+      Because that is calling me names too. We belong, Georgie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pretty sentiment tickled him. Gloom flew from his brow before sunshine
+      that took its place. He laughed. &ldquo;You're a dear, dear old thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a whimsical look at him. &ldquo;I ought to have said at once what I am
+      going to say now: Did you hurt him much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bashed him!&rdquo; George said, revelling in it. &ldquo;I fairly bashed him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She snuggled against this tremendous fellow.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was a park-keeper who, from that opium drug of sweet silence with which
+      lovers love to dull their senses, recalled them to the urgency for action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The park-keeper led David by one hand, Angela by the other, whence he had
+      found them wandering. Disappointment that their owner was a protected lady
+      instead of a nicely-shaped nursemaid whom by this introduction he might
+      add to his recreations, delivered him of stern reproof at the carelessness
+      which had let these children go astray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would very much like to know,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;what their ma would say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My plump gentleman,&rdquo; said George pleasantly, &ldquo;meet me at this
+      trysting-place at noon to-morrow, and your desire shall be gratified.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The park-keeper eyed him; thought better of the bitter words he had
+      contemplated; contented himself with: &ldquo;Funny, ain't yer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Screaming,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;One long roar of mirth. Hundreds turned away
+      nightly. Early doors threepence extra. Bring the wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The park-keeper withdrew with a morose air.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      And now my George and his Mary turned upon the immediate future. Conning
+      the map of ways and means and roads of action, a desolate and almost
+      horrifying country presented itself. No path that might be followed
+      offered pleasant prospects. All led past that ogre's castle at 14 Palace
+      Gardens; at the head of each stood the ogress shape of Mrs. Chater,
+      gnashing for blood and bones over the disaster to her first-born. She must
+      be faced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George flared a torch to light the gloom: &ldquo;But why should you go near her,
+      dearest? Let me do it. I'll take the children back. I'll see her. I'll get
+      your boxes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the sweetest women trudge through life handicapped by the
+      preposterous burden of wishing to do what their sad little minds hold
+      right. It is a load which, too firmly strapped, makes them dull companions
+      on the highway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary said: &ldquo;It wouldn't be <i>right</i>, dear. The children are in my
+      charge; how could I send them back to their mother in the care of a
+      strange man? And it wouldn't be right to myself, either. It would look as
+      if I admitted myself in the wrong. No; I must, must face her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George's torch guttered; gave gloom again. He tried a second: &ldquo;Well, I'll
+      come with you. That's a great idea. She won't dare say much while I'm
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it wouldn't be <i>right</i>, Georgie. You oughtn't to come to the
+      house&mdash;to see her&mdash;after what you've done to the detestable Bob.
+      No, I'll go alone and I'll go now. You shall come as far as the top of the
+      road and there wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo; George asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was to research the map for rest-houses and for fortunes that might
+      be won after the ogre castle had been passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary conned and peered until the strain squeezed a little moisture in her
+      eyes. &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; she said faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bold George had to know. &ldquo;It won't be for very long, dear old girl.
+      You must find another situation. Till then a lodging. I know a place where
+      a man I know used to have digs. A jolly old landlady. I'll raise some
+      money&mdash;I'll borrow it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary tried to brighten. &ldquo;Yes, and I'll go to that agency again. I must,
+      because I shall have no character, you see. I'll tell her everything quite
+      truthfully, and I think she'll be nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no good waiting,&rdquo; George said. His voice had the sound of a funeral
+      bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary arose slowly, white. She said: &ldquo;Come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a tumbril rumble in their ears, the children dancing ahead, they
+      started for Palace Gardens.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The groans and curses of her adored Bob, his bulgy mouth and shutting
+      eyes, his tender nose and the encrimsoned water where he had layed his
+      wounds&mdash;these had so acted upon Mrs. Chater's nerves, plunged her
+      into such vortex of hysteria, that the manner of her reception of Mary was
+      true reflection of her fears, nothing dissembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Withdrawing her agitated face from the dining-room window as Mary and the
+      children approached, she bounded heavily to the door; flung it ajar;
+      collapsed to her knees upon the mat; clasped David and Angela to that
+      heaving bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Safe!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;Safe! Thank God, my little lambs are safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Distraught she swayed and hugged; kissed and moaned again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David pressed away. &ldquo;You smell like whisky, mummie,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a dash of icy water on a fainting fit; wonderfully it strung the
+      demented woman's senses. She pushed her little lambs from her; fixed Mary
+      with awful eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you've come back&mdash;<i>Miss?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary quivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder you dared. I wonder you had the boldness to face me after your
+      wicked behaviour. You've got nothing to say for yourself. I'm not
+      surprised&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary began: &ldquo;Mrs. Chater, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how can you? How can you dare defend yourself? Never, never in all my
+      born days have I met with such ingratitude; never have I been deceived
+      like this. I took you in. I felt sorry for you. I fed you, clothed you,
+      cared for you, treated you as one of my own family; and this is my reward.
+      There you stand, unable to say a word&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you think, Mrs. Chater&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't <i>speak</i>! I won't hear you. Here have I day after day been
+      entrusting my beloved lambs to your care, and heaven alone knows what
+      risks they have run. My boy&mdash;my Bob, who would die rather than get a
+      living soul into trouble&mdash;sees you with this man you have been going
+      about with. He does his duty to me, his mother, and to my precious lambs,
+      his brother and sister, by reproving you, and you set this man&mdash;this
+      low hired bully&mdash;upon him to murder him. I'll have the law on the
+      coward. I'll punish him and I'll punish you, miss. No wonder you were
+      frightened when my Bob caught you. No wonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is untrue, Mrs. Chater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't <i>speak!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will speak. I shall speak. It is untrue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You dare&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a lie. Yes, I don't mind what I say when you speak to me like that.
+      It is a wicked lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Girl&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your son told you he caught me with the man who thrashed him as he
+      deserved, he told you a lie. He never saw me with him. He followed me into
+      the Park this morning and tried to repeat what he did on Friday night. He
+      is a coward and a cad. The man to whom I am engaged caught him at it and
+      thrashed him as he deserved. There! Now you know the truth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Very white, my ridiculous Mary pressed her hand to her panting breast;
+      stopped, choked by the wild words that came tumbling up into her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very red, swelling and panting in turkey-cock fury, Mrs. Chater, towering,
+      swallowed and gasped, breathless before this vixenish attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was the first to find speech; and incoherently she stormed as at a
+      scratching do those persons whose true selves lie beneath a tissue film of
+      polish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bubbled and panted: &ldquo;Oh, you wicked girl!&mdash;oh, you wicked girl!&mdash;oh,
+      you wicked girl!&mdash;bold as brass-calling me a liar&mdash;<i>me</i>&mdash;and
+      my battered boy&mdash;engaged indeed!&mdash;I'll have the law and the
+      police and the judges&mdash;my solicitors&mdash;libel and assault, and
+      slander and attempted murder&mdash;boxes searched&mdash;my precious lambs
+      to hear their mother spoken to like this&mdash;get out of the hat-rack,
+      David, and go upstairs this instant&mdash;Angela, don't stand there&mdash;if
+      I wasn't a lady I'd box your ears, miss&mdash;only a week ago didn't I
+      give you a black silk skirt of mine?&mdash;and fed you like a princess,
+      with a soft feather pillow too, because you said the bolster made your
+      head ache&mdash;servants to wait on you hand and foot&mdash;and this is my
+      reward&mdash;how I keep my hands off you heaven only knows&mdash;but you
+      shall suffer, miss&mdash;oh, yes you shall&mdash;I'll give you in charge&mdash;I'll
+      call a policeman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned towards the kitchen stairs; screamed &ldquo;Susan! Kate! Jane!
+      Susan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Small need to bellow. Around the staircase corner three white-capped heads&mdash;Kate
+      holding back Susan, Susan restraining Jane, Jane holding Kate&mdash;had
+      been with delighted eyes and straining ears bathing in this rare scene.
+      With glad unanimity they broke their restraint one upon the other; crushed
+      pell-mell, hustling up the narrow stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater plumped back into a chair; with huge hands fanned her heated
+      face. &ldquo;Fetch a policeman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They plunged for the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob's swollen countenance came over the banisters. He roared &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate, Jane and Susan swung between the conflicting authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call a policeman! Summon a constable! Fetch an officer!&rdquo; In gusty breaths
+      from behind Mrs. Chater's hands, working like a red paddle-wheel, came the
+      commands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; roared Bob; and to enforce pushed forward the battered face till
+      it stuck out flat over the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His alarmed mother screamed: &ldquo;Bob, you'll fall over the banisters!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two kept up a battledore and shuttlecock of agitated conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, stop those women!&rdquo; Bob cried; &ldquo;for God's sake, stop them, mother!
+      What on earth are you thinking of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give her in charge!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't, you can't. Oh, my God, what a house this is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She called me a liar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't charge her for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She half murdered you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never touched me. Why don't you do as I told you? Why don't you send
+      her away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mercy, Bob! you'll fall and kill yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as I say, then! Do as I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, put back your head! Put back your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as I say, then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater stopped the paddle-wheel; rose to her feet. Bob's ghastly face
+      drew in to safer limits. She addressed Mary: &ldquo;Again my boy has interceded
+      for you. Oh, how you must feel!&rdquo; She addressed the maids: &ldquo;Is her box
+      packed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They chorused &ldquo;Yes&rdquo;; pointed, and Mary saw her tin box, corded, set
+      against the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call a cab,&rdquo; Mrs. Chater commanded; and as the whistle blew she turned
+      again upon Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, miss, you may go. I pack you off as you deserve. But before you go&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The battered face shot out again above the banisters: &ldquo;Pay her her wages
+      and send her away, mother. Do, for goodness' sake, send her away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wages! Certainly not! Mercy! Your head again! Go back, Bob!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The maddened, pain-racked Bob bellowed: &ldquo;Oh, stop it! stop it! I shall go
+      mad in a minute. She is entitled to her wages. Pay her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will. Susan! Susan, come up here and take this money. How much is
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not to be paid,&rdquo; Mrs. Chater trumpeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is to be paid,&rdquo; bawled her son. &ldquo;Do you want an action brought
+      against you? Oh, my God, what a house this is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy! You will fall! Very well, I'll pay her.&rdquo; Mrs. Chater turned to
+      Mary. &ldquo;Again and yet again my son intercedes for you, miss. Oh, how you
+      must feel!&rdquo; She grabbed around her dress for her pocket; found a purse;
+      produced coins; banged them upon the table. &ldquo;There!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now my Mary, who had stood upright breasting these successive surges,
+      spoke her little fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a hand she swept the table, sending the coins flying this way and
+      that&mdash;with them a card salver, a vase, a pile of prayer-books. With
+      her little foot she banged the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not touch your money&mdash;your beastly money. You are
+      contemptible and vulgar, and I despise you. Mr. Chater, if you are a man
+      you will tell your mother why you were thrashed. Do you dare to say you
+      interfered because you found me with someone? Do you dare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With masterly strategy Bob drove home a flank attack. To have affirmed he
+      did dare might lead to appalling outburst from this little vixen. He said
+      very quietly, as though moved by pity: &ldquo;Please do not make matters worse
+      by blustering, Miss Humfray.&rdquo; He sighed: &ldquo;I bear you no ill-will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My poor Mary allowed herself to be denuded of self-possession. His words
+      put her control to flight; left her exposed. Tears started in her eyes.
+      She made a little rush for the stairs. &ldquo;Oh, you coward!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You
+      coward! I will make you say the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Would she have clutched the skirts of his dressing-gown, forgetting the
+      proper modesty of a nice maiden, and dragged him down the stairs? Would
+      she indelicately have pursued him to his very bedroom, and there,
+      regardless of his scanty dress, have assaulted him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob believed she would. It is so easy for the world's heroines to remain
+      calm against attack. My Mary was made of commoner stuff&mdash;the
+      wretched, baser clay of which not I, but my neighbours, not you, but your
+      acquaintances, are made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob believed she would. He cried, &ldquo;Send her away! Why the devil don't you
+      send her away?&rdquo;; gathered his skirts; fled for the safety of a locked
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater believed she would. Mrs. Chater plunged across the hall;
+      stood, an impassable and panting guardian, upon the lowermost step. Her
+      outstretched arm stayed Mary; a voice announced, &ldquo;The cab'm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My Mary stood a moment; little fists clenched, flashing eyes; blinked
+      against the premonition of a rush of tears; then, as they came, turned for
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; trumpeted Mrs. Chater. &ldquo;Go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was upon the mat when Angela and David made a little rush; caught her
+      skirts. The alarming scenes had hurtled in sequence too rapid and too
+      violent to be by the children understood. But a scrap here and a scrap
+      there they had caught, retained, correctly interpreted; and the whole,
+      though it supplied no reason, told clearly that their adored Mary was
+      going from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're coming back soon, aren't you?&rdquo; David cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not going away, are you, Miss Humf'ay?&rdquo; implored Angela.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Chater shrilled: &ldquo;Children, come away. Come here at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary dropped one knee upon the mat; caught her arms about the children.
+      She pressed a cool face against each side her wet and burning countenance,
+      gave kisses, and upon the added stress of this new emotion choked:
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, little ducklings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, darling, <i>darling</i> Miss Humf'ay, we <i>will</i> be good if
+      you'll stay!&rdquo; They felt this was the desperate threat that so often
+      followed their misdemeanours put into action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held them, hugging them. &ldquo;It isn't that. You have been good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you said you would stay for ever and ever if we were good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not ever and ever; I said&mdash;I said perhaps a fairy prince would come
+      to take me. Didn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He regarded
+      the hansom at the door: &ldquo;That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy princes don't
+      come in cabs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle,
+      kiss me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon the
+      small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about which they
+      clung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They screamed, &ldquo;Let me go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and howl: &ldquo;Take away your
+      <i>hand</i>, mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Angela gasped: &ldquo;Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater's stormy eyes, my Mary stooped
+      over David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;David!&rdquo; The calm ring of the tones he had learned to obey checked his
+      clamour, his plunging kicks. She stooped; kissed him. &ldquo;Be good as gold,&rdquo;
+       she commanded. &ldquo;Promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good as gold&mdash;yes&mdash;p'omise,&rdquo; David choked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula. Mary stepped back. Susan
+      slammed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drive down the street,&rdquo; she choked; lay back against the cushions; gave
+      herself to shaking sobs.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Her George met her a very few yards down the street. He gave an order to
+      the cabman and sat beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long before her grief was hushed. She dried her eyes; nestled
+      against this wonderful fellow who, as love had now constituted her world,
+      was the solace against every trouble that could come to her, the shield
+      against any power that might arise to do her hurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They debated the position and found it desperate; discussed the immediate
+      future to discover it threatening. Yet the gloom was irradiated by the
+      glowing light of the prospective future; the rumbling of present fears was
+      lost in the tinkling music of their voices, striking notes from love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cab twisted this way and that; clattered over Battersea Bridge, down
+      the Park, to the right past the Free Library, and so into Meath Street and
+      to the clean little house of the landlady whom George knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her, in the tiny sitting-room, the story was told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appeared that she had never yet taken a lady lodger. In her street
+      ladies were regarded with suspicion; that no petticoats were ever to be
+      fetched across the threshold was a rule to which each medical student who
+      engaged her rooms must first subscribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None the less she was here acquiescent. She knew George well; had for him
+      an affection above that which commonly she entertained for the noisy young
+      men who were her means of livelihood. Mary should pay for the little back
+      bedroom that Mr. Thornton had; and, free of charge, should have use of the
+      sitting-room rented by Mr. Grainger. There would be no lodgers until the
+      medical schools reopened in October.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was settled&mdash;and together in the sitting-room where Mrs.
+      Pinking made them a little lunch again they debated the immediate future.
+      It was three weeks before George's examination was due. Again he declared
+      himself confident that, when actually he had passed, his uncle would not
+      refuse the 400 pounds which meant the world to them&mdash;which meant the
+      tight little practice at Runnygate. But the intervening weeks were
+      meanwhile to be faced. Mary must have home. At the Agency she must pour
+      forth her tale and seek new situation till they could be married. If the
+      Agency failed them&mdash;They shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Revolving desperate schemes for the betterment of this position into which
+      with such alarming suddenness they had been thrust, George took his leave.
+      He would have tarried, but his Mary was insistent that his work must not
+      be interfered with. Upon its successful exploitation everything now
+      depended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brightly she kissed her George good-bye. He was not to worry about her.
+      She was to be shut from his mind. To-morrow she would go to the Agency. He
+      might lunch with her, and, depend upon it, she would greet him with great
+      news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      In which this History begins to rattle.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will Lose
+      Nothing By Not Accompanying Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In pursuit of our opinion that the novel should hark back to its origin
+      and be as a story that is told by mouth to group of listeners, here we
+      momentarily break the thread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an occasion for advertisement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As when the personal narrator, upon resumption of his history, will at a
+      point declare, &ldquo;Now we come to the exciting part,&rdquo; so now do I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heretofore we have somewhat dragged. We have been as host and visitor at
+      tea in the drawing-room. Guests have arrived; to you I have introduced
+      them, and after the shortest spell they have taken their leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My Mary and my George&mdash;favoured guests&mdash;have sat with us through
+      our meal; but how fleeting our converse with those others&mdash;with Mr.
+      William Wyvern, with Margaret, with Mrs. Major and with Mr. Marrapit! I
+      grant you cause to grumble at their introduction, so purposeless has been
+      their part. I grant you they have been as the guests at whose arrival,
+      disturbing the intimate chatter, impatient glances are exchanged; at whose
+      departure there is shuffle of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I promise you we shall now link our personages and set our history
+      bounding to its conclusion. We have collected them; now to switch on the
+      connection and set them acting one against the other until the sparks do
+      fly; watching those sparks shall be your entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The switch which thus sets active the play of forces I shall call
+      circumstance. If it has been long delayed, I have the precedent of all the
+      story of human life as my excuse. For we are the children of circumstance.
+      We move each in our little circle by a stout hedge encompassed.
+      Circumstance suddenly will break the wall: some fellow man or woman is
+      flung against us, and immediately the quiet ambulation of our little
+      circle is for some conflict sharp exchanged. To-day we are at peace with
+      the world, to-morrow warring with all mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I say with all mankind, because so narrow and so selfish is our outlook
+      upon life that one single man or woman&mdash;a dullard neighbour or a
+      silly girl&mdash;who may interfere with us, throws into turmoil our whole
+      existence. Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out all life save only
+      this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world&mdash;engaging
+      our complete faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deeper misfortune cannot be conceived. It is through allowing such
+      occurrences to crush us that brows are wrinkled before their time; nerves
+      broken-edged while yet they should be firmly strung; death reached ere yet
+      the proper span of life is lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For these unduly wrinkled brows, too early broken nerves, too soon
+      encountered graves, civilised man has agreed upon an excuse. He names it
+      the strain of life in modern conditions. There is no body in this plea. It
+      is not the conditions that matter; it is our manner of receiving those
+      conditions. Bend to them and they will crush; face them and they become of
+      no avail; allow them to be the Whole of life, and immediately they are
+      given so great a weight that to withstand them is impossible; regard them
+      in their proper proportion to the scheme of things, and they become of
+      airy nothingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For if we regulate each to its right importance all that surrounds us, not
+      forgetting that since life is transient time is the only ultimate standard
+      of value, how unutterably insignificant must small human troubles appear
+      in their relation to the whole scheme of things, to the enduring hills,
+      the immense seas, vast space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gain strength from strength. Compare vexations encompassed by the artifice
+      of man with the tremendous life that is mothered by nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gain strength from strength. Set troubles against the enduring hills,
+      misfortunes against the immense seas, perplexities against vast space,
+      torments against the stout trees. Learn to take tribute of strength from
+      every object that is built of strength&mdash;the strength of solidity that
+      a stout beam may give, the strength of beauty that from a picture or a
+      statuary irradiates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gain strength from strength. It is a first principle of warfare to band
+      undisciplined troops with tried regiments, to shoulder recruits with
+      veterans. The horse-breaker will set the timid colt in harness with the
+      steady mare. Thus is stiffening and a sense of security imparted to the
+      weaker spirit; timidity oozes and is burned by the steady flame of courage
+      that from the stronger emanates. In the heat of that flame latent strength
+      warms and kindles in the weaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gain strength from strength. Seek intercourse with the minds that are
+      above you; if not to be encountered, they are to be purchased in books.
+      Avoid communion with the small minds below you and of your level.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man, nor book, nor thing can be touched without virtue passing thence
+      into you. See to it that who or what you touch gives you strength, not
+      weakness; uplifts, not debases. The aspiring athlete does not seek to
+      match his strength against inferiors. These give him&mdash;easy victory.
+      Contact with them is for him effortless; they tend to draw him to their
+      plane. Rather, being wise, he shuns them to pit his prowess against such
+      as can give him best, from whom he may learn, out of whom he will take
+      virtue, by whom he will be raised to all that is best in him. Gain
+      strength from strength. The attributes strength and weakness are as
+      infectious as the plague. Make your bed so that you may lie with strength
+      and catch his affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not pretend that these are thoughts which influenced the persons of
+      my history. My unthinking George and my simple Mary would care nothing for
+      such things. Sight of the enduring hills would evoke in my George the
+      uttered belief that they would be an infernal sweat to climb; sound of the
+      immense seas if in anger would move my Mary to prayer for all those in
+      peril on the wave, if in lapping tranquillity to sentimental thoughts of
+      her George. But they had laughter and they had love. Adversity can make
+      little fight against those lusty weapons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now we have an exquisite balcony scene and rare midnight alarms for
+      your delectation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      On that day when George left his Mary at the little lodgings in Meath
+      Street, Battersea, Bill Wyvern returned to Paitley Hill after absence from
+      home for a week upon a visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Margaret was his first thought upon his arrival. Letters between the
+      pair were, by the sharpness of Mr. Marrapit's eye, compelled to be
+      exchanged not through the post but by medium of a lovers' postal box
+      situate in the hole of a tree in that shrubbery of Herons' Holt where they
+      were wont by stealth to meet. Thus when Bill, upon this day of his return,
+      scaled the tremendous wall and groped among the bushes, he saw the
+      trysting bower innocent of his love&mdash;then searched and found a
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sad little note for lover's heart. Mr. Marrapit, it said, abed of a
+      chill, prevented Margaret meeting her Bill that afternoon. Her father must
+      be constantly ministered; impossible to say when she would be released.
+      She heard him calling, she must fly to him. With fondest love. No time for
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The lines chilled Bill's heart. His was a fidgety and nervous love that
+      took fright at shadow of doubt. The week that had divided him from
+      Margaret was the longest period they had not embraced since their
+      discovery one of another. Was it not possible, he tortured himself, that
+      loss of his presence had blurred his image in her heart? Countless heroes
+      of his own stories who thus had suffered rose to assure him that possible
+      indeed it was. The more he brooded upon it the more probable did it
+      become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bedtime found him desolated. In apprehension he paced his room. The
+      thought of sleep with this devil of doubt to thump his pillow was
+      impossible. Leaning from his window he gazed upon the stars and groaned;
+      dropped eyes to the lawn, silvered in moonlight, and started beneath the
+      prick of a sudden thought. It was a night conceived for lovers' tryst. He
+      would seek his Margaret's open window, whistle her from her bed, and bring
+      this damned doubt of her to reality or knock the ghostly villain dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an inspiriting thought, and Bill started to whistle upon it until
+      he remembered the demeanour in which he would have sent forth one of his
+      own heroes upon such a mission. &ldquo;Dark eyes gleaming strangely from a pale,
+      set face,&rdquo; he would have written. Bill's eyes were of a clearest,
+      childlike blue which interfered a little with the proper conception of the
+      role he was to play; but blanketing his spirits in melancholy he stepped
+      from his room and passed down the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That favoured bull-terrier Abiram, sleeping in the hall, drummed a tattoo
+      of welcome upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chuck it,&rdquo; said Bill morosely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;faithful hound&rdquo; that gives solace to the wounded heart is a pretty
+      enough thing in stories; Abiram had had no training for the part. This dog
+      associated his master not with melancholy that needed caressing but with
+      wild &ldquo;rags&rdquo; that gave and demanded tremendous spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Intelligence, however, showed the wise creature that the tone of that
+      command meant he was to be excluded from whatever wild rag might be now
+      afoot. It was not to be borne. Therefore, to lull suspicion, Abiram ceased
+      his drumming; rose when Bill had passed; behind him crept stealthily; and
+      upon the door being opened bounded around his master's legs and into the
+      moonlight with a joyous yelp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fearful of arousing Korah and Dathan in their kennels to tremendous din if
+      he bellowed orders, Bill hissed commands advising Abiram to return indoors
+      under threat of awful penalties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abiram frisked and skipped upon the lawn like a young lamb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill changed commands for missiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abiram, entering into the thing with rare spirit, caught, worried, and
+      killed each clod of earth hurled at him, then bounded expectant forward
+      for the next sacrifice that would be thrown for his delight in this
+      entrancing game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; spoke Bill between his teeth. &ldquo;Very well. You jolly well
+      come, my boy. Wait till you get near enough for me to catch you, that's
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath this understanding they moved forward across the lawn and down the
+      road; Abiram sufficiently in the rear to harass rats that might be going
+      about their business, without himself being in the zone of his master's
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heaving a sigh burthened with fond memory as he passed the wall of Herons'
+      Holt where it gave upon the secret meeting-place in the shrubbery, Bill
+      skirted the grounds; for the second time in his life passed through the
+      gate and up the drive.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Well he knew his adored's window. From the shrubbery she had pointed it
+      him. Now with a bang of the heart he observed that the bottom sash stood
+      open so that night breezes, mingling freely with the perfumes of her
+      apartment, unhindered could bear in to her his tremulous love-signals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He set a low whistle upon the air. It was not louder, he felt, than the
+      agitated banging of his heart that succeeded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he whistled, and once again. There was a rustling from within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo; he softly called. &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She appeared. The blessed damosel leaned out. About her yearning face the
+      long dark hair abundantly fell; her pretty bed-gown, unbuttoned low, gave
+      him glimpse of snowy bosom, beautifully rounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bill!&rdquo; she cried, stretching her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, glancing downwards at her person, she stepped back swiftly.
+      Reappearing, the soft round of her twin breasts was not to view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had buttoned up her night-dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bill!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Wow!</i>&rdquo; spoke Abiram in nerve-shattering welcome. &ldquo;<i>Wow!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blessed damosel fled. Bill plunged a kick. Abiram took the skirt of
+      it; waddled away across the lawn, his waving stern expressing pleasure at
+      having at once shown his politeness by bidding a lady good evening, and at
+      being, like true gentleman, well able to take a hint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill put upon the breeze:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right. He's gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer. Shuddering with terror lest that hideous <i>wow!</i> had
+      disturbed the house the blessed damosel lay trembling abed, the coverings
+      pressed about her straining ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's gone,&rdquo; Bill strained again, his larynx torn with the rasp of
+      whispers that must penetrate like shouts and yet speed soft-shod. &ldquo;He's
+      gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret put a white leg to the ground&mdash;listened; drew forth its
+      companion&mdash;listened; glimpsed her white legs; shuddered at such
+      immodesty with a man so close; veiled them to their toes with her
+      bed-gown; listened; stepped again to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bill!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has anyone heard, do you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling, not a soul. It sounded loud to us. Oh, Margaret&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know why I am come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&mdash;no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought&mdash;from your note&mdash;that you didn't care to see me
+      again. I thought-being away like that&mdash;that you found you didn't-love
+      me after all. Oh, I was tortured, Margaret. Oh&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn!&rdquo; said Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blessed damosel poked her beautiful head again into the night. &ldquo;It's
+      all right. I thought I heard a sound. We must be careful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Margaret, I was tortured&mdash;racked. I had to come to you. Tell me
+      I was wrong in thinking&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bill, Bill, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This girl was well-nigh in a swoon of delicious excitement. Emotion took
+      her and must be gulped ere she found voice. She stretched her arms down
+      towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bill, I thought so, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A steely pang struck at his heart. &ldquo;You thought you didn't love me after
+      all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emotion dragged her from the window to her waist. Her long hair cascaded
+      down to him so that the delicious tips, kissing his face, might by his
+      lips be kissed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she breathed; &ldquo;I thought the same of you. I thought you might
+      have found&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn!&rdquo; said Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She reappeared; again her tresses trickled to him. &ldquo;It's all right. I
+      thought you might have found you didn't love me after all. Dearest, not
+      hearing from you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In sympathy of spirit Bill groaned: &ldquo;What could I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her hands in a delicious ecstasy. &ldquo;I know, I know. But you
+      know how foolish I am. I felt&mdash;oh, Bill, forgive me!&mdash;I felt
+      that, if you had really cared, a way of sending me a message might have
+      been found. Of course, it was impossible. And there was more than that.
+      When we parted last week, I thought you seemed not to care very much&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know. I know now how foolish I was, but that is what I thought&mdash;and,
+      Bill, it tortured me. I've not been able to sleep at nights. That is how I
+      was awake just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, I believe you're crying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so&mdash;so happy now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, so am I! Aren't you glad I came, Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She murmured, &ldquo;Oh, Bill!&rdquo;; gave him a smile that pictured her answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mutually they gazed for a space, drinking delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her thirst quenched, Margaret said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bill, those nights, those terrible nights when I have been doubtful of
+      you, filled me with thoughts that shaped into a poem last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A poem to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About us. Shall I read it?&mdash;now that the doubt is all over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He begged her read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand
+      paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful
+      moon:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Our meeting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature knew we met?
+  Twilight soft with a gentle breeze
+  Bearing scent of the slumbering seas;
+  Music sweet&mdash;'twas a nightingale,
+  Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail&mdash;
+  Golden sky that was flecked with red
+  (Ribands of rose on a golden bed).
+  Ah, love! when first we met!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      She paused. &ldquo;It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest,&rdquo; she whispered,
+      &ldquo;and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That is the imagery
+      of it&mdash;as it seemed to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill said: &ldquo;And to me; a beautiful imagery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: &ldquo;Oh, it's nothing, really.
+      You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in song. One has to
+      set them down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is merely the instrument,&rdquo; Bill said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the instrument.&rdquo; She hugged the phrase. &ldquo;The <i>instrument</i>. How
+      cleverly you put things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill disavowed the gift. Margaret breathed, &ldquo;Oh, you do; I have so often
+      noticed it.&rdquo; Bill again denied.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Conventionality demanded this little exchange of them, and to-day the
+      empress sway of conventionality is rarely rebelled. Even, as here, when
+      treading the path of love, the journey must constantly be stopped while
+      handfuls of the sweet-smelling stuff are tossed about our persons. Neglect
+      the duty and you must walk alone. For to neglect conventionality is like
+      going abroad without clothes; the naked man appears. Now, nothing can be
+      more utterly horrid to our senses than a stark woman or stark man walking
+      down the street. We should certainly pull aside the blind to have a peep,
+      and the more we could see of the nakedness the further would we crane our
+      heads (provided no one was by to watch); but to go out and chat, to be
+      seen in company with the naked creature, is another matter. We would
+      sooner chop off our legs. So with the conventions. The fewer of them you
+      wear, the more naked (that is to say, real) do you become. Eyes will poke
+      at you round the blinds, but you must walk quickly past the gate, please.
+      If you will not go through the machine and come out a nice smooth sausage,
+      well, you must remain original flesh and gristle; but you will smell
+      horrid in nice noses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it not warming, as you read this, to know perfectly well that you are
+      not one of the sausages?
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When they had sufficiently daubed themselves, Margaret asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I read the next verse? That was the imagery of our meeting; this of
+      our parting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill gulped. This man was fondling the scented tresses that trickled about
+      his face; speech was a little difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her page beneath the moon; gave her voice to its rapture:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Our parting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature our folly knew?
+  Mournful swish of the sobbing rain;
+  Distant surge of the Deep in pain;
+  Whispering wail of the wandering wind,
+  Seeking, sobbing, a rest to find;
+  Fitful gleam from a troubled sky
+  (Nature weeping to see love die).
+  Ah, love, when last we met!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a perfect day, really,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Very hot, and just before
+      lunch, do you remember? But there, again, it is the <i>imagery</i> of it
+      as it seemed to our inner selves. It comes to one, and one is the <i>instrument</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill's voice was hoarse. &ldquo;Margaret, come down to me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must. I must touch you&mdash;kiss you. You must come down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bill, I dare not; I should be heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bitted his next words as they came galloping up. Dare he give them
+      rein? And then again he bathed in the ecstasy of the scene. The black
+      square of the open window; the scented roses that framed it; the silver
+      night that lit its picture&mdash;her dusky face between her streaming
+      hair, her white arms, bare to where the pushed-back sleeves gave them to
+      the soft breeze to kiss, the soft outline of her breast where the press of
+      her weight drew close her gown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not to be borne. The bitted words lashed from his hold. He gasped:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am coming up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was she aghast at him? he asked himself. He stood half-checked while her
+      steady eyes left his face, roamed from him&mdash;contrasting, as ashamed
+      he felt, the purity of the still night with the clamour of his turbulent
+      passions&mdash;and settled on an adjacent flowerbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she spoke, very calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a potting-box just there,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you turned it on end
+      you could reach the window, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The box gave him two feet of reach. He jumped for the ledge&mdash;caught
+      it; pulled; fetched the curve of an arm over the sill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then between earth and paradise he hung limp; for a sudden horror was in
+      his Margaret's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put upon his brow a hand that pressed him back; gave words to her
+      pictured alarm: &ldquo;A step upon the gravel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      'Twixt earth and window, with dangling legs and clutching arms, in
+      muscle-racking pain he hung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truly a step, and then another step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then a very tornado of sound beat furiously upon the trembling night;
+      with it a flash; from it the pattering of a hundred bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone had discharged a gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Satan was hurled, so, plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill fell.
+      And now the still air was lashed into a fury of sound-waves, tearing this
+      way and that in twenty keys; now the sleeping garden was torn by rushing
+      figures, helter-skelter for life and honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sounds!&mdash;the melancholy bellow of that gardener, Mr. Fletcher, as the
+      recoil of the bell-mouthed blunderbuss he had fired hurled him prone upon
+      the gravel; the dreadful imprecations of Bill striving to clear his leg of
+      the potting-box through whose side it had plunged; piercing screams of
+      Mrs. Major from a ground-floor room; shrills of alarm from Mr. Marrapit;
+      <i>gurr-r-ing</i> yelps from Abiram in ecstasy of man-hunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rushing figures!&mdash;Bill, freed from his box, at top speed towards the
+      shrubbery; Mr. Fletcher, up from his fall, with tremendous springs
+      bounding across the lawn; Abiram in hurtling pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More sounds!&mdash;panic screams from Mr. Fletcher, heavily labouring; the
+      protest of a window roughly raised; from George's head, thrust into the
+      night: &ldquo;Yi! Yi! Yi! Hup, then! Good dog! Sock him! Sock him! Yi! Yi! Yi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We must seek the fuse that touched off this hideous turbulence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Alarums And Excursions By Night.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      We are going into a lady's bedroom, but I promise you the thing shall be
+      nicely done: there shall not be a blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midnight when Bill Wyvern projected the scheme whose execution we
+      have followed through sweetness to disaster. Two hours earlier the
+      Marrapit household had sought its beds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Marrapit's wise rule that each member of his establishment
+      should pass before him as he or she sought their chambers. Night is the
+      hour when the thoughts take on unbridled licence; and he would send his
+      household to sleep each with some last admonition to curb fantastic
+      wanderings of the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this night Mr. Marrapit was himself abed of the chill that Margaret
+      had mentioned in her note to Bill. But the review was not therefore
+      foregone. Upon his back, night-capped head on pillow propped, he lay as
+      the minute-hand of his clock ticked towards ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His brow ruffled against a sound without his door. He called:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Armitage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; spoke Mrs. Armitage through the oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Breathe less stertorously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Armitage, his cook, waiting outside upon the mat, gulped wrath;
+      respirated through open mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock at Mr. Marrapit's elbow gave the first chime of ten. Instantly
+      Mrs. Armitage tapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enter,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waddled her stout figure to him. Behind her Clara and Ada, those trim
+      maids, took place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit addressed her. &ldquo;To-morrow, Mrs. Armitage, arouse your girls
+      at six. Speed them at their toilet; set them to clean your flues.&rdquo; He
+      glanced at a tablet taken from beneath his pillow. &ldquo;At 4.6 this afternoon
+      I smelt soot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The flues were cleaned this morning, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Untrue. Your girls were late. Prone in suffering upon my couch, my ears
+      tell me all that is accomplished in every part of the house. Ten minutes
+      after your girls descended I heard the kitchen fire roar. I suspect
+      paraffin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Armitage wriggled to displace the blame. &ldquo;I rose them at six, sir.
+      They sleep that heavy and they take that long to dressing, it's a wonder
+      to me they ever do get down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit addressed the sluggards. &ldquo;Shun the enervating couch. Spring
+      to the call. Cleanliness satisfied, adorn not the figure; pursue the
+      duties. Ponder this. Seek help to effect it. Contrive a special prayer. To
+      your beds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They left him; upon the mat encountered Frederick, and him, in abandon of
+      relief, dug vitally with vulgar thumbs.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Squirming, Frederick, the gardener's boy, advanced to the bedside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit sternly regarded him: &ldquo;Recite your misdeeds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've done me jobs, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prostrated, I cannot check your testimony. One awful eye above alone can
+      tell. Upon your knees this night search stringently your heart. Bend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frederick inclined his neck until his forehead was upon the coverlet. Mr.
+      Marrapit scanned the neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behind the ears are stale traces. Cleanse abundantly. To your bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without the door Frederick encountered Mr. Fletcher. &ldquo;You let me catch you
+      reading abed to-night,&rdquo; Mr. Fletcher warned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cleanse yer blarsted ear-'oles,&rdquo; breathed Frederick, pushing past.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher moved in to the presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is all securely barred, bolted and shuttered?&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am apprehensive. This is the first night I have not accompanied you
+      upon your round. Colossal responsibility lies upon you. Should thieves
+      break through and steal, upon your head devolves the crime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wearily Mr. Fletcher repeated: &ldquo;It's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit frowned: &ldquo;You do not inspire confidence. Sleep films your
+      eye. I shudder for you. Women and children are in your care this night.
+      The maids, Mrs. Armitage, Mrs. Major, my daughter, the young life of
+      Frederick, are in your hands. What if rapine and murder, concealed in the
+      garden, are loosed beneath my roof this night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher passed a fist across his brow; spoke wearily: &ldquo;It's all
+      right, Mr. Marrapit. I can't say more; I can't do more. I tell you again
+      it's all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Substantiate. Adduce evidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher raised an appealing hand: &ldquo;How can I prove it? My word's a
+      good word, ain't it? I tell you the doors are locked. I can't bring 'em up
+      to show you, can I? I'm a gardener, I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By zeal give proof. Set your alarum-clock so that twice in the night you
+      may be roused. Gird then yourself and patrol. But lightly slumber. Should
+      my bell sound in your room spring instantly to my bedside. To your couch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Battling speech, Mr. Fletcher moved to the door. At the threshold protest
+      overcame him. He gave it vent: &ldquo;I should like to ast if I was engaged to
+      work by night as well as day? Can't I even have me rest? 'Ow many nights
+      am I to patrol the house? It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am;
+      not a watchdog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Away, insolence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Insolence, upon the stairs, morosely descending, drew aside to give room
+      to Margaret and George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret parted her lips at him in her appealing smile. &ldquo;Oh, Mr.
+      Fletcher,&rdquo; in her pretty way she said, &ldquo;you locked me out. Indeed you
+      did.&rdquo; She smiled again; tripped towards Mr. Marrapit's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher stayed George, following. &ldquo;Mr. George, did you shut up secure
+      behind Miss Margaret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George reassured him; questioned his earnestness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher pointed through a window that gave upon the garden. &ldquo;I've the
+      'orrors on me to-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;According to Master there's rapine
+      lurking in them bushes. Mr. George, what'll I do if there's rapine beneath
+      this roof to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catch it firmly by the back of the neck and hold its head in a bucket of
+      water,&rdquo; George told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher passed, pondering the suggestion. &ldquo;Only something to do with
+      rats after all,&rdquo; he cogitated with wan smile of relief.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Margaret, at her father's bedside, luxuriously mouthed the fine phrases of
+      the Book of Job which nightly she read him. Her chapter finished, she
+      inquired: &ldquo;Shall I read on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Job continue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, father. The next begins, 'Then answered Bildad, the Shuite.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George coughed upon the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terminate,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Bildad is without.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father, George is not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He torments me. He is Bildad. Terminate. To your bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed a warm kiss upon Job's brow; took on her soft cheek the salute
+      of his thin lips. &ldquo;You have everything, dear father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prone on my couch I lack much. I am content. You are a good girl,
+      Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father!&rdquo; She tripped from the room in a warmth of satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rough head of Bildad the Shuite came round the door; spoke &ldquo;Good
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Approach,&rdquo; said Job. Bildad's legs came over the mat. &ldquo;You seek your
+      room? But not your couch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to bed, if that's what you mean,&rdquo; George told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit groaned. &ldquo;Spurn it. Shun sloth. In the midnight oil set the
+      wick of knowledge. Burn it, trim it, tend it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George withdrew to his room; set the midnight pipe in his mouth; leaning
+      from his window sped his thoughts to Battersea.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      One member of the house remained to be sent to sleep. Mrs. Major put a
+      soft knuckle to the door; came at the call; whispered &ldquo;I thought I might
+      disturb you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never disturb me, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little squeak sprung from the nutter in the masterly woman's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sigh, Mrs. Major?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I can't bear to see you lying there. The&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      paused against an effort, then took the aspirate in a masterly rush&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      house is not the same without you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sympathy is very consoling to me, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Marrapit!&rdquo; She plunged a shaft that should try him: &ldquo;I wish I had
+      the right to give you more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your position in this house gives you free access to me, Mrs. Major.
+      Regard your place as one of my own circle. Do not let deference stifle
+      intercourse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman hove a superb sigh. &ldquo;If you knew how I feel your
+      kindness, Mr. Marrapit. Truly, as I say to myself every night, fair is my
+      lot and goodly is my&mdash;&rdquo; Icy dismay took her. Was the missing word
+      &ldquo;hermitage&rdquo; or &ldquo;heritage&rdquo;? With masterly decision she filled the blank
+      with a telling choke; keyed her voice to a brilliant suggestion of
+      brightness struggling with tears: &ldquo;The sweetling cats are safely sleeping.
+      I have come straight from them. Ah, how they miss you! How well they know
+      you suffer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do?&rdquo; A tremble of pleasure was in Mr. Marrapit's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They does&mdash;do.&rdquo; Mrs. Major recited their day, gave their menu. &ldquo;I
+      must not tarry,&rdquo; she concluded; &ldquo;you need rest. Good night, Mr. Marrapit.
+      Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit put out his candle.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      And now in every room, save one, Sleep drew her velvet fingers down
+      recumbent forms; pressed eyelids with her languorous kiss; upon her warm
+      breast pillowed willing heads; about her bedfellows drew her Circe arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major's room was that single exception, and it is that masterly
+      woman's apartment we now shall penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hurrying to semi-toilet; again assuring herself that the key was turned;
+      peering a last time for lurking ravishers beneath the bed, Mrs. Major then
+      fumbled with keys before her box&mdash;threw up the lid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down through a pile of garments plunged her arm. Her searching fingers
+      closed about her quest and a very beautiful smile softened her face&mdash;a
+      smile of quiet confidence and of trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In greater degree than men, women have this power of taking strength from
+      the mere contact of an inanimate object. A girl will smile all through her
+      sleep because, hand beneath pillow, her fingers are about a photograph or
+      letter; no need, as with Mrs. Major there was no need, even to see the
+      thing that thus inspires. The pretty hand will delve to recesses of a
+      drawer, and the thrill that brings the smile will run up from, it may be,
+      a Bible, a diary, or a packet of letters touched. Dependent since Eden,
+      woman is more emotionally responsive to aught that gives aid than is man;
+      for man is accustomed to battle for his prizes, not to receive them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major drew up, that smile still upon her face, and the moon through
+      uncurtained window gave light upon the little joy she fetched from the
+      depths of her trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Tom Gin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The neck of Old Tom's bottle clinked against a glass; Old Tom gurgled
+      generously; passed away through the steady smile he had inspired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major set a carafe of water upon a little table; partnered it with
+      Old Tom; reclined beside the pair on a comfortable seat; closed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At intervals, as the hand crept between eleven and twelve of the clock,
+      she would open them; when she did so diluted Old Tom in the glass fell
+      lower, full-bodied Old Tom in the bottle marched steadily behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The further Old Tom crept downwards from the neck of his captivity, with
+      the greater circumspection did Mrs. Major open her eyes. Considerable
+      practice had told this masterly woman that Old Tom must be commanded with
+      a steady will: else he took liberties. Eyes suddenly opened annoyed Old
+      Tom, and he would set the furniture ambulating round the room in a manner
+      at once indecorous in stable objects and calculated to bewilder the
+      observer. Therefore, upon setting down her glass, this purposeful woman
+      would squarely fix the bureau that stood opposite her, would for a moment
+      keep her gaze upon it with a sternness that forbade movement, then gently
+      would close her eyes. When Old Tom must be again interviewed she would
+      lift the merest corner of an eyelid; catch through it the merest fraction
+      of the bureau; determine from the behaviour of this portion the stability
+      of the whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus if the corner she sighted showed indecorous propensities&mdash;as,
+      swelling and receding, fluttering in some ghostly breeze, or altogether
+      disappearing from view,&mdash;she would drop her lid and wait till she
+      might catch it more seemly. This effected, she would work from that fixed
+      point, inch by inch, until the whole bureau was revealed&mdash;swaying a
+      little, perhaps, but presently quiescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, and not until, it was firmly anchored she would slowly start her eye
+      in review around the other objects of her apartment. If the wash-stand had
+      tendency to polka with the bed, or the wardrobe unnaturally to stretch up
+      its head through the ceiling, Mrs. Major would march her gaze steadily
+      back to the bureau, there to take fresh strength and start again. When all
+      was orderly&mdash;then Old Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Masterly in all things, this woman was most masterly in her cups.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Into Mr. Marrapit's dreams there came a whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed at Sleep; she crooned to him and he snuggled against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon his brain there rapped a harsh <i>Wow</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wriggled from his bedfellow; she put an arm about him, drew him to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now there succeeded a steady wash of sound&mdash;rising, falling,
+      murmuring persistent against his senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his back upon Sleep. She crooned; he wriggled from her.
+      Seductively she followed; he kicked a leg and jarred her, threw an arm and
+      hurt her. Disgusted, she slipped from bed and left him, leaving a chilly
+      space where she had warmly lain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit shivered; felt for Sleep; found her gone; with a start sat
+      upright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breakwater gone, that wash of sound which had lapped around his senses
+      rushed in upon them. Lingering traces of the touch of Sleep still offered
+      resistance&mdash;a droning hum. The wash surged over, poured about him&mdash;<i>VOICES</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit violently cleared his throat. The voices continued. Violently
+      again. They still continued. Tremendously a third time. They yet
+      continued. From this he argued that they could not be very close to his
+      door. Intently he listened, then located them&mdash;they came from the
+      garden. He felt for the bell-push that carried to Mr. Fletcher's room; put
+      his thumb upon it; steadily pressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sleep toyed no tricks in Mr. Fletcher's bed. Like some wanton mistress
+      discovered in the very act of betrayal, she at the first tearing clamour
+      of the electric bell bounded from the sheets, scuttled from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rapine!&rdquo; cried Mr. Fletcher; plunged his head beneath the bedclothes and
+      wrestled in prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strident gong faltered not nor failed. Steady and penetrating it
+      dinned its hideous call. Mr. Fletcher waited for screams. None came. He
+      pushed the sheet between his chattering teeth, listened for cudgelling and
+      heavy falls. None came. That bell had single possession of the night. The
+      possibility that only patrolling was required of him nerved him to draw
+      from his concealment. He lit a candle; into trousers pushed his quivering
+      legs; upon tottering limbs passed up the stairs to Mr. Marrapit's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judas!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit greeted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher sighed relief: &ldquo;I thought it was rapine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have betrayed your trust. You are Iscariot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come when you rung.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence. I have heard voices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God help us,&rdquo; Mr. Fletcher piously groaned; the candle in his shaking
+      hand showered wax.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blasphemer! He will not help the craven. Gird yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll call Mr. George.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Refrain. I will attend to that. Gird yourself. Take the musket from the
+      hall. It is loaded. Patrol!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want the musket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be not overbold. Outside you may be at their mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Outside!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me patrol outside!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is your task. Forward!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By now Mr. Marrapit had risen; swathed himself in a dressing-gown. Sternly
+      he addressed Mr. Fletcher: &ldquo;As you this night quit yourself so will I
+      consider the question of your dismissal. If blood is spilt this night it
+      will be upon your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher trembled. &ldquo;That's just it. It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forward, Iscariot.&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit drove Judas before him; in the hall took
+      down the gun and pressed it into the shaking hands. He drew the bolts,
+      impelled Iscariot outward, and essayed to close the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher clutched the handle. Mr. Marrapit pushed; hissed through the
+      crack: &ldquo;Away! Search every nook. Penetrate each fastness. Use stealth.
+      Track, trace, follow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Discarding entreaty, Mr. Fletcher put hoarse protest through the slit of
+      aperture that remained: &ldquo;I should like to ast if I was engaged for this,
+      Mr. Marrapit,&rdquo; he panted. &ldquo;I'm a gardener, I am&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recognise that. To your department. With your life forefend it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit fetched the door against the lintel; in the brief moment he
+      could hold it close slid the lock.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      No tremor of fear or of excitement ruffled this remarkable man. Calm in
+      the breezes of life he was calm also in its tempests. This is a natural
+      corollary. As a man faces the smaller matters of his life so he will face
+      its crises. Each smallest act accomplished imprints its stamp upon the
+      pliable mass we call character; our manner of handling each tiniest
+      common-place of our routine helps mould its form; each fleeting thought
+      helps shape the mould.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The process is involuntary and we are not aware of its working. Character
+      is not made by tremendous thumps, but by the constant patterings of
+      minutest touches. The athlete does not build his strength by enormous
+      exertions, but by consistent and gentle training. Huge strains at
+      spasmodic intervals, separated by periods in which he lies fallow in
+      sloth, add nothing to his capacity for endurance; it is by the tally of
+      each minute of his preparation that you may read how he will acquit
+      himself against the test. Thus also with the shaping of character, and
+      thus was Mr. Marrapit, collected in minor affairs, mighty in this crisis.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IX.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Turning from the door he marched steadily across the hall towards the
+      stairs to arouse George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the lowermost step a movement on the landing above made him pause. He
+      was to be spared the trouble. Placing the candle upon a table he looked
+      up. He spoke. &ldquo;George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wash it?&rdquo; said a voice. &ldquo;Wash it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wash nothing,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit commanded. &ldquo;Who is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer, starting low, ascended a shrill scale: &ldquo;Wash it? Wash it? Wash
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit answered. &ldquo;Descend!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He craned upwards. The curl-papered head of Mrs. Major poked at him over
+      the banisters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling,&rdquo; breathed Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Darling&mdash;<i>um!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Major! What is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thash what <i>I</i> want to know,&rdquo; said Mrs. Major coquettishly. &ldquo;Wash
+      it? Wash <i>ish</i> it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are distraught, Mrs. Major. Have no fear. To your room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The curl-papered head waggled. Mrs. Major beamed. &ldquo;Darling. Darling&mdash;um!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exercise control,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit told her. &ldquo;Banish apprehension. There are
+      thieves; but we are alert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The head withdrew. Mrs. Major gave a tiny scream: &ldquo;Thieves!&rdquo; She took a
+      brisk little run down the short flight which gave from where she stood;
+      flattened against the wall that checked her impulse; pressed carefully
+      away from it; stood at the head of the stairs facing Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gazed up. &ldquo;I fear you have been walking in your sleep, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major did not reply. She pointed a slippered toe at the stair below
+      her; swayed on one leg; dropped to the toe; steadied; beamed at Mr.
+      Marrapit; and in a high treble coquettishly announced, &ldquo;<i>One</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit frowned: &ldquo;Retire, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major plumped another step, beamed again: &ldquo;<i>Two</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You dream. Retire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major daintily lifted her skirt; poised again. The projected slipper
+      swayed a dangerous circle. Mrs. Major alarmingly rocked. That infamous Old
+      Tom presented three sets of banisters for her support; she clutched at
+      one; it failed her; &ldquo;Three four five six seven eight nine ten&mdash;<i>darling</i>!&rdquo;
+       she cried; at breakneck speed plunged downwards, and with the &ldquo;<i>Darling</i>!&rdquo;
+       flung her arms about Mr. Marrapit's neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back before the shock, staggering beneath the weight, Mr. Marrapit went
+      with digging heels. They could not match the pace of that swift blow upon
+      his chest. Its backward speed outstripped them. With shattering thud he
+      plumped heavily to his full length upon the floor; Mrs. Major pressed him
+      to earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that shock was a whack on the head for Old Tom that temporarily
+      quieted him. &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; Mrs. Major asked, clinging tightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit gasped: &ldquo;Release my neck. Remove your arms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are upon my chest. I am prone beneath you. Release!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all dark,&rdquo; Mrs. Major cried; gripped firmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not dark. I implore movement. Our juxtaposition unnaturally
+      compromises us. It is abhorrent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major opened the eyes she had tightly closed during that staggering
+      journey and that shattering fall. She loosed her clutch; got to her knees;
+      thence tottered to a chair. That infamous Old Tom raised his head again;
+      tickled her brain with misty fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit painfully rose. He put a sympathetic hand upon the seat of
+      his injury; with the other took up the candle. He regarded Mrs. Major;
+      suspiciously sniffed the air, pregnant with strange fumes; again regarded
+      his late burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon her face that infamous Old Tom set a beaming smile,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Follow me, Mrs. Major,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit commanded; turned for the
+      dining-room; from its interior faced about upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With rare dignity the masterly woman slowly arose; martially she poised
+      against the hat-rack; with stately mien marched steadily towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Temporarily she had the grip of Old Tom&mdash;was well aware, at least, of
+      his designs upon her purity, and superbly she combated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With proud and queenly air she drew on&mdash;Mr. Marrapit felt that the
+      swift suspicion which had taken him had misjudged her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major reached the mat. Old Tom gave a playful little twitch of her
+      legs, and she jostled the doorpost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With old-world courtesy she bowed apology to the post. &ldquo;Beg pardon,&rdquo; she
+      graciously murmured; stood swaying.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      X.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Step by step with her as she had crossed the hall, Mr. Fletcher,
+      recovering from the coward fear in which he shivered outside the door, had
+      crept forward along the path around the house. As Mrs. Major stood swaying
+      upon the threshold of the dining-room he reached the angle; peered round
+      it; in horror sighted Bill's figure pendant from Margaret's window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thrice the bell-mouth of his gun described a shivering circle; tightly he
+      squeezed his eyelids&mdash;pressed the trigger.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      BANG!
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit bounded six inches&mdash;hardly reached the earth again when,
+      with a startled scream, Mrs. Major was upon him, again her arms about his
+      neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now shriek pursued shriek, tearing upwards through her throat. Old Tom
+      had loosed the ends of all her nerves. Like bolting rabbit in young corn
+      the tearing discharge of that gun went madly through them, and lacerated
+      she gave tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stifled by the bony shoulder that pressed against his face, Mr. Marrapit
+      went black. He jerked his head free, put up his face, and giving cry for
+      cry, shrilled, &ldquo;George! George! George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The din reached George where from his window he leaned, crying on Abiram
+      in the man-hunt across the garden. He drew in his head, bounded down the
+      stairs. Over Mrs. Major's back, bent inwards from the toes to the rock
+      about which she clung, Mr. Marrapit's empurpled face stared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon George's countenance the sight struck a great grin; his legs it
+      struck to dead halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major's shrieks died to moans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Action!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit gasped. &ldquo;Remove this creature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George put a hand upon her back. It shot a fresh shriek from her; she
+      clung closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pantaloon!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit strained. &ldquo;Crush that grin! Action! Remove this
+      woman! She throttles me! The pressure is insupportable. I am Sinbad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George again laid hands. Again Mrs. Major shrieked; tighter clung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit, blacker, cried, &ldquo;Zany!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what the devil can I do?&rdquo; George asked, hopping about the pair;
+      Mrs. Major's back as responsive to his touch as the keys of a piano to
+      idle fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You run to and fro and grin like a dog,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit told him. &ldquo;Each
+      time you touch her she screams, grips me closer. I shall be throttled. Use
+      discretion. Add to mine your assurance of her safety. She is not herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George chuckled. &ldquo;She's not. She's tight as a drum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liar!&rdquo; moaned Mrs. Major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Intoxicated?&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sharp words will move where entreaty cannot stir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major relaxed her hold; spun round. &ldquo;Monster&rdquo; and &ldquo;Perjurer&rdquo; rushed
+      headlong to her lips. &ldquo;Ponsger!&rdquo; she cried; tottered back against the
+      sofa; was struck by it at the bend of her knees; collapsed upon it. Her
+      head sunk sideways; she closed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can see for yourself,&rdquo; George said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit sniffed: &ldquo;My nose corroborates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ponsger!&rdquo; the prone figure wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit started: &ldquo;Mrs. Major!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened her eyes: &ldquo;Call me Lucy. Darling-<i>um!</i>&rdquo; She began to
+      snore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abhorrent!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whisperings without made him step to the door. White figures were upon the
+      stairs. &ldquo;To your beds!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, whatever is it, sir?&rdquo; Mrs. Armitage panted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Away! You outrage decency.&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit set a foot upon the stairs. The
+      affrighted figures fled before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George, when his uncle returned, was peering through the blind. &ldquo;Who the
+      devil loosed off that gun? It is immaterial. All events are buried beneath
+      this abhorrent incident. The roof of my peace has crashed about me.&rdquo; Mr.
+      Marrapit regarded the prone figure. &ldquo;Her inspirations grate upon me; her
+      exhalations poison the air. Rouse her. Thrust her to her room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll never wake her now till she's slept it off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us then essay to carry her. She cannot remain here. My shame shall
+      not be revealed, nor hers uncovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George began: &ldquo;To-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow I speed her from my gates. My beloved cats have been in the
+      care of this swinish form. They have been in jeopardy. I tremble at their
+      escape. To-morrow she departs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden tremendous idea swept over George, engulfing speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With no word he moved to the sofa; grasped the prone figure; put it upon
+      its weak legs. They gave beneath it. &ldquo;You must take her feet,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Averting his gaze, Mr. Marrapit took the legs that Old Tom had
+      devitalised. The procession moved out; staggered up the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heavy was the burden; bursting with vulgar laughter was George; but that
+      huge idea that suddenly had come to him swelled his muscles, lent him
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heaved the form upon the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the dressing-table a candle burned. By its light Mr. Marrapit
+      discovered Old Tom's bottle, two fingers of the villain yet remaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He beat his breast. &ldquo;Extinguish that light. I to my room. Seek Fletcher.
+      He patrols the garden for malefactors. In the morning I will see you.
+      Before this disaster my chill is sped. You are of my flesh. Cleave unto
+      me. In our bosoms let this abhorrent sore be buried. Seek Fletcher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The distraught man tottered to his room.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George went slowly down the stairs, bathing in the delicious thrills of
+      unfolding the wrappings from about his great idea. He had yet had time but
+      to feel its shape and hug it as a child will feel and hug a doll packed in
+      paper. Now he stripped the coverings, and his pulses thumped as he saw how
+      fine was it. Almost unconscious to his actions he unbarred the door;
+      stepped into the thin light; was not aroused until, treading upon Mr.
+      Fletcher's musket, his idea was suddenly jolted from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the gun that gave the echoes; where the hand that started it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hoarse cry came to him: &ldquo;Mr. George! Mr. George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked along the sound. Above a hedge below the lawn an apple-tree
+      raised its branches. Within them he could espy a dark mass that as he
+      approached took form. Mr. Fletcher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grass hushed George's footsteps. Rounding the hedge he came upon the
+      little drama that gave that note of dread to Mr. Fletcher's calls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the gardener's armpits one branch of the apple-tree passed; behind
+      his knees another. Between them hung his heavy seat. Whitely a square of
+      it peered downwards; melancholy upon the sward lay the lid of corduroy
+      that should have warmed the space. For ten paces outwards from the
+      tree-trunk there stretched a pitted path. Abiram, as George came, turned
+      at this path's extremity; set his sloe eye upon the dull white patch in
+      Mr. Fletcher's stern; hurled forward up the track; sprang and snapped jaws
+      an inch below the mark as Mr. Fletcher mightily heaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lesser dog would have yapped bafflement, fruitlessly scratched upwards
+      from hind legs. Abiram was perfect dog of the one breed of dog that is in
+      all things perfect. Silently he plodded back; turned; ran; leapt again.
+      Again Mr. Fletcher heaved, and again the fine jaws snapped an inch beneath
+      the pallid square of flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As once more uncomplaining he turned, Abiram sighted George; ruffled.
+      George spoke his name. Abiram wagged that short tail that marked his
+      Champion Victor Wild blood, shook the skull that spoke to the same mighty
+      strain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dog expected in his human friends that same devotion to duty which is
+      the governing trait of his breed. His shake implied, &ldquo;No time for social
+      niceties, sir. I have a job in hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call 'im off, Mr. George,&rdquo; Mr. Fletcher implored. &ldquo;Call 'im&mdash;<i>ur!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      heaved upward as Abiram again sprang&mdash;&ldquo;off,&rdquo; he concluded, sinking
+      once more as the bull-terrier trotted up the little path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fascinating scene. &ldquo;You're quite safe,&rdquo; George told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Safe! I'm <i>tired!</i> I can't keep on risin' and fallin' all night.
+      It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a&mdash;<i>ur!</i>&rdquo;
+       He heaved again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George told him: &ldquo;You do it awfully well, though; so neat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call 'im off,&rdquo; Mr. Fletcher moaned. &ldquo;He'll have me in a minute. He's 'ad
+      a bit off of me calf; he's 'ad a piece out of me trousers. He'll go on.
+      He's a methodical dog&mdash;<i>ur!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George took a step; caught Abiram's collar. &ldquo;How on earth did you get up
+      there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jumped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jumped! You couldn't jump up there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher took a look to see that Abiram was securely held; then
+      started to wriggle to a pose of greater comfort. &ldquo;I'd jump a house with
+      that 'orror after me,&rdquo; he said bitterly. By intricate squirmings he laid a
+      hand upon the cold patch of flesh that gazed starkly downwards from his
+      stern. &ldquo;If I ain't got hydrophobia I've got frost-bite,&rdquo; he moaned. &ldquo;Cruel
+      draught I've had through this 'ole. Take 'im off, Mr. George.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George was scarcely listening. His thoughts had returned to the delicious
+      task of fingering his great idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take 'im off, Mr. George,&rdquo; Mr. Fletcher implored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George passed a handkerchief under Abiram's collar; tugged for the gate;
+      there dispatched the dog down the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abiram shook his head; trotted with dejected stern. A job had been left
+      unfinished.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Hallooing safety to the apple-tree, too preoccupied to inquire further
+      into the reason for the gun and the presence of Bill's dog, George turned
+      for the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Awakening birds carolled his presence. They hymned the adventures of the
+      day that Dawn, her handmaiden, came speeding, silver-footed,
+      perfume-bearing, fresh from her dewy bath, to herald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George put up an answering pipe. For him also the day was adventure-packed
+      and must lustily be hymned. Entering Mr. Marrapit's study he drew the
+      blinds; upon a telegraph form set Mary's name and her address; pondered;
+      then to these words compressed his great idea:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Go agency this morning. Get name on books. Meet you there. Think can
+      get you situation here. George.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immediately the office opens,&rdquo; said George; trod up to his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      As Mr. Marrapit had said, the disaster of the night had sped his
+      complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He appeared at breakfast. No word was spoken. He ate nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only gave he sign of interest. Midway through the meal muffled sounds
+      came to the breakfast party. Scufflings in the hall struck an attentive
+      light in Mr. Marrapit's eyes; slam of the front door jerked him in his
+      seat; wheels, hoofs along the drive drew his gaze to the window. A cab
+      rolled past&mdash;a melancholy horse; a stout driver, legs set over a
+      corded box; a black figure, bolt upright, handkerchief to eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vision passed. Mr. Marrapit gazed upwards; his thin lips moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vulgar curiosity shall not tempt us to pry into the demeanour with which,
+      an hour earlier, this man had borne himself in the study with Mrs. Major.
+      Of that unhappy woman's moans, of her explanations, of the tears that
+      poured from her eyes&mdash;bloodshot in a head most devilishly racked by
+      Old Tom&mdash;we shall not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret stretched her hand for more bread. Despite the moving scenes in
+      which during the night she had travelled with her Bill, her appetite was
+      nothing affected. With her meals her sentimentality was upon the
+      friendliest terms. This girl was most gnawed by hunger when by emotion she
+      was most torn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stretched for a third slice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit cleared his throat. The sound shot her. She caught his eye
+      and the glance pierced her. Her outstretched hand dropped upon the cloth,
+      toyed with crumbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit said: &ldquo;I perceive you are finished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret murmured: &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Her voice had a tremulous note. It is a bitter
+      thing to lose a slice of bread-and-butter for which the whole system
+      imperatively calls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Withdraw,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put a lingering glance upon the loaf; wanly glided from the room.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      As she closed the door George prepared for his great idea. He drank deeply
+      of a cup of tea; drew down his cuffs; pondered them. They were covered in
+      pencilled notes, evolved by desperate work all that morning, to aid him
+      when the hour was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He absorbed Note I; spoke: &ldquo;I am afraid last night's events very much
+      distressed you, sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are interred. Do not resurrect them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George hurried to Note 2. &ldquo;My sympathies with you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the dead bury the dead. Mourn not the past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George skipped to Note 3. &ldquo;What I am concerned about is the cats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, indeed I am. I am not demonstrative. Perhaps you have not
+      guessed my fondness for the cats?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me, it is a deep affection. When I saw that unhappy woman tigh&mdash;under
+      the influence of spirits, what was my first thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supply the answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George took another glimpse at Note 3. &ldquo;What was my first thought?&rdquo; he
+      repeated. &ldquo;Was it distress at sight of a woman so forgetful of her
+      modesty? No. Was it sympathy for the cruel deception that had been
+      practised upon you? Forgive me, sir, it was not.&rdquo; (He glanced at his
+      notes.) &ldquo;What, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused brightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is your conundrum,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Solve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George raised an impressive hand. &ldquo;What, then? It was the thought of the
+      risks that the cats I so loved had run whilst beneath the care of this
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit's groan inspirited George. He was on the right track. He took
+      Note 4. &ldquo;I asked myself, Who is responsible for the jeopardy in which
+      these creatures have been placed? Heaven knows, I said, what they may not
+      have suffered. This woman may have neglected their food, she may have
+      neglected their comforts. In a drunken fit she might have poisoned them,
+      beat them, set furious dogs upon them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit writhed in anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George acted as Note 4 bade him. He dropped his voice. &ldquo;Let us trust,
+      sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that none of these things has taken place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit murmured. &ldquo;Amen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George's voice took a sterner note. &ldquo;But, I asked myself, Who is
+      responsible for those horrors that might have been, that may have been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit dropped his head upon his hands. He murmured: &ldquo;I am.
+      Peccavi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George rose in noble calm. He read Note 5; gave it with masterly effect:
+      &ldquo;No, sir. I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I! I have not slept since I leftyou, sir. I have paced my room and&rdquo; (he
+      read a masterly note) &ldquo;remorse has paced with me, step by step, hour by
+      hour. Did I help my uncle, I asked myself, when he was selecting this Mrs.
+      Major? No. Was I by his right hand to counsel and advise him? No. Has not
+      my training at hospital, my intercourse with ten thousand patients, taught
+      me to read faces like an open book? It has. Should not I then have been by
+      his side to help him when he selected a woman for the post of caring for
+      our-forgive me, sir, I said 'our'&mdash;caring for our cats? I should. I
+      asked myself how I could make amends. Only by begging my uncle's
+      forgiveness for my indifference and by imploring him to let me help him in
+      the choice of the next woman he selects.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A masterly pause he followed with an appeal sent forth in tones of rare
+      beauty: &ldquo;Oh, sir, I do beg your forgiveness; I do implore you let me make
+      amends by helping you in your next choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit wiped moist eyes. &ldquo;I had not suspected in you this profundity
+      of feeling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said brokenly: &ldquo;I have given you no reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit replied on a grim tone: &ldquo;Assuredly you have not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George glanced at Note 6; fled from the danger zone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where I fear the mistake was made in Mrs. Major,&rdquo; he hurried, &ldquo;was that
+      she was not a perfect lady. Our&mdash;forgive me for saying 'our'&mdash;our
+      cats are refined cats, cats of gentle birth, of inherent delicacy. Their
+      attendant should be of like breeding. She should be refined, her birth
+      should be gentle, her feelings delicate. She should be a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit said. &ldquo;As sea calleth to sea, as like
+      calleth to like, so would an ebb and flow of sympathy be set in motion
+      between my cats and an attendant delicately born. Is that your meaning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George murmured in admiration: &ldquo;In beautiful words that is my meaning.&rdquo; He
+      paused. Now the bolt was to be shot, and he nerved himself against the
+      strain. He fired: &ldquo;I have a suggestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Propound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No further need for notes. George pushed back his cuffs; gulped the
+      agitation that swelled dry and suffocating in his mouth. &ldquo;This is my
+      suggestion. Because I have had experience in the reading of faces; because
+      I wish to make recompense for my share in the catastrophe of Mrs. Major's
+      presence; because&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are drowning beneath reasons. Cease bubbling. Strike to the surface.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George had not been drowning. He had been creeping gingerly from
+      stepping-stone to stepping-stone. The endeavour had been to come as close
+      as possible to the big rock upon which he intended to spring. The less the
+      distance of the leap the more remote the chance of slipping down the rock
+      and being whirled off in swift water. It is a method of progression by
+      which, in the race of existence, many lives are lost. The timid will
+      hobble from stone to stone, landing at each forward point more and yet
+      more shaky in the knees. The torrent roars about them. Sick they grow and
+      giddy; stepping-stones are green and slimy; the effort of balancing cannot
+      be unduly prolonged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere ever they feel themselves ready for the leap they slip, go whirling
+      and drowning downstream past the stepping-stones that are called Infirmity
+      of Purpose. Or they may creep close enough the rock, only to find they
+      have delayed over their hobbling progression until the rock is already so
+      crowded by others who have been bolder over the stones as to show no
+      foothold remaining. They leap and fall back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are all gifted with strength sufficient for that spring; but disaster
+      awaits him who scatters his energies in a hundred hesitating little
+      scrambles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now George sprang; poised upon that last &ldquo;because.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And because&mdash;I wish&mdash;&rdquo; He sprang&mdash;&ldquo;Therefore I suggest
+      that I should go to town to-day and search every agency until I find you a
+      lady I think suitable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thud of his landing knocked the breath out of him. In terror he lay
+      lest Mr. Marrapit's answering words should have the form of desperate
+      fellows who would hurl him from his hold, throw him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I agree,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George was drawn to his feet. He could have whooped for joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I agree. I have misjudged you. In this matter I lay my trust in you. Take
+      it, tend it, nurse it; cherish it so that it may not be returned to me
+      cold and dead. Speed forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I a free hand?&rdquo; George asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emphatically no. Every effort must be made to keep down expenses. Here
+      are two shillings. Render account. As to salary&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George burst out: &ldquo;Oh, she'll come for anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit started. &ldquo;She? Whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George threw a blanket to hide the hideous blunder. &ldquo;Told of such a home
+      as this is,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;a true lady would come for anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blunder sank, covered. &ldquo;I earnestly pray that may be so,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit
+      said. &ldquo;I doubt. Rapacity and greed stalk the land. Mrs. Major had
+      five-and-twenty pounds per annum. I will not go above that figure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George told him: &ldquo;Rely upon me. But, by a free hand I meant a free hand as
+      to engaging what I may think a suitable person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emphatically no. You are the lower court. Sift sheep from goats. Send
+      sheep here to me. I am the tribunal. I will finally select.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The refusal placed a last obstacle in the path of George's scheme, but he
+      did not demur. Primarily he dared not. To demur might raise again that
+      blunder he had let escape when he had said, &ldquo;She'll come for anything&rdquo;;
+      this time it might rage around and not be captured. All might be wrecked.
+      Secondly he felt there to be no great need for protest. The confidence of
+      having won thus far gave him courage against this final difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust me, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very soberly he paced from the room; gently closed the door; with the
+      tread of one bearing a full heart heavily moved up the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached his room; ripped off sobriety. &ldquo;Oh, Mary!&rdquo; he exultantly cried,
+      &ldquo;if I can get you down here, old girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit, meanwhile, stepped to the room where his cats lived;
+      lovingly toyed with his pets; took the Rose of Sharon a walk in the
+      garden. He was in pleasant mood. Great had been the distress of the night,
+      but this man had enjoyed a luxurious warm bath&mdash;in crocodile's tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mary in the little Battersea lodgings was at breakfast when her George's
+      telegram arrived. She puckered over its mystery; shaped events this way
+      and that, but could make of them no keyhole that the message would fit and
+      unlock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flew among the higher improbabilities: George, she conjectured, had
+      misrepresented this stony-hearted uncle; last night had told all to Mr.
+      Marrapit, and Mr. Marrapit had warmed to her and bade him fetch her to
+      Herons' Holt. She ripped George's description of his uncle from about the
+      old man; dressed Mr. Marrapit in snowy locks and a benign smile; pictured
+      him coming down the steps with outstretched hand to greet her. She heard
+      him say, &ldquo;My daughter&rdquo;; she saw him draw George to her, lock their hands;
+      she heard him murmur, &ldquo;Bless you, my children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a romantic young woman. A poached egg was allowed to grow cold as
+      she trembled over her delectable fancies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a glance at the telegram pulled her from these delicious flights;
+      bumped her to earth. &ldquo;<i>Think can get you situation here.</i>&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Situation&rdquo; drove the fatherly air from Mr. Marrapit; once more
+      rehabilitated him as her George presented him&mdash;grim and masterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Further conjecture altogether drove Mr. Marrapit from the picture. What
+      situation could be offered her in the Marrapit household? Why should
+      &ldquo;here&rdquo; mean Herons' Holt? It must mean at a house in the district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the magic carpet of this new thought my Mary was whirled again in an
+      imaged paradise. She would be near her George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      High in these clouds she ran to her bedroom for her hat; but with it there
+      descended upon her head a new thought that again sent her toppling
+      earthwards. Characterless, and worse than characterless, how was she to
+      get any such delightful post? My Mary started up the street for the
+      Agency, blinking tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Battersea Bridge a new thought came sweeping. She clutched on to it;
+      held it fast. Into her tread it put a spring; to her chin gave a brave
+      tilt. If everything failed, if of the telegram nothing came, why, at least
+      she had the telegram!&mdash;was making for the Agency under a direct
+      command from her George. The thought swelled her with confidence and
+      comfort. How warm a thing it was to feel that she did not face the world
+      alone! Her George's arm was striking for her, her George's hand was
+      pointing a terse command. &ldquo;Go to Agency.&rdquo; She was obeying him; she
+      belonged to him.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mary had intended to wait outside the Agency until her George should
+      arrive and explain his mysterious message. But she was scarcely at the
+      building when Miss Ram, also arriving, accosted her&mdash;took her
+      upstairs. Miss Ram quite naturally regarded the meeting as evidence that
+      Mary had come for help. Mary, in a flutter as to George's intentions,
+      could but meekly follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the room marked &ldquo;Private,&rdquo; settled at her table, Miss Ram icily opened
+      the interview. &ldquo;I have heard from Mrs. Chater. I did not expect to see you
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary began: &ldquo;I don't know what you have heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram stretched for a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't wish to,&rdquo; Mary cried; put out a hand that stayed the action.
+      &ldquo;To hear all she says would again begin it all. It would be like her
+      voice. It would be like being with her again. Please, please, Miss Ram,
+      don't tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have your own version?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the truth.&rdquo; Mary pointed at the letter-file. &ldquo;The truth isn't
+      there. Mrs. Chater isn't capable of the truth. She cannot even recognise
+      the truth when she hears it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In yet more freezing tones Miss Ram replied: &ldquo;She is an old and valued
+      client.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You only know her in this office,&rdquo; Mary told her. &ldquo;You don't know her in
+      her home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have suited her with other young ladies. I have heard of her from
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they have spoken well of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discounting the prejudice of a late employee, they have spoken well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was her son there with them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have not told me so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Mary; sat back in her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your version is about the son?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary nodded. Recollection put a silly lump in her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram said: &ldquo;Miss Humfray, when I received that letter from Mrs.
+      Chater, I said I would have no more to do with you. I told Miss Porter I
+      would not see you. Why, out of all my ladies, do you come back to me
+      characterless from your situations? I will listen to your story. Make it
+      very brief. Don't exaggerate. I have sat in this chair for seventeen
+      years. I can distinguish in a minute between facts and spleen. You desire
+      to tell your version?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must,&rdquo; Mary said. &ldquo;What I'd like to do would be to get up and say, 'If
+      you doubt me, I'll not trouble to convince you.' I'd like to walk out and
+      leave you and face anything rather than 'explain.' Why should I 'explain'
+      to anybody? But I'm not going to walk out. I haven't the pluck. I know
+      what it is like to be alone out there.&rdquo; She gave a little choke. &ldquo;I've
+      learnt that much, anyway.&rdquo; She went on. &ldquo;I'll just tell you, that's all. I
+      don't want your sympathy; I only want your sense of justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like your spirit,&rdquo; Miss Ram said. It was a quality she rarely found in
+      her applicants. &ldquo;Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mary told. She phrased bluntly. Her recital was after the manner of
+      the fireworks called &ldquo;Roman candles.&rdquo; These, when lit, pour out fire and
+      smoke in a rather weak-kneed dribble. They must be held tightly. When
+      tensely enough constricted, of fire and smoke there is little, but at
+      intervals out there pops an exceedingly luminous ball of flame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My Mary kept the pressure of pride upon her throat. There was no dribble
+      of emotion. Only the facts popped out&mdash;hard and dry, and to Miss Ram
+      intensely illuminative. Mary did not mention George's name. She concluded
+      her narrative with jerky facts relative to the scene in the Park. &ldquo;Then I
+      ran away,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and a friend of mine came up. He had seen. And he
+      thrashed him. When I got back to Mrs. Chater's her son had arrived&mdash;battered.
+      He told his mother that he had seen me with a man and had interfered. That
+      the man assaulted him. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The miserable hound!&rdquo; pronounced Miss Ram with extraordinary ferocity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a drawer in her desk she took a manuscript book, bound in limp
+      leather, tied with blue ribbon. Herein were contained the remarkable
+      thoughts which from time to time had come to this woman during her
+      seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the flyleaf
+      was inscribed &ldquo;Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram.&rdquo; It was her intent to publish
+      this darling work when beneath each letter of the alphabet twelve
+      aphorisms were written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The miserable hound!&rdquo; cried she, when the full tale of Mr. Bob Chater's
+      vileness was told; drew &ldquo;Aphorisms&rdquo; towards her and wrote in hot blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then looked at Mary. &ldquo;<i>L,</i>&rdquo; she read, &ldquo;<i>L. Lust. Lust is the sound
+      meat of natural instinct gone to carrion. Men eat meat, wolves eat
+      carrion. Some men are wolf-men</i>&mdash;Hand me the dictionary, Miss
+      Humfray. Two r's in carrion. I <i>thought</i> so. Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She replaced &ldquo;Aphorisms.&rdquo; &ldquo;My dear, I will do what I can for you,&rdquo; she
+      told Mary. &ldquo;I <i>do</i> believe you. Go into the interview room. I hear a
+      step.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      That step was George's. Abashed in this home of women he shuffled uneasily
+      in the passage, then put a hesitating knuckle upon &ldquo;Enquiries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From within a violent movement was followed by a strange guttural sound.
+      George entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With scarlet face and watery eyes, Miss Porter&mdash;the stout young woman
+      who presided over this department, and whose habit it was to suck sweets
+      the better to beguile the tedium of her duties&mdash;gazed at him; made
+      guttural sounds. The start of George's knock had caused this girl to
+      swallow a particularly large sweet, and its downward passage was
+      inflicting upon her considerable pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was an alarming sight. &ldquo;I'm afraid&mdash;&rdquo; George began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon!&rdquo; gasped Miss Porter, driving the sweet with a tremendous swallow.
+      &ldquo;Pardon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; George pleasantly said. &ldquo;Not at all. I called with reference
+      to a lady-help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grinding sweet forbade the pleasant dalliance
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Porter could have wished with this handsome young man. In a brave
+      spasm (this girl was in great suffering), &ldquo;I will tell the Principal,&rdquo; she
+      said; trod heavily to Miss Ram's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fate is an abominable trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand it gave
+      Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her enjoying him.
+      Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of a fine sweet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reappearing and holding the door ajar: &ldquo;Miss Ram will see you,&rdquo; she
+      murmured. Tears were in this girl's eyes; the bolted sweet was still
+      paining her very much indeed.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In two clever bows Miss Ram without a word greeted George; indicated a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George sat down. &ldquo;I want,&rdquo; he began&mdash;&ldquo;that is, my uncle wants, a
+      lady-help&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Name, please,&rdquo; rapped Miss Ram, opening the ledger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George gave it; stretched a leg to indicate a confidence he did not feel;
+      pitched his voice to aid the presentment. &ldquo;When I say lady-help&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Address, please,&rdquo; said Miss Ram with a pistol-snap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George withdrew the signs of confidence with a jerk. He gave the
+      information. Then waited Miss Ram to give him a lead. He had twice been
+      shot; was in no desire again to expose his person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram fixed her small black eyes upon him. She said nothing. The
+      intrusion of a young man into matters essentially domestic she strongly
+      disapproved. Under &ldquo;D&rdquo; in &ldquo;Aphorisms&rdquo; this woman had a trenchant note
+      touching this matter. &ldquo;<i>D. Domesticity. Domesticity</i>,&rdquo; said this
+      note, &ldquo;<i>is the offspring of all the womanly virtues. The virtues
+      impregnate the woman, and domesticity is the resultant child. Absence of a
+      single womanly trait aborts or debilitates the offspring. Men have nothing
+      whatever to do with it, and nothing is more abominable than a man who
+      meddles with domestic matters.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rays of Miss Ram's disconcerting eye pushed George steadily backwards
+      from the rock of such small confidence as remained to him. Assailed by the
+      inquiring bows with which she now interrogated his further purpose, he
+      slipped from it, plunged wildly into the sea of what he required, and for
+      five minutes beat this way and that, hurling the splash of broken
+      sentences at Miss Ram's unbending countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beginning a description of Mr. Marrapit's household, he floundered thence
+      to a description of the required lady's duties; abandoning that
+      unfinished, splashed to a description of the manner of person for whom he
+      sought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his object to paint a character and appearance as near to his
+      Mary's as he could master; to induce Miss Ram to suggest her as likely
+      candidate for the post. He could not introduce his Mary to his uncle
+      unless she came under the auspices of some recognised institution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he floundered on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram did not move. His struggles grew less; he caught at haphazard
+      words; flung them desperately; at last relapsed; sat sweating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram poked him with a questioning bow. He did not stir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a further bow she accepted his defeat; handed him a pink paper. &ldquo;Now,
+      kindly fill up this form. State precisely what you require. Write clearly,
+      please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George obeyed. Miss Ram studied the answers to her printed interrogations;
+      opened her ledger. &ldquo;I have several suitable ladies.&rdquo; She started to read a
+      list. &ldquo;Miss Minna Gregor; aged 25; daughter of the late Humphrey Gregor,
+      stockbroker; three years' character from Mrs. Mountsaffron of Charles
+      Street, to whom she was lady-help and from whom an excellent reference may
+      be obtained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too old,&rdquo; said George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram frowned; returned to the ledger. &ldquo;Miss Ellen Hay; aged 20;
+      daughter of Lieutenant Hay, late R.N. For two years with Mrs. Hoyle-Hoyle
+      of Knightsbridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George squeaked, &ldquo;Too young.&rdquo; He had not anticipated this ordeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram read on. At the fifteenth name George was in desperate agitation.
+      His list of objections was exhausted. Each protest had narrowed his field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the last upon my books,&rdquo; Miss Ram severely told him. &ldquo;She fills
+      all your requirements. None of your objections applies. You will certainly
+      engage her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel sure I shall,&rdquo; George brightly said. If this was the last name it
+      must be Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to hear that,&rdquo; Miss Ram announced. &ldquo;You are hard to please.
+      This is a most admirable young woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George leaned forward with an expectant smile. Miss Ram read: &ldquo;Miss Rosa
+      Brump&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George's smile died. An &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; was startled out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brump,&rdquo; said Miss Ram testily. &ldquo;Brump. B-r-u-m-p, <i>Brump</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;; ran a finger around the inside of his collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram read on, emphasising the Brumps with the suggestion of a ball
+      bouncing from rock to rock:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Rosa <i>Brump</i>; aged 21; daughter of the late Selwyn Agburn <i>Brump</i>,
+      barrister-at-law. Companion to Miss Victoria Shuttle of Shuttle Hall,
+      Shuttle, Lines, until that lady's death. The late Miss Shuttle dying
+      suddenly, Miss <i>Brump</i> has no reference from her. What that reference
+      would have been, however, is clearly evidenced by the fact that in her
+      will Miss Shuttle bequeathed 'to my faithful companion Rosa <i>Brump</i>,'
+      her terra-cotta bust of the late Loomis Shuttle, Esq., J.P., inventor of
+      the Shuttle liquid manure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram wagged a finger at George. &ldquo;That speaks for itself,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George did not answer. He was in a confusion of fear. This terrible woman
+      would force Miss Brump upon him. He was powerless in her hands. He was in
+      chains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it not?&rdquo; poked Miss Ram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Oh, rather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. I congratulate your uncle upon obtaining this estimable young
+      woman. She should call here in a few minutes. You can then make final
+      arrangements. Meanwhile, this form&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George hurled himself free from this hypnotic panic. Anything must be done
+      to shake off this intolerable Brump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had forgotten&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What colour is Miss Brump's hair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her <i>what?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hair. Her hair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How extraordinary! Brown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George effected an admirable start. He echoed: &ldquo;<i>Brown?</i> Oh, not
+      brown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. Brown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George mournfully shook his head. &ldquo;Oh, dear! How unfortunate! I'm afraid
+      Miss Brump will not suit, Miss Ram. My uncle&mdash;extraordinary foible&mdash;has
+      a violent objection to brown hair. He will not have it in the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unheard of!&rdquo; Miss Ram snapped. &ldquo;Unheard of!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George rubbed together his sweating palms; blundered on. &ldquo;None the less a
+      fact,&rdquo; he said impressively. He dropped his voice. &ldquo;It is a very sad
+      story. He had fifteen brothers&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifteen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you, yes. All were black-haired except one, who was brown&mdash;the
+      first brown-haired child in the history of the house. 'Bantam' they used
+      to call him when they were girls and boys together&mdash;'Bantam.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Girls</i>! You said brothers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes. Girls as well. Twelve, twelve girls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve girls and fifteen boys!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you, yes. A record. As I was saying, the brown-haired child, he
+      took to drink. It is most painful. Died in a madhouse. My uncle, head of
+      the family, reeled beneath the stigma&mdash;reeled. Vowed from that day
+      that he would never let a brown-haired person cross his threshold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George wiped his streaming face; sat back with a sigh. Miss Brump was
+      buried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram's next words caused him to start in his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your hair is brown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My contemptible George, all his lies now rushing furious upon him, put his
+      hand to his head; withdrawing it, gazed at the palm with the air of one
+      looking for a stain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about <i>that</i>?&rdquo; rapped Miss Ram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George gave a wan smile. &ldquo;It is my misfortune,&rdquo; he said simply&mdash;&ldquo;my
+      little cross. We all have our burdens in this life, Miss Ram. Pardon me if
+      I do not care to dwell upon mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a bow Miss Ram indicated sympathy; decorously closed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George gave a little sigh. With a simulation of brightness he proceeded:
+      &ldquo;You are sure you have no other lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have one,&rdquo; said Miss Ram. &ldquo;She would not suit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I be allowed to judge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram turned to the ledger. &ldquo;'Miss Mary Humfray.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George started. &ldquo;It is nothing,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;One of those shivers; that
+      is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram bowed. &ldquo;'Miss Mary Humfray; aged 21; only child of the late
+      Colonel Humfray, Indian Army; references from former employer not good,
+      but with extenuating circumstances.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she might suit,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;She&mdash;she&mdash;&rdquo; he groped
+      wildly&mdash;&ldquo;she is the daughter of a colonel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So were four others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George wiped his brow. &ldquo;The&mdash;the <i>only</i> daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You consider that a merit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My uncle would. He has curious ideas. He is himself an only child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram stared. George had the prescience of trouble, but could not find
+      it. &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;oh, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifteen brothers and twelve sis&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George saw the gaping pit; sprang from it. &ldquo;<i>Has</i> an only child,&rdquo; he
+      corrected. &ldquo;<i>Has</i>, not <i>is</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram glared, continued: &ldquo;What of the absence of character?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imagine the fact of being an only child would override that. You said
+      there were extenuating circumstances?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are. I personally would speak for the young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Excitement put George upon his feet. &ldquo;I thank you very much, Miss Ram. I
+      feel that this lady will suit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have asked nothing about her. With the others you were unusually
+      particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I act greatly by instinct. It is a family trait. Something seems to
+      assure me in this case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram gazed searchingly at George; answered him upon an interested
+      note. &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; she spoke. &ldquo;Remarkable. Pray pardon me.&rdquo; She drew
+      &ldquo;Aphorisms&rdquo; from its drawer; hesitated a moment; with flowing pen wrote
+      beneath &ldquo;I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned towards George. &ldquo;Pray pardon me,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;What you tell
+      me of acting by instinct greatly interests me as a student of character.
+      In this little volume here I&mdash;allow me.&rdquo; She emphasised with a
+      quill-pen. &ldquo;<i>I. Instinct. Instinct is the Almighty's rudder with which
+      He steers our frail barques upon the tempestuous sea of life at moments
+      when otherwise we should be quite at a loss. Some of us answer quickly to
+      this mysterious helm and for example something seems to tell them in the
+      middle of the night that the house is on fire, and they get up and find it
+      is. Let those who don't answer quickly beware!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's awfully well put,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Awfully well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time Miss Ram smiled. &ldquo;You would wish to interview the young
+      lady?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Fortunately she is present. Kindly step to the
+      Interview Room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led the way. With thundering pulses George followed. His Mary rose.
+      Miss Ram introduced them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George rolled his tongue in a dry mouth; passed it over dry lips. He had
+      no words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you no questions?&rdquo; Miss Ram asked severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a third time since he had entered this building, panic broke damply
+      upon George's brow. He blew his nose; in a very faint voice asked: &ldquo;Your
+      age is twenty-one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon an agitated squeak his Mary told him: &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; In desperation he paused: caught Miss Ram's awful eye; was goaded to
+      fresh plunge. &ldquo;Ah, one-and-twenty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a tiny squeak Mary replied: &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shuffled in desperation. &ldquo;When will you be twenty-two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In February.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! February.&rdquo; This was awful. &ldquo;February.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram's eye stabbed him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;February. Then you must be twenty-one now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Tch-tch!</i>&rdquo; sounded Miss Ram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-one,&rdquo; George stammered. &ldquo;Twenty-one&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the other room at that moment Miss Porter called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am required,&rdquo; said Miss Ram, &ldquo;elsewhere. I will return in a moment.&rdquo;
+       She passed out; closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling!&rdquo; cried George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Georgie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They embraced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held her to him; kissed the soft gold hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a movement in the next room his Mary wriggled free. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Gad, it's been awful! Did you hear me in that room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, laughing at him. He kissed the smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do be careful! Let <i>go</i>, George; let <i>go</i>. I couldn't hear
+      what you said. But you were hours&mdash;<i>hours</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Years. Aeons of time. I have aged considerably. I
+      thought it would never end. It was appalling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her pretty hands. &ldquo;But tell me, George. Do tell me. I don't
+      understand <i>anything</i>. What has <i>happened?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me time,&rdquo; George told her. &ldquo;I am not the same George. The
+      light-hearted George of yore is dead under Miss Ram's chair. I am old and
+      seamed with care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George, <i>do, do</i> tell me! Don't fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not fooling. I can't fool. You don't realise what I have been
+      through. You have no heart. I can't fool. When I was a child I thought as
+      a child; I did childish things. But now that I have been through Miss
+      Ram's hands my bright boyhood is sapped. I am old and stricken in years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Georgie, <i>do, do</i> tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This ridiculous George gave a boyish laugh; clasped his Mary again;
+      squeezed her to him till she gasped. &ldquo;I've got you, Mary!&rdquo; he said. He
+      kissed the gold hair. &ldquo;I've got you. I'm going to see you every day.
+      You're coming down to live at Herons' Holt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told her.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram returned; directed at George a bow that Was one huge note of
+      interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite satisfactory,&rdquo; George replied. &ldquo;I am sure my uncle will agree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is, of course,&rdquo; objected Miss Ram, &ldquo;the unfortunate matter of
+      references.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George took a frank air. &ldquo;Miss Ram, I am quite willing to take your
+      personal assurances on that matter. On behalf of my uncle I accept them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will send a written statement of the matter,&rdquo; said Miss Ram. Her air
+      was dogged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I most solemnly assure you that is unnecessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Ram killed him with a bow. &ldquo;It is my custom. I have the reputation of
+      seventeen years to sustain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George quailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your uncle,&rdquo; Miss Ram exclaimed, &ldquo;will also wish to see Miss Humfray. She
+      shall go this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not this afternoon,&rdquo; George told her. &ldquo;No. To-morrow. He could not see
+      her to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. To-morrow. To-night I will write the references to him. Kindly
+      pay the fee to Miss Porter in the office. Good morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pushed him off with a stabbing bow. He fled.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In that delectable interview during Miss Ram's absence George had arranged
+      with his Mary that this was a day to be celebrated. She should not proceed
+      instantly to be weighed by Mr. Marrapit; let that ordeal be given to the
+      morrow. This splendid day should splendidly end; tremendous gaiety should
+      with a golden clasp fasten the golden hours of the morning. In the
+      afternoon he had a lecture and clinical demonstrations. Like a horse he
+      would work till half-past six. At seven he would meet his Mary in Sloane
+      Square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was. At that hour George from the top of his 'bus spied his Mary
+      upon the little island in the Square. He sprang down and his first action
+      was to show a fat and heavy sovereign, pregnant with delights, lying in
+      his palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Borrowed,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;One pound sterling. Twenty shillings net. And
+      every penny of it is going to fly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He called a hansom, and they smoothly rolled to Earl's Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When sovereigns are rare possessions, how commanding an air the feel of
+      one imparts! Mary watched her George with pride. How masterful was he! How
+      deferential the head waiter at the restaurant in the Exhibition became!
+      The man was putting them off with an inner table. Her George by a look and
+      a word had him in a minute to right-abouts, and one of the coveted tables
+      upon the verandah was theirs. Waiters flocked about. With such an air did
+      George command the cheapest wine upon the list that the waiter, whose lip
+      ordinarily would have curled at such an order, hastened to its execution
+      with dignity of task, deference of service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They ate robustly through the menu: faltered not nor checked at a single
+      dish. They passed remarks upon their neighbours. At intervals George would
+      say, &ldquo;Isn't this fine, Mary?&rdquo;; or his Mary would say, &ldquo;Oh, Georgie, isn't
+      this splendid?&rdquo; And the other would answer, &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A meal and a conversation to make your proper lovers shudder! There was no
+      nibbling at and toying with food; there was no drinking and feasting from
+      the light of one another's eyes. When George felt thirsty he would put his
+      nose in the cheap claret and keep it there till mightily refreshed; such
+      hungry yearnings as his Mary felt she satisfied with knife and fork. These
+      were very simple children and exceedingly healthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while his Mary's tongue ached with a cold, cold ice, George was in the
+      pangs of mental arithmetic. As the bill stood, that pregnant sovereign had
+      given birth to all the delights of which it was capable; was shattered and
+      utterly wrecked in child-bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A waiter came bustling. There was just time. George leant across. &ldquo;Mary,
+      when I ask you if you'll have coffee, say you prefer it outside&mdash;it's
+      cheaper there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coffee, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Special coffee,&rdquo; George ordered nonchalantly. &ldquo;Yes, two. One moment.
+      Would you rather have your coffee outside near the band, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary was splendid. She looked around the room, she looked into the
+      cool night&mdash;and there her eye longer lingered. &ldquo;It's cooler outside,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;I think it would be nicer outside, if you don't mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure you don't mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no; no, not a bit. Bill, waiter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The waiter bowed low over his munificent tip; dropped it into a jingling
+      pocket. George gathered his miserable change; slid it silently to where it
+      lay companionless; with his Mary passed into the warm night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Empress Gardens they found a hidden table; here sipped coffee, and
+      here were most dreadfully common. Mary's hand crept into her George's;
+      they spoke little. The warm night breeze gently kissed their faces; the
+      band stirred deepest depths; they set their eyes upon the velvety darkness
+      that lay beyond the lights, and there pictured one another in a delectable
+      future. Mary saw a very wonderful George; now and then glimpsed a very
+      happy little Mary in a wonderful home. George also saw a happy little Mary
+      in a wonderful home, but he more clearly followed a very wonderful George,
+      magnificently accomplishing the mighty things that made the little Mary
+      happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George kissed his Mary upon the doorstep of the Battersea lodgings; caught
+      the last train to Paltley Hill; and as he walked home from the station the
+      scented hedges murmured to him with his Mary's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The Girl Comes Near The Lugger.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At breakfast upon the following day George set forth the result of his
+      labours; with urgent eloquence extolled the virtues of this Miss Humfray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Mr. Marrapit's plate lay an open envelope; upon the back George
+      could read the inscription &ldquo;Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed
+      Gentlewomen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What had Miss Ram said of his Mary? The thought that she had written a
+      reference which at the last moment would dash into dust this mighty
+      scheme, was as a twisting knife in George's vitals. Every time that Mr.
+      Marrapit stretched his hand for the letter the agitated young man upon a
+      fresh impulse would dash into defiant eulogy of his darling; and so
+      impetuous was the rush of his desperate words that at the beat of every
+      new wave Mr. Marrapit would withdraw his startled hand from the letter;
+      frown at George across the coffee-pot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last: &ldquo;Sufficient,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;Curb zeal. Mount discretion. Satisfy
+      the demands of appetite. You have not touched food. Tasks he before you.
+      Do not starve the brain. I am tired of your eulogies of this person. For
+      twenty-one minutes you have been hurling advertisements at me. I am a
+      hoarding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bill-sticker pushed a piece of bacon into a dry mouth; sat with
+      goggling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hoarding continued: &ldquo;I have here this person's reference. It is good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down shot the piece of bacon; convulsively bolted like Miss Porter's
+      sweet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; cried George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said good. For faulty articulation I apologise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I heard. I meant that I am pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strive to express the meaning. The person arrives for inspection at
+      mid-day. For your assistance I tender thanks. The incident is now closed.
+      Do you labour at hospital to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George had determined to be at the fount of news. In town, uncertain, he
+      could have applied himself to nothing. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, here; I work here to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To your tasks,&rdquo; commanded Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George went to his room, but his tasks through that morning lay neglected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impossible to work. He was in a position at which at one time or another
+      most of us are placed. He was upon one end of a balanced see-saw, and he
+      was blindfolded so that it was impossible to see what might happen upon
+      the other extremity. Suddenly he might be swung up to highest delight;
+      suddenly he might be dashed earthwards to hit ground with a jarring thud.
+      The one eventuality or the other was certain; but he must sit blindfold
+      and helpless&mdash;unable to affect the balance by an ounce. Here is the
+      position in which all of us are made cowards. Bring the soldier into
+      action, and his blood will run hot enough to make him intoxicated and
+      insensible to fear; hold him in reserve, and courage will begin to ooze.
+      Give us daylight in which we may see aught that threatens us, and likely
+      enough we shall have desperate courage sufficient to rush in and grapple;
+      it is in the darkness that uncertainty sets teeth chattering. More prayers
+      are said, and with more devotion, at night than in the morning. We creep
+      and crawl and squirm to heaven when the uncertainty of the night has to be
+      faced; but we can get along well enough, thank you, when we spring out of
+      bed with the courage of morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George could not work until he knew whether he was to be swung high or
+      thrown low. He paced his room; glimpsed his watch; tremendously smoked&mdash;and
+      groaned aloud as, at every turn, he would receive the buffets of
+      recollection of some important point upon which he had omitted to school
+      his Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those desperate moments he decided finally that Margaret should not be
+      told that Mary and he were so much more than strangers. Supposing all went
+      well, and his Mary came to Herons' Holt, her safety and his would
+      certainly be imperilled by giving the key of their secret to his cousin.
+      It was a hard resolve. About the beautiful romance of the thing Margaret's
+      nature would have crooned as a mother over her suckling. She would have
+      mothered it, cherished it, given them a hundred opportunities of
+      exchanging for clasps and whispers the chilly demeanour they must bear one
+      to another. But the pleasure must be foregone. My George had the
+      astonishing sense to know that the animal instinct in Margaret's nature
+      would outride the romance. Twice the countless years that separate us from
+      the gathering of our first instincts may pass, and this the strongest of
+      them&mdash;the abhorrence of secrecy-will never be uprooted. When all life
+      was a ferocious struggle for life, secrecy&mdash;and it would have been
+      the secret of a store of food&mdash;was inimical to the existence of the
+      pack: it was opposed to the first of the slowly forming laws of nature.
+      There must be equality of opportunity that all might equally be tested.
+      Thus it was that a secret hoard of food, when come upon, instantly was
+      noised abroad by the discoverer, and its possessor torn to death; and thus
+      it is to-day that a secret once beyond the persons immediately concerned
+      is carried from mouth to mouth till the world has it, and its first
+      possessors take the violence of discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a reason that was almost similar George negatived the impulse which
+      bade him meet his Mary at the station, walk with her to the house, and
+      leave her before the gates. For, supposing again that she were accepted
+      and came to Herons' Holt, this suspicious meeting would come flying to Mr.
+      Marrapit upon the breezes that whirl in and out of every cranny and nook
+      in small communities. Towns are blind and deaf; villages have peeping
+      eyes, straining ears, loose mouths, that pry and listen and whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost upon the hour of twelve there came to the agitated young man's ears
+      a ring that could be none other than hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tip-toed to the banisters; peered below. His Mary was ushered in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she stood behind the maid who tapped on Mr. Marrapit's door, she
+      glanced up. George had a glimpse of her face; waved encouragement from the
+      stairhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid stood aside. His Mary passed in to the ogre's den.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Clad in a dressing-gown, Mr. Marrapit was standing against the fireplace.
+      My trembling Mary settled just clear of the closing door; took his gaze.
+      He put his eye upon her face; slowly travelled it down her person; rested
+      it upon her little shoes; again brought it up; again carried it down; this
+      time left it at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gaze seemed to burn her stockings. She shuffled; little squirms of
+      fright nudged her. She glanced at her feet, fearful of some hideous hole
+      in her shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am&mdash;&rdquo; she jerked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. Marrapit spoke: &ldquo;I see you are. Discontinue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The command was shot at her. Trembling against the shock she could only
+      murmur: &ldquo;Discontinue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly. Discontinue. Refrain. Adjust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discontinue...?&rdquo; With difficulty she articulated the word, then put after
+      it on a little squeak: &ldquo;... What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It,&rdquo; rapped Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quake in terror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pah!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit exclaimed. &ldquo;You said 'I am.' Were you not about to say
+      'I am standing on the polished boards'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believed that was in your mind. Let it now enter your mind. You are on
+      the polished boards. You have high heels. I quake in terror lest they have
+      left scratch or blemish. Adjust your position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary stepped to the carpet. She was dumb before this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit bent above the polished flooring where she had stood. &ldquo;There
+      is no scratch,&rdquo; he announced, &ldquo;neither is there any blemish.&rdquo; He resumed
+      his post against the fireplace and again regarded her: &ldquo;You are young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am older really.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elucidate that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean&mdash;I am not inexperienced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why say one thing and mean another? Beware the habit. It is perilous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed it is not my habit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is your recreation, then. Do not indulge it. Continue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am young, but I have had experience. I think if you were to engage me I
+      would give you satisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adduce grounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would try in every way to do as you required. I understand I am to look
+      after cats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abandon that impression. I have not said so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I mean if you engage me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Again you say one thing and mean another. I am suspicious. It is a
+      habit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>indeed</i> it is not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if a recreation, a recreation to which you are devoted. You romp in
+      it. Twice within a minute you have gambolled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My Mary blinked tears. Since rising that morning, her nerves had been upon
+      the stretch against this interview. She had schooled herself against all
+      possibilities so as to win into the house of her dear George, yet at every
+      moment she seemed to fall further from success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ca-catch me up so,&rdquo; she trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit expanded upwards. &ldquo;Catch you up! A horrible accusation. The
+      table is between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mis-misunderstand me.&rdquo; She silenced a little sniff with a dab of her
+      handkerchief. She looked very pretty. Mr. Marrapit placed beside her the
+      mental image of Mrs. Major; and at every point she had the prize. He liked
+      the soft gold hair; he liked the forlorn little face it enframed; he liked
+      the slim little form. His cats, he suspected, would appreciate those nice
+      little hands; he judged her to have nice firm legs against which his cats
+      could rub. Mrs. Major's, he apprehended, would have been bony; not legs,
+      but shanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary made another dab at her now red little nose. The silence increased
+      her silly fright. &ldquo;You mis-misunderstand me,&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With less asperity Mr. Marrapit told her: &ldquo;I cannot accept the blame. You
+      wrap your meanings. I plunge and grope after them. Eluding me, I am
+      compelled to believe them wilfully thrown. Strive to let your yea be yea
+      and your nay nay. With circumspection proceed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary gathered her emotion with a final little sniff. &ldquo;I like ca-cats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I implore you not to accuse me of misunderstanding you. A question is
+      essential. You do not always pronounce 'cats' in two syllables?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Satisfactory. You said 'ca-cats.' Doubtless under stress of emotion.
+      Proceed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary sniffed; proceeded. &ldquo;I like ca-cats&mdash;cats. If you were to engage
+      me I am sure your cats would take to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admit the possibility. I like your appearance. I like your voice. Had
+      you knowledge of the acute supersensitiveness of my cats you would
+      understand that they will appreciate those points. I do not require in you
+      veterinary knowledge; I require sympathetic traits. I do not engage you to
+      nurse my cats&mdash;though, should mischance befall, that would come
+      within your duties,&mdash;but to be their companion, their friend. You are
+      a lady; themselves ancestral they will appreciate that. I understand you
+      are an orphan; there also a bond links you with them. All cats are
+      orphans. It is the sole unfortunate trait of their characters that they
+      are prone to forget their offspring. In so far as it is possible to
+      correct this failing amongst my own cats, I have done my best. Amongst
+      them the sanctity of the marriage tie is strictly observed. The word stud
+      is peculiarly abhorrent to me. Polygamy is odious. There is a final point.
+      Pray seat yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary took a chair. Mr. Marrapit, standing before her, gazed down upon her.
+      From her left he gazed, then from her right. He returned to the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is satisfactory,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You have a nice lap. That is of first
+      importance. The question of wages has been settled. Arrive to-morrow. You
+      are engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: of George in Torment.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      If we write that Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful, we use
+      the term as a figure of speech that must be taken in its accepted sense;
+      not read literally. For it is impossible that life, in whatever
+      conditions, can be eventless. The dullest life is often with events the
+      most crowded. In dulness we are thrown back upon our inner selves, and
+      that inner self is of a construction so sensitive that each lightest
+      thought is an event that leaves an impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In action, in gaiety, in intercourse we put out an unnatural self to brunt
+      the beat of events. We are upon our guard. There are eyes watching us, and
+      from their gaze we by instinct fend our inner self just as by instinct we
+      fend our nakedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Overmuch crowded with such events, the inner self is prone to shrivel, to
+      fade beneath lack of nutriment; and it may happen that in time the
+      unnatural self will take its place, will become our very self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is gravely to our disadvantage. Overmuch in action, the man of
+      affairs may win the admiration of a surface-seeing world; may capture the
+      benefits of strong purpose, of wealth, and of position. But he is in
+      danger of utterly losing the fruits that only by the inner, the original,
+      and true self can be garnered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life presents for our pursuit two sets of treasures. The one may be had by
+      the labours of the hands; the other by exercise of the intellect&mdash;the
+      true self. And at once this may be said: that the treasures heaped by the
+      hands soil the hands, and the stain sinks deep. The stain enters the blood
+      and, thence oozing, pigments every part of the being&mdash;the face, the
+      voice, the mind, the thoughts. For we cannot labour overlong in the fields
+      without besweating the brow; and certainly we cannot ceaselessly toil
+      after the material treasures of life without gathering the traces of that
+      labour upon our souls. It stains, and the stain is ugly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming to treasures stored by exercise of the intellect, the true self,
+      these also put their mark upon the possessor; but the action is different
+      and the results are different. Here the pigment that colours the life does
+      not come from without but distils from within. Man does not stoop to rend
+      these treasures from the earth; he rises to them. They do not bow; they
+      uplift. They are not wrenched in trampling struggle from the sties where
+      men battle for the troughs; they are absorbed from the truths of life that
+      are as breezes upon the little hills. They are in the face of Nature and
+      in Nature's heart; they are in the written thoughts of men whose thoughts
+      rushed upward like flames, not dropped like plummet-stones&mdash;soared
+      after truth and struck it to our understanding, not made soundings for
+      earthy possessions showing how these might be gained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it is not to be urged that the quest of material treasures is to be
+      despised, or that life properly lived is life solely dreaming among
+      truths. The writer who made the story of the Israelites sickening of
+      manna, wrapped in legend the precept that man to live must work for life.
+      We are not living if we are not working. We cannot have strength but we
+      win meat to make strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No; my protest is against the heaping of material treasure to the neglect
+      of treasure stored by the true self. Material treasure is not ours. We but
+      have the enjoyment of it while we can defend it from the forces that
+      constantly threaten it. Misfortune, sorrow, sickness&mdash;these are ever
+      in leash against us; may at any moment be slipped. Misfortune may whirl
+      our material treasures from us; sorrow or sickness may canker them, turn
+      them to ashes in the mouth. They are not ours; we hold them upon
+      sufferance. But the treasures of the intellect, the gift of being upon
+      nodding terms with truth, these are treasures that are our impregnable
+      own. Nothing can filch them, nothing canker them: they are our own&mdash;imperishable,
+      inexhaustible; never wanting when called upon; balm to heal the blows of
+      adversity, specific against all things malign. Cultivate the perception of
+      beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to distinguish between the realities
+      of life and the dross of life; and you have a great shield of fortitude of
+      which certainly man cannot rob you, and against which sickness, sorrow, or
+      misfortune may strike tremendous blows without so much as bruising the
+      real you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it is in the life that is called uneventful that there is the most
+      opportunity for storing these treasures of the intellect. Perhaps there is
+      also the greater necessity. In the dull round of things we are thrown in
+      upon ourselves, and by every lightest thought and deed either are
+      strengthening that inner self or are sapping it. Either we are reading the
+      thoughts of men whose thoughts heap a priceless store within us, or we are
+      reading that which&mdash;though we are unaware&mdash;vitiates and puts
+      further and further beyond our grasp the truths of life; either we are
+      watching our lives and schooling them to feed upon thoughts and deeds that
+      will uplift them, or we are neglecting them, and allowing them to browse
+      where they will upon the rank weeds of petty spites, petty jealousies,
+      petty gossipings and petty deeds. In action we may have no time to waste
+      over this poisonous herbage; but in dulness most certainly we do have the
+      temptation&mdash;and as we resist or succumb so shall we conduct ourselves
+      when the larger events of life call us into the lists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful: need not be recorded.
+      We are following the passage of the love 'twixt her and George; and within
+      the radius of Mr. Marrapit's eye love durst not creep. She saw little of
+      her George. They were most carefully circumspect in their attitude one to
+      another, and conscience made their circumspection trebly stiff. There are
+      politenesses to be observed between the inmates of a house, but my Mary
+      and my George, in terror lest even these should be misconstrued,
+      studiously neglected them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aloofness troubled Margaret. This girl wrapped her sentiment about
+      Mary; delighting in one who, so pretty, so young, so gentle-voiced, must
+      face life in an alien home. The girls came naturally together, and it was
+      not long before Margaret bubbled out her vocation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk was upon books. Margaret turned away her head; said in the voice
+      of one hurrying over a commonplace: &ldquo;I write, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She tingled for the &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; from her companion, but it did not come, and
+      this was very disappointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stole a glance at Mary, sitting with a far-away expression in her eyes
+      (the ridiculous girl had heard an engine whistle; knew it to be the train
+      that was taking her George to London). Margaret stole a glance at Mary;
+      repeated louder: &ldquo;I write, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It fetched the delicious response. Mary started: &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret said hurriedly: &ldquo;Oh, nothing worth speaking of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary said: &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;; gave her thoughts again to the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was wretched of her. &ldquo;Poems,&rdquo; said Margaret, and stressed the word &ldquo;<i>Poems</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary came flying back from the train. &ldquo;Oh, how interesting that is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At once Margaret drew away. &ldquo;Oh, it is nothing,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;nothing.&rdquo; She
+      put her eyes upon the far clouds; breathed &ldquo;Nothing&rdquo; in a long sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this it was not a far step to reading, with terrible reluctance, her
+      poems to Mary; nor from this again was it other than an obvious step to
+      telling of Bill. Her pretty verses were so clearly written at some heart
+      which throbbed responsive, that Mary must needs put the question. It came
+      after a full hour's reading&mdash;the poet sitting upon her bed in a
+      litter of manuscripts, Mary in a low chair before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a tremulous voice the poet concluded the refrain of an exquisite verse:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Beat for beat, your heart, my darling,
+          Beats with mine.
+  Skylarks carol, quick responsive,
+          Love divine.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The poet gave a little gulp; laid down her paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary also gulped. From both their pretty persons emotion welled in a great
+      flood that filled the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure that is written <i>to</i> somebody,&rdquo; Mary breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing to
+      be capable of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary implored: &ldquo;Oh, do tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Margaret told the story of Bill&mdash;with intimate details and in
+      the beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding
+      emotion piled upwards to the very roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will examine
+      a baby&mdash;if they must&mdash;with a bashful diffidence that pulls down
+      the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its
+      chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love&mdash;if they
+      must&mdash;with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must not
+      be discovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her confidence:
+      &ldquo;And have you&mdash;are you&mdash;I know practically nothing about you,
+      Mary, dear. <i>Do</i> tell me, are <i>you</i> in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She laughed.
+      &ldquo;Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another by
+      knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer
+      sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the arrow
+      that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions so that she
+      should not flinch at the wound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret twanged the bow-string. &ldquo;No time to fall in love?&rdquo; she murmured.
+      She fitted the shaft; let fly. &ldquo;Do you like George, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary stooped to her shoe-laces. Despite her preparations the arrow had
+      pierced, and she hid her face to hide the blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George?&rdquo; said she, head to floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, George. Do you like George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My Mary sat up, brazen. &ldquo;George? Oh, you mean your cousin? I daresay he's
+      very nice. Practically I've never even spoken to him since I've been
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. Of course he's very busy just now. Do you think you would like
+      him if you did know him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was murderous work. Mary was beginning to quiver beneath the arrows;
+      was in terror lest she should betray the secret. A desperate kick was
+      necessary. She wildly searched for a foothold; found it; kicked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure I shouldn't like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet softly protested: &ldquo;Oh why, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's clean-shaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don't like a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't stand a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if he had a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if he had a&mdash;Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly.&rdquo;
+       She fled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope paper
+      towards her; wrote:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued the
+      idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his return.
+      After a few paces, &ldquo;George,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;do you like Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George was never taken aback. &ldquo;Mary? Mary who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Humfray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, is her name Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is.&rdquo; Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up at
+      him. &ldquo;Do you like her, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Mary&mdash;Miss Humfray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major&mdash;in some ways. If
+      that's what you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this
+      girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George, dear, I wish you would do something for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from his
+      pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She asked him: &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said brokenly: &ldquo;You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a moustache.
+      It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one way. It is by
+      pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a tooth-brush and
+      tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have to do it every
+      morning, and I somehow can never remember it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic
+      temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept waiting
+      for its meals.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the
+      hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate, and
+      so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of an
+      outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to approach,
+      at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated air advertised
+      long neglect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by chance,
+      George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into the copse,
+      had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick undergrowth had
+      plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had taken him within, shown
+      him an outer and an inner room, and, in the second, a sight that had given
+      him laughter; for he discovered there sundry empty bottles labelled &ldquo;Old
+      Tom,&rdquo; a glass, an envelope addressed to Mrs. Major. It was clear that in
+      this deserted place&mdash;somehow chanced upon&mdash;the masterly woman
+      had been wont, safe from disturbance, to meet the rascal who, taken to
+      Herons' Holt on that famous night, had so villainously laid her by the
+      heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this day
+      when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief whispered moment
+      to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking pale, had told her
+      to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately George gave her directions
+      for the hut; there he would meet her at five o'clock; there not the most
+      prying eye could reach them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him, just
+      within the threshold of the open door. It was their first secluded meeting
+      since she had come to Herons' Holt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed &ldquo;I have thee, girl&rdquo;; sprang
+      on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first moment together in Paltley Hill!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;The first holy
+      kiss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary wriggled. &ldquo;George! You frightened me nearly out of my life. It's
+      not holy. You're hurting me awfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child, it is holy. Trust in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George, you <i>are</i> hurting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scorn that. It is delicious!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a space, looking
+      at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild spirits,
+      despite her roguishness, for a space they did not speak. His hands were
+      below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was the junction
+      whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being received and
+      pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without hitch or delay the
+      delectable thrill came pouring; above, between their eyes, on wires
+      invisible they signalled its safe arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the
+      intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with thirst
+      will with a little sigh put down the glass that has touched him back to
+      vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made them dumb
+      before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they had been
+      whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the
+      medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we are
+      nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs about
+      us, we have no words to express the elevation. Debase love and we can
+      speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must be dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a little laugh they broke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going on all right, old girl?&rdquo; George asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Splendidly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed and said: &ldquo;I will give the proper answer to that. How can I be
+      other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way&mdash;very, very
+      lucky. Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure. Cherish
+      it, tend it, love it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you waste
+      them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me&mdash;about your exam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was at once serious. &ldquo;To-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow my
+      angel voice trills in the examiners' ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you had a paper first, before the viva?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not snap me up, girl. I speak in metaphors. To-morrow my angel hand
+      glides my pen over the paper. On Thursday my angel tongue gives forth my
+      wisdom with the sound of a tinkling cymbal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The paper to-morrow, the viva on Thursday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed his angel head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George, don't, <i>don't</i> fool. Are you nervous? Will you pass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall rush, I shall bound. I shall hurtle through like a great
+      boulder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Georgie!</i> Will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his banter. &ldquo;I believe I shall, old girl. I really think I
+      shall. I've simply sweated my life out these weeks&mdash;all for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She patted his hand. &ldquo;Dear old George! How I shall think of you! And
+      then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;why, then, we'll marry! Mary, I shall hear the result
+      immediately after the viva. Then I shall rush back here and tackle old
+      Marrapit at once. If he won't give me the money I think perhaps he'll lend
+      it, and then we'll shoot off to Runnygate and take up that practice and
+      live happily ever after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the brave ardour of youth they discussed the delectable picture;
+      arranged the rooms they had never seen; planned the daily life of which
+      they had not the smallest experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice in our lives we can play at Make-Believe&mdash;once when we are
+      children, once when we are lovers. And these are the happiest times of our
+      lives. We are not commoners then; we are emperors. We touch the sceptre
+      and it is a magic wand. We rule the world, shaping it as we will, dropping
+      from between our fingers all the stony obstacles that would interfere with
+      its plasticity. Between childhood and love, and between love and death,
+      the world rules us and bruises us. But in childhood, and again in love, we
+      rule the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they ruled their world.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      That night Mary prayed her George might pass his examination&mdash;a
+      prayer to make us wise folk laugh. The idea of our conception of the
+      Divinity deliberately thrusting into George's mind knowledge that he
+      otherwise had not, the idea of the Divinity deliberately prompting the
+      examiners to questions that George could answer&mdash;these are ludicrous
+      to us in our wisdom. We have the superiority of my simple Mary in point of
+      intelligence; well, let us hug that treasure and make the most of it.
+      Because we miss the sense of confidence with which Mary got from her
+      knees; passed into her dreams. With our fine intellects we should lie
+      awake fretting such troubles. These simple, stupid Marys just hand the
+      tangle on and sleep comforted. They call it Faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, but isn't it grand to be of that fine, brave, intellectual,
+      hard-headed, business-like stamp that trusts nothing it cannot see and
+      prove? Rather!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Up the drive George came bounding with huge strides. The fires of
+      tremendous joy that roared within him impelled him to enormous energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the journey from Waterloo to Paltley Hill he could with difficulty
+      restrain himself from leaping upon the seat; bawling &ldquo;I've passed! I've
+      passed! I'm qualified!&rdquo; He could not sit still. He fidgeted, wriggled;
+      thrust his head first from one window, then from the other. Every foot of
+      the line was well known to him. To each familiar landmark his spirit
+      bellowed: &ldquo;Greeting! When last you saw me I was coming up in a blue funk.
+      Now! Oh, good God, now&mdash;&rdquo; and he would draw in, stride the carriage,
+      and thrust his head from the other window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His four fellow-passengers regarded him with some apprehension. They
+      detected signs of lunacy in the young man; kept a nervous eye cocked upon
+      the alarm cord; at the first stopping place with one accord arose and
+      fled. One, signing herself &ldquo;Lady Shareholder,&rdquo; had her alarming experience
+      in her daily-paper upon the following morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At his station George leapt for the platform a full minute before the
+      train had stopped. Up the lanes he sent his bursting spirits flying in
+      shrill whistlings and gay hummings; slashed stones with his stick; struck
+      across the fields and took gates and stiles in great spread-eagled vaults.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So up the drive, stones still flying, whistlings still piping.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon the lawn he espied Mr. Marrapit and his Mary. She, on a garden seat,
+      was reading aloud from the <i>Times</i>; Mr. Marrapit, on a deep chair
+      stretched to make lap for the Rose of Sharon, sat a little in advance of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George approached from Mr. Marrapit's flank; soft turf muffled his
+      strides. The warm glow of kindliness towards all the world, which his
+      success had stoked burning within him, put a foreign word upon his tongue.
+      He sped it on a boisterous note:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Uncle, I've passed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary crushed the <i>Times</i> between her hands; bounded to her feet.
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Hip! hur&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bit the final exclamation; dropped to her seat. Mr. Marrapit had
+      twisted his eye upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in pain?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;oh, no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a pang in the hip?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no&mdash;no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you bounded. You cried 'hip'! Whose hip?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was startled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unsatisfactory. The brain, not the hip, is the seat of the emotion.
+      Elucidate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know why I said 'hip.' I was startled. Mr. George startled me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me also he startled. I did not shout hip, thigh, leg nor knee. Control
+      the tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to George. &ldquo;Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has projected
+      this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you repeat it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sprayed upon between mortification and laughter at the manner of his
+      greeting, George's enthusiasm was a little damped. But its flame was too
+      fierce to be hurt by a shower. Now it roared again. &ldquo;I've passed!&rdquo; he
+      cried. &ldquo;I'm qualified!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tender my felicitations. Accept them. Leave us, Miss Humfray. This is a
+      mighty hour. Take the Rose. Give her cream. Let her with us rejoice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary raised the cat. She faced about so that she directly shut Mr.
+      Marrapit from his nephew; with her dancing eyes spoke her happiness to her
+      George; passed down the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright. &ldquo;Again,
+      accept my felicitations,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They are yours. Take them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: &ldquo;It is a
+      mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to
+      port, through hurts to harbour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;&rdquo; George said, groping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our minds
+      and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand. Westward the
+      setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows. Between us the
+      horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer stands. It is banished
+      by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is ended. The vow which I
+      swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept. I would nourish you, I
+      declared, until you were a qualified physician. You are a qualified
+      physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the future, upon a written
+      invitation, I trust you will visit this home in which your youth has been
+      spent. When do you leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm
+      came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He had
+      not anticipated it. He jerked: &ldquo;When do I&mdash;leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness and
+      waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When does it
+      fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope, spend beneath
+      my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George flamed. &ldquo;You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood.&rdquo; He
+      became stern. &ldquo;Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to
+      stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest
+      money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you Godspeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became humble. &ldquo;I
+      am sorry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I see what you mean. I appreciate your kindness. You
+      ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them before you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one waiting
+      a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some kind would
+      be necessary. &ldquo;Proceed,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George said: &ldquo;My plans&mdash;&rdquo; He swallowed. &ldquo;My plans&mdash;&rdquo; Again he
+      swallowed. His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought despairingly
+      for one that would not at the very outset turn Mr. Marrapit into screams.
+      &ldquo;My plans&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit groaned. &ldquo;My God! What is coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said on a rush: &ldquo;These are my plans. I intend to marry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;then&mdash;&rdquo; said George, floundering. &ldquo;After that&mdash;then&mdash;I
+      intend to marry&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bigamy,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit murmured. &ldquo;Bigamy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little
+      seaside practice that is for sale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes half
+      closed, face working upon some inward stress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are my plans,&rdquo; George summarised: &ldquo;to marry and buy this practice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face ceased;
+      he opened his eyes, sat up. &ldquo;When?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This practice&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have it in my eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I wanted to ask&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You intend to ask me for money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to suggest&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four&mdash;five hundred pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heaven!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the end
+      of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She tripped to him. &ldquo;Father! What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit throated. &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was upon her errand no&mdash;words passed between the two. Mr.
+      Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. &ldquo;Leave us,&rdquo; he said. He
+      drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench beside him;
+      gave George a wan smile. &ldquo;I am stricken in years,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have passed
+      through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had experience of
+      such affections of the brain. I thought&rdquo;&mdash;the hideous memory shook
+      him&mdash;&ldquo;I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said defiantly: &ldquo;I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly gulped.
+      &ldquo;I shall have a stroke,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;My hour is at hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. &ldquo;Oh, I say, uncle, don't
+      go on like that! You don't know what this means to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to
+      myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. &ldquo;Oh, for
+      heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it
+      impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask, you
+      have only to say no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promise that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say it now, then. No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you haven't heard me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unnecessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tortured young man raised his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is necessary! You shall! You must!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit gasped. &ldquo;Barley water! I am going to be
+      murdered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this is insupportable!&rdquo; George cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I endorse that. A double death threatens me. I shudder between a stroke
+      and a blow. I shall be battered to death on my own lawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would only listen to me,&rdquo; George implored. &ldquo;Why can we never be
+      natural when we meet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Search your heart for the answer,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit told him. &ldquo;It is because
+      your demands are unnatural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't heard them. Listen. I am on the threshold of my career. I am
+      sure you will not ruin it. The real price of this practice is 650 pounds&mdash;the
+      value of a year and a half's income; that is the usual custom. I am
+      offered it for four hundred. Then I want to marry and to have a little
+      balance with which to start&mdash;say 100 pounds for that. That makes 500
+      pounds altogether. I implore you to lend&mdash;lend, not give&mdash;that
+      sum. I will pay you back 50 pounds at the end of the first year and a
+      hundred a year afterwards. Interest too. I don't know much about these
+      things. Any interest you like. We would get a solicitor to draw up an
+      agreement. Say you will lend the money. I feel sure you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You delude yourself by that assurance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, wait before you refuse. My prospects are so bright if only you will
+      help me. I have no one else to whom I can turn. It is only a loan I ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is refused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George stamped away, hands to head. The poor boy was in agony. Then
+      returned:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't believe you. You will not be so heartless. Think over what I have
+      said. Tell me to-night&mdash;to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My answer would be the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You absolutely refuse to lend me the money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I refuse. It is against my principles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My frantic George clutched at a shimmering hope. &ldquo;Against your principles
+      to lend? Do you mean that you will give&mdash;give me 500 pounds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit gasped. He drank; gasped: &ldquo;Give 500 pounds!
+      You are light-headed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then lend it!&rdquo; George supplicated on a last appeal. &ldquo;Make any conditions
+      you please, and I will accept them. Uncle, think of when you were a young
+      man. Remember the time when you were on the threshold of your career.
+      Think of when you were engaged as I am now engaged. Imagine your feelings
+      if you had been prevented marrying. You won't stand in my way? The
+      happiest life is before me if you will only give your aid. Otherwise&mdash;otherwise&mdash;oh,
+      I say, you won't refuse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I implore you to close this distressing scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you lend me the money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My principles prevent me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then damn your principles!&rdquo; George shouted. &ldquo;Damn your principles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he had been battering his head against this brick wall he had been
+      saved pain by the hope that a last chance would carry him through. Now
+      that he realised the futility of the endeavour, the stability of the wall,
+      he had time to feel the bruising he had suffered&mdash;the bitterness of
+      failure and of all that failure meant. The hurts combined to make him roar
+      with pain, and he shouted furiously again: &ldquo;Damn your principles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo; throated Mr. Marrapit on a note of terror. He reached for
+      the glass. It was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He struggled to his feet; got the chair between George and himself; cried
+      across it: &ldquo;Beware how you touch me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm not going to touch you. You needn't be afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have every need. I am afraid. Keep your distance. You are not
+      responsible for your actions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't be afraid, I tell you. It is too ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I repeat I have need. Keep your distance. My limbs tremble as one in a
+      palsy.&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit gripped the chair-back; his shudders advertised his
+      distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only want to say this,&rdquo; George declaimed, &ldquo;that if you refuse what I
+      ask, you are refusing what is lawfully mine. My mother left you 4000
+      pounds for my education. At the outside you have spent three. The 500
+      pounds is mine. I have a right to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep your distance, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My furious George took three steps forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you answer what I say?&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit gave a thin cry: turned, and with surprising bounds made
+      across the lawn. A slipper shot from his foot. He alighted upon a stone;
+      bounded heavenwards with a shrill scream; and hopping, leaping, shuffling,
+      made the corner of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George swung on his heel. It occurred to him to visit Bill Wyvern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The Rape Of The Rose.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Bill was away from home, the maid who answered the door told George; Mrs.
+      Wyvern was out; the Professor was in his study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George found the great biologist warming his chilly old bones in a vast
+      armchair before a fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a twinkling of his sky-blue eyes that spoke to pleasant temper, the
+      Professor greeted George; nodded him into an opposite seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am reading a letter,&rdquo; he announced. This man spoke very slowly, never
+      abbreviated; had now an air of child-like happiness. &ldquo;It is a letter from
+      Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said: &ldquo;Ah, what is Bill doing? I've not seen him for days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Wyvern chuckled away and fumbled with clumsy old fingers among
+      the closely-written sheets on his lap. One he selected and inclined
+      towards George. Its upper half was thickly lettered in heavy red type,
+      prominent among which there bawled forth in wavy capitals, thickly
+      underscored:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;THE DAILY.&rdquo; EVERYBODY'S PAPER. PRICE 1/2d.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hot stuff!&rdquo; George cried. &ldquo;Is old Bill on the staff of the <i>Daily</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Bill is on the staff of the <i>Daily</i>,&rdquo; the Professor returned
+      with more chuckling. &ldquo;You have heard of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's advertised everywhere. You can't get away from it. First
+      number out to-morrow, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is. I think it will be a very terrible production&mdash;a very
+      horrible production indeed. But I am an annual subscriber because of Bill,
+      and I have written a short article for the first issue also because of
+      Bill. Bill says&rdquo; (the Professor fumbled again; ran his nose twice up and
+      down each sheet; finally struck the passage) &ldquo;Bill says, 'You were a
+      brick, dear old governor, to send that article. It is a most thundering
+      scoop for the <i>Daily</i>, and made the Boss most awfully bucked up with
+      me. You are a brick, dear old Governor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little tear rolled out of Professor Wyvern's silly old eye, and he blew
+      his nose in a series of terrific thunder-claps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You see how pleased Bill is with himself. I am afraid
+      he uses the most terrible expressions in his letters, but he does not use
+      them when he is writing his stories. He is a clever boy, and I am very
+      proud of him. Now let me tell you.&rdquo; He fell to nosing the sheets again.
+      &ldquo;All this first part is about his dogs. '... if Abiram and Dathan start
+      scrapping, just hoof Abiram&mdash;it's his fault.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor looked up at George. &ldquo;I would more readily kick a police
+      constable than I would kick Abiram,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must tell Hocken all
+      this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued, &ldquo;'... see that Korah is kept short of meat for a bit ...
+      when they are exercising, for goodness' sake don't let them be taken down
+      Windmill Lane. There is a collie there that they have got a grudge against
+      and will tear to bits if they catch.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor paused. &ldquo;Oh, dear! oh, dear! I must give all this part to
+      Hocken to keep. Ah! Now here is about his work. They have engaged him at
+      four pounds a week. He does not know exactly what he is. Not a sub-editor.
+      Not a reporter. He thinks they will put him on to what he calls 'special
+      jobs,' or he may have to do what he calls 'ferret round' and find jobs for
+      himself. The understanding is that he is only on probation. If he does
+      anything very good they will put him on the permanent staff; if not, he is
+      liable to go at a week's notice. Then he says, 'Tell all this to George,
+      and give him my love. He was up for his exam&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Wyvern broke off. &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;oh, dear me, I have
+      forgotten! You have been up for your examination?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kindly old Professor Wyvern misinterpreted the lack of enthusiasm. &ldquo;When I
+      was a medical student,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I failed dozens of times in my final
+      examination&mdash;dozens. It's no criterion of knowledge, you know: it is
+      just luck. Never let examination failure dishearten you. Go along happily,
+      George, and take your chance when it comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's come,&rdquo; George said, beaming; recollection of his splendid success
+      temporarily overshadowed recollection of his tragic failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have qualified?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor's sky-blue eyes danced with glee. He struggled on to his
+      tottery old legs; before George could save him the exertion, had hobbled
+      over the hearth-rug and was wringing his hand in tremendous pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well done, George!&rdquo; he bubbled. &ldquo;Well done! Well done! It is the most
+      splendid news. I have not had such a happy day for a long time. Qualified!
+      Well, that is splendid! Splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell back into his chair, panting with his excitement. &ldquo;Ring that bell,
+      George. We must celebrate this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A maid appeared. &ldquo;Susan,&rdquo; said the Professor, &ldquo;bring up a small bottle of
+      champagne and two glasses. Mr. George has passed his examination. Be very
+      quick, Susan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susan was very quick. The cork popped; the glasses foamed and fizzed. &ldquo;Now
+      we will have one glass each,&rdquo; the Professor said. &ldquo;I think, it will kill
+      me at this hour, and if my wife catches me she will send me to bed; so we
+      must be very quick. Now, this is your health, George. God bless you and
+      good luck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drained his glass like the brave old boy that he was; and when his eyes
+      had done streaming, and he had finished gasping and choking, bade Susan
+      hurry away the signs of the dreadful deed before her mistress should catch
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now tell me your plans, George. Which road to Harley Street, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then George poured into those kindly old ears all the tragic story&mdash;the
+      girl he was going to marry; the practice he was going to buy; the wrecker
+      who had wrecked his fair ships ere ever he had put to sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were in the Professor's nature no sympathies that enabled him even
+      to comprehend miserliness in any degree. Made aware of the taint in Mr.
+      Marrapit, he became red and furious in his abhorrence of it. With snorts
+      and fumes he punctuated the recital; when it closed, burst out: &ldquo;Why, but
+      it is yours! the money is yours. It is misappropriation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just what I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he must be made to give it you.&rdquo; George laughed grimly. &ldquo;I say
+      that, too. But how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you certain of your facts, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been to Somerset house and seen my mother's will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Legally, then&mdash;we'll get it out of him by law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've thought of that,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;I don't think it is possible. Look,
+      the passage runs like this. I have it word for word. 'To my brother
+      Christopher Marrapit 4000 pounds, and I desire him to educate in the
+      medical profession my son George.' Not even 'with which I desire him,' you
+      see. I don't think there's any legal way of getting the money I want&mdash;the
+      five hundred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      For full ten minutes Professor Wyvern made no answer. He stared in the
+      fire, and every now and again one of his little chuckles set his bent old
+      shoulders bobbing. Upon a longer chuckle they waggled for a space; then he
+      turned to George. &ldquo;Not legally; well, then, what about illegally, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George did not comprehend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very bad notion has come into my head,&rdquo; the Professor continued. &ldquo;I
+      ought to be ashamed of it, but I am not. I think it would be very funny. I
+      think your uncle would deserve it. I am sure it would be very funny, and I
+      think it would be proper and justifiable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor's old shoulders bobbed about again. &ldquo;No, I will not tell
+      you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will not be a party to it; because if my wife found out
+      she would send me to bed and keep me there. But I will tell you a little
+      story, George. If it sets up a train of action that you like to follow&mdash;well,
+      I think it will be very funny. Only, don't tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, this is mysterious. Tell me the story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will. This is the story. When I was a student in Germany we had a
+      professor called Meyer. He wore a wig because he was quite bald. He was
+      very sensitive about his baldness and would have no one know&mdash;but we
+      knew. Upon one afternoon there was a great violinist who was coming to
+      play at our town. All the professors announced that for this occasion they
+      would postpone the lectures they should then have given, so that their
+      classes might attend the concert. But this Professor Meyer said that he
+      would not postpone his lecture. It was a link in a series, you understand&mdash;not
+      to be missed,&mdash;so his class, of which I was one; were very furious.
+      We told him that we were entitled to a holiday this day since all had it,
+      but he would not hear us. We were very angry, for this holiday was our
+      right. Now, also, one week before the concert the burgomaster of our town
+      was to give a great banquet to the celebration of the centenary of a
+      famous citizen. Here our Professor Meyer was to make a speech. Well, when
+      he remained adamant, determined to give us no holiday, we had a great
+      meeting, and thus we arranged to procure the holiday that was ours by
+      right. Our plot was justified by his mulishness. He should lose the thing
+      he most cherished&mdash;he should lose his wig two days before his banquet
+      with the burgomaster. One of us would take his wig, seizing him as by
+      night he walked to his rooms. Before his distress we should be most
+      sympathetic, offering every aid. Perchance he would encourage our efforts
+      by offer of the prize we most desired. The plot worked, with no
+      misadventure, to a brilliant triumph. We took the wig. We enveloped him in
+      our sympathy. 'Search out and restore my wig,' said he, 'and you shall
+      have your holiday.' Then we found his wig and we enjoyed the holiday that
+      was our right. That is the story,&rdquo; Professor Wyvern ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mystification clouded George's face. He pushed out a leg, stared at the
+      toe. He stared at the fire; at the Professor, chuckling and rubbing his
+      hands, he stared. His brain twisted the story this way and that, striving
+      to dovetail it into his own circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In such a process the eyes are the mouth of the machine whence the
+      completed manufacture sends forth its sparkling. But while the mechanism
+      twists and turns the fabrics there is no sparkle&mdash;the eyes are
+      clouded in thought, as we say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes that George turned upon toe, upon fire, and upon Professor
+      Wyvern, were dull and lack-lustre. The machine worked unproductive; there
+      was a cog that required adjustment, a lever that wanted a pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George sought the foreman machinist; said slowly: &ldquo;But I don't see how the
+      story helps me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must think over it,&rdquo; Professor Wyvern told him. &ldquo;I dare not
+      tell you any more. I must be no party to the inference that can be drawn.
+      But do you not see that the thing our Professor cherished most was his
+      wig? Now, Bill has told me that the thing your uncle cherishes above all
+      price is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Click went the machine; round buzzed the wheels; out from George's eyes
+      shot the sparkles. He jumped to his feet, his face red. &ldquo;Is his cat!&rdquo; he
+      cried. &ldquo;His Rose of Sharon! I see it! I see it! By Gad, I'll do it! Look
+      here now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I will not,&rdquo; the Professor said. &ldquo;I do not wish to know anything
+      about it. I hear my wife's step.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand. All right. But don't tell a soul&mdash;not even Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell, because I do not know. But I suspect it is something very
+      funny,&rdquo; and the Professor burst into a very deep &ldquo;Ho! ho! ho!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dearest,&rdquo; said Mrs. Wyvern at the door, &ldquo;whatever can you be laughing
+      at so loudly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! ho! ho! ho!&rdquo; boomed the Professor, belling like a bloodhound. &ldquo;It is
+      something very funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Wyvern kissed the thin hairs on the top of his mighty head. &ldquo;Dear
+      William, I do trust it was not one of those painful stories of your young
+      days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George stayed to dinner. By nine he left the house. He did not make for
+      home. Striking through lanes he climbed an ascending field, mounted a
+      stile, and here, with an unseeing eye upon Herons' Holt twinkling its
+      bedroom lights in the valley below, he smoked many pipes, brooding upon
+      his scheme.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was not a melancholy process. Every now and again a crack of laughter
+      jerked him; once he took his pipe from his mouth and put up a ringing peal
+      of mirth that sent a brace of bunnies, flirting near his feet, wildly
+      scampering for safety. Long he brooded....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A church clock gave him eleven. At ten he had been too deeply buried. Now
+      his head was pushed clear from the burrow in which he had been working,
+      and the sound caught his attention. No light now pricked Herons' Holt upon
+      the dusky chart stretched beneath him. Its occupants were abed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do it to-night!&rdquo; cried George. &ldquo;I'll do it at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew on his pipe. A full cloud of smoke came. The pipe was well alight,
+      and caution bidding him that it were well to bide a while so that sleep
+      might more cosily warm the beds of the household, he determined that he
+      would have out his last smoke as plotter: his next would be smoked as doer
+      of the deed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rehearsed his plan. A knife would slip back the catch of the window
+      behind which the Rose of Sharon lay. Possessing himself of her person he
+      would speed to that tumbled hut in the copse. There she might lie in
+      safety for the night: neither hut nor copse was in any man's road. Upon
+      the morrow, when the hideous circumstance had been discovered, he would
+      bear himself as events seemed to demand. He would be boundless in his
+      sympathy, a leader in the search. If the idea of reward did not occur to
+      Mr. Marrapit, he must suggest it. Unlikely that in the first moment of
+      loss, when the Rose would still seem to be near, the reward would approach
+      the figure at which he aimed. That was for his cunning to contrive. But
+      obviously it would be impossible permanently to keep the Rose in the hut.
+      To-morrow, when pretending to search for her he could guard the place
+      where she lay; but he could not always be sentinel. The countryside would
+      be scoured; no stone left unturned, no spinney unbeaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he saw the matter, the plan would be to get somewhere down the railway
+      line on pretext of a clue, taking the Rose of Sharon with him; for the
+      success of the whole scheme depended upon his concealing the cat until Mr.
+      Marrapit should be upon his bended knees in his distress, in deepest
+      despair as to the Rose's recovery, and hence would be transported to
+      deepest gratitude when it was restored to his arms. George told himself he
+      must be prepared against the eventuality of his uncle failing to offer in
+      public reward so large a sum as 500 pounds. That did not greatly distress.
+      Best indeed if that sum were offered, but, failing it, it was upon Mr.
+      Marrapit's gratitude that George ultimately reckoned. Surely when he
+      &ldquo;found&rdquo; the cat it would be Mr. Marrapit's natural reply to give in
+      exchange the sum he had that afternoon so violently refused. At the least,
+      he could not refuse to lend it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in his brooding George had decided he must not tell his Mary. First,
+      it would be cruel to set her upon the rack of acting a part before Mr.
+      Marrapit, before the household, before every questioner she must
+      encounter; second&mdash;second, my ignoble George had doubts as to in what
+      spirit his Mary would regard this plot did he make her partner in it. That
+      it was wholly justifiable he personally would have contended before
+      archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that was as
+      incontestably his own as the being which also his mother had given him.
+      Before all the angelic host he would thus have protested-without stammer,
+      without blush; with the inspiration of righteousness, with the integrity
+      of innocence. But to protest his cause before his Mary was another matter.
+      There might be no occasion to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye with
+      him in the matter. She might; but it was an eventuality he did not care to
+      try against a test. His Mary was a girl&mdash;and girls are in their
+      conduct narrowed by scruples that do not beset men. His Mary&mdash;and
+      this it was that would make a test so violent&mdash;his Mary was his Mary,
+      and well he knew, and loved, the little heart so delicately white as
+      instantly to discover the finest specks of sootiness&mdash;if specks there
+      were&mdash;in any breeze that might cross its surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, he would not tell his Mary. When the thing was done&mdash;when he, the
+      black-hearted rogue, had the little saint safe in the toils she would find
+      so delicious, then&mdash;then he would tell her, would silence her
+      frightened squeals&mdash;if she squealed&mdash;by his intention to pay
+      back the money, whether won as reward (which was improbable) or earned as
+      token of gratitude (which was highly likely). He had only asked to borrow,
+      and it should only be a loan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the dark fields in spirit he kissed his little saint. ... Of course&mdash;of
+      course&mdash;one must admit these brutal things&mdash;of course the scheme
+      might fail. Anything might happen to crash it about his ears. That was a
+      deadly, dismal thought, but he flattened it from sight with that lusty
+      hammer that gay youth uses&mdash;&ldquo;I shan't be any worse off if it does
+      fail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smoke came through his pipe in burning whiffs. He shook it bowl
+      downwards. Ashes and sparks fell in a shower. The pipe was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Whoop! forrard!</i> The game was afoot.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A moon as clear as that which shone when Bill stole to Herons' Holt to woo
+      his blessed damosel, gave a clear light to George as now he approached the
+      house. He took his way across the fields, and his progression was that of
+      no stealthy-footed conspirator. Two miles of downward-sloping land lay
+      between the stile whereon he had brooded and the home that his plottings
+      were to disturb. In buoyant spirits&mdash;for this was action, and action
+      makes lusty appeal to youth&mdash;he trotted or galloped as the descent
+      was easy or sharply inclined; the low hedges he took in great sprawling
+      jumps, the ditches in vast giant strides&mdash;arms working as
+      balance-pole, humming as he ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the lawn he became more cautious. But the moon showed Herons' Holt
+      sleepy-eyed-blinds drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cats' parlour, back of the house, gave upon a little strip of turf
+      that kept away the kitchen garden. George drew his knife; approached the
+      window. Now he was a criminal indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To slip the catch was easy work; between upper and lower sash there was
+      clear space. George inserted his pen-knife. Tip of blade grated against
+      catch; a little pressure&mdash;an answering movement; a little more&mdash;and,
+      <i>click</i>, the trick was done!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he raised the sash, and now he is in the room. Glimmer of a match
+      shows him the sleeping-baskets; its steadier flame discloses the Rose,
+      snugly curled, a little free of her silken coverlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wake, now, Rose&mdash;as an older school of novelists would have addressed
+      you. Wake, Rose! Wake, pretty Rose! Queenly Rose, awake! Wake precious,
+      virgin Rose! Squeal! scratch! bite! Claw those wicked hands descending
+      into your pure bed! Spring like spotless maiden aroused to find ravisher
+      at her couch! Spring, Rose, spring! Squawking news of outrage to all the
+      house, bound wildly, Rose, about this room that else you shall not see
+      until through searing perils you have passed! Spring! Rose, spring!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not Rose!
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The ravisher's hands descended upon her person&mdash;she only purred. They
+      passed about her warm and exquisite form&mdash;she purred the more. They
+      tickled her as they laid hold&mdash;she stretched a leg; purred with
+      fuller note. Perchance this virgin cat dreamed of some gallant young Tom
+      wooing her bed; perchance these ticklings had their deliciously
+      transfigured place in her visions; perchance&mdash;she only purred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now George tucked her beneath his arm. Legs dangled wretchedly; gallant
+      young Tom leapt from her dreams and she awoke. She stirred. George had a
+      foot upon the window-sill, and the night air ruffled her downy coat. She
+      was pressed against bony ribs; a rough arm squeezed her wretchedly; long,
+      poky fingers tortured her flank; her legs draggled dismally. She voiced
+      protest in a plaintive, piercing, long-drawn <i>&ldquo;Mi-aow!&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Clout!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Rose! Pretty, foolish Rose&mdash;as our older school again would have
+      written&mdash;why did you entertain sensuous dreams when you should have
+      been stirring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Mi-aow!&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Clout!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too late, Rose! Too late! That beauteous head&mdash;that prize-winning
+      head which from kittenhood upwards has known none other than caress, is
+      now a mark for battering bumps if you do but open those perfect jaws&mdash;those
+      prize-winning jaws. Too late, Rose! Too late! Do not cry now, Rose! The
+      ravisher has you. His blood congeals in terror at your plaintive cry. In
+      his brutish panic he will answer it with thuds. Too late, Rose! Too late!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mi-aow!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Clout!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Rose, Rose!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is outside now. &ldquo;Shut up, you fat idiot!&rdquo; he hisses. Squeezing her yet
+      more villainously with one arm, with the other he draws down the sash.
+      Through the gate, into the lane, over the stream, down the ride, into the
+      copse&mdash;up to the hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The outer door hangs grinningly upon its hinges. The door going to the
+      inner room has a working latch; George kicks it open; elbows it to behind
+      him; drops the Rose with jarring plump; strikes a match. There is the
+      dusty pile of Old Tom bottles, there the little heap of bracken upon which
+      Mrs. Major doubtless had reclined while with Old Tom she talked.
+      Excellent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The match goes out. He lights another. The Rose is standing forlornly at
+      his feet. While the match lasts he lifts her to the bracken bed; presses
+      her down; backs out; closes the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His watch, put beneath the moon, tells him it is upon one o'clock. He
+      pulls to the outer door; wedges beneath it a stump of wood that keeps it
+      firmly shut; makes for home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an hour he is sleeping the dreamless, childlike slumber that comes to
+      those who, setting their hand to the plough, have manfully laboured a full
+      day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Horror At Herons' Holt.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sleep does not necessarily shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton
+      mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice
+      or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, seductive
+      when least desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George, steeped in crime, snuggled warmly to her until aroused by a rude
+      shaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night-capped and dressing-gowned, white-faced and trembling, awful in
+      grief Mr. Marrapit stood near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up! The Rose of Sharon is lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it is so. Up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George pushed a shaking leg out of bed. He was had unawares. As a sleeper
+      pitched sleeping into the sea, so from unconsciousness he was hurled plump
+      into the whirlpool of events. And as the sleeper thus immersed would gulp
+      and sink and kick, so now he blinked, shivered, and gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He repeated: &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it is so. I have eyes; I have been to her room.&rdquo; Mr.
+      Marrapit's voice rose in a wailing cry. &ldquo;I have been to her room. Gone!
+      Gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George put out the other leg&mdash;crime-steeped legs that quivered. He
+      had looked for a space between awaking and meeting his uncle in which to
+      prepare his plans, rehearse his words. This abrupt rousing stampeded his
+      senses. He quavered &ldquo;Wher&mdash;where can she be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit flung up his arms. &ldquo;Oh, my God! If I knew that would I be
+      here? Up! Up! Join the searchers in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George pushed a criminal leg into his trousers. Conscience made thumbs of
+      his fingers, trembled his joints. He hopped frantically, thrusting with
+      the other foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dance!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit moaned bitterly. &ldquo;Dance! That is right! Why do you
+      not sing also? This is nothing to you! Dance on! Dance on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George cannoned the wash-stand. &ldquo;It <i>is</i> something to me. I can
+      hardly believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is sorrow expressed in a gavotte? Grief in a hornpipe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not dancing. My damned bags are stuck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit wrung his hands. &ldquo;Discard them! Discard them! Must decency
+      imperil the Rose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a tremendous kick George thrust in past the obstruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're on now&mdash;my slippers&mdash;coat&mdash;what shall I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Join the searchers. Scour the grounds. Search every shrub. Climb every
+      tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The agonised man led downstairs. &ldquo;I found the window open,&rdquo; he moaned.
+      &ldquo;Night by night, year in year out, I have shut it. Impossible that I
+      forgot. If I forgot, the Rose is in the garden or in the vicinity. If I
+      did not forget, the window was forced&mdash;the Rose was stolen. A
+      detective shall decide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George grew quite cold. Employment of a detective had not occurred to him.
+      They were at the front door. He put a hand on Mr. Marrapit's arm. &ldquo;Oh, not
+      a detective. Don't get a detective.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If need be I will get forty detectives. I will blacken the countryside
+      with detectives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George grew quite hot. &ldquo;Uncle, let us keep this private. Leave it with me.
+      Rely on me. I will find your cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into the garden,&rdquo; cried Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Join the searchers. They have
+      failed once. Lead, animate, encourage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you won't get a detective?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit did not reply. He had opened the hall door; Mr. Fletcher in
+      the middle distance approached moodily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit thrust out a hand. &ldquo;Back! Back!&rdquo; he cried hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wearily Mr. Fletcher gave answer. &ldquo;It's no use, Mr. Marrapit. It's no good
+      saying 'back.' I've been back. I've been back and I've been front and I've
+      been both sides. I've looked here, I've looked there; I've looked up, I've
+      looked down. I'm giddy with looking.&rdquo; He approached; stood before them.
+      Woe heavily draped herself about this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, easily discouraged!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, infirm of purpose! Back, faint-heart! Do not say die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faint-heart mopped a streaming brow. &ldquo;But I do say die. I do say die, Mr.
+      Marrapit, and I damn well shall die if I go creepin' and crawlin' and
+      hissin' much longer. It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not
+      a cobra.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit slammed the door. George hurried out of sight; in the kitchen
+      garden sat down to think. He was frightened. Thus far the plot had not
+      worked well. Detectives!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave an hour to the search he was ostensibly conducting; when he again
+      entered the house was more easy-minded. Employed in meditation that hour
+      gave him back his coolness of the night. Rudely awakened, given no time in
+      which firmly to plant his feet, securely to get a purchase with his hands
+      before the storm burst, he had been whirled along helpless and bewildered
+      before Mr. Marrapit's gusty agony. Instead of resisting the torrent,
+      directing its course, he had been caught where it surged fiercest, hurled
+      down-stream. In the vulgar simile of his reflections he was rotting the
+      whole show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now he had steadied himself. He girded his loins against the part he
+      had to play; with new determination and confidence entered the house.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There was no breakfast at Herons' Holt that morning. When George, dressed,
+      bathed and shaved, sought out his uncle, it was to find Mr. Marrapit in
+      the study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The distracted man was pacing the floor, a closely written sheet of paper
+      in his hands. He turned upon George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the hour of my travail I am also beneath the burden of earlier griefs.
+      Yesterday a disastrous scene took place between us. Oaths rasped from your
+      lips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forget that, sir. Forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my desire. Misery wails through the corridors. In her presence
+      let us bury private differences. In this appalling catastrophe every help
+      is required. You have youth, manhood; you should be invaluable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George declared: &ldquo;I mean to be. I will not rest until the Rose is
+      restored.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was perfectly true, as he was to discover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Commendable,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit pronounced. Now that this volunteer was
+      enlisted, Mr. Marrapit discarded supplication, resumed mastery. &ldquo;While you
+      have searched,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have schemed.&rdquo; He indicated the paper he
+      carried. &ldquo;These are my plans. Peruse them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George read; returned the paper. &ldquo;If these arrangements do not restore the
+      Rose,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;nothing will. I see you do not mention my name. I
+      fear you doubted my assistance. I think I will join the&mdash;the&mdash;&mdash;&ldquo;&mdash;he
+      glanced at the paper&mdash;&ldquo;the <i>extra-mural</i> searchers. I know the
+      countryside well. I can go far and fast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit agreed. &ldquo;Summon the household,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George called Margaret; the two carried out the order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a semicircle the household grouped about their master; from Mrs.
+      Armitage at the one horn to George at the other they took their places&mdash;Mrs.
+      Armitage, Clara, Ada, Mr. Fletcher, Frederick, Mary, Margaret, George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paper in hand Mr. Marrapit regarded them. He pointed at Frederick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That boy is sucking a disgusting peppermint. Disgorge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glad of relief, all eyes went upon the infamous youth. He purpled,
+      struggled, gulped, swallowed&mdash;from his eyes tears streamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stiffneck!&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit thundered. &ldquo;Disgorge, I said. You are controlled
+      by appetite; your belly is your god.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't 'ad no breakfast,&rdquo; Stiffneck answered fiercely. Like Miss
+      Porter upon a similar occasion this boy was in great pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no breakfast shall you have until the Rose is restored. Heartless!
+      How can you eat while she, perhaps, does starve?&rdquo; The angry man addressed
+      the group. &ldquo;These are the plans for her recovery. Give ear. You, vile boy,
+      will rush to the dairy and order to be sent at once as much milk as Mrs.
+      Armitage will command you. Mrs. Armitage, you with your maids&mdash;Fletcher,
+      you with that boy, are the <i>intramural</i> workers, the workers within
+      the walls. George, Margaret, Miss Humfray&mdash;<i>extra-mural</i>. Mrs.
+      Armitage, with milk let every bowl and saucer be filled. Fletcher, at
+      intervals of thirty feet along the wall let these be placed. If our
+      wanderer is near she will be attracted. Margaret, with Miss Humfray to the
+      village. Collect an army of village boys. Describe our Rose. Set them to
+      scour the countryside for her. Yourselves join that search. Let the call
+      of 'Rose! Rose!' echo through every lane. George, you also will scour far
+      and wide. Upon your way despatch to me a cab from the station. I drive to
+      the post-office to telephone for a detective. I have not yet decided which
+      detective. It is a momentous matter.&rdquo; He flung out both hands. &ldquo;To your
+      tasks! Let zeal, let love for our lost one spur each to outvie the efforts
+      of another. Fletcher, raise the window. That pungent boy has poisoned the
+      air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They trooped from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A Detective At Herons' Holt.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Bolt Buildings, Westminster, is a colossal red structure reared upon the
+      site of frightened-looking little houses which fell beneath the breaker's
+      hammer coincident with the falling in of their lease. Here you may have a
+      complete floor of rooms at from three to five hundred a year; or, high
+      under the roof, you may rent a single room for forty-five pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. David Brunger, Private Detective and Confidential Inquiry Agent,
+      appeared on the books of the Bolt Buildings management as lessee of one of
+      these single rooms. The appearance of his quarters as presented to the
+      visitor had, however, a more pretentious aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shot to the topmost floor in the electric lift, passing to the left and up
+      five stairs in accordance with the lift boy's instructions, the intending
+      client would be faced by three doors. Upon the first was inscribed:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Upon the middle door:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Private).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And upon the third:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Office).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      These signs of large staff and flourishing business were in keeping with
+      the telling advertisements which Mr. David Brunger from time to time
+      caused to appear in the Press.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watch your wife,&rdquo; said these advertisements, adding in smaller type that
+      had the appearance of a whisper: &ldquo;David Brunger will watch her.&rdquo; &ldquo;What
+      keeps your husband late at office?&rdquo; they continued. &ldquo;David Brunger will
+      find out. Confidential inquiry of every description promptly and cheaply
+      carried out by David Brunger's large staff of skilled detectives (male and
+      female). David Brunger has never failed. David Brunger has restored
+      thousands of pounds' worth of stolen property, countless missing
+      relatives. David Brunger, 7 Bolt Buildings, Strange Street, S.W. Tel. 0000
+      West.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In London, with its myriad little eddies of crime and matrimonial
+      infelicity, there is a neat sum to be made out of detective work. Scotland
+      Yard wolfs the greater part of these opportunities; there are established
+      names that absorb much of the remainder. In the surplus, however, there is
+      still a livelihood for the David Brungers. For if the Brungers do not go
+      nosing after silken petticoats covering aristocratic but wanton legs; if
+      the Brungers do not go flying across the Continent, nose to ground,
+      notebook in hand, after the fine linen worn by my lord who is making
+      holiday with something fair and frail under the quiet name of Mr. and Mrs.
+      Brown; if the Brungers are not employed to draggle silken petticoats and
+      fine linen through the Divorce Court, there is work for them among humbler
+      washing baskets. Jealous little shop-keepers have erring little wives, and
+      common little wives have naughty little husbands: these come to your
+      Brungers. And if, again, the Brungers do not dog the footsteps of your
+      fifty-thousand-pound men, your embezzlement-over-a-period-of-ten-years
+      men, your cheque-forging men&mdash;if the Brungers are invited to do no
+      dogging after these, there are pickings for them in less flashy crimes.
+      Hiding in cupboard work while the sweated little shop-assistant slips a
+      marked shilling from the till, hiding in basement work while a trembling
+      little figure creeps down and pilfers the stock&mdash;these are the pranks
+      that come to your Brungers.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      While Mr. Marrapit at Herons' Holt was addressing to his household grouped
+      about him his orders relative to the search for the Rose of Sharon, Mr.
+      David Brunger at Bolt Buildings was entering the door marked &ldquo;DAVID
+      BRUNGER (Private).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A telephone, a gas stove, a roll-top desk, an office chair, an armchair, a
+      tiny deal table and a wooden-seated chair comprised the furniture of the
+      apartment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For myself, I like severity and simplicity of surroundings,&rdquo; Mr. David
+      Brunger in the office chair would tell a client in the armchair. &ldquo;For <i>myself</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and he would waggle his head towards the side walls with an air that
+      seemed to imply prodigal luxury in the fittings of &ldquo;(Clerks)&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;(Office).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Entering the room Mr. Brunger unlocked the roll-top desk; discovered the
+      stump of a half-smoked cigarette; lit it and began to compare the day's
+      racing selections of &ldquo;Head Lad,&rdquo; who imparted stable secrets to one
+      tipster's organ, with those of &ldquo;Trainer,&rdquo; who from the knowledge of his
+      position very kindly gave one horse snips to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten o'clock the large staff of trained detectives (male and female),
+      mentioned in Mr. Brunger's advertisements, came pouring up the stairs,
+      knocked at the door and filed into the room. Its name was Issy Jago, a
+      Jewish young gentleman aged seventeen, whose appearance testified in the
+      highest manner to the considerable thrift he exercised in the matter of
+      hair-dressers and toilet soap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Issy Jago sat himself on the wooden-seated chair before the small deal
+      table; got to work upon his finger-nails with the corner of an omnibus
+      ticket; proceeded to study the police court reports in the <i>Daily
+      Telegraph</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his duty, whenever he noted plaintiffs or defendants to whom Mr.
+      David Brunger's services might be of benefit, to post to them Mr. David
+      Brunger's card together with a selection of entirely unsolicited
+      testimonials composed and dictated by Mr. Brunger for the occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also his duty to receive clients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a knock was heard at &ldquo;DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks)&rdquo; Mr. Issy Jago would
+      slip through from &ldquo;DAVID BRUNGER (Private)&rdquo; to the tiny closet containing
+      the cistern into which the door marked &ldquo;DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks)&rdquo; opened.
+      Sliding through this door in such a manner as to give the client no
+      glimpse of the interior, he would inform the visitor, with a confidential
+      wink, &ldquo;Fact is we have a client in there&mdash;a very well-known personage
+      who does not wish it to be known that he is consulting us.&rdquo; The impressed
+      caller would then be conducted into &ldquo;DAVID BEUNGER (Private).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between &ldquo;DAVID BRUNGER (Private)&rdquo; and &ldquo;DAVID BRUNGER (Office),&rdquo; on the
+      other hand, there was no communication. Indeed there was no room behind
+      &ldquo;(Office)&rdquo;: the door gave on to the roof. When, therefore, a hesitating
+      client chose to knock at &ldquo;(Office)&rdquo; Mr. Issy Jago, emerging from
+      &ldquo;(Private),&rdquo; would give the whispered information: &ldquo;Fact is there's a very
+      important private consultation going on in there&mdash;Scotland Yard
+      consulting us.&rdquo; And the impressed client would forthwith be led into
+      &ldquo;DAVID BRUNGER (Private).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In either event, the client trapped, Mr. Issy Jago would skip into
+      &ldquo;(Clerks)&rdquo; and sit on the cistern till Mr. Brunger's bell summoned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the privilege of adding to the dignity of his single apartment by
+      having his name inscribed upon the cistern cupboard and upon the emergency
+      exit to the roof, Mr. Brunger paid thirty shillings extra per annum.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      By half-past ten Mr. Brunger was occupied in composing an unsolicited
+      testimonial to be sent to the wife of a green-grocer in the Borough who,
+      on the previous day, had summoned her husband for assault at Lambeth
+      Police-Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had suspicions but no proof of my 'usband's infidelity,&rdquo; dictated Mr.
+      Brunger, pacing the floor, &ldquo;until I enlisted your services. I must say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the telephone bell rang. Mr. Brunger ceased dictation; took
+      up the receiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you David Brunger, the private detective?&rdquo; a voice asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are,&rdquo; replied Mr. Brunger in the thin treble he used on first
+      answering a call. &ldquo;Who are you, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Mr. Christopher Marrapit of Herons' Holt, Paltley Hill, Surrey. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment,&rdquo; piped Mr. Brunger. &ldquo;Is it confidential business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is most urgent business. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, please. In that case the private secretary must take your
+      message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brunger laid down the receiver; took a turn across the room;
+      approached the telephone; in a very deep bass asked, &ldquo;Are you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The frantic narrative that was poured into his ears he punctuated with
+      heavy, guttural &ldquo;Certainly's,&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes's,&rdquo; &ldquo;We comprehend's,&rdquo; &ldquo;We follow
+      you's.&rdquo; Then: &ldquo;Mr. David Brunger himself? I'm afraid that is impossible,
+      sir. Mr. Brunger has his hands very full just now. He is closeted with
+      Scotland Yard. At this moment, sir, the Yard is consulting him ...'m...'m.
+      Well, I'll see, sir, I'll see. I doubt it. I very much doubt it. But hold
+      the line a minute, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his capacity of Mr. David Brunger's private secretary, Mr. David
+      Brunger drank from the carafe of water on the mantelpiece to clear his
+      tortured throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his capacity of the great detective and confidential inquiry agent
+      himself, he then stepped to the telephone and, after exhibiting a power of
+      invention relative to startling crimes in hand that won even the
+      admiration of Mr. Issy Jago, announced that he would be with Mr. Marrapit
+      at three o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be a big job, Issy,&rdquo; he remarked, relighting the stump of
+      cigarette, &ldquo;or it may be a little job. But what I say and what I do is, <i>impress
+      your client. Impress your client,</i> Issy. Let that be your maxim through
+      life. And if I catch you again takin' a draw at my cigarette when my
+      back's turned, as I see you just now, I'll damn well turn you inside out
+      and chuck you through that door. So you watch it. You've made this smoke
+      taste 'orrid-'orrid. No sauce, now; no sauce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      By two o'clock the results of Mr. Marrapit's colossal scheme began to pour
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bowls of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every
+      stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a
+      clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the immediate
+      generalship of Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the morning cats bounded, flickered and disappeared upon the
+      wall. Fat cats, thin cats; tom cats, tabby cats; white cats, black cats,
+      yellow cats, and grey cats; young cats and old cats. As each appeared, Mr.
+      Marrapit, first expectant then moaning, would wave his assistants to the
+      assault. Up would go the clothes-prop of Mr. Fletcher or Frederick; down
+      would go the stranger cat. It was exhausting work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At two-thirty the village boys who had been searching were mustered at the
+      gate. Each bore a cat. Some carried two. Leaving his clothes-prop lancers,
+      Mr. Marrapit hurried down the drive to hold review.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pass,&rdquo; he commanded, &ldquo;in single file before me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed. &ldquo;Dolt! Dolt!&rdquo; groaned Mr. Marrapit, writhing in the
+      bitterness of crushed hope as each cat was held towards him. &ldquo;Dolt and
+      pumpkin-head! How could that wretched creature be my Rose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How, indeed, when at that moment the Rose of Sharon in the ruined hut was
+      lapping milk taken her by George in a lemonade bottle, her infamous captor
+      smoking on the threshold?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Precisely at three o'clock Mr. David Brunger arrived. Conducted to the
+      room whence the Rose had disappeared, the astute inquiry agent was there
+      closeted with Mr. Marrapit for half an hour. At the end of that time Mr.
+      Marrapit appeared on the lawn. His face was white, his voice, when he
+      spoke, hollow and trembling. He called to the clothes-prop lancers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cease. Cease. Withdraw the milk. The Rose of Sharon is not strayed. She
+      is stolen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thenk Gord!&rdquo; said Frederick. &ldquo;Thenk Gord! I've pretty well busted myself
+      over this game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher said nothing; drew his snail from his pocket; plunged head
+      downwards in a bush. Woe sat heavy upon him; beneath the indignity and
+      labour of thrusting at stranger cats with a clothes-prop this man had
+      grievously suffered.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Rose was stolen. That was Mr. Brunger's discovery after examination of
+      the window-latch where George's knife had marked it, the sill where
+      George's boots had scratched it. Outside the great detective searched for
+      footmarks&mdash;they had been obliterated by heavy rainfall between the
+      doing of the hideous deed and its discovery. Upon the principle of
+      impressing his client, however, Mr. Brunger grovelled on the path with
+      tape measure and note-book; measured every pair of boots in the house;
+      measured the window; measured the room; in neat little packets tied up
+      specimens of the gravel, specimens of the turf, specimens of hair from the
+      Rose of Sharon's coat, picked from her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was six o'clock when he had concluded. By then George had returned; the
+      three held council in the study. Addressing Mr. Marrapit, Mr. Brunger
+      tapped his note-book and his little packages. &ldquo;We shall track the culprit,
+      never fear, Mr. Marrapit,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My impression is that this is the
+      work of a gang&mdash;a <i>gang</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely my impression,&rdquo; George agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brunger took the interruption with the gracious bow of one who
+      condescends to accept a pat on the back from an inferior. Mr. Marrapit
+      twisted his fingers in his thin hair; groaned aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A <i>gang,</i>&rdquo; repeated Mr. Brunger, immensely relishing the word. &ldquo;We
+      detectives do not like to speak with certainty until we have clapped our
+      hands upon our men; we leave that for the amateurs, the bunglers&mdash;the
+      <i>quacks</i> of our profession.&rdquo; The famous confidential inquiry agent
+      tapped the table with his forefinger and proceeded impressively. &ldquo;But I
+      will say this much. Not only a gang, but a desperate gang, a dangerous,
+      stick-at-nothing gang.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit writhed. The detective continued: &ldquo;What are our grounds for
+      this belief?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What are our <i>data</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at George. George shook his head. Easy enough, and useful, to
+      acquiesce in the idea of a gang, but uncommonly hard to support the
+      belief. He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brunger was disappointed; a little at sea, he would have clutched
+      eagerly at any aid. However, &ldquo;impress your client.&rdquo; He continued: &ldquo;These
+      are our data. We have a valuable cat&mdash;a cat, sir, upon which the eyes
+      of cat-breeders are enviously fixed. Take America&mdash;you have had
+      surprising offers from America for this cat, sir, so you told me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight hundred pounds,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely. Observe how our data accumulate. We have dissatisfaction among
+      breeders at home because you will not employ this cat as, in their
+      opinion, for the good of the breed, she should be employed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit moaned: &ldquo;Polygamy is abhorrent to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely. Our data positively pile about us. We have a thousand
+      enthusiasts yearning for this cat. We have your refusal to sell or to&mdash;to&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Mr. Brunger allowed a hiatus delicately to express his meaning. &ldquo;Then
+      depend upon it, sir, we have a determination to secure this cat by foul
+      means since fair will not avail. We have a conspiracy among unscrupulous
+      breeders to obtain this valuable cat, and hence, sir, we have a gang&mdash;a
+      <i>gang</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit put his anguish of mind into two very deep groans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep calm, my dear sir,&rdquo; Mr. Brunger soothed. &ldquo;We shall return your cat.
+      We have our data.&rdquo; He continued: &ldquo;Now, sir, there are two ways of dealing
+      with a <i>gang</i>. We can capture the <i>gang</i> or we can seduce the <i>gang</i>&mdash;by
+      offering a reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George jumped in his chair. &ldquo;Anything wrong?&rdquo; Mr. Brunger inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your&mdash;your extraordinary grasp of the case astonishes me,&rdquo; George
+      exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Experience, sir, experience,&rdquo; said Mr. Brunger airily. Addressing Mr.
+      Marrapit, &ldquo;We must put both methods to work,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;I shall now
+      go to town, look up the chief breeders and set members of my trained staff
+      to track them. Also I must advertise this reward. With a cat of such value
+      we cannot use half measures. Shall we say one hundred pounds to start
+      with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo; gasped Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Barley water!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George sprang to the sideboard where always stood a jug of Mr. Marrapit's
+      favourite refreshment. Mr. Marrapit drank, agitation rattling the glass
+      against his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think what it means to you, sir,&rdquo; persuaded Mr. Brunger, a little alarmed
+      at the effects of his proposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective's tone had a very earnest note, for he was thinking with
+      considerable gratification what the hundred pounds would mean to himself.
+      On previous occasions he had urged rewards from his clients, put Mr. Issy
+      Jago in the way of securing them, and paid that gentleman a percentage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think what it means to you,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;What is a hundred pounds or
+      thrice that sum against the restoration of your cat? Come, what is it,
+      sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruin,&rdquo; answered Mr. Marrapit, gulping barley water. &ldquo;Ruin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brunger urged gravely: &ldquo;Oh, don't say that, sir. Think what our dumb
+      pets are to us. I've got a blood-'ound at home myself that I'd give my
+      life for if I lost&mdash;gladly. Surely they're more to us, our faithful
+      friends, than mere&mdash;mere&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pelf,&rdquo; supplied George, on a thin squeak that was shot out by the
+      excitement of seeing events so lustily playing his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mere pelf,&rdquo; adopted Mr. Brunger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit gulped heavily at the barley water; set his gaze upon a
+      life-size portrait in oils of his darling Rose; with fine calm announced:
+      &ldquo;If it must be, it must be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With masterly celerity Mr. Brunger drew forward pen and paper; scribbled;
+      in three minutes had Mr. Marrapit's signed authority to offer one hundred
+      pounds reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put the document in his pocket; took up his hat. &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he said
+      after farewells, &ldquo;I or one of my staff will return to scour the immediate
+      neighbourhood. It has been done, you tell me, but only by amateurs. The
+      skilled detective, sir, will see a needle where the amateur cannot discern
+      a haystack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      He was gone. His last words had considerably alarmed George. No time was
+      to be lost. All was working with a magic expediency, but the Rose must not
+      be risked in the vicinity of one of these needle-observing detectives. She
+      must be hurried away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; George said, &ldquo;I did not say it while the detective was here&mdash;I
+      do not wish to raise your hopes; but I believe I have a clue. Do not
+      question me,&rdquo; he added, raising a hand in terror lest Mr. Marrapit should
+      begin examination. &ldquo;I promise nothing. My ideas may be wholly imaginary.
+      But I believe&mdash;I believe&mdash;oh, I believe I have a clue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit rushed for the bell. &ldquo;Recall the detective! You should have
+      spoken. I will send Fletcher in pursuit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George seized his uncle's arm. &ldquo;On no account. That is why I did not speak
+      before. I am convinced I can do better alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not convince me. You are an amateur. We must have the skilled
+      mind. Let me ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George was in terror. &ldquo;No, no; do you not see it may be waste of time? Let
+      me at least make sure, then I will tell the detective. Meanwhile let him
+      pursue other clues. Why send the trained mind on what may be a
+      goose-chase?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The argument had effect. Mr. Marrapit dropped into a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George explained. To follow the clue necessitated, he said, instant
+      departure&mdash;by train. He would write fullest details; would wire from
+      time to time if necessary. His uncle must trust him implicitly. The
+      detective must not be told until he gave the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eager to clutch at any hope, Mr. Marrapit clutched at this. George was
+      given money for expenses; at eight o'clock left the house. There had been
+      no opportunity for words with his Mary. She did not even know that Mr.
+      Marrapit had refused the money that was to mean marriage and Runnygate;
+      she had not even danced with her George upon his success in his
+      examination. Leaving the household upon his desperate clue, George could
+      do no more than before them all bid her formal farewell. At half-past
+      eight he is cramming the peerless Rose of Sharon into a basket taken from
+      Mr. Fletcher's outhouses; at nine the villain is tramping the railway
+      platform, in agony lest his burden shall mi-aow; at ten the monster is at
+      Dippleford Admiral; at eleven the traitor is asleep in the bedroom of an
+      inn, the agitated Rose uneasily slumbering upon his bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Terror At Dippleford Admiral.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impress your client,&rdquo; was the maxim of Mr. David Brunger. &ldquo;Make a splash
+      and keep splashing,&rdquo; was that of Mr. Henry T. Bitt, editor of Fleet
+      Street's new organ, the <i>Daily</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muddy pools were Mr. Bitt's speciality. His idea of the greatest possible
+      splash was some stream, pure and beautiful to the casual eye, into which
+      he could force his young men and set them trampling the bottom till the
+      thick, unpleasant mud came clouding up whence it had long lain
+      unsuspected. There was his splash, and then he would start to keep
+      splashing. By every art and device the pool would be flogged till the
+      muddy water went flying broadcast, staining this, that, and the other fair
+      name to the nasty delight of Mr. Bitt's readers. Scandal was Mr. Bitt's
+      chief quest. Army scandal, navy scandal, political scandal, social scandal&mdash;these
+      were the courses that Mr. Bitt continuously strove to serve up to his
+      readers. Failing them&mdash;if disappointingly in evidence on every side
+      was the integrity and the honour for which Mr. Bitt raved and bawled when
+      in the thick of splashing a muddy pool,&mdash;then, argued Mr. Bitt, catch
+      hold of something trivial and splash it, flog it, placard it, into a
+      sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set the halfpennies rising
+      like trout in an evening stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bringing these principles-indeed they won him his appointment&mdash;to the
+      editorship of the <i>Daily</i>, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by
+      the fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue
+      of the paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while preparing for press upon the second night the chance came. There
+      was no scandal, no effective news; but there was matter for a sensational,
+      semi-mysterious &ldquo;leading story&rdquo; in a tiny little scrap of news dictated by
+      Mr. David Brunger, laboriously copied out a dozen times by Mr. Issy Jago
+      and left by that gentleman at the offices of as many newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven sub-editors &ldquo;spiked&rdquo; it, three made of it a &ldquo;fill-par.,&rdquo; one gave it
+      a headline and sent it up as an eight-line &ldquo;news-par.&rdquo;; one, in the
+      offices of the <i>Daily</i>, read it, laughed; spoke to the news-editor;
+      finally carried it up to Mr. Bitt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt's journalistic nose gave one sniff. The thing was done. Some old
+      idiot was actually offering the ridiculously large sum of one hundred
+      pounds for the recovery of a cat. Here, out of the barren, un-newsy world,
+      suddenly had sprung a seed that should grow to a forest. The very thing.
+      The <i>Daily</i> was saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away sped a reporter; and upon the following morning, bawling from the
+      leading position of the principal page of the <i>Daily</i>, introducing a
+      column and a quarter of leaded type, these headlines appeared:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  VALUABLE CAT STOLEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+  HUGE REWARD.
+
+  CHANCE FOR AMATEUR DETECTIVES.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Daily</i> readers revelled in it. It appeared that a gang of between
+      five and a dozen men had surrounded the lonely but picturesque and
+      beautiful country residence of Mr. Christopher Marrapit at Herons' Holt,
+      Paltley Hill, Surrey. Mr. Marrapit was an immensely wealthy retired
+      merchant now leading a secluded life in the evening of his days. First
+      among the costly art and other treasures of his house he placed a
+      magnificent orange cat, &ldquo;The Rose of Sharon,&rdquo; a winner whenever exhibited.
+      The gang, bursting their way into the house, had stolen this cat, despite
+      Mr. Marrapit's heroic defence, leaving the unfortunate gentleman senseless
+      and bleeding on the hearth-rug. Mr. Marrapit had offered 100 pounds reward
+      for the recovery of his pet; and the <i>Daily</i>, under the heading
+      &ldquo;Catchy Clues,&rdquo; proceeded to tell its readers all over the country how
+      best they might win this sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <i>Daily</i> readers revelled in it. Upon three of their number it had a
+      particular effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill Wyvern had not been at the <i>Daily</i> office that night. Employed
+      during the day, he had finished his work at six; after a gloomy meal had
+      gone gloomily to bed. This man was on probation. His appointment to a
+      permanent post depended upon his in some way distinguishing himself; and
+      thus far, as, miserable, he reflected, he utterly had failed. The &ldquo;copy&rdquo;
+       he had done for the first issue of the <i>Daily</i> had not been used; on
+      this day he had been sent upon an interview and had obtained from his
+      subject a wretched dozen words. These he had taken to the news-editor; and
+      the news-editor had treated them and him with contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's all he would say,&rdquo; poor Bill had expostulated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All he would say!&rdquo; the news-editor sneered. &ldquo;Here, Mathers, take this
+      stuff and make a quarter-col. interview out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it was in depressed mood that Bill on the following morning opened
+      his <i>Daily.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flaring &ldquo;Country House Outrage&rdquo; hit his eye; he read; in two minutes
+      his mood was changed. A sensation at Paltley Hill! At Mr. Marrapit's! Here
+      was his chance! Who better fitted than he to work up this story?
+      Fortunately he knew Mr. Henry T. Bitt's private address; had the good
+      sense to go straight to his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cab took him to the editor's flat in Victoria Street. Mr. Bitt was
+      equally enthusiastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hot stuff,&rdquo; said Mr. Bitt. &ldquo;You've got your chance; make a splash. Go to
+      the office and tell Lang I've put you on to it. Cut away down to the scene
+      of the outrage and stay there as our Special Commissioner till I wire you
+      back. Serve it up hot. Make clues if you can't find 'em. Hot, mind.
+      H-O-T.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Professor Wyvern was the second reader upon whom the sensational story had
+      particular effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through breakfast the Professor eyed with loving eagerness the copy of the
+      <i>Daily</i> that lay folded beside his plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At intervals, &ldquo;I have made a very good breakfast, now,&rdquo; he would say. &ldquo;Now
+      I will try to find what Bill has written in this terrible paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But thrice Mrs. Wyvern lovingly checked him. &ldquo;Dear William, no. You have
+      hardly touched your sole. You must finish it, dear, every scrap, before
+      you look at the paper. You have been eating such good breakfasts lately.
+      Now, please, William, finish it first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is as big as a shark,&rdquo; the Professor grumbles, making shots with his
+      trembling fork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear William, it is a very small sole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he has finished. A line catches his eye as he unfolds the <i>Daily</i>,
+      and he chuckles: &ldquo;Oh, dear! This is a very horrible paper. 'Actress and
+      Stockbroker&mdash;Piccadilly by night.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear William, we only want to read what Bill has written. An interview,
+      he tells us, with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear William waggles his naughty old head over the actress and the
+      stockbroker; shaky fingers unfold the centre pages; nose runs up one
+      column and down another, then suddenly starts back burnt by the flaring
+      &ldquo;Country House Outrage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dearest! Dearest! Whatever is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But dearest is speechless. Dearest can only cough and choke and splutter
+      in convulsions of mirth over some terrific joke of which he will tell Mrs.
+      Wyvern no more than: &ldquo;He has done it. Oh, dear! oh, dear! He has done it.
+      Oh, dear! This will be very funny indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen that two out of the three readers particularly interested
+      in Mr. Bitt's splash were agreeably interested. Upon the third the effect
+      was different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was George's first morning in the little inn at Dippleford Admiral. An
+      unaccustomed weight upon his legs, at which thrice he sleepily kicked
+      without ridding himself of it, at length awoke him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found the morning well advanced; the disturbing weight that had
+      oppressed him he saw to be a hairy object, orange of hue. Immediately his
+      drowsy senses awoke; took grip of events; sleep fled. This object was the
+      Rose of Sharon, and at once George became actively astir to the surgings
+      of yesterday, the mysteries of the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pondering upon them, he was disturbed by a knock that heralded a voice:
+      &ldquo;The paper you ordered, mister; and when'll you be ready for breakfast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty minutes,&rdquo; George replied; remembered the landlady had overnight
+      told him she was a little deaf; on a louder note bawled: &ldquo;Twenty minutes,
+      Mrs. Pinner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner, after hesitation, remarked: &ldquo;Ready now? Very well, mister&rdquo;;
+      pushed a newspaper beneath the door; shuffled down the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of his brief negotiations with Mrs. Pinner upon the previous
+      evening, George, in response to the proud information that the paper-boy
+      arrived at nine o'clock every morning on a motor bicycle, had bellowed
+      that he would have the <i>Daily</i>. For old Bill's sake he had ordered
+      it; with friendly curiosity to see Bill's new associations he now withdrew
+      his legs from beneath the Rose of Sharon; hopped out of bed; opened the
+      paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon &ldquo;Country House Outrage&rdquo; George alighted plump; with goggle eyes,
+      scalp creeping, blood freezing, read through to the last &ldquo;Catchy Clue&rdquo;;
+      aghast sank upon his bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had got into the papers! Among all difficult eventualities against
+      which he had made plans this had never found place. It had got into the
+      papers! The cat's abduction was, or soon would be, in the knowledge of
+      everyone. This infernal reward which with huge joy he had heard offered,
+      was now become the goad that would prick into active search for the Rose
+      every man, woman, or child who read the story. It had got into the papers!
+      He was a felon now; fleeing justice; every hand against him. Discovery
+      looked certain, and what did discovery mean? Discovery meant not only loss
+      of the enormous stake for which he was playing&mdash;his darling Mary,&mdash;but
+      it meant&mdash;&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; groaned my miserable George, &ldquo;it means ruin; it
+      means imprisonment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Melancholy pictures went galloping like wild nightmares through this young
+      man's mind. He saw himself in the dock, addressed in awful words by the
+      judge who points out the despicable character of his crime; he saw himself
+      in hideous garb labouring in a convict prison; he saw himself struck off
+      the roll at the College of Surgeons; he saw himself&mdash;&ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; he
+      groaned, &ldquo;I'm fairly in the cart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Very slowly, very abject, he peeled off his pyjamas; slid a white and
+      trembling leg into his bath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed away
+      the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from George's
+      brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a tingling glow
+      braced also his mind against the pummellings of his position. Drying, he
+      caught himself whistling; catching himself in such an act he laughed
+      ruefully to think how little ground he had for good spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the whistling prevailed. This ridiculous buoyancy of youth! What
+      luckless pigs are we who moon and fret and grow besodden with the waters
+      of our misfortunes! This cheeky corkiness of youth! Shove it under the
+      fretted sea of trouble, and free it will twist, up it will bob. Weight it
+      and drop it into the deepest pool; just when it should be drowned, pop!
+      and it is again merrily bobbing upon the surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a sight to make us solemn-souled folk disgustingly irritated. We are
+      the Marthas&mdash;trudging our daily rounds, oppressed with sense of the
+      duties that must be done, with the righteous feeling of the hardness of
+      our lot; and these light-hearts, these trouble-shirkers, this corkiness of
+      youth, exasperate us enormously. But the grin is on their side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whistling prevailed. By the time George was dressed he had put his
+      position into these words&mdash;these feather-brained, corky, preposterous
+      words: &ldquo;By gum!&rdquo; said George, brushing his hair, &ldquo;by gum! I'm in a devil
+      of a hole!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The decision summed up a cogitation that showed him to be in a hole
+      indeed, but not in so fearsome a pit as he had at first imagined. He had
+      at first supposed that within a few minutes the earth would be shovelled
+      in on him and be buried. Review of events showed the danger not to be so
+      acute. On arrival the previous night, after brief parley with Mrs. Pinner
+      he had gone straight to his room, bearing the Rose tight hid in her
+      basket. No reason, then, for suspicion yet to have fallen upon him. He
+      must continue to keep the Rose hid. It would be difficult, infernally
+      difficult; but so long as he could effect it he might remain here secure.
+      The beastly cat must of course be let out for a run. That was a chief
+      difficulty. Well, he must think out some fearful story that would give him
+      escape with the basket every morning.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast was laid in a little sitting-room over the porch, adjoining his
+      bedroom. George pressed the poor Rose into her basket; carried it in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner was setting flowers on the table. George carried the basket to
+      the window; placed it on a chair; sat upon it. With his right hand he
+      drummed upon the lid. It was his purpose to inspire the Rose with a timid
+      wonder at this drubbing that should prevent her voicing a protest against
+      cramped limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some nice tea and a bit of fish I'm going to bring you up, mister,&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Pinner told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recollecting her deafness, and in fear lest she should approach the
+      basket, George from the window bellowed: &ldquo;Thank you, Mrs. Pinner. But I
+      won't have tea, if you please. Won't have tea. I drink milk&mdash;<i>milk</i>.
+      A lot of milk. I'm a great milk-drinker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rose wriggled. George thumped the basket. &ldquo;As soon as you like, Mrs.
+      Pinner. As quick as you like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner closed the door; the Rose advertised her feelings in a long,
+      penetrating mi-aow. In an agony of strained listening George held his
+      breath. But Mrs. Pinner heard nothing; moved steadily downstairs. He wiped
+      his brow. This was the beginning of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mrs. Pinner reappeared, jug of milk and covered dish on a tray,
+      George's plan, after desperate searchings, had come to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave it speech. &ldquo;I want to arrange, Mrs. Pinner&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wait till I've settled the tray, mister, I'll come close to you.
+      I'm that hard of hearing you wouldn't believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George sprang from the basket; approached the table. His life depended
+      upon keeping a distance between basket and Pinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to arrange to have this room as a private sitting-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had never been so used before, but it could be arranged, Mrs. Pinner
+      told him. She would speak to her 'usband about terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I want to keep it very private indeed, I don't want anyone to enter
+      it unless I am here.&rdquo; George mounted his lie and galloped it, blushing for
+      shame of his steed. &ldquo;The fact is, Mrs. Pinner, I'm an inventor. Yes, an
+      inventor. Oh, yes, an inventor.&rdquo; The wretched steed was stumbling, but he
+      clung on; spurred afresh. &ldquo;An inventor. And I have to leave things lying
+      about&mdash;delicate instruments that mustn't be disturbed. Awfully
+      delicate. I shall be out all day. I shall be taking my invention into the
+      open air to experiment with it. My invention&mdash;&rdquo; He waved his hand at
+      the basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner quite understood; was impressed. &ldquo;Oh, dear, yes, mister. To be
+      sure. An inventor; fancy that, now!&rdquo; She gazed at the basket. &ldquo;And the
+      invention is in there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right in there,&rdquo; George assured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll parding my asking, mister; but your saying you have to take it in
+      the open hair&mdash;is it one of them hairships, mister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it <i>is,</i>&rdquo; George said frankly. This was a useful idea and he
+      approved it. &ldquo;It <i>is.</i> It's an airship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never did!&rdquo; Mrs. Pinner admired, gazing at the basket. &ldquo;A
+      hairship in there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mi-aow!</i>&rdquo; spoke the Rose&mdash;penetrating, piercing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner cocked her head on one side; looked under the table. &ldquo;I
+      declare I thought I heard a cat,&rdquo; she puzzled. &ldquo;In this very room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George felt perfectly certain that his hair was standing bolt upright on
+      the top of his head, thrusting at right angles to the sides. He forced his
+      alarmed face to smile: &ldquo;A cock crowing in the yard, I think, Mrs. Pinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner took the explanation with an apologetic laugh. &ldquo;I'm that hard
+      o' hearing you never would believe. But I could ha' sworn. Ill not keep
+      you chattering, sir.&rdquo; She raised the dish cover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A haddock was revealed. A fine, large, solid haddock from which a cloud of
+      strongly savoured vapour arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George foresaw disaster. That smell! that hungry cat! Almost he pushed
+      Mrs. Pinner to the door. &ldquo;That you, thank you. I have everything now. I
+      will ring if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mi-aow!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless my soul!&rdquo; Mrs. Pinner exclaimed. &ldquo;There is a cat&rdquo;; dropped on hands
+      and knees; pushed her head beneath the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George rushed for the basket. Wreaking his craven alarm upon the hapless
+      prisoner, he shook it; with a horrible bump slammed it upon the floor;
+      placed his foot upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner drew up, panting laboriously. &ldquo;Didn't you hear a cat, mister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George grappled the crisis. &ldquo;I did not hear a cat. If there were a cat I
+      should have heard it. I should have felt it. I abominate cats. I can
+      always tell when a cat is near me. There is no cat. Kindly leave me to my
+      breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mrs. Pinner was ashamed. &ldquo;I'm sure I do beg you parding, mister. The
+      fact is we've all got cats fair on the brain this morning. In this here
+      new paper, mister, as perhaps you've seen, and they're giving us a free
+      copy every day for a week, there's a cat been stole, mister. A hundred
+      pounds reward, and as the paper says, the cat may be under your very nose.
+      We're all a 'unting for it, mister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She withdrew. George crossed the room; pressed his head, against the cold
+      marble of the mantelpiece. His brows were burning; in the pit of his
+      stomach a sinking sensation gave him pain. &ldquo;All a 'unting for it! all a
+      'unting for it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Rose had bulged her flanks with the complete haddock, when,
+      responsive to a &ldquo;Stuff your head in that, you brute,&rdquo; the patient creature
+      had lapped a slop-bowl full of milk, George again imprisoned her; rushed,
+      basket under arm, for open country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Pinner in the bar-parlour, as George fled through, was reading from a
+      paper to a stable hand, a servant girl, and a small red-headed Pinner boy:
+      &ldquo;It may be in John o' Groats,&rdquo; he read, &ldquo;or it may be in Land's End.&rdquo; He
+      thumped the bar. &ldquo;'Ear that! Well, it may be in Dippleford Admiral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was precisely because it was in Dippleford Admiral that his young
+      inventor lodger fled through the bar without so much as a civil &ldquo;good
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the post-office, keeping a drumming foot on the terrified Rose, George
+      sent a telegram to Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Think on track. Must be cautious. Don't tell Brunger.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung down eightpence halfpenny; fled in the direction of a wood that
+      plumed a distant hill. Fear had this man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Panic At Dippleford Admiral.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George left Dippleford Admiral that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left at great speed. There was no sadness of farewell. There was no
+      farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning at seven o'clock to his sitting-room at the inn, melancholy
+      beneath a hungry and brooding day in the woods with the Rose tethered to a
+      tree by the length of two handkerchiefs, he ordered supper&mdash;milk,
+      fish, and chops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinner asked him if that would be all. She and 'usband were going to
+      a chapel meeting; the servant girl was out; there would only be a young
+      man in the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George took the news gratefully. His nerves had been upon the stretch all
+      day. It was comforting to think that for a few hours he and this vile cat
+      would have the house to themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately Mrs. Pinner left the room he greedily fell to upon the chops.
+      All day he had eaten nothing: the Rose must wait. Three parts of a tankard
+      of ale was sliding at a long and delectable draught down upon his meal
+      when the slam of a door, footsteps and a bawling voice in the yard told
+      him that Mrs. Pinner and 'usband had started, chatting pleasantly, for
+      their chapel meeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dish cleared, George arranged his prisoner's supper; stepped to the
+      basket to fetch her to it. As he lifted her splendid form there came from
+      behind him an exclamation, an agitated scuffling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In heart-stopping panic George dropped the cat, jumped around. The
+      red-headed Pinner boy, whom that morning he had seen in the bar-parlour,
+      was scrambling from beneath the sofa, arms and legs thrusting his flaming
+      pate at full-speed for the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; George cried, rooted in alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-headed Pinner boy got to Ms feet, hurled himself at the door
+      handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; roared George, struggling with the stupefaction that gripped him.
+      &ldquo;Stop, you young devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-headed Pinner boy twisted the handle; was half through the door as
+      George bounded for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Par-par!&rdquo; screamed the flaming head, travelling at immense speed down the
+      passage. &ldquo;Par-par! It ain't a hairship. It's a cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George dashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Par-par! Par-par! It's a cat!&rdquo; The redheaded Pinner boy took the first
+      short flight of stairs in a jump; rounded for the second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George lunged over the banisters; gripped close in the flaming hair; held
+      fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a full minute in silence they poised&mdash;red-headed Pinner boy, on
+      tip-toe as much as possible to ease the pain, in acute agony and great
+      fear; George wildly seeking the plan that must be followed when he should
+      release this fateful head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, with a backward pull that most horribly twisted the red-headed
+      face: &ldquo;If you speak a word I'll pull your head off,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;Come up
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pitiful procession reached the sitting-room. &ldquo;Sit down there,&rdquo; George
+      commanded. &ldquo;If you make a sound I shall probably cut your head clean off.
+      What do you mean by hiding in my room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between gusty pain and terror: &ldquo;I thought it was a hairship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; George paced the room. What did the vile boy think now? &ldquo;Oh, well,
+      what do you think it is now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it's the cat wot's in the piper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you do, do you?&rdquo; Yes, this was a very horrible position indeed. &ldquo;Oh,
+      you do, do you? Now, you listen to me, my lad: unless you want your head
+      cut right off you sit still without a sound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-headed Pinner boy sat quite still; wept softly. Life, at the
+      moment, was a bitter affair for this boy.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George paced. The hideous nightmares of the morning had returned now&mdash;snorting,
+      neighing, trampling iron-shod; stampeding in hideous irresistible rushes.
+      This was the beginning of the end. He was discovered&mdash;his' secret
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flight&mdash;immediate flight&mdash;that was the essential course.
+      Par-par, thanks to sweet heaven, was at a chapel meeting. The thing could
+      be done. A timetable upon the mantelpiece told him that a down-train left
+      the station at 8.35. It was now eight. Better a down-train than an up. The
+      further from London the less chance of this infernal <i>Daily</i> with its
+      Country House Outrage. Examining the time-table he determined upon Temple
+      Colney&mdash;an hour's run. He had been there once with Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what of this infernal red-headed Pinner boy? In agony wrestling with
+      the question, George every way ran into the brick wall fact that there was
+      no method of stopping the vile boy's mouth. The red head must be left
+      behind to shriek its discovery to par-par. All that could be done was to
+      delay that shriek as long as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George packed his small hand-bag; placed upon the table money to pay his
+      bill; lifted the crime-stained basket; addressed the red-headed Pinner
+      boy:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop that sniffling. Take that bag. You are to come with me. If you make
+      a sound or try to run away you know what will happen to you. What did I
+      tell you would happen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut me 'ead off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right off. Right off&mdash;<i>slish</i>! Give me your hand; come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through a side door, avoiding the bar, they passed into the street. Kind
+      night gave them cloaks of invisibility; no one was about. In a few minutes
+      they had left the bold village street, were in timid lanes that turned and
+      twisted hurrying through the high hedges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half a mile upon the further side of the station George that morning had
+      passed a line of haystacks. Now he made for it, skirting the railway by a
+      considerable distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-headed Pinner boy, exhausted by the pace of their walk, not
+      unnaturally nervous, spoke for the first time: &ldquo;Ain't you going to the
+      station, mister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Station? Certainly not. Do you think I am running away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-headed Pinner boy did not answer. This boy was recalling in every
+      detail the gruesome story, read in a paper, of a bright young lad who had
+      been foully done to death in a wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George continued: &ldquo;I shall be back with you at the inn this evening, and I
+      shall ask your father to give you a good thrashing for hiding in my room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In an earnest prayer the red-headed Pinner boy besought God that he might
+      indeed be spared to receive that thrashing.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      They reached the haystack. George struck a match; looked at his watch. In
+      seven minutes the train was due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladder George had noticed that morning was lying along the foot of a
+      stack. Uprearing it against one partially demolished, &ldquo;Put down that bag,&rdquo;
+       he commanded. &ldquo;Up with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gustily sniffing in the huge sighs that advertised his terror, the
+      red-headed Pinner boy obeyed. George drew down the ladder. &ldquo;Stop up there;
+      I shall be back in five minutes. If you move before then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the trembling boy out of his own agitated fear to fill the
+      unspoken doom. He walked slowly away in the direction opposite from the
+      station until the haystack was merged and lost in the blackness that
+      surrounded it. Then, doubling back, he made for the road; pounded along it
+      at desperate speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most satisfactorily did that bounding, lurching, stumbling run along the
+      dark, uneven lane punish this crime-steeped George. Well he realised,
+      before he had sped a hundred yards, that guilt lashes with a double thong.
+      She had scourged him mentally; now with scorpions she physically lashed
+      him. As it had been racked throbbed that left arm encircling the basket
+      wherein in wild fear the Rose clung to ease the dreadful bruisings that
+      each oscillation gave her; as it were a ton-weight did that hand-bag drag
+      his right arm, thud his thigh; as he were breathing fire did his tearing
+      respirations sear his throat; as a great piston were driving in his skull
+      did the blood hammer his temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Topping a low rise he sighted the station lights below. Simultaneously,
+      from behind a distant whistle there sprang to his ears the low rumble of
+      the coming train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This history is not to be soiled with what George said at the sound. With
+      the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination leapt
+      from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red-headed Pinner
+      boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack&mdash;from the roughness of the
+      lane that laboured his passage to the speed of the oncoming train that
+      hammered at his fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hurled himself down the rise; with his last breath gasped for a ticket;
+      upon a final effort projected himself into the train; went prone upon a
+      seat. He was away!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was when George was some fifteen minutes from Temple Colney that the
+      red-headed Pinner boy, bolstered up with prayer, commended his soul to
+      God; slipped with painful thud from the haystack; pelted for Par-par.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Disaster At Temple Colney.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Three days have passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That somewhat pale and haggard-looking young man striding, a basket
+      beneath his arm, up the main street of Temple Colney is George. The
+      villagers stop to stare after him; grin, and nudge into one another
+      responsive grins, at his curious mannerisms. He walks in the exact centre
+      of the roadway, as far as he can keep from passers-by on either side.
+      Approached by anyone, he takes a wide circle to avoid that person.
+      Sometimes a spasm as of fear will cross his face and he will violently
+      shake the basket he carries. Always he walks with giant strides. Every
+      morning he shoots out of the inn where he is staying as though sped on the
+      blast of some ghostly current of air; every evening, returning, he gives
+      the impression of gathering himself together on the threshold, then goes
+      bolting in at whirlwind speed. He is a somewhat pale and haggard young
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The villagers know him well. He is the young hairship inventor who has a
+      private sitting-room at the Colney Arms. Certain of them, agog to pry his
+      secret, followed him as he set out one day. They discovered nothing. For
+      hours they followed; but he, glancing ever over his shoulder, pounded
+      steadily on, mile upon mile&mdash;field, lane, high road, hill and dale.
+      He never shook them off though he ran; they never brought him to
+      standstill though indomitably they pursued. Towards evening the exhausted
+      procession came thundering up the village street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a very pale and haggard young man that bolted into the Colney Arms
+      that night.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Three days had passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If George had the <i>Daily</i> to curse for the miserable life of secrecy
+      and constant agony of discovery that he was compelled to lead, he had it
+      also to bless that his discovery by the red-headed Pinner boy had not long
+      ago led to his being run to earth. In its anxiety to cap the satisfactory
+      splash it was making over this Country House Outrage, the <i>Daily</i> had
+      overstepped itself and militated against itself. Those &ldquo;Catchy Clues&rdquo; were
+      responsible. So cunningly did they inspire the taste for amateur detective
+      work, so easy did they make such work appear, that Mr. Pinner, having
+      thrashed silence into his red-headed son, kept that son's discovery to
+      himself. As he argued it&mdash;laboriously pencilling down &ldquo;data&rdquo; in
+      accordance with the &ldquo;Catchy Clue&rdquo; directions,&mdash;as he argued it&mdash;if
+      he communicated his knowledge to the <i>Daily</i> or to the local police,
+      if he put them&mdash;(the word does not print nicely) on the scent, ten to
+      one they would capture the thief and secure the reward. No, Mr. Pinner
+      intended to have the reward himself. Therefore he hoarded his secret;
+      brooded upon it; dashed off hither and thither as the day's news brought
+      him a Catchy Clue that seemed to fit his data.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of this George knew nothing. Steeped in crime this miserable young man
+      dragged out his awful life at Temple Colney: nightmares by night, horrors
+      by day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every morning with trembling fingers he opened his <i>Daily</i>; every
+      morning was shot dead by these lines or their equivalent:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  FRESH CLUE.
+
+  CAT SEEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After much groaning and agony George would force himself to know the
+      worst; after swearing furiously through the paragraphs of stuffing with
+      which Mr. Bitt's cunning young man skilfully evaded the point, would come
+      at last upon the &ldquo;fresh clue&rdquo; and read with a groan of relief that, so far
+      as the truth were concerned, it was no clue at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the strain was horrible. All Temple Colney read the <i>Daily</i>;
+      eagerly debated its &ldquo;Catchy Clues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet George could not see, he told himself, that he would better his plight
+      by seeking fresh retreat. If the <i>Daily</i> were to be believed, all the
+      United Kingdom read it and discussed its Catchy Clues. He decided it were
+      wiser to remain racked at Temple Colney rather than try his luck, and
+      perhaps be torn to death, elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice he had been moved to abandon his awful enterprise&mdash;in the train
+      fleeing from the red-headed Pinner boy; pounding across country pursued by
+      curious inhabitants of Temple Colney. On these occasions this miserable
+      George had been minded to cry defeated to the circumstances that struck at
+      him, to return to Herons' Holt with the cat whilst yet he might do so
+      without gyves on his wrists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But thought of his dear Mary hunted thought of this craven ending. &ldquo;I'll
+      hang on!&rdquo; he had cried, thumping the carriage seat: &ldquo;I'll hang on! I'll
+      hang on! I'll hang on!&rdquo; he had thumped into the table upon his weary
+      return to the inn on the day he had been followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had cause for hope. When, on his second morning at Temple Colney, the
+      <i>Daily</i> had struck him to white agony by its newest headlines;
+      cooling, he was able to find comfort in the news it gave to the world. &ldquo;On
+      the advice of the eminent detective, Mr. David Brunger, who has the case
+      in hand, the reward has been raised to 125 pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoop!&rdquo; cried George, spirits returning.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Three days had passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rain began to fall heavily on this afternoon. Usually&mdash;even had there
+      been floods&mdash;George did not return to the inn until seven o'clock.
+      The less he was near the abode of man the safer was his vile secret. But
+      to-day, when the clouds told him a steady downpour had set in, he put out
+      for his lodging before three. He was in high spirits. Success was making
+      him very bold. At Temple Colney, thus far, no breath of suspicion had
+      paled his cheek; at Herons' Holt events were galloping to the end he would
+      have them go. That morning the <i>Daily</i> had announced the raising of
+      the reward to 150 pounds. True, the <i>Daily</i> added that Mr. Marrapit
+      had declared, absolutely and finally, that he would not go one penny
+      beyond this figure. George laughed as he read. In four days his uncle had
+      raised the offer by fifty pounds; at this rate&mdash;and the rate would
+      increase as Mr. Marrapit's anguish augmented&mdash;the 500 pounds would
+      soon be reached. And then! And then!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the pouring rain George whistled up the village street, whistled
+      up the stairs, whistled into the sitting&mdash;room. Then stopped his
+      tune. The buoyant notes of triumph dwindled to a tuneless squeak, to a
+      noiseless breathing&mdash;Bill Wyvern, seated at a table, sprung to meet
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ho!&rdquo; cried Bill. &ldquo;They told me you wouldn't be in before seven! What
+      ho! Isn't this splendid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said in very hollow voice: &ldquo;Splendid!&rdquo; He put the basket on a
+      chair; sat on it; gave Bill an answering, &ldquo;What ho!&rdquo; that was cheerful as
+      rap upon a coffin lid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how goes it?&rdquo; Bill asked eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George put out a hand. &ldquo;Don't come over here, dear old fellow. I'm
+      streaming wet. Sit down there. How goes what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the clue&mdash;your clue to this cat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the clue&mdash;the clue. Yes, I'll tell you all about that. Just wait
+      here a moment.&rdquo; He rose with the basket; moved to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth have you got in that basket?&rdquo; Bill asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eggs,&rdquo; George told him impressively. &ldquo;Eggs for my uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have a thundering lot in a basket that size.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three or four hundred,&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;Three or four hundred eggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in the passionless voice of one in a dream. Indeed he was in a
+      dream. This horrible contingency had so set him whirling that of clear
+      thought he was incapable. Moving to his bedroom he thrust the basket
+      beneath the bed; came out; locked the door; took the key; returned to
+      Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill came over and slapped him on the back. &ldquo;Expect you're surprised to
+      see me?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Isn't this ripping, old man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stunning!&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Absolutely stunning.&rdquo; He sank on a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill was perplexed. &ldquo;You don't look best pleased, old man. What's up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was precisely what George wished to know. Terror of hearing some
+      hideous calamity stayed him from putting the question. He gave a pained
+      smile. &ldquo;Oh, I'm all right. I'm a bit fagged, that's all. The strain of
+      this search, you know, the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know!&rdquo; cried Bill enthusiastically. &ldquo;I <i>know</i>. You've been
+      splendid, old man. Finding out a clue like this and pluckily carrying it
+      through all by yourself. By Jove, it's splendid of you!&mdash;especially
+      when you've no reason to do much for your uncle after the way in which
+      he's treated you. I admire you, George. By Gad, I <i>do</i> admire you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all!&rdquo; George advised him. &ldquo;By no means, old fellow.&rdquo; He wiped his
+      brow; his mental suffering was considerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, I can see you're pretty bad, old man,&rdquo; Bill continued. &ldquo;Never
+      mind, I'm here to help you now. That's what I've come for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George felt that something very dreadful indeed was at hand. &ldquo;How did you
+      find out where I was?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From old Marrapit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marrapit? Why, but my uncle won't let you come within a mile of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that's all over now.&rdquo; A very beautiful look came into Bill's eyes;
+      tenderness shaded his voice: &ldquo;George, old man, if I can track down the
+      hound who has stolen this cat your uncle has practically said that he will
+      agree to my engagement with Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George tottered across the room; pressed his head against the cold
+      window-pane. Here was the calamity. He had thought of taking Bill into his
+      confidence&mdash;how do so now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, you do look bad, old man,&rdquo; Bill told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm all right. Tell me all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's too good&mdash;too wonderful to be true. Everything is going
+      simply splendidly with me. I'm running this cat business for the <i>Daily</i>&mdash;my
+      paper, you know. It's made a most frightful splash and the editor is
+      awfully bucked up with me. I'm on the permanent staff, six quid a week&mdash;eight
+      quid a week if I find this cat. I'm working it from Herons' Holt, you
+      know. I'm&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George turned upon him. &ldquo;Are you 'Our Special Commissioner at Paltley
+      Hill'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather! Have you been reading it? Pretty hot stuff, isn't it? I say,
+      George, wasn't it lucky I chucked medicine! I told you I was cut out for
+      this kind of thing if only I could get my chance. Well, I've got my
+      chance; and by Gad, old man, if I don't track down this swine who's got
+      the cat, or help to get him tracked down, I'll&mdash;I'll&mdash;&rdquo; The
+      enthusiastic young man broke off&mdash;&ldquo;Isn't it great, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My miserable George paced the room. &ldquo;Great!&rdquo; he forced out. &ldquo;Great!&rdquo; This
+      was the infernal Special Commissioner whom daily he had yearned to
+      strangle. &ldquo;Great! By Gad, there are no words for it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you'd be pleased. Thanks awfully&mdash;<i>awfully</i>. Well, I was
+      telling you. Being down there for the paper I simply had to interview
+      Marrapit. I plucked up courage and bearded him. He's half crazy about this
+      wretched cat. I found him as meek as a lamb. Bit snarly at first, but when
+      he found how keen I was, quite affectingly pleasant. I've seen him every
+      day for the last four days, and yesterday he said what I told you&mdash;I
+      came out with all about Margaret and about my splendid prospects, and, as
+      I say, he practically said that if I could find the cat he'd be willing to
+      think of our engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But about finding out where I was? How did you discover that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he told me. Told me this morning.&rdquo; Bill shuffled his legs
+      uncomfortably for a moment, then plunged ahead. &ldquo;Fact is, old man, he's a
+      bit sick with you. Said he'd only had one telegram from you from
+      Dippleford Admiral and one letter from here. Said it was unsatisfactory&mdash;that
+      it was clear you were incapable of following up this clue of yours by
+      yourself. You don't mind my telling you this, do you, old man? You know
+      what he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George gave the bitter laugh of one who is misunderstood, unappreciated.
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;go on.&rdquo; He was trembling to see the precipice over
+      which the end of Bill's story would hurl him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as I said&mdash;that it was clear you could not carry through your
+      clue by yourself. So I was to come down and help you. That was about ten
+      o'clock, and I caught the mid-day train&mdash;I've been here since two.
+      Well, Brunger&mdash;the detective chap, you know&mdash;Marrapit was going
+      to send him on here at once&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the precipice. George went hurtling over the edge with whirling
+      brain: &ldquo;Brunger coming down here?&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather! Now, we three together, old man&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When's he coming?&rdquo; George asked. He could not hear his own voice&mdash;the
+      old nightmares danced before his eyes, roared their horrors in his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill looked at the clock. &ldquo;He ought to be here by now. He ought to have
+      arrived&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The roaring confusion in George's brain went to a tingling silence;
+      through it there came footsteps and a man's voice upon the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the tracked criminal who hears his pursuer upon the threshold, as the
+      fugitive from justice who feels upon his shoulder the sudden hand of
+      arrest, as the poor wretch in the condemned cell when the hangman enters&mdash;as
+      the feelings of these, so, at this sound, the emotions of my miserable
+      George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dash must be made to flatten this hideous doom. Upon a sudden impulse he
+      started forward. &ldquo;Bill! Bill, old man, I want to tell you something. You
+      don't know what the finding of this cat means to me. It&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know, old man,&rdquo; Bill earnestly assured him. &ldquo;You're splendid, old
+      man, splendid. I never dreamt you were so fond of your uncle. Old man, it
+      means even more to me&mdash;it means Margaret and success. Here's Brunger.
+      We three together, George. Nothing shall stop us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The sagacious detective entered. George gave him a limp, damp hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't look well,&rdquo; Mr. Brunger told him, after greetings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what I was saying,&rdquo; Bill joined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, George looked far from well. Round-shouldered he sat upon the
+      sofa, head in hands&mdash;a pallid face beneath a beaded brow staring out
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the strain of this clue, Mr. Brunger,&rdquo; Bill continued. &ldquo;He's on the
+      track!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are?&rdquo; cried the detective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right on,&rdquo; George said dully. &ldquo;Right on the track.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a gang?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two,&rdquo; George answered in the same voice. &ldquo;Two gangs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sagacious detective thumped the table. &ldquo;I said so. I knew it. I told
+      you so, Mr. Wyvern. But <i>two</i>, eh? <i>Two</i> gangs. That's tough.
+      One got the cat and the other after it, I presume?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said George. He was wildly thinking; to the conversation paying no
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? But, my dear sir, one of 'em <i>must</i> have the cat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George started to the necessities of the immediate situation; wondered
+      what he had said; caught at Mr. Brunger's last word. &ldquo;The cat? Another
+      gang has got the cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, three gangs!&rdquo; the detective cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three gangs,&rdquo; George affirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two gangs you said at first,&rdquo; Mr. Brunger sharply reminded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My miserable George dug his fingers into his hair. &ldquo;I meant three&mdash;I'd
+      forgotten the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't see how a man can forget a whole <i>gang</i>,&rdquo; objected the
+      detective. He stared at George; frowned; produced his note-book. &ldquo;Let us
+      have the facts, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if drawn by the glare fixed upon him, George moved from the sofa to the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, the facts,&rdquo; Mr. Brunger repeated. &ldquo;Let's get these gangs settled
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George took a chair. He had no plan. He plunged wildly. &ldquo;Gang A, gang B,
+      gang C, gang D&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brunger stopped short in the midst of his note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's <i>four</i> gangs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The twisting of George's legs beneath the table was sympathetic with the
+      struggles of his bewildered mind. He said desperately, &ldquo;Well, there <i>are</i>
+      four gangs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective threw down his pencil. &ldquo;You're making a fool of me!&rdquo; he
+      cried. &ldquo;First you said two gangs, then three gangs&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're making a fool of yourself,&rdquo; George answered hotly. &ldquo;If you knew
+      anything about gangs you'd know they're always breaking up&mdash;quarrelling,
+      and then rejoining, and then splitting again. If you can't follow, don't
+      follow. Find the damned gangs yourself. You're a detective&mdash;I'm not.
+      At least you say you are. You're a precious poor one, seems to me. You've
+      not done much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his bewilderment and fear my unfortunate George had unwittingly hit
+      upon an admirable policy. Since first Mr. Marrapit had called Mr. Brunger
+      it had sunk in upon the Confidential Inquiry Agent that indeed he was a
+      precious poor detective. In the five days that had passed he had not
+      struck upon the glimmer of a notion regarding the whereabouts of the
+      missing cat. This was no hiding in cupboard work, no marked coin work, no
+      following the skittish wife of a greengrocer work. It was the real thing&mdash;real
+      detective work, and it had found Mr. Brunger most lamentably wanting. Till
+      now, however, none had suspected his perplexity. He had impressed his
+      client&mdash;had bounced, noted, cross-examined, measured; and during
+      every bounce, note, cross-examination and measurement fervently had prayed
+      that luck&mdash;or the reward&mdash;would help him stumble upon something
+      he could claim as outcome of his skill. George's violent attack alarmed
+      him; he drew in his horns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! don't be 'ot,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;Don't be 'ot. Little misunderstanding,
+      that's all. I follow you completely. Four gangs&mdash;<i>I</i> see. <i>Four</i>
+      gangs. Now, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was George's turn for fear. &ldquo;Four gangs&mdash;quite so. Well, what do
+      you want me to tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Start from the beginning, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George started&mdash;plunged head-first. For five minutes he desperately
+      gabbled while Mr. Brunger's pencil bounded along behind his splashing;
+      words. Every time the pencil seemed to slacken, away again George would
+      fly and away in pursuit the pencil would laboriously toil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four gangs,&rdquo; George plunged along. &ldquo;Gang A, gang B, gang C, gang D. Gang
+      A breaks into the house and steals the cat. Gang B finds it gone and
+      tracks down gang C.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tracks gang A, surely,&rdquo; panted Mr. Brunger. &ldquo;Gang A had the cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gang B didn't know that. I tell you this is a devil of a complicated
+      affair. Gang B tracks down gang C and finds gang D. They join. Call 'em
+      gang B-D. Gang A loses the cat and gang C finds it. Gang C sells it to
+      gang B-D, which is run by an American, as I said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; gasped Mr. Brunger without looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. Gang B-D hands it over to gang A by mistake, and gang A makes
+      off with it. Gang C, very furious because it is gang A's great rival,
+      starts in pursuit and gets it back again. Then gang B-D demands it, but
+      gang A refuses to give it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gang C!&rdquo; Mr. Brunger panted. &ldquo;Gang C had got it from gang A.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but gang A got it back again. Gang B-D&mdash;Look here,&rdquo; George
+      broke off, &ldquo;that's perfectly clear about the gangs, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; said Mr. Brunger, feeling that his reputation was gone unless
+      he said so. &ldquo;Wants a little studying, that's all. Most extraordinary story
+      I ever heard of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm dashed if I understand a word of it,&rdquo; Bill put in. &ldquo;Who <i>are</i>
+      these gangs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George rose: &ldquo;Bill, old man, I'll explain that another time. The fact is,
+      we're wasting time by sitting here. I was very near the end when you two
+      arrived. The cat is here&mdash;quite near here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective and Bill sprang to their feet. George continued: &ldquo;It's going
+      to change hands either tonight or to-morrow. If you two will do just as I
+      tell you and leave the rest to me, we shall bring off a capture. To-morrow
+      evening I will explain everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective asked eagerly; &ldquo;Is it a certainty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost. It will be touch and go; but if we miss it this time it is a
+      certainty for the immediate future. I swear this, that if you keep in
+      touch with me you will be nearer the cat than you will ever get by
+      yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sincerity shone in his eyes from these words. The detective and Bill were
+      fired with zeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take command, sir!&rdquo; said Mr. Brunger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Come with me. I will post you for the night. We have some
+      distance to go. Don't question me. I must think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a question,&rdquo; said the detective: he was, indeed, too utterly
+      bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George murmured &ldquo;Thank heaven!&rdquo;; took his hat; led the way into the
+      street. In dogged silence the three tramped through the rain.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George led for the Clifford Arms, some two miles distant. For the present
+      he had but one object in view. He must get rid of Bill and this infernal
+      detective; then he must speed the cat from Temple Colney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he walked he pushed out beyond the primary object of ridding himself of
+      his companions; sought the future. In the first half-mile he decided that
+      the game was up. He must deliver the Rose to his uncle immediately without
+      waiting for the reward to be further raised. To hang on for the shadow
+      would be, he felt, to lose the substance that would stand represented by
+      Mr. Marrapit's gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this preposterous buoyancy of youth! The rain that beat upon his face
+      cooled his brow; seemed to cool his brain. Before the first mile was
+      crossed he had vacillated from his purpose. When he said to his followers
+      &ldquo;Only another half-mile,&rdquo; his purpose was changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This preposterous corkiness of youth! It had lifted him up from the sea of
+      misfortune in which he had nigh been drowned, and now he was assuring
+      himself that, given he could hide the Rose where a sudden glimmering idea
+      suggested, he would be safer than ever before. The two men who were most
+      dangerous to him&mdash;the detective and the <i>Daily's</i> Special
+      Commissioner at Paltley Hill, now slushing through the mud behind&mdash;were
+      beneath his thumb. If he could keep them goose-chasing for a few days or
+      so&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The turn of a corner brought them in view of the Clifford Arms. George
+      pointed: &ldquo;I want you to spend the night there and to stay there till I
+      come to-morrow. A man is there whom you must watch&mdash;the landlord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the gangs?&rdquo; Mr. Brunger asked, hoarse excitement in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gang B&mdash;leader. Don't let him suspect you. Just watch him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he got the cat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With great impressiveness George looked at the detective, looked at Bill.
+      Volumes of meaning in his tone: &ldquo;<i>Not yet!</i>&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill cried: &ldquo;By Gad!&rdquo; The detective rubbed his hands in keen anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the inn. Bill gave a story of belated tourists. A room was
+      engaged. In a quarter of an hour George was speeding back to Temple
+      Colney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the post-office he stopped; purchased a letter-card; held his pen a
+      while as he polished the glimmering idea that now had taken form; then
+      wrote to his Mary:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dearest girl in all the world,&mdash;You've never had a line from me
+      all this time, but you can guess what a time I've been having. Dearest
+      darling, listen and attend. This is most important. Our future depends
+      upon it. Meet me to-morrow at 12.0 at that tumbled-down hut in the copse
+      on the Shipley Road where we went that day just before my exam. Make any
+      excuse to get away. You must be there. And don't tell a soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till to-morrow, my darling little Mary.&mdash;G.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He posted the card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Of Paradise Lost and Found.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples from the lightest
+      action that we may toss into the sea of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life is a game of consequences. A throws a stone, and the widening ripples
+      wreck the little boats of X and Y and Z who never have even heard of A.
+      Every day and every night, every hour of every day and night, ripples from
+      unknown splashes are setting towards us&mdash;perhaps to swamp us, perhaps
+      to bear us into some pleasant stream. One calls it luck, another fate.
+      &ldquo;This is my just punishment,&rdquo; cries one. &ldquo;By my good works I have merited
+      this,&rdquo; exclaims another; but it is merely the ripple from some distant
+      splash&mdash;merely consequences. Consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sleepy maid in Mr. City Merchant's suburban mansion leaves the dust-pan
+      on the stairs after sweeping. That is the little action she has tossed
+      into the sea of life, and the ripples will wreck a boat or two now snug
+      and safe in a cheap and happy home many miles away. Mr. City Merchant
+      trips over the dustpan, starts for office fuming with rage, vents his
+      spleen upon Mr. City Clerk&mdash;dismisses him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. City Clerk seeks work in vain; the cheap but happy home he shares with
+      pretty little Mrs. City Clerk and plump young Master City Clerk is
+      abandoned for a dingy lodging. Grade by grade the lodging they must seek
+      grows dingier. Now there is no food. Now they are getting desperate. Now
+      pneumonia lays erstwhile plump Master City Clerk by the heels and carries
+      him off&mdash;consequences, consequences; that is one boat wrecked. Now
+      Mr. City Clerk is growing mad with despair; Mrs. City Clerk is well upon
+      the road that Master City Clerk has followed. Mr. City Clerk steals, is
+      caught, is imprisoned&mdash;consequences, consequences; another boat
+      wrecked. Mrs. City Clerk does not hold out long, follows Master City Clerk&mdash;consequences,
+      consequences. Three innocent craft smashed up because the housemaid left
+      the dustpan on the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Impossible to tell how far will speed the ripples from the lightest action
+      that we may toss into the sea of life. Solely and wholly because George
+      abducted the Rose of Sharon, Miss Pridham, who keeps the general drapery
+      in Angel Street, Marylebone Road, sold a pair of green knitted slippers,
+      each decorated with a red knitted blob, that had gazed melancholy from her
+      shop window for close upon two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Major who purchased them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since that terrible morning on which, throat and mouth parched, head
+      painfully throbbing through the overnight entertainment of Old Tom, Mrs.
+      Major had been driven from Mr. Marrapit's door, this doubly distressed
+      gentlewoman had lived in retirement in a bed-sitting-room in Angel Street.
+      She did not purpose immediately taking another situation. This woman had
+      sipped the delights of Herons' Holt; her heart was there, and for a month
+      or two, as, sighing over her lot, she determined, she would brood in
+      solitude upon the paradise she had lost before challenging new fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ripples of the abduction of the Rose reached her. This was a masterly
+      woman, and instanter she took the tide upon the flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major was not a newspaper reader. The most important sheet of the <i>Daily</i>,
+      however, she one day carried into her bed-sitting-room wrapped about a
+      quartern of Old Tom. It was the day when first &ldquo;Country House Outrage&rdquo;
+       shouted from the <i>Daily's</i> columns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Idly scanning the report her eye chanced upon familiar names. A common
+      mind would have been struck astonished and for some hours been left
+      fluttering. Your masterly mind grasps at once and together a solution and
+      its possibilities. Without pause for thought, without even sniff of the
+      new quartern of Old Tom, Mrs. Major sought pen and paper; wrote with
+      inspired pen to Mr. Marrapit:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not even dare begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the right
+      even to address you; but in the moment of your great tribulation something
+      stronger than myself makes me take up my pen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mrs. Major paused; read what she had written; without so much as a
+      sigh tore the sheet and started afresh. That &ldquo;something stronger than
+      myself makes me&rdquo; she felt to be a mistake. Something decidedly stronger
+      than herself sat in the quartern bottle a few inches from her nose, and it
+      occurred to her that a cruel mind might thus interpret her meaning. She
+      tore the sheet. This was a masterly woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare not even begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the right
+      even to address you; but in the moment of your tribulation I feel that I
+      must come forward with my sympathy. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, may I say with my
+      aid? I feel I could help you if only I might come to dear, dear Herons'
+      Holt. When I think of my angel darling Rose of Sharon straying far from
+      the fold my heart bleeds. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I cannot rest, I cannot live,
+      while my darling is wandering on the hillside, or is stolen, and I am
+      unable to search for her. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, think of me, I implore you,
+      not as Mrs. Major, but as one whom your sweet darling Rose loved. If the
+      Rose is anywhere near Herons' Holt, she would come to me if I called her,
+      I feel sure, more readily than she would come to anyone else except
+      yourself, and you are not strong enough to search as I would search. Oh,
+      Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt in this terrible hour. Do not
+      speak to me, do not look at me, Mr. Marrapit. I do not ask that. I only
+      beg on my bended knees that you will let me lay myself at night even in
+      the gardener's shed, so that I may be there to tend my lamb when she is
+      found, and by day will be able to search for her. That is all I ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of myself I will say nothing. I will not force upon you the explanations
+      of that dreadful night which you would not take from my trembling lips. I
+      will not tell you that, maddened by the toothache, I was advised to hold a
+      little drop of spirit in the tooth, and that, never having touched
+      anything but water since I and my dear little brother promised my dying
+      mother we would not, the spirit went to my head and made me as you saw me.
+      I will not write any of those things, Mr. Marrapit; only, oh, Mr.
+      Marrapit, I implore you to let me come and look for my Rose. Nor will I
+      tell you how fondly, since I left you, I have thought of all your nobility
+      of character and of your goodness to me, Mr. Marrapit. Wronged, I bear no
+      resentment. I have received too much kindness at your hands. Ever since I
+      left you I have thought of none but the Rose and you. Shall I prove that?
+      I will, Mr. Marrapit&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here again Mrs. Major paused; thoughtfully scratched her head with her
+      penholder. Like authors more experienced, her emotions had driven her pen
+      to a point demanding a special solution which was not immediately
+      forthcoming. She had galloped into a wood. How to get out of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major scratched thoughtfully; gazed at Old Tom; gazed round the room;
+      on a happy inspiration gazed from the window. Miss Pridham's general
+      drapery was immediately opposite. A bright patch of green in the window
+      caught Mrs. Major's eye. She recognised it as the knitted slippers she had
+      once or twice noticed in passing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very thing! Laying down her pen the masterly woman popped across to
+      Miss Pridham's; in two minutes, leaving that lady delighted and
+      one-and-eleven-three the richer, was back with the green knitted slippers
+      with the red knitted blobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took up her pen and continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since I left I have thought of none but the Rose and you. Shall I
+      prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I make so bold as to
+      send you in a little parcel a pair of woollen slippers that I have knitted
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major examined them. Such sun as creeps into Angel Street, Marylebone
+      Road, jealous of rival brightness had filched their first delicate tint of
+      green, had stolen the first passionate scarlet of the red blobs. She
+      continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are a little faded because on every stitch a bitter tear has fallen.
+      Yes, Mr. Marrapit, my tears of sorrow have rained upon these slippers as I
+      worked. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, they are not damp, however. Every evening since
+      they were finished I have had my little fire lighted and have stood the
+      slippers up against the fender; and then, sitting on the opposite side of
+      the hearth, just as I used to sit for a few minutes with you after we had
+      brought in the darling cats, I have imagined that your feet were in the
+      slippers and have imagined that I am back where I have left my bleeding
+      heart. I never meant to dare send them to you, Mr. Marrapit, but in this
+      moment of your tribulation I make bold to do so. Do not open the parcel,
+      Mr. Marrapit, if you would rather not. Hurl it on the fire and let the
+      burning fiery furnace consume them, tears and all. But I feel I must send
+      them, whatever their fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt to find my darling Rose!&mdash;then
+      without a word I will creep away and die.&mdash;LUCY MAJOR.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon the following morning there sped to Mrs. Major from Herons' Holt a
+      telegram bearing the message &ldquo;Come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frantic to clutch at any straw that might bring to him this Rose, Mr.
+      Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major. He felt there to be much truth,
+      in her contention that his Rose, if secreted near by, would come quicker
+      at her call than at the call of another. His Rose had known and loved her
+      for a full year. His Rose, refined cat, did not take quickly to strangers,
+      and had not&mdash;he had noticed it&mdash;given herself to Miss Humfray.
+      Therefore Mr. Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the remainder of her letter&mdash;it considerably perturbed him. Had
+      he misjudged this woman, whom once he had held estimable? All the
+      delectable peace of his household during her reign, as contrasted with the
+      turmoil that now had taken its place, came back to him and smote his
+      heart. He opened the slippers, noted the tear-stains. Had he misjudged
+      her? What more likely than her story of the racking tooth that must be
+      lulled with a little drop of spirit? Had he misjudged her? But as against
+      that little drop of spirit, how account for the vast and empty bottle of
+      Old Tom found in her room? Had he misjudged her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In much conflict of mind this man paced the breakfast room, a green
+      knitted slipper with red knitted blob in either hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus that Margaret, entering, found him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a soft little laugh, &ldquo;Oh, father!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;what have you got
+      there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit raised the green knitted slippers with the red knitted blobs.
+      &ldquo;A contrite heart,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;A stricken and a contrite heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He resumed his pacing. Margaret squeezed round the door which happily she
+      had left ajar; fled breakfastless. Quick at poetic image though she was,
+      the symbol of a contrite heart in a pair of green knitted slippers with
+      red knitted blobs was not clear to this girl. In her father it alarmed
+      her. This great sorrow was perchance turning his brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit laid the slippers upon his dressing-table; that afternoon
+      greeted Mrs. Major with a circumspect reserve. Combining the vast and
+      empty bottle of Old Tom with the fact that never had his judgment of man
+      or matter failed him, he determined that Mrs. Major was guilty. But not
+      wilfully guilty. Tempted to drown pain, she had succumbed; but the
+      slippers were the sign of a contrite heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly possessor of the contrite heart betrayed no signs of its
+      flutterings and its exultant boundings at being once more in paradise.
+      This was a masterly woman, and, masterly, she grasped at once her position&mdash;without
+      hesitation started to play her part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Mr. Marrapit's study she stood humbly before him with bowed head; did
+      not speak. Her only sounds were those of repressed emotion as Mr. Marrapit
+      recited the history of the abduction. The white handkerchief she kept
+      pressed against her chin punctuated the story with sudden little dabs
+      first to one eye then the other. Little sniffs escaped her; little catches
+      of the breath; tiny little moans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She choked when he had finished: &ldquo;Let me see&mdash;my darling's&mdash;bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Marrapit led the way. Above the silk-lined box whence George had
+      snatched the Rose, the masterly woman knelt. She fondled the silken
+      coverlet; her lips moved. Suddenly she dashed her handkerchief to her
+      eyes; with beautiful moans fled hurriedly to the bedroom that had been
+      allotted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an exquisitely touching sight. Mr. Marrapit, greatly moved, went to
+      his room; took out the green knitted slippers with the red knitted blobs.
+      Had he misjudged this woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes later he again encountered Mrs. Major. Now she was girt
+      against the weather and against exercise. Beneath her chin were firmly
+      knotted the strings of her sober bonnet; a short skirt hid nothing of the
+      stout boots she had donned; her hand grasped the knob of a bludgeon-like
+      umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman had removed all traces of her emotion. In a voice
+      humble yet strong, &ldquo;I start to search, Mr. Marrapit,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I will
+      find the Rose if she is to be found.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So deep sincerity was in her speech, so strong she seemed, so restful in
+      this crisis, that Mr. Marrapit, watching her stride the drive, again fell
+      to pacing and cogitation&mdash;had he misjudged her? Almost unconsciously
+      he moved upstairs to his room; drew those green slippers with red blobs
+      from their drawer.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Had Mr. Marrapit doubted the sincerity of Mrs. Major's search, assuredly
+      he would have misjudged her. In her diary that night the masterly woman
+      inscribed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Am here; must stick</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her best chance of sticking, as well she knew, lay in finding the Rose.
+      Could she but place that creature's exquisite form in Mr. Marrapit's arms,
+      she felt that her reward would be to win back to the paradise from which
+      Old Tom had driven her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore most strenuously she scoured the countryside; pried into houses;
+      popped her head into stable doors. This woman nothing spared herself; in
+      the result, at the end of two days, was considerably dejected. For it was
+      clear to her that the Rose had not strayed, but had been stolen; was not
+      concealed in the vicinity of Herons' Holt, but had been spirited to the
+      safety of many miles. She was driven to accept Mr. Brunger's opinion&mdash;the
+      Rose had been stolen by some eager and unscrupulous breeder to be used for
+      gross purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was upon the evening of the second day in paradise that this woman
+      settled upon this gloomy conclusion. Gloomy it was, and desperately,
+      sitting in her bedroom that night, the masterly woman battled for some way
+      to circumvent it. To that entry made in her diary on the night of her
+      arrival she had added two further sentences:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Hate that baby-faced Humfray chit.&rdquo; </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certain cannot stick unless find cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening her diary now she gazed upon these entries; chewed them. They were
+      bitter to the taste. To agony at what she had lost was added mortification
+      at seeing another in her place; and rankling in this huge wound was the
+      poison of the knowledge that she could not win back. Circumstances were
+      too strong. The cat was not to be found, and&mdash;stabbing thought&mdash;&ldquo;certain
+      cannot stick unless find cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This way and that the masterly woman twisted in search of a means to
+      circumvent her position. It might be done by accomplishing the overthrow
+      of this baby-faced chit. If the baby-faced chit could be made to displease
+      Mr. Marrapit and be turned out, it would surely be possible, being ready
+      at hand, to take her place. But how could the baby-faced chit be made to
+      err?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This way and that Mrs. Major twisted and could find no means. Always she
+      was forced back to the brick-wall fact&mdash;salvation lay only in finding
+      the cat. That would accomplish everything. She would have succeeded where
+      the baby-faced chit had failed; she would have proved her devotion; she,
+      would have earned, not a doubt of it, the reward of re-entry into paradise
+      that Mr. Marrapit in his gratitude would more than offer&mdash;would press
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cat was not to be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beating up against the desperate barrier of that thought, Mrs. Major
+      groaned aloud as she paced the room, threw up her arms in her despair. The
+      action caused her to swerve; with hideous violence she crashed her
+      stockinged foot against the leg of the wash-stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples of the lightest action
+      we may toss upon the sea of life. The stunning agony in this woman's toes,
+      as, hopping to the bed, she sat and nursed them, with the swiftness of
+      thought presented to her a solution of her difficulty that struck her
+      staring with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first thought in her throbbing pain was of remedy for the bruise.
+      &ldquo;Bruise&rdquo; brought involuntarily to her mind the picture of a chemist's shop
+      in the Edgware Road, not far from Angel Street, whose window she had seen
+      filled with little boxes of &ldquo;Bruisine,&rdquo; the newest specific for abrasions.
+      Thence her thoughts, by direct passage, jumped to the time when last she
+      had noticed the shop&mdash;she had been returning from a stroll by way of
+      Sussex Gardens. And it was while mentally retracing that walk down Sussex
+      Gardens that Mrs. Major lit plump upon the solution of her difficulty. She
+      had noticed, let out for a run from No. 506, an orange cat that was so
+      precisely the image of the Rose of Sharon that she had stopped to stroke
+      it for dear memory's sake. Often since then she had spoken to it; every
+      time had been the more struck by its extraordinary resemblance to the
+      Rose. She had reflected that, seen together, she could not have told them
+      apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major forgot the throbbing of her abrased toes. Her brows knitted by
+      concentration of thought, very slowly the masterly woman concluded her
+      disrobing. Each private garment that she stripped and laid aside marked a
+      forward step in the indomitable purpose she had conceived. As her fingers
+      drew the most private from her person, leaving it naked, so from her plan
+      did her masterly mind draw the last veil that filmed it, leaving it clear.
+      When the Jaeger nightdress fell comfortably about her, her purpose too was
+      presentable and warm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day and every night, every hour of every day and night, ripples from
+      unknown splashes are setting towards us. From this masterly woman, in
+      process of toilet, ripples were setting towards a modest and unsuspecting
+      cat lying in sweet slumber at 506 Sussex Gardens, off the Edgware Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the masterly woman had thus determined&mdash;she would have that cat
+      that was the Rose's second self. The Rose was in the hands of some villain
+      breeder and would never be returned; small fear of discovery under that
+      head. This cat was the Rose's second self; differences that Mr. Marrapit
+      might discover, lack of affection that he might notice, could be
+      attributed to the adventures through which the Rose had passed since her
+      abduction. Under this head, indeed, Mrs. Major did not anticipate great
+      difficulty. Similar cats are more similar than similar dogs. They have
+      not, as dogs have, the distinguishing marks of character and
+      demonstrativeness. In any event, as the masterly woman assured herself,
+      she ran no peril even if her plot failed. She would say she had found the
+      cat, and if Mr. Marrapit were convinced it was not his Rose&mdash;well,
+      she had made a mistake, that was all.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon the morrow, playing her hand with masterly skill, Mrs. Major sought
+      interview with Mr. Marrapit. With telling dabs of her pocket handkerchief
+      at her eyes, with telling sniffs of her masterly nose, she expressed the
+      fear that she had outstayed his kindness in receiving her. He had granted
+      her request&mdash;he had let her come to Herons' Holt; but two days had
+      passed and she had not found his Rose. True, if she had longer she could
+      more thoroughly search; but as an honest woman she must admit that she had
+      been given her chance, had failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon a wailing note she ended: &ldquo;I must go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cancel that intention,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit told her. Her honesty smote this
+      man. Had he misjudged her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smothered a sniff in her handkerchief: &ldquo;I must go. I must go. I have
+      seen that you regard me with suspicion. Oh, you have reason, I know; but I
+      cannot bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remove that impression,&rdquo; spoke Mr. Marrapit. He <i>had</i> misjudged this
+      woman; he was convinced of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major gave her answer in the form of two smothered sniffs and a third
+      that, eluding her handkerchief, escaped free and loud&mdash;a telling
+      sniff that advertised her distress; wrung Mr. Marrapit's emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued: &ldquo;Mrs. Major, at a future time we will discuss the painful
+      affair to which you make reference. At present I am too preoccupied by the
+      calamity that has desolated my hearth. Meanwhile, I suspend judgment. I
+      place suspicion behind me. I regard you only as she whom my Rose loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish me to stay a little longer?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Major, trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my wish. Continue to prosecute your search.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Trembling yet more violently Mrs. Major said: &ldquo;I will stay. I had not
+      dared to suppose I might stop more than two days. I brought nothing with
+      me. May I go to London to get clothes? I will return to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Early to-morrow would be more convenient. I have other things to do in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, then,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door Mrs. Major turned. Her great success at this interview
+      emboldened her to a second stroke. &ldquo;There is one other thing I would like
+      to say, if I dared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be fearless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She plunged. &ldquo;If Heaven should grant that I may find the Rose, I implore
+      you not to distress me by offering me the reward you are holding out. I
+      could not take it. I know you can ill afford it. Further than that, to
+      have the joy of giving you back your Rose would be reward enough for me.
+      And to know that she was safe with you, though I&mdash;I should never see
+      her again, that would make me happy till the end of my days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her nobility smote Mr. Marrapit. Cruelly, shamefully, he <i>had</i>
+      misjudged her. Her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, very gently Mrs.
+      Major closed the door; very soberly mounted the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of earshot, she walked briskly to her room; drew forth her diary; in a
+      bold hand inscribed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Absolutely certain shall stick.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman lunched in town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Mrs. Major Finds The Lock.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      By six o'clock Mrs. Major had all ready for her adventure. In the little
+      room at Angel Street she deposited a newly purchased basket; at eight
+      o'clock started for Sussex Gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice, while passing down the terrace at about nine, she had seen the cat
+      she now pursued let out for what was doubtless its nightly run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On each occasion she had observed the same order of events, and she judged
+      them to be of regular occurrence. Out from No. 506 had stepped a tall man,
+      long-haired, soft-hatted, poetically bearded. Behind him had followed the
+      cat. The cat had trotted across the road to the gardens; the tall man had
+      walked slowly round the enclosure. Returning, he had called. The cat had
+      walked soberly forth from the railings and the pair had re-entered the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Matters fell this night precisely as the sapient woman had conjectured.
+      Shortly before nine she took up position against the railings in a dark
+      patch that marked the middle point between two lamps, some doors above
+      506. No tremor agitated her form; in action this woman was most masterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A church clock struck a full clear note, another and another. The
+      after-humming of the ninth had scarcely died when the blackness that lay
+      beneath the fanlight of 506 was split by a thin rod of yellow light.
+      Instantly this widened, served for a moment to silhouette a tall figure,
+      then vanished as the door slammed. The tall figure stepped on to the
+      pavement; a cat at its feet trod sedately across the road. The tall figure
+      turned; in a moment was meditatively pacing the pavement opposite where
+      Mrs. Major stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major gave him twenty yards. Then she hurried along the railings to
+      where the cat had tripped. Six feet inwards, delicately scratching the
+      soil beneath a bush, she espied it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman pressed her face between the rails; stretched a
+      snapping finger and thumb; in an intense voice murmured, &ldquo;Tweetikins
+      puss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tweetikins puss continued thoughtfully to turn the soil. This was a nicely
+      mannered cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tweety little puss!&rdquo; cooed Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Tweety pussikins! puss, puss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tweety pussikins turned to regard her. Mrs. Major moistened her finger and
+      thumb; snapped frantically. &ldquo;Puss, puss&mdash;tweety pussy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tweety pussy advanced till the snapping fingers were within an inch of its
+      nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pussikins, pussikins!&rdquo; implored Mrs. Major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pussikins very deliberately seated itself; coiled its fine tail about its
+      feet; regarded Mrs. Major with a sphinx-like air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major pressed till the iron railings cut her shoulders. She stretched
+      the forefinger of her extended arm; at great peril of slipping forward and
+      rasping her nose along the rails effected to scratch the top of the
+      sphinx's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puss, puss! Tweety, <i>tweety</i> puss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By not so much as a blink did tweety puss stir a muscle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major was in considerable pain. Her bent legs were cramped; the
+      railings bit her shoulder; her neck ached: &ldquo;Tweety little puss! Tweety
+      puss! Puss! <i>Drat</i> the beast!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In great physical agony and in heightening mental distress&mdash;since
+      time was fleeting and the cat as statuesque as ever,&mdash;Mrs. Major
+      again dratted it twice with marked sincerity and a third time as a sharp
+      sound advertised the splitting of a secret portion of her wear against the
+      tremendous strain her unnatural position placed upon it. Unable longer to
+      endure the pain of her outstretched arm, she dropped her hand to earth;
+      with a masterly effort resumed her smiling face and silky tone. Repeating
+      her endearing cooings, she scratched the soil, enticing to some hidden
+      mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The demon of curiosity impelled this cat's doom. For a moment it eyed the
+      scratching fingers; then stretched forward its head to investigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time for gentle methods was gone. Mrs. Major gripped the downy scruff
+      of the doomed creature's neck; dragged the surprised animal forward;
+      rudely urged it through the railings; tucked it beneath her cloak; sped
+      down the road in the same direction that the tall figure had taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where the tall figure had turned round the gardens Mrs. Major kept
+      straight. Along a main street, into a by-street, round a turning, across a
+      square, up a terrace, over the Edgware Road&mdash;so into the
+      bed-sitting-room at Angel Street.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Speeding by train to Herons' Holt upon the following morning, beside her
+      the basket wherein lay the key that was to open paradise, Mrs. Major
+      slightly altered her plans. It had been her intention at once to burst
+      upon Mr. Marrapit with her prize&mdash;at once to put to desperate test
+      whether or no he would accept it as the Rose. But before Paltley Hill was
+      reached the masterly woman had modified this order. The cat she had
+      abducted was so much the facsimile of the Rose that for the first time it
+      occurred to her that, like the Rose, it might be valuable, and that a
+      noisy hue and cry might be raised upon its loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If this so happened, and especially if Mr. Marrapit were doubtful that the
+      cat was his Rose, it would be dangerous to let him know that she had made
+      her discovery in London. Supposing he heard that a London cat, similar to
+      the Rose in appearance, were missing, and remembered that this cat&mdash;of
+      which from the first he had had doubts&mdash;was filched from London? That
+      might turn success into failure. The chances of such events were remote,
+      but the masterly woman determined to run no risks. She decided that on
+      arrival at
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paltley Hill she would conceal her cat; on the morrow, starting out from
+      Herons' Hill to renew her search, would find it and with it come bounding
+      to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to where she should hide it she had no difficulty in determining. She
+      knew of but one place, and she was convinced she could not have known a
+      better. The ruined hut in the copse off the Shipley Road, whither in the
+      dear, dead days beyond recall she had stolen for Old Tommish purposes, was
+      in every way safe and suitable. None visited there at ordinary times; now
+      that the country-side was no longer being searched for the Rose save by
+      herself, it was as safe as ever. She would leave her cat there this day
+      and night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this determination the remarkable woman acted; before proceeding to
+      Herons' Holt secured her cat in that inner room of the hut where, but a
+      few days previously, the Rose herself had lain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she reached the house a maid told her that Mr. Marrapit was closeted
+      with young Mr. Wyvern.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      During the afternoon Mrs. Major visited her cat, taking it milk. That
+      evening, Mary and Margaret being elsewhere together, she was able to enjoy
+      a quiet hour with Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was heavily depressed: &ldquo;A week has passed, Mrs. Major. Something tells
+      me I never again will see my Rose. This day I have sent young Mr. Wyvern
+      and Mr. Brunger after my nephew George. The clue he claims to know is my
+      last chance. I have no faith in it. Put not your trust&mdash;&rdquo; Mr.
+      Marrapit allowed a melancholy sigh to conclude his sentence. This man had
+      suffered much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major clasped her hands. &ldquo;Oh, do not give up hope, Mr. Marrapit.
+      Something tells me you <i>will</i> see her&mdash;soon, very soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit sighed. &ldquo;You are always encouraging, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something tells me that I have reason to be, Mr. Marrapit. Last night I
+      dreamed that the Rose was found.&rdquo; The encouraging woman leaned forward;
+      said impressively, &ldquo;I dreamed that I found her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit did not respond to her tone. Melancholy had this man in
+      leaden grip. &ldquo;I lose hope,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Man is born unto trouble as the
+      sparks fly upward. Do not trust in dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but I <i>do</i>!&rdquo; Mrs. Major said with girlish impulsiveness. &ldquo;I <i>do</i>.
+      I always have. My dreams so often come true. Do not lose hope, Mr.
+      Marrapit.&rdquo; She continued with a beautiful air of timidity: &ldquo;Oh, Mr.
+      Marrapit, I know I am only here on sufferance, but your careworn air
+      emboldens me to suggest&mdash;it might keep your poor mind from thinking&mdash;a
+      game of backgammon such as we used to play before&mdash;&rdquo; She sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major arranged the board; drew Mr. Marrapit's favourite chair to the
+      table; rattled the dice. After a few moves, &ldquo;Oh, you're not beating me as
+      you used to,&rdquo; she said archly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am out of practice,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major paused in the act of throwing her dice. &ldquo;Out of practice! But
+      surely Miss Humfray plays with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major gave a sigh that suggested more than she dared say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed again when the game was concluded. Mr. Marrapit sat on. &ldquo;Quite
+      like old times,&rdquo; Mrs. Major murmured. &ldquo;Good night, Mr. Marrapit; and don't
+      lose hope. Remember my dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite like old times,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman ascended the stairs rubbing her hands.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major ate an excellent breakfast upon the following morning. She was
+      upon the very threshold of winning into paradise, but not a tremor of
+      nervousness did she betray or feel. This was a superb woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eleven she left the house and took a walk&mdash;rehearsing the manner
+      in which she had arranged to burst in upon Mr. Marrapit with the cat,
+      checking again the arguments with which she would counter and lull any
+      doubts he might raise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twelve she entered the hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major was in the very act of leaving the building, the cat beneath
+      her arm, when a sound of voices and footsteps held her upon the threshold.
+      She listened; the sounds drew near. She closed the door; the sounds, now
+      loud, approached the hut. She ran to the inner room; a hand was laid upon
+      the outer latch. She closed the door; applied her eye to a crack; George
+      and Mary entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Mrs. Major Gets The Key.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George carried a basket. He laid it upon the floor. Then he turned and
+      kissed his Mary. He put his arms about her; held her to him for a moment
+      in a tremendous hug; pressed his lips to hers; held her away, drinking
+      love from her pretty eyes; again kissed her and again hugged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gasped: &ldquo;I shall crack in half in a minute if you will be so
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed; let her free. He led to the tottering bench that stood across
+      the room, sat her there, and taking her little gloved hand patted it
+      between his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine, Mary,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to see you again! Fine! It seems months!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years,&rdquo; Mary whispered, giving one of the patting hands a little squeeze.
+      &ldquo;Years. And you never sent me a line. I've not had a word with you since
+      you came up on the lawn that day and said you had passed your exam. You
+      simply <i>bolted</i> off, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You got my letter, though, this morning?&rdquo; George said. He dropped her
+      hand; fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. He was becoming a little nervous
+      at the matter before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary told him: &ldquo;Well, that was <i>nothing</i>. It was such a <i>frantic</i>
+      letter! What is all the mystery about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you the whole story.&rdquo; George got from the bench and began to
+      pace, filling his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a tender little smile Mary watched her George's dear face. Then, as
+      he still paced, lit his pipe, gustily puffed, but did not speak, a tiny
+      troubled pucker came between her eyes. There was a suspicion of a silly
+      little tremor in her voice when at last she asked: &ldquo;Anything wrong, old
+      man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George inhaled a vast breath of smoke; let it go in a misty cloud. With a
+      quick action he laid his pipe upon the table; sprang to her side. His
+      right arm he put about her, in his left hand he clasped both hers.
+      &ldquo;Nothing wrong,&rdquo; he cried brightly; &ldquo;not a bit wrong. Mary, it's a game, a
+      plot, a dickens of a game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, tell me,&rdquo; she said, beaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wants your help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, tell me, tell me, stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will help?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, if I can. Oh, do tell me, Georgie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll show you, that's quicker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sprang to the basket; unstrapped the lid; threw it back. A most
+      exquisite orange head upreared. A queenly back arched. A beautiful figure
+      stepped forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>George!</i>&rdquo; Mary cried. &ldquo;George! <i>The Rose!</i> You've found her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George gave a nervous little crack of laughter. &ldquo;I never lost her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never lost her! No, but she's been&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had her all the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>All the</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>took</i> her! <i>You</i>&mdash;took her! Oh, George, speak sense!
+      Whatever can you mean?&rdquo; Mary had jumped to her feet when first the Rose
+      stepped forth; now was close to her George&mdash;face a little white,
+      perplexed; hands clasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cried: &ldquo;Sweetest dove of a Mary, don't talk like that. Sit down and
+      I'll tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what have you done?&mdash;what have you <i>done?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The true woman was in that question. How they jostle us, these women, with
+      their timid little flutterings when we are trying to put a case before
+      them in our manlike way!&mdash;first spoiling their palate with all the
+      sugar, so that they may not taste the powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what I've done if you'll only sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now laugh, Mary. You simply must laugh. I can't tell you while you look
+      like that. Laugh, or I shall tickle you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed merrily&mdash;over her first bewilderment. &ldquo;But, Georgie, it's
+      something fearful that you've done, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat beside her; took her hands. &ldquo;It's terrific. Look here. From the
+      beginning. When I told old Marrapit I'd passed my exam. I asked for that
+      500 pounds&mdash;you know&mdash;to start us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He refused. He got in an awful state at the bare idea. I asked him to
+      lend it&mdash;he got worse. Mary, he simply would not give or advance a
+      penny: you know what that meant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dejected droop of her mouth gave answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I concocted a plot. Old Wyvern helped me&mdash;Professor
+      Wyvern, you know. I thought that if I took his cat, his beloved Rose, and
+      lay low with her for a bit, he would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>George!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;finish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;He would be certain to offer a reward. And I guessed he wouldn't
+      mind what he paid. So I thought I'd take the cat and hang on till he
+      offered L500, or till I thought he'd be so glad to get the Rose back that
+      he'd do what I want out of pure gratitude. Then I'd bring it back and get
+      the money&mdash;say I'd found it, you see, and&mdash;and&mdash;wait a bit&mdash;for
+      heaven's sake don't speak yet.&rdquo; George saw his Mary was bursting with
+      words; as he judged the look in her eyes they were words he had reason to
+      fear. Shirking their hurt, he hurried along. &ldquo;Don't speak yet. Get the
+      money, and then we'd save up and pay him back and then tell him. There!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She burst out: &ldquo;But, George&mdash;how <i>could</i> you? Oh, it's wrong&mdash;it's
+      <i>awful!</i> Why, do you know what people would call you? They'd say
+      you're a&mdash;yes, they'd say you're a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He snatched the terrible word from her lips with a kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'd say I was a fool if I let Marrapit do me out of what is my own.
+      That's the point, Mary. It's my money. I'm only trying to get what is my
+      own. I felt all along you would see that; otherwise&mdash;&rdquo; He hesitated.
+      He was in difficulties. Manlike, he suddenly essayed to shoot the
+      responsibility upon the woman. &ldquo;&mdash;Otherwise I wouldn't have done it,&rdquo;
+       he ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary had the wit to slip from the net, to dig him a vital thrust with
+      the trident: &ldquo;If you thought that, why didn't you tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thrust staggered him; set him blustering: &ldquo;Tell you! Tell you! How
+      could I tell you? I did it on the spur of the moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could have written. Oh, Georgie, it's wrong. It <i>is</i> wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took up the famous sex attack. &ldquo;Wrong! Wrong! That's just like a woman
+      to say that! You won't listen to reason. You jump at a thing and shut your
+      eyes and your ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>will</i> listen to reason. But you haven't <i>got</i> any reason. If
+      you had, why didn't you tell me before you did it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued the sex assault; flung out a declamatory hand. &ldquo;There you go!
+      Why didn't I tell you? I've told you why. I tell you I did it on the spur
+      of the moment&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she still struggled. &ldquo;Yes, that's just it. You didn't think. Now that
+      you are thinking you must see it in its proper light. You <i>must</i> see
+      it's wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't. I don't in the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, why are you getting in such a state about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not getting in a state!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are.&rdquo; His Mary fumbled at her waist-belt. &ldquo;You are. You're&mdash;saying&mdash;all
+      sorts&mdash;of&mdash;things. You&mdash;said&mdash;I&mdash;was&mdash;just&mdash;like&mdash;a&mdash;woman.&rdquo;
+       Out came this preposterous Mary's pocket handkerchief; into it went Mary's
+      little nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George sprang to her. &ldquo;Oh, Mary! Oh, I say, don't cry, old girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The nose came out for a minute, a very shiny little nose. &ldquo;I can't help
+      crying. This is an&mdash;an <i>awful</i> business.&rdquo; The shiny little nose
+      disappeared again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George tried to pull away the handkerchief, tried to put his face against
+      hers. A bony little shoulder poked obstinately up and prevented him. He
+      burst out desperately. &ldquo;Oh, damn! Oh, what a beast I am! I'm always making
+      you cry. Oh, damn! Oh, Mary! I can't do anything right. I've had an awful
+      time these days&mdash;and I was longing to see you,&mdash;and now I've
+      called you names and been a brute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary gulped the tears that were making the shiny little nose every
+      minute more shiny. Never could she bear to hear her George accuse himself.
+      Upon a tremendous sniff, &ldquo;You haven't been a brute,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;&mdash;a
+      bit. It's my&mdash;my fault for annoying you when I don't properly
+      understand. Perhaps I don't understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put an arm about her. &ldquo;You don't, Mary. Really and truly you don't. Let
+      me tell you. Don't say a word till I've done. I'll tell you first why I've
+      brought the Rose here. You see, I can't keep her anywhere else. I'm being
+      chased about all over England. Bill and that infernal detective are after
+      me now, and I simply must hide the beastly cat where it will be safe.
+      Well, it's safest here&mdash;here, right under their noses, where nobody
+      will ever look because everyone thinks it miles away by now. I can't stop
+      near it, because I must be away on this clue they think I've got&mdash;especially
+      now I've got mixed up with the detectives: see? So I want you just to come
+      up from the house every day and feed the cat. You'll be perfectly safe,
+      and it can't be for very long. You would do that, wouldn't you? Oh, Mary,
+      think what it means to us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She polished the shiny little nose: &ldquo;I'd do anything that would help you.
+      But, Georgie, it's not <i>right</i>; it's <i>wrong</i>. Oh, it is wrong! I
+      don't care <i>what</i> you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you haven't heard what I've got to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have. I've been listening for hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, Mary. No, I haven't explained yet. You're too serious about it.
+      It isn't a bit serious. It's only a frightful rag. And nobody will suffer,
+      because he'll get his money back. And, think&mdash;think what it means.
+      Now, do listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She listened, and her George poured forth a flood of arguments that were
+      all mixed and tangled with love. She could not separate the two. This
+      argument that he was right was delectably sugared with the knowledge that
+      the thing was done for her; that delicious picture of the future, when it
+      was swallowed, proved to be an argument in favour of his purpose. Love and
+      argument, argument and love&mdash;she could not separate them, and they
+      combined into a most exquisite sweetmeat. The arm her George had about her
+      was a base advantage over her. How doubt her George was right when against
+      her she could feel his heart! How be wiser than he when both her hands
+      were in that dear brown fist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was almost won when with a &ldquo;So there you are!&rdquo; he concluded. She had
+      been won if she had much longer remained beneath the drug of his dear,
+      gay, earnest words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he ceased she came to. The little awakening sigh she gave was the
+      little fluttering sigh of a patient when the anesthetic leaves the senses
+      clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her George. Horrible to dim the sparkling in those dear
+      eyes, radiant with excitement, with love. Yet she did it. The goody-goody
+      little soul of her put its hands about the little weakness of her and held
+      it tight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said: &ldquo;I do, <i>do</i> see what you mean, Georgie. But I do, <i>do</i>
+      think it's wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the little hands and the brown fist changed places. For she put
+      one hand below the fist, and with the other patted as she gave her little
+      homily&mdash;goody-goody little arguments, Sunday-school little arguments,
+      mother-and-child little arguments. And very timidly she concluded: &ldquo;You
+      are not angry, Georgie, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This splendid George of hers gave her a tremendous kiss. &ldquo;You're a little
+      saint; you're a little idiot; you're a little angel; you're a little
+      goose,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;But I love you all the more for it, although I'd
+      like to shake you. I <i>would</i> like to shake you, Mary. You're ruining
+      the finest joke that ever was tried; and you're ruining our only chance of
+      marrying; and goodness only knows what's going to happen now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed ever so happily. It was intoxicating to bend this dear George;
+      intoxicating to have the love that came of bending him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I <i>am</i> right, am I not?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George said: &ldquo;Look here, saint and goose. I'm simply not going to chuck
+      the thing and all our happiness like this. I'll make a bargain. Saint and
+      goose, we'll say you are right, but you shall have one night to think over
+      it. One night. And this afternoon you will go to Professor Wyvern and tell
+      him everything and hear what he thinks about it&mdash;what an outsider
+      thinks: see? Yes, that's it. Don't even spend a night over it. Have a talk
+      with Professor Wyvern, and if you still think I ought to chuck it, write
+      to me at once, and to-morrow I'll come down and creep in unto my uncle
+      with the cat, and say: 'Uncle, I have sinned.' There, Mary, that's agreed,
+      isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's agreed,&rdquo; she joined. &ldquo;Yes, that's fair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at his watch. &ldquo;I must cut. I must catch the one-thirty train. I
+      must calm Bill and the 'tec. in case you&mdash;Mary, <i>do</i> weigh
+      whatever Wyvern says, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She promised; gave her George her hope that the Professor would make her
+      see differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's splendid of you!&rdquo; George cried. &ldquo;Saint and goose, that's sweet of
+      you. Mary, I'm sure he will. Look here, I must fly; come half-way to the
+      station. The cat's all right here. Pop up and feed her this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They pressed the door behind them; hurried down the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was precisely as they turned from the lane into the high-road, that
+      Mrs. Major, a cat beneath her arm, went bounding wildly through the copse
+      towards Herons' Holt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      George Has A Shot At Paradise.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Two hours after George, leaving his Mary near Paltley Hill railway
+      station, had got back to his inn at Temple Colney, a very agitated young
+      man booked from Temple Colney to Paltley Hill and was now speeding between
+      them in the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had the carriage to himself. Sometimes he sat, hands deep in pockets,
+      legs thrust before him, staring with wide and frightened eyes at the
+      opposite seat. Sometimes he paced wildly from door to door, chin sunk on
+      breast, in his eyes still that look of frantic apprehension. Sometimes he
+      would snatch from his pocket a telegram; glare at it; pucker his brows
+      over it; groan over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George was this feverish young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his table in his room at the inn he had found this telegram awaiting
+      him. He had broken the envelope, had read, and immediately a tickling
+      feeling over his scalp had sent a dreadful shiver through his frame:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Return at once. Cat found.&mdash;Marrapit.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had plumped into a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a space the capacity for thought was gone. In his brain was only a
+      heavy drumming that numbed. Beneath the window a laden cart went thumping
+      by&mdash;thump, thump; thump, thump&mdash;cat found; cat found. The cart
+      drubbed away and was lost. Then the heavy ticking of the clock edged into
+      his senses&mdash;tick, tock; tick, tock&mdash;cat found; cat found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then thought came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cat found!&mdash;then all was lost. Cat found!&mdash;then some damned
+      prowling idiot had chanced upon the hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This miserable George had felt certain that Professor Wyvern's arguments
+      would overcome his Mary's scruples. That little meeting with his Mary had
+      made him the more desperately anxious for success so that he might win her
+      and have her. And now&mdash;cat found!&mdash;all over. Cat found! His
+      pains for nothing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the support of a hope, and to this, hurrying back to the
+      station, speeding now in the train, most desperately he clung. The Rose,
+      he struggled to assure himself, had not been found at all. It was
+      impossible that anyone had been to the hut. Some idiot had found a cat
+      that answered to the Rose's description, and had telegraphed the discovery
+      to his uncle; or someone had brought a cat to his uncle and his uncle was
+      himself temporarily deluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wildly praying that this might be so, George leaped from the train at
+      Paltley Hill; went rushing to the hut. Outside, for full ten minutes he
+      dared not push the door. What if he saw no Rose? What if all were indeed
+      lost?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He braced himself; pushed; entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once he gave a whoop, and another whoop, and a third. He snapped his
+      fingers; cavorted through the steps of a wild dance that considerably
+      alarmed the noble cat that watched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For there was the Rose!
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When George had indulged his transports till he was calmer, he took a
+      moment's swift thought to decide his action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since someone was bouncing a spurious Rose on his uncle, he must delay, he
+      decided, no longer&mdash;must dash in with the true Rose at once. Surely
+      his uncle's delight would be sufficient to arouse in him the gratitude
+      that would produce the sum necessary for Runnygate!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Previously, when he had reflected upon the plan he should follow on
+      restoring the cat, he had been a little alarmed at the difficulties he
+      foresaw. Chief among them was the fact that his uncle, and the detective,
+      and heaven knew who else besides, would require a plausible and
+      circumstantial story of how the Rose had been found&mdash;might wish to
+      prosecute the thief. How to invent this story had caused George enormous
+      anxiety. He shuddered whenever he thought upon it; had steadily put it
+      behind him till the matter must be faced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this and all other difficulties he now sent flying. The relief of
+      freedom from the badgering he had endured since he abducted the Rose; the
+      enormous relief of finding that the Rose was not, after all, gone from the
+      hut; the tearing excitement of the thought that he had his very fingers
+      upon success&mdash;these combined to make him reckless of truth and blind
+      to doubts. He relied upon his uncle's transports of delight on recovering
+      the Rose&mdash;he felt that in the delirious excitement of that joy
+      everything must go well and unquestioned with him who had brought it
+      about. As to his Mary's scruples&mdash;time enough for them when the
+      matter was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was George's feeling at the end of his rapid cogitation. A heartless
+      chuckle he gave as he thought of Bill and Mr. Brunger at the inn, closely
+      dogging the landlord; then he seized the cat and in a second was bounding
+      through the copse to Herons' Holt as Mrs. Major, a short space ago, had
+      bounded before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The maid who opened the door told George that the master awaited him in
+      the study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing of George's excitement had left him during the rush down to the
+      house. His right arm tucked about the cat he carried, with his left hand
+      impulsively he pushed open the door; with a spring eagerly entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as he stepped over the threshold the bubbling words that filled his
+      mouth melted; did not shape. In the atmosphere of the apartment there was
+      that sinister element of some unseen force which we detect by medium of
+      the almost atrophied sense that in dogs we call instinct. As dogs will
+      check and grow suspicious in the presence of death that they cannot see,
+      but feel, so my George checked and was struck apprehensive by the sudden
+      sensation of an invisible calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quick glance he gave increased the sudden chill of his spirits. He saw
+      Mr. Marrapit standing against the mantelshelf&mdash;dressing-gowned, hands
+      behind back, face most intensely grim; his glance shifted and he froze,
+      for it rested upon Mrs. Major&mdash;hidden by a table from the waist
+      downwards, prim, bolt upright in a chair, face most intensely grim; his
+      eyes passed her and now goggled in new bewilderment, for they took in his
+      Mary&mdash;seated upon the extreme edge of the sofa, a white tooth upon
+      lower lip, face most intensely woebegone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George stood perfectly still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like the full, deep note of a huge bell, Mr. Marrapit's voice came booming
+      through the fearful atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; boomed Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cat beneath George's arm wriggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boom and wriggle touched George back to action from the fear into which
+      the invisible something and the fearful panorama of faces had struck him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all&mdash;let have happened what might have happened&mdash;he had
+      the cat!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung the creature round into his hands; outstretched it. He took a
+      step forward. &ldquo;Uncle!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;uncle, I have found the Rose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said Mrs. Major on a short jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Mary there came a violent double sniff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George stood perfectly still; the unseen horror he felt to be rushing upon
+      him, but it remained invisible. With considerably less confidence he
+      repeated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Rose, uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said Mrs. Major on a yet shorter jerk; from Mary a double sniff yet
+      more violent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit raised a white hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark!&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alarmed, his nerves unstrung, with straining ears George listened. The
+      tense atmosphere made him ajump for outward sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark!&rdquo; boomed Mr. Marrapit; lowered the warning hand; at George directed
+      a long finger. &ldquo;Are you not afraid that you will hear upon the threshold
+      the footsteps of the young men who will come in, wind you up, and carry
+      you out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth&mdash;?&rdquo; George asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit poked the extended finger towards him. &ldquo;Ananias!&rdquo; he boomed.
+      He poked at my quivering Mary. &ldquo;Sapphira!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George recovered. &ldquo;Is this a joke?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I tell you&mdash;look for
+      yourself&mdash;I have found the Rose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit stooped to Mrs. Major's lap, hidden by the table. With a most
+      queenly creature in his arms he stood upright. &ldquo;Here is the Rose,&rdquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly George forgot all that had immediately passed. Instantly he
+      remembered that a bogus Rose was what he fully expected to see. Instantly
+      fear fled. Instantly assurance returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a full and confident note, &ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you have been deceived!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His words let loose a torrent upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit with one arm clasped to his breast the cat he had raised from
+      Mrs. Major's lap. Alternately raising and lowering the other hand, his
+      white hair seeming to stream, his eyes flashing, he took on, to George's
+      eyes, the appearance of an enraged prophet bellowing over the cities of
+      the Plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>have</i> been deceived!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You are right. Though you have
+      the forked tongue of an adder, yet you speak truly. I have been deceived.
+      Woe is me for I have been most wickedly deceived by those who eat of my
+      bread, who lie beneath my roof. I have cherished vipers in my bosom, and
+      they have stung me. Bitterly have I been deceived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused. A low moan from Mrs. Major, handkerchief to eyes, voiced the
+      effect of his speech upon her; in racking sniffs Mary's emotion found
+      vent. But upon George the outburst had a cooling result&mdash;he was
+      certain of his ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said solidly: &ldquo;That's all rot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rot!&rdquo; cried Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, rot. You work yourself up into such a state when you get like this,
+      that you don't know what you're talking about&mdash;vipers and all that
+      kind of thing. When you've calmed down and understand things, perhaps
+      you'll be sorry. I tell you you've been deceived. That's not the Rose
+      you've got hold of. This is the Rose. Someone has made a fool of you.
+      Someone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between two violent sniffs, &ldquo;Oh, George, don't, don't!&rdquo; came from his
+      Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Startled, George checked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monster, be careful,&rdquo; said Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Beware how much deeper you
+      enmire yourself in the morass of your evil. Put down that miserable
+      creature you hold. I place Mrs. Major's Rose beside it. Look upon them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George looked. With staring eyes he gazed upon the two cats. With arched
+      tails they advanced to exchange compliments, and the nearer they stood
+      together the less Rose-like became the cat he had brought into the room.
+      For the cat that Mr. Marrapit had produced&mdash;Mrs. Major's cat, as he
+      called it&mdash;was the Rose herself; could be none other, and none other
+      (when thus placed alongside) could be she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck unconscious to his surroundings by this appalling spectacle, George
+      slowly stooped towards the cats as though hypnotised by the orange coats.
+      His eyes goggled further from his head; the blood went thumping in his
+      temples. He was aghast and horror-struck with the stupefaction that comes
+      of effort to disbelieve the eyes. But he did disbelieve his eyes. How
+      possibly trust them when from the Rose's very bed he had taken the Rose
+      herself and held her till now when he produced her? He did disbelieve his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave Mrs. Major's cat a careless pat. By an effort throwing a careless
+      tone into his voice, &ldquo;A very good imitation,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Not at all unlike
+      the Rose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit became an alarming sight. He intook an enormous breath that
+      swelled him dangerously. He opened his lips and the air rushed out with
+      roaring sound. Again he inspired, raised his clenched hands above his
+      head, stood like some great tottering image upon the brink of internal
+      explosion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As upon a sudden thought, he checked the bursting words that threatened
+      from his lips; allowed his pent-up breath to escape inarticulate; to his
+      normal size and appearance shrank back when it was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an air of ebbing doubt, &ldquo;Not at all unlike?&rdquo; he questioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George replied briskly. He forced himself to take confidence, though every
+      moment made yet more difficult the struggle to disbelieve what his eyes
+      told him. &ldquo;Not at all unlike,&rdquo; he affirmed. &ldquo;Very similar, in fact. Yes, I
+      should say very similar indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still in the same tone of one who is being reluctantly convinced, Mr.
+      Marrapit again played Echo's part: &ldquo;Very similar indeed? You grant that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; George admitted frankly. &ldquo;Certainly. I do not wonder you were
+      mistaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit smoothly replied. &ldquo;Indeed, in Mrs. Major's cat I
+      detect certain signs which my Rose has long borne but which she has no
+      longer, if the cat you bring is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; said George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certain signs,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit repeated, with the smoothness of flowing
+      oil, &ldquo;which I recollect in my Rose. The mark, for example, where her left
+      ear was abrased by Mr. Wyvern's blood-thirsty bull-terrier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George stooped to the cats. Pointing, he cried triumphantly: &ldquo;Yes, and
+      there is the mark!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit pronounced mildly. &ldquo;Yes, but you are now looking at
+      Mrs. Major's cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like one who has stepped upon hot iron George started back, stared aghast.
+      A further &ldquo;hem,&rdquo; with which a chuckle was mixed, came from Mrs. Major;
+      from my collapsed Mary upon the edge of the sofa a sniff that was mingled
+      groan and sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George put a hand to his head. This young man's senses were ajostle and
+      awhirl. Well he remembered that mark which by disastrous blunder he had
+      indicated on Mrs. Major's cat; vainly he sought it on his own. Yet his was
+      the Rose. Was this a nightmare, then, and no true thing? He put his hand
+      to his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looking at Mrs. Major's cat,&rdquo; repeated Mr. Marrapit, his tone smooth as
+      the trickle of oil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George fought on. &ldquo;Quite so. Quite so. I know that. That is what makes it
+      so extraordinary&mdash;that this cat which you call Mrs. Major's and think
+      is the Rose should have the very mark that our Rose had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But our Rose has not&mdash;if that is she.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! not now,&rdquo; George said impressively. &ldquo;Not now. It healed. Healed
+      months ago. Don't you remember my saying one morning, 'The Rose's ear is
+      quite healed now'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not, sir,&rdquo; snapped Mr. Marrapit, with alarming sharpness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; fired Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Hem! Hem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That tail,&rdquo; spoke Mr. Marrapit, a sinister hardness now behind the
+      oiliness. &ldquo;Mark those tails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George marked. To this young man's disordered mind the room took on the
+      appearance of a forest of waving tails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; rapped Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;You note those tails? Mrs. Major's cat has a
+      verdant tail, a bush-like tail. Yours has a rat tail. Do you recollect my
+      pride in the luxuriousness of the Rose's tail?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George blundered along the path he had chosen. &ldquo;Formerly,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not
+      latterly. Latterly, if you remember, there was a remarkable falling off in
+      the Rose's tail. Her tail moulted. It shed hairs. I remember worrying over
+      it. I remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice from the sofa froze him. &ldquo;Oh, George, don't, don't!&rdquo; moaned his
+      Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recovering his horror, he turned stiffly upon her. &ldquo;If you mean me, Miss
+      Humfray, you forget yourself. I do not understand you. Kindly recollect
+      that I have another name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hideous frown he bent upon his Mary might well have advertised the
+      sincerity of his rebuke. He faced Mr. Marrapit, blundered on. &ldquo;I remember
+      noticing how thin the Rose's tail was getting.&rdquo; He gathered confidence,
+      pushed ahead. &ldquo;You have forgotten those little points, sir. Upset by your
+      loss you have jumped at the first cat like the Rose that you have seen.&rdquo;
+       He took new courage, became impressive. &ldquo;You are making a fearful mistake,
+      sir&mdash;an awful mistake. A mistake at which you will shudder when you
+      look back&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Incredible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit, swelling as a few moments earlier he had swollen, this time
+      burst to speech. He raised his clenched fists; in immense volume of sound
+      exploded. &ldquo;Incredible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George misinterpreted; was shaken, but hurried on. &ldquo;It is. I admit it. It
+      is an incredible likeness. But look again, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit gave instead a confused scream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alarmed, George made as if to plunge on with further protests. &ldquo;George!
+      George!&rdquo; from his Mary checked him. Furious, he turned upon her; and in
+      that moment Mr. Marrapit, recovering words, turned to Mrs. Major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you have restored my treasure to my house, Mrs. Major, so now silence
+      this iniquitous man by telling him what you have told me. I implore speed.
+      Silence him. Utterly confound him. Stop him from further perjury before an
+      outraged Creator rains thunderbolts upon this roof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a telling &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; the masterly woman cleared for action. &ldquo;I will, Mr.
+      Marrapit,&rdquo; she bowed. She murmured &ldquo;Rosie, Rosie, ickle Rosie!&rdquo; The cat
+      Mr. Marrapit had lifted from her lap sprang back to that enticing cushion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gently stroking its queenly back, to the soft accompaniment of its
+      majestic purr, in acid-tipped accents she began to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pointed at the cat that now sat at George's crime-steeped boots. &ldquo;When
+      I was out this morning I found that cat in a little copse on the Shipley
+      Road. At first I thought it was our darling Rose. Suddenly I heard voices.
+      I did not wish to be seen, because, dear Mr. Marrapit, if it was the Rose
+      I had found, I wanted to bring it to you alone&mdash;to be the first to
+      make you happy. So I slipped into a disused hut that stands there.
+      Footsteps approached the door and I went into an inner room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major paused; shot a stabbing smile at George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now my miserable George realised. Now, visible at last, there rushed
+      upon him, grappled him, strangled him, the sinister something whose
+      presence he had scented on entering the apartment. No sound came from this
+      stricken man. He could not speak, nor move, nor think. Rooted he remained;
+      dully gazed at the thin lips whence poured the flood that engulfed and
+      that was utterly to wreck him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masterly woman continued. She indicated the rooted figure in the
+      middle of the room, the collapsed heap upon the sofa's edge. &ldquo;Those two
+      entered. He had a basket. Oh, what were my feelings when out of it he took
+      our darling Rose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the space of two minutes the masterly woman advertised the emotions
+      she had suffered by burying her face in the Rose's coat; rocking gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emerging, she gulped her agitation; proceeded. &ldquo;I need not repeat again
+      all the dreadful story I heard, Mr. Marrapit? Surely I need not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit told her. &ldquo;You need not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a masterly half-smile, expressive of gratitude through great
+      suffering, Mrs. Major thanked him. &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;I did not hear
+      the whole of it. It was so dreadful, I was so horrified, that I think I
+      fainted. Yes, I fainted. But I heard them discuss how he had stolen the
+      Rose so they might marry on the reward when it was big enough. He had kept
+      the darling till then; now it was her turn to take charge of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Major ceased with a jerk, drew in her legs preparatory to flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rooted figure had sprung alarmingly to life. George would not have
+      his darling Mary blackened. He took a stride to Mrs. Major; his pose
+      threatened her. &ldquo;That's untrue!&rdquo; he thundered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Ho! A liar to my face! Ho!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are a liar,&rdquo; George stormed, &ldquo;when you say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence!&rdquo; commanded Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Do not anger heaven yet further. Can
+      you still deny&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; George said very loudly. &ldquo;No! No! I deny nothing. But that woman's a
+      liar when she says Miss Humfray discussed the business with me, or that it
+      was Miss Humfray's turn to take the damned cat. Miss Humfray knew nothing
+      about it till I told her. When she heard she said it was wrong and tried
+      to make me take the cat back to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his wrath George had advanced close to Mrs. Major. He stretched a
+      violent finger to an inch from her nose. &ldquo;That's true, isn't it? Have the
+      grace to admit that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Indomitable of purpose, the masterly woman pressed back her head as far as
+      the chair would allow, tightened her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The violent finger followed. &ldquo;Say it's true!&rdquo; George boiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary implored: &ldquo;Oh, George, don't, don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The furious young man flamed on to her. &ldquo;Be quiet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit began a sound. The furious young man flamed to him: &ldquo;You be
+      quiet, too!&rdquo; He thrust the dreadful finger at Mrs. Major. &ldquo;Now speak the
+      truth. Had Miss Humfray anything to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This tremendous George had temporary command of the room. The masterly
+      woman for once quailed. &ldquo;I didn't hear that part,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George drew in the fearful finger. &ldquo;That's as good as the truth&mdash;from
+      you.&rdquo; He rounded upon Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;You understand that. This has been my
+      show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A blackguard show,&rdquo; pronounced Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;A monstrous and an impious
+      show. A&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to hear that. Whatever it is you are the cause of it. If you
+      had done your duty with my mother's money&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A figure passed the open French windows along the path. Mr. Marrapit
+      shouted &ldquo;Fletcher!&rdquo; The gardener entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you've betrayed your trust,&rdquo; George shouted. He liked the fine phrase
+      and repeated it. &ldquo;You've betrayed your trust!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Marrapit assumed his most collected air. &ldquo;Silence. Silence, man of
+      sin. Leave the house. Return thanks where thanks are due if I do not hound
+      the law upon you. Take that girl. That miserable cat take. Hence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary got to her feet, put a hand on her George's arm. &ldquo;Do come, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wild young man shook her off. &ldquo;I'll go when it pleases me!&rdquo; he shouted
+      at Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall be arrested,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit returned. He addressed Mary. &ldquo;Place
+      that cat in that basket Carry it away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George stood, heaving, panting, boiling for effective words, while his
+      Mary did as bade. Awful visions of her George, fettered between policemen,
+      trembled her pretty fingers. At last she had the basket strapped, raised
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, George,&rdquo; she said; and to Mr. Marrapit, &ldquo;I'm so sorry, Mr.
+      Marrapit. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave her furious George a vent. &ldquo;Sorry! What are you sorry about? What
+      have you done?&rdquo; He roared over to Mrs. Major: &ldquo;What other lies have you
+      been telling?&rdquo; He lashed himself at Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Set the law on me? I
+      jolly well hope you will. It will all come out then how you've behaved&mdash;how
+      you've treated me. How you've betrayed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fletcher,&rdquo; Mr. Marrapit interrupted, &ldquo;remove that man. Take him out.
+      Thrust him from the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; said Mr. Fletcher. &ldquo;Me thrust him? I'm a gardener, I am; not a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duty or dismissal,&rdquo; pronounced Mr. Marrapit. &ldquo;Take choice.&rdquo; He turned to
+      the window. &ldquo;Come, Mrs. Major.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George dashed for him. &ldquo;You're not going till I've done with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violence was in his tone, passion in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alarmed, &ldquo;Beware how you touch me!&rdquo; called Mr. Marrapit; caught Mr.
+      Fletcher, thrust him forward. &ldquo;Grapple him!&rdquo; cried Mr. Marrapit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fletcher was violently impelled against George; to save a fall
+      clutched him. &ldquo;Don't make a scene, Mr. George,&rdquo; he implored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George pushed him away. Mr. Fletcher trod back heavily upon Mr. Marrapit's
+      foot. Mr. Marrapit screamed shrilly, plunged backwards into a cabinet,
+      overturned it, sat heavily upon its debris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A laugh overcame George's fury. He swung on his heel; called &ldquo;Come&rdquo; to his
+      Mary; stalked from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they passed through the gate, &ldquo;Oh, Georgie!&rdquo; his Mary breathed. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Georgie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raged on to her: &ldquo;What on earth made you say you were sorry? You've no
+      spirit, Mary! No spirit!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tremendous young man stalked ahead with huge strides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In deep melancholy, sore beneath the correction Mr. Marrapit had heaped
+      upon him, Mr. Fletcher wandered from the study; turned as he reached the
+      path. &ldquo;Me grapple him!&rdquo; said Mr. Fletcher. &ldquo;Me a craven! Me thrust him
+      from the house! It's 'ard&mdash;damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a
+      Ju-jitsu.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Agony In Meath Street.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Silent, gloom-ridden, my sniffing Mary, my black-browed George laboured to
+      the station. Silent they sat upon a bench waiting the London train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George bought his Mary a piece of chocolate from the automatic machine;
+      she was a forlorn picture as with tiny nibbles she ate it, tears in her
+      pretty eyes. In the restaurant George bought himself a huge cigar. This
+      man was a desperate spectacle as with huge puffs he smoked, hands deep in
+      pockets, legs thrust straight, brows horribly knitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had no words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train came in. George found an empty compartment; helped his poor Mary
+      to a corner; roughly dumped the cat-basket upon the rack; moodily plumped
+      opposite his Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had no words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as the train moved from the third stop that Mary, putting a giant
+      sniff upon her emotions, asked her George: &ldquo;Wher&mdash;where are we going,
+      dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until the fifth stop that George made answer. &ldquo;Those Battersea
+      digs,&rdquo; he told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had no words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Queen's Road station gloomily they alighted; silently laboured to the
+      house of Mrs. Pinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George answered her surprise. &ldquo;Miss Humfray will have these rooms again,
+      Mrs. Pinking, if you will be so kind; and I&mdash;&rdquo; He checked. &ldquo;Could you
+      let us have some tea, Mrs. Pinking? Afterwards I'll have a talk with you.
+      We've got into a&mdash;We're very tired. If you could just let us have
+      some tea, then I'll explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In silence they ate and drank. George was half turned from the table,
+      gloomily gazing from the window. Tiny sniffs came from his Mary; he had no
+      words for her; looked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But presently there was a most dreadful choking sound. He sprang around.
+      Most painfully his Mary was spluttering over a cup of tea. With trembling
+      hands she put down the cup; her face was red, convulsively working.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George half rose to her. &ldquo;Don't cry, darling Mary-kins. Don't cry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She set down the cup; swallowed; gasped, &ldquo;I'm not crying&mdash;I'm
+      la-laughing,&rdquo; and into a pipe of gayest mirth she went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gloom gathered its sackcloth skirts; scuttled from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George roared with laughter; rocked and roared again. When he could get a
+      catch upon his mirth there was the clear pipe of his Mary's glee, clear,
+      compelling, setting him off again. When she would gasp for breath there
+      was her dear George, head in those brown hands, shaking with tremendous
+      laughter&mdash;and she must start again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gasped: &ldquo;George! If you could have seen yourself standing there
+      telling those awful stories&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gasped: &ldquo;When I mistook the cats&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gasped: &ldquo;Mr. Marrapit's face&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gasped: &ldquo;Mrs. Major's&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The exhaustion of their mirth gave them pause at last. George wiped his
+      running eyes; Mary tremendously blew her little nose, patted her gold hair
+      where it eagerly straggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel better after that,&rdquo; George said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him, &ldquo;So do I&mdash;heaps. It's no good being miserable over what
+      is past, is it, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit; not the slightest. Come and sit on the sofa and let's see
+      where we are.&rdquo; She put that golden head upon his manly shoulder; he
+      fetched his right arm about her; she nursed her hands upon the brown fist
+      that came into her lap; that other brown hand he set upon the three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they viewed their prospects&mdash;gloomy pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we're fairly in the cart,&rdquo; George summed up. &ldquo;We are, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His ridiculous Mary gave him that lovers' ridiculous specific. &ldquo;We've got
+      each other,&rdquo; she told him, snuggling to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George kissed her. He fumbled in his pockets. &ldquo;I've got just about three
+      pounds&mdash;over from what Marrapit gave me for the clue-hunting. I say,
+      Mary, it's pretty awful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She snuggled the closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early evening, tip-toeing through the window, was drawing her dusky
+      hangings about the room when at length George withdrew the brown hands;
+      stirred.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon a little sigh Mary let go the string that held the dreams she had
+      been dreaming. Like a great gay bundle of many-coloured toy balloons
+      suddenly released, they soared away. She came to the desperate present;
+      noted her George filling his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got upon his legs; paced the floor, puffing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his characteristic pose when he was most tremendous. She watched
+      this tremendous fellow adoringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He told her: &ldquo;I've settled it all, Marykins. I've fixed it all up. We'll
+      pull through right as rain.&rdquo; He caught the admiring glance in his Mary's
+      eye; inhaled and gusted forth a huge breath of smoke; repeated the fine
+      sentence. &ldquo;We'll pull through right as rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear George!&rdquo; she softly applauded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed ahead. &ldquo;There's this locum tenens I was going to take up in the
+      North. I haven't offed that yet&mdash;haven't refused it, I mean. Well, I
+      shall take it. The screw's pretty rotten, but up in the North&mdash;in the
+      North, you know&mdash;well, it's not like London. It's cheap&mdash;frightfully
+      cheap. You can live on next to nothing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pushed out the irritating, practical, womanish side of her. &ldquo;<i>Can</i>
+      you? How do you <i>know</i>, Georgie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We men hate these pokes at our knowledge; women will not understand
+      generalisations. George jerked back: &ldquo;How do I <i>know</i>? Oh, don't
+      interrupt like that, Mary. Everybody knows that living is cheap in the
+      North&mdash;in the <i>North</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she excused herself. &ldquo;Of course, dear, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, where was I? Frightfully cheap, so the screw won't matter. I'll
+      take the job, dearest. I'll take it for next month. And&mdash;listen&mdash;we'll
+      marry and go up there together and live in some ripping little rooms.
+      There!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was flaming pink; could only breathe: &ldquo;Georgie, <i>dear!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped his pacing to give her a squeezing hug, a kiss upon the top of
+      the gold hair. Then he went through the steps of a wild dance. &ldquo;Marry!&rdquo; he
+      cried. &ldquo;Marry, old girl, and let everybody go hang! We'll have to work it
+      through a registrar. I'm not quite sure how it's done, but I'll find out
+      tomorrow. I know you both have to have been resident in the place for a
+      week or so&mdash;I'll fix all that. Then we'll peg along up in the North;
+      and we'll look out for whatever turns up, and we'll save, and in time
+      we'll buy a practice just like Runnygate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he sat beside his Mary again; with a tremendous brush painted in more
+      details of this entrancing picture. Every doubt, every difficulty he threw
+      to tomorrow&mdash;that glad sea in which youth casts its every trouble.
+      Was he sure he still had the refusal of this locum?&mdash;rather! but he
+      would make certain, tomorrow. Was he sure they both could live upon the
+      salary?-rather! he would prove it to-morrow. Could they really get married
+      at a registrar's within a few days?-rather! he'd fix that up to-morrow. As
+      to the money necessary for the marriage, necessary to tide over the days
+      till the locum was taken up, why, he knew he could borrow that&mdash;from
+      the Dean or from Professor Wyvern&mdash;to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were upon the very crest and flood of their delight when George noted
+      the gathering dusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, it's getting late!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I must fix it up with Mrs.
+      Pinking. We've made no arrangement with her yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary agreed: &ldquo;Yes, dear.&rdquo; She went on, pretty eyes shining, face aglow:
+      &ldquo;Oh, Georgie, think of the last time you brought me here! I had nothing to
+      expect but going out to work again; and you weren't qualified. And now&mdash;now,
+      although we've lost our little Runnygate home&rdquo; (she could not stop a tiny
+      sigh), &ldquo;we're actually going to be married in a few days! Georgie, I
+      shan't sleep for hoping everything will turn out all right to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will,&rdquo; George told her. &ldquo;It will. Right as rain, old girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her great sigh of contentment advertised the drink she took of that
+      sparkling future. &ldquo;Think of us being together always in a week or so&mdash;belonging!
+      Where will you stay till then? Quite close. Get a room quite close,
+      Georgie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her. &ldquo;Why, you old goose, I'm not going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She echoed him: &ldquo;Not going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. I'm going to get a bedroom here, and we'll have all our
+      meals and everything in here. We're not going to part again, Marykins. Not
+      much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That maddening handicap beneath which the sweetest women trudge shackled
+      Mary, deluged this joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Georgie!&rdquo; she said; and again trembled, &ldquo;Oh, Georgie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My impulsive George scented the damp. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Well? Whatever's&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Georgie, you can't have a room here. We can't have all our meals
+      together here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He realised the trouble. He broke out: &ldquo;Why ever not? Why ever&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't be <i>right</i>! Georgie, it <i>wouldn't</i> be right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her impulsive George choked for words. &ldquo;Not right! 'Pon my soul, Mary, I
+      simply don't understand you sometimes. Not <i>right! Why</i> isn't it
+      right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so difficult to tell. &ldquo;You don't understand, dear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm damned if I do. I'm sorry, Mary, but you are so funny, you women.
+      It's so exasperating after the&mdash;the devil of a day I've had. Just
+      when I've fixed up everything you turn round and&rdquo;&mdash;he threw out an
+      angry hand&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Why</i> isn't it right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This poor little Mary clung to her little principles. &ldquo;Don't you see?
+      we're engaged, dear; and being engaged, we oughtn't to live alone like
+      this. People would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to rave. Certainly he had had a devil of a day; and this was a
+      maddening buffet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;People! People! You're always thinking of people, you
+      women! Who's to know? Who on earth's to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The instinct of generations of training gave her the instinctive reply in
+      the instinctive sweet little tone: &ldquo;We should know, Georgie,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung up his arms: &ldquo;Oh, good God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swallowed his boiling irritation; laughed 'spite himself; went to his
+      Mary. &ldquo;Mary, don't be such an utter, utter goose. It's too, too
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took his kiss; but she held her stupid little ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't be right, Georgie, <i>really</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her George clanged the bell with a furious stroke that brought Mrs.
+      Pinking in panic up the stairs. Holding himself very straight, speaking in
+      sentences short and hard, paying to his Mary no smallest attention, he
+      made the arrangements. Miss Humfray would take on her bedroom again. By
+      the week. If Mrs. Pinking would be so kind as to allow them the same
+      terms. He thanked her. That was settled, then. He would look in in the
+      morning. He would say good night, Mrs. Pinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pinking gave him good night; busied herself with the tea-things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her presence enabled this brutal George to preserve his stony bearing;
+      denied his pretty Mary opportunity to melt him with her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hard as flint, &ldquo;Well, good night,&rdquo; he said to her. &ldquo;I'll look in to-morrow
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon a little sniff, &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; she whispered; strangled an &ldquo;Oh,
+      George! George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She followed him to the door. He was down the stairs before she could
+      command her voice for: &ldquo;Where shall you go, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the reckless fury of one who sets forth to plunge into the river, he
+      called back, &ldquo;I? I? Oh, <i>anywhere&mdash;anywhere</i>. Who cares where <i>I</i>
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hall door slammed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late into that night while a young woman sobbed her pretty eyes out upon a
+      pillow in a back room of Meath Street, Battersea, a young man, who
+      furiously had been pacing London, paced and repaced the street from end to
+      end, gazing the windows of the house where she lay. This young man
+      muttered, gesticulated, groaned. &ldquo;Oh, damn!&rdquo; was his song. &ldquo;Oh, Mary! Oh,
+      what a cursed brute I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a bitter ending to a fearful day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      George spent the night&mdash;such of it as remained after his bitter
+      moanings outside his Mary's lodging&mdash;with the Mr. Franklyn who had
+      accompanied him on that little &ldquo;stroll up west&rdquo; that had terminated in the
+      cab adventure nearly three months before. Of all his student friends who
+      would give him a bed, Mr. Franklyn, because in a way associated with his
+      Mary, had come most prominently into his mind. That same association gave
+      him a lead from which to pour out his reply to Mr. Franklyn's rallying, as
+      they sat at supper, upon his gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember that day after the July exam, when we went up west
+      together?&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Franklyn remembered; in some gloom shook his head over the
+      recollection. &ldquo;That waitress you left me with in the shop,&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Franklyn sadly, &ldquo;she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang the waitress! Listen, Franklyn, After I left you I turned up
+      past the Marble Arch&mdash;&rdquo; He proceeded with some account of the love
+      between him and his Mary; skipped all details relating to the cat; came to
+      the impending marriage; sought advice upon the prospects of a man marrying
+      on a locum's earnings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Franklyn listened with great sympathy. &ldquo;It's a rum thing you should be
+      placed like that, George,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm in just the same position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George exclaimed eagerly&mdash;in love, youth warms to a companion&mdash;&ldquo;You
+      are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, not exactly,&rdquo; Mr. Franklyn admitted. &ldquo;Very nearly. I've got myself
+      into a brute of a fix over a girl in the lager-beer garden at Earl's
+      Court. She&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George bounced from the table, seized his hat. &ldquo;Who cares a damn about
+      your lager-beer girls?&rdquo; he shouted; slammed from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then, while Mr. Franklyn laboriously indited a letter in reply to
+      one received from the lager-beer girl's mother, that George paced Meath
+      Street.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At breakfast with Mr. Franklyn upon the following morning, he was in
+      brighter trim&mdash;apologised for his over-night abruptness; apologised
+      for the hasty meal he was making; announced that he was off to see his
+      Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he lit his pipe, &ldquo;I'll see you at hospital this morning some time, old
+      chap,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I shall dash in to fix up with the Dean about taking
+      Bingham's place in that practice up in Yorkshire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Franklyn prodded for another slice of bacon. &ldquo;You can't, old chap,&rdquo; he
+      remarked. &ldquo;That's filled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George shouted: &ldquo;Filled! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, taken&mdash;gone. Simpson's got it&mdash;ten days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An icy chill smote my poor George. After the dreadful loss of Runnygate
+      everything had depended upon this appointment with its salary considerably
+      above the average.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simpson! Simmy got it!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;What the blazes does Simmy mean by
+      taking it? He knew I was after it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good lad, you never came near the place after you'd qualified. If
+      Simmy hadn't taken it someone else would. Bingham was in a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blankly George stared before him. At length, &ldquo;I suppose there are several
+      other jobs going?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None on the Dean's list,&rdquo; said Mr. Franklyn. &ldquo;I was looking at it last
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath this new distress George postponed the burning desire to clasp his
+      Mary in his arms and beg forgiveness. He hurried to hospital; made for the
+      Dean's office. Here disaster was confirmed. Simpson had already taken the
+      Yorkshire place; the Dean had no other posts on his lists. &ldquo;Only this
+      Runnygate practice,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I haven't seen you since you qualified. Can
+      you raise the price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George, rising and making for the door, could only shake his head. There
+      was something at his throat that forbade speech. Runnygate and all that
+      Runnygate meant&mdash;the dear little home, the tight little practice, the
+      tremendous future&mdash;was a bitter picture now that it was so utterly
+      lost; now that even this place in Yorkshire was also gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great pity!&rdquo; the Dean told him. &ldquo;I've kept it for you. Lawrence, the man
+      who's leaving it, is coming to see me at five this evening. I shall have
+      to help him find another purchaser.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The infernal something in George's throat gripped the harder as he took
+      his way to his Mary. He cursed himself for that hideous cat enterprise.
+      Had he never undertaken it, had he continued instead to entreat and
+      implore, there was always the chance that his uncle would have relented
+      and advanced the money sufficient for Runnygate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As things were, he stood for ever damned in his uncle's eyes; further, by
+      his folly he had encompassed his darling Mary's ejection from a home where
+      she might comfortably have stayed till he was in position to marry her;
+      further, he had just missed the assistantship which, to his present frame
+      of mind, seemed the sole post in the world that would give him sufficient
+      upon which to call his Mary wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The desperate thoughts augmented his fearful remorse at his treatment of
+      her overnight. Arrived at Meath Street, admitted by Mrs. Pinking, he
+      bounded up the stairs, tremendous in his agony of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary had her pretty nose pressed flat against the window. With dim
+      eyes she had been gazing for her George in the opposite direction from
+      that he had approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; he called, arms outstretched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into them she flung herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They locked in a hug so desperate as only love itself could have borne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He poured out his remorse; beside him on the sofa she patted those brown
+      hands. He told his gloomy tale; she patted the more lovingly&mdash;assured
+      him that, if the Yorkshire place had failed, something equally good would
+      turn up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was in desperate despondency. &ldquo;It's all that infernal cat, Mary,&rdquo;
+       he groaned; she kissed that knotted forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He asked her: &ldquo;By the way, where's that other brute?&mdash;the beast we
+      brought here with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She peered low. &ldquo;I've just fed the poor thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Attracted by her movement, that orange cat which had wrought the fearful
+      disaster came forth from beneath the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;G-r-r-r!&rdquo; George growled; stamped his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orange cat again took shelter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don't frighten it, dear,&rdquo; Mary told him. &ldquo;It's done no harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George rose. He was too tremendously moved to contain himself while
+      seated. &ldquo;Done no harm!&rdquo; he cried. He took a step to the window. &ldquo;Done no&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He stopped short. &ldquo;Oh, Lord! I say, Mary! Oh, Lord! here's Bill!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary fluttered to his side; saw Bill Wyvern disappear beneath the porch of
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A knock; shuffling in the passage; footsteps up the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Gad! I'd forgotten all about old Bill,&rdquo; George said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Bill entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The most tremendous crises between man and man commonly begin with
+      exchange of the customary banalities. Charlotte Corday gave Marat <i>&ldquo;Bonsoir,
+      citoyen,&rdquo;</i> ere she drove her knife. This was no cloak to hide her
+      purpose. We are so much creatures of convention that the man who sets out,
+      hell in breast, to avenge himself upon another, cannot forbear to give him
+      greeting before ever he comes upon the matter between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George, involuntarily straightening his back as he remembered how
+      desperately he had hoodwinked this Bill, had upon a fool's errand packed
+      him to that inn, as involuntarily passed him the customary words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Bill!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How on earth did you know I was here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He awaited the burst of reproach; the torrent of fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These did not come. About Bill's mouth, as from George to Mary he glanced,
+      there were the lines of amusement; no menace lay in his clear blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Went to look for you at the hospital,&rdquo; Bill replied. &ldquo;Met that man
+      Franklyn, and he told me you very probably were here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George pushed ahead with the banalities. &ldquo;Surprised to see Miss Humfray
+      here?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;You met her, of course, at my uncle's while&mdash;while&rdquo;&mdash;this
+      was dangerous ground, and he hurried over it&mdash;&ldquo;while I was away,&rdquo; he
+      said quickly; blew his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill told him: &ldquo;Yes. Not a bit surprised.&rdquo; The creases of amusement became
+      more evident. He shook Mary's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; George said. &ldquo;Um! Quite so. Sit down, Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They took seats. Constraint was upon these people; each sat upon the
+      extreme edge of the chair selected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause, &ldquo;You've been to Herons' Holt, then?&rdquo; George remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yesterday. Yesterday night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Yesterday. Thursday, so to speak. Um! Margaret quite well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The deadly pause came on again. Mary looked appealing to her George.
+      George, his right boot in a patch of sunlight, earnestly was watching it
+      as, twisting it this way and that, the polish caught the rays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It lay with herself to make a thrust through this fearful silence. Upon a
+      timid little squeak she shot out: &ldquo;Mr. Marrapit quite well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite,&rdquo; Bill told her. &ldquo;Quite. A little bit&mdash;&rdquo; He checked; again the
+      silence fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary no longer could endure it. Impulsively leaning forward, arms
+      outstretched, hands clasped, &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Wyvern!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You're <i>not</i>
+      angry with George, <i>are</i> you? He <i>couldn't</i> help sending you to
+      that inn, <i>could</i> he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Constraint fled. &ldquo;Of course I'm not,&rdquo; Bill declared. &ldquo;Not a bit. I've come
+      here to congratulate you both. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George sprang forward; grasped Bill's hand. &ldquo;Good old buck!&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Good old Bill! I'm awfully sorry, Bill. You're a stunner, Bill. Isn't he
+      a stunner, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He <i>is</i> a stunner,&rdquo; Mary agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stunner, red beneath this praise, warmly returned George's grip. When
+      they released, &ldquo;I say, George, you <i>are</i> an ass, you know,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;Why on earth didn't you tell me what you were up to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You weren't there, old man, when it began. You were in London. How on
+      earth was I to know your paper would come plunging into the business?&rdquo; The
+      memory of the pains that paper had caused him swept all else from George's
+      mind. Indignation seized him. &ldquo;It was a scandalous bit of work, Bill. 'Pon
+      my soul it's simply shameful that a newspaper can go and interfere in a
+      purely private matter like that. Yes, it is, Mary. Don't you interrupt.
+      Bill understands. I don't blame you, Bill; you were doing your duty. I
+      blame the editor. What did he want to push into it for? I tell you that
+      paper drove me up and down the country till I was pretty well dead. It's
+      all very well for you to grin, Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not grinning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are grinning.&rdquo; George threw a bitter note into his declamations. &ldquo;Of
+      course, you can afford to grin. What was agony to me was hot stuff for
+      you. I expect you've made your reputation over this show. Everything's
+      turned out all right for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill took that bitter note. &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; he broke in. &ldquo;Rather! I pulled it
+      off, didn't I? I found the rotten cat, didn't I? I wasn't made a fool of
+      for two days in a country inn, was I? I've not got the sack all through
+      you, have I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George instantly forgot his personal sorrows. &ldquo;Oh, I say, Bill, you
+      haven't, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill, not expecting the interruption, confessed a little lamely: &ldquo;No, I
+      haven't. I <i>haven't</i>&mdash;as it turns out. But I might have&mdash;if
+      it wasn't for&mdash;&rdquo; He paused a moment; sadly said, &ldquo;Anyway, just as I
+      thought I'd got her, I've lost Margaret again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In those fierce days when her Bill was the Daily Special Commissioner,
+      Margaret had confided in Mary the promise Mr. Marrapit had made should
+      Bill find the cat. Now Mary was filled with sympathy. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Wyvern!&rdquo;
+       she cried, &ldquo;I <i>am</i> sorry! What has happened? How do you know? Do tell
+      us everything of when you went to Herons' Holt last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill took a chair. He said gloomily: &ldquo;There's not much to tell. I felt I
+      couldn't wait at that infernal inn any longer, so I left the detective in
+      charge, went to the inn where we'd found George, didn't see him, and came
+      back to Herons' Holt. I saw old Marrapit for about two minutes in the
+      hall. He foamed at me all about George, foamed out that I was one of
+      George's friends, and foamed me out of the door before I could get in a
+      word. Said I never was to come near the place again. I asked him about
+      Margaret, and he had a kind of fit&mdash;a kind of fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George said softly: &ldquo;I know what you mean, old man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A kind of fit,&rdquo; Bill gloomily repeated. Then he struck one clenched fist
+      into the palm of the other hand. &ldquo;And hang it!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I've won her!
+      According to the bargain old Marrapit made with me, I've won her. If it
+      had not been for me you wouldn't have taken the cat to that hut in the
+      wood, and if you hadn't taken it there Marrapit wouldn't have it <i>now</i>.
+      It's through me he got it, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bill,&rdquo; George told him, &ldquo;it is. You rotted my show all right. No mistake
+      about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fearful situation as between these two young men. In silence, in
+      gloom, they gazed each upon the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill took a glance at George's face; turned hurriedly from the despair
+      there stamped; set his eyes upon my pretty Mary. He gave a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, George, old man, you've come out of it the better,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You've
+      lost the money you wanted, but you've got your&mdash;you've got Miss
+      Humfray. I've lost my&mdash;I've lost Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In great melancholy George rose; crossed to his Mary; sat upon the arm of
+      her chair; caressed her pretty shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know what you're talking about, Bill. Bill, we're in a most
+      fearful hole. We haven't got a sou, and I've got no work. You're doing
+      well. You're making money. You're bound to get Margaret in time. As for us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill was deeply stirred. &ldquo;I say, I am sorry,&rdquo; he told them. He sat up very
+      straight. &ldquo;Look here, don't get down on your luck. Come out and have lunch
+      with me and tell me just how you're fixed. If a small loan will do you any
+      good I'm certain my guv'nor will stand it. He likes you awfully, George.
+      Come on. I shan't see you again otherwise for some time. I'm off on
+      another Special Commissioner job for the <i>Daily</i>, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George gave a slight shudder. &ldquo;Oh? Thank goodness, I'm not the object of
+      it this time. What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? Why, you've seen the <i>Daily</i> this morning, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll never open the infernal thing again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill did not heed the aspersion. &ldquo;It's really rather funny, you know,&rdquo; he
+      went on. &ldquo;Look here.&rdquo; He tugged at his pocket; produced a <i>Daily</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pencil dislodged by the paper fell to the ground; rolled beneath the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill stooped after it. The cat that lay there, disturbed, walked forth&mdash;arching
+      its proud orange back.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      With eyes that goggled tremendously Bill stared at it; with a finger that
+      shook he pointed at it; turned his head to George. &ldquo;George,&rdquo; he asked,
+      &ldquo;whose cat is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George looked at Mary; gave a bitter little laugh. &ldquo;I suppose it's ours,&rdquo;
+       he replied. &ldquo;Eh, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sad little smile his Mary gave, &ldquo;I suppose it is,&rdquo; she agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From one to the other Bill looked, suspicion in those goggling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>suppose</i> it is?&rdquo; he emphasised. Again he swiftly looked from
+      George to Mary; again stared at the splendid orange form. &ldquo;George,&rdquo; he
+      said sharply&mdash;&ldquo;George, what is that cat's name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George regarded him with a whimsical smile. &ldquo;Bill, you old duffer, you
+      don't think it's the Rose, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet more sharply than before Bill spoke. &ldquo;George, is that cat's name
+      Abishag?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Abishag?</i> What an awful&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill turned from him with an impatient gesture. He called to the cat,
+      &ldquo;Abishag! Abishag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With upreared tail the fine creature trotted to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; George broke out. &ldquo;Is that <i>your</i> cat, Bill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill turned upon him. &ldquo;<i>My</i> cat! You know thundering well it's not my
+      cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it knows you, Mr. Wyvern,&rdquo; Mary told him wonderingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was sorrow, a look of pity in this young man's eyes as reproachfully
+      he regarded my Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung round upon George. &ldquo;George, you've made a fool of me once&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what on earth's the matter with you,&rdquo; George told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With knitted brows Bill for a moment searched his face. &ldquo;I ask you
+      point-blank,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;Did you steal this cat, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George struck the stern young man upon the back. &ldquo;Is <i>that</i> what
+      you're driving at, you old ass? Stole it! D'you suppose I'll ever <i>touch</i>
+      a cat again? That's the infernal cat Mrs. Major left in that hut when she
+      hooked off the Rose. Marrapit told you, didn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Into a chair Bill collapsed&mdash;legs thrust straight before him, head
+      against the cushioned back. He gasped. &ldquo;George, this is a licker, a fair
+      licker.&rdquo; Enormously this staggered man swelled as he inhaled a tremendous
+      breath; upon a vast sigh he let it go. &ldquo;That cat&mdash;&rdquo; he said. He got
+      to his legs and paced the room; astonished, Mary and George regarded him.
+      &ldquo;That cat&mdash;I'll bet my life that's the cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      My Mary was trembling before this fearful agitation. For support she took
+      her George's hand. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Wyvern!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;whatever is it? Have we
+      got into another awful trouble through those dreadful, <i>dreadful</i>
+      cats?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at the <i>Daily</i>,&rdquo; Bill said. &ldquo;Look at the <i>Daily</i>. George,
+      give me a cigarette. I must smoke. This is an absolute licker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My frightened Mary jumped for the paper where it had fallen; spread it
+      upon the table; opened it. &ldquo;Oh, George!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Oh, George!&rdquo;; pressed
+      a pretty finger upon these flaming words:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  ANOTHER CAT OUTRAGE.
+
+  AMAZING STORY.
+
+  MR. VIVIAN HOWARD'S FAMOUS PET
+
+  STOLEN WHILE BACK TURNED.
+
+  &ldquo;DAILY&rdquo; OFFER.
+
+  500 POUNDS FOR OUR READERS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      My Mary's golden head, my George's head of brown, pressed and nudged as
+      with bulging eyes they read the crisp, telling paragraphs that followed in
+      a column of leaded type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Readers of the <i>Daily</i>, it appeared, would be astonished to learn
+      that the abduction of Mr. Marrapit's famous cat, the Rose of Sharon&mdash;concerning
+      the recovery of which all hope had now been abandoned&mdash;had been
+      followed by a similar outrage of a nature even more sensational, more
+      daring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vivian Howard, the famous author and dramatist, whose new novel, &ldquo;Amy
+      Martin,&rdquo; <i>Daily</i> readers need not be reminded, was to start in the <i>Daily</i>
+      as a feuilleton on Monday week, had been robbed of his famous cat &ldquo;Abishag
+      the Shunamite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole reading public were well aware of Mr. Howard's devotion to this
+      valuable pet. Scarcely a portrait of Mr. Howard was extant that did not
+      show Abishag the Shunamite by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a melancholy coincidence that in the interview granted to the <i>Daily</i>
+      by Mr. Howard last Saturday he had told that Abishag had sat upon his
+      table while every single word of the manuscript of &ldquo;Amy Martin&rdquo; was
+      penned. He had admitted that she was his mascot. Without her presence he
+      could not compose a line. <i>Daily</i> readers would imagine, then, Mr.
+      Howard's prostration at his appalling loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The occurrence had taken place on Monday night. As <i>Daily</i> readers
+      were well aware, Mr. Howard had for some weeks been staying at the house
+      of his widowed mother in Sussex Gardens. Nightly at nine it had been his
+      custom to stroll round the gardens before settling down for three hours'
+      work upon &ldquo;Amy Martin.&rdquo; During his stroll Abishag would slip into the
+      gardens, meeting her master upon his completion of the circuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to this practice, Mr. Howard, on Monday night, had followed his
+      usual custom. He believed he might possibly have walked a little slower
+      than usual as he was pondering deeply over his final revise of the proof
+      of &ldquo;Amy Martin.&rdquo; Otherwise his programme was identical with its usual
+      performance. But upon his return the cat was not to be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theories, suggestions, investigations that had already been made,
+      followed. The <i>Daily</i> abundantly proved that the cat had not strayed
+      but had been deliberately stolen by someone well acquainted with Mr.
+      Howard's nightly promenade; pointed out that this second outrage showed
+      that no one possessing a valuable cat was safe from the machinations of a
+      desperate gang; asked, Where are the police? and concluded with the pica
+      sub-head:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;DAILY&rdquo; OFFER.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Daily,</i> it appeared, on behalf of the whole reading public of
+      Great Britain, the Colonies, America, and the many Continental countries
+      into whose tongues Mr. Howard's novels had been translated, offered 500
+      pounds to the person who would return, or secure the return of, Abishag
+      the Shunamite, and thus restore peace to the heart of England's premier
+      novelist, whose new story, &ldquo;Amy Martin,&rdquo; would start in the <i>Daily</i>
+      on Monday week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sketch-map of Sussex Gardens, entitled &ldquo;Scene of the Outrage,&rdquo; showed,
+      by means of dotted lines, (A) Route taken by Mr. Vivian Howard; (B) Route
+      into Gardens taken by cat; (C) Supposed route taken by thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Henry T. Bitt had achieved a mammoth splash.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The golden head and the head of brown lifted simultaneously from the
+      paper; stared towards Bill, pacing, smoking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tremendous possibilities flickered in George's mind; made his voice husky.
+      &ldquo;Bill,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;do you believe that cat is this Abishag&mdash;Vivian
+      Howard's Abishag?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill nodded absently. This man's thoughts were afar&mdash;revolving this
+      situation he had named &ldquo;licker.&rdquo; &ldquo;Look at the description,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Look
+      at the cat. It knows its name, doesn't it? I've seen a life-size painting
+      of Abishag. It's a cert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George dropped upon the sofa; his thoughts, too, rushed afar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tremendous possibilities danced a wild jig in his Mary's pretty head;
+      trembled her voice. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Wyvern!&rdquo; she appealed, &ldquo;what does it mean?
+      What does it mean&mdash;for us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a licker,&rdquo; Bill told her. &ldquo;It's a fair licker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary dropped by her George's side; to his her thoughts rushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Bill threw away his cigarette; faced George. He said slowly:
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Major must have stolen this cat, George. But how did she get it?
+      She's been at Herons' Holt the last week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary gave a little jump. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Wyvern, she went up to town on Monday
+      till Tuesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill struck a hand upon the table. &ldquo;That fixes it. By gum, that fixes it!
+      I tell you what it is, George. I tell you what it is. I believe&mdash;yes,
+      I believe she'd seen this cat before, knew it was like the Rose, and meant
+      to have palmed it off on old Marrapit herself so as to get him to take her
+      back. Margaret told me all about her getting the sack. I bet my life
+      that's it. By gum, <i>what</i> a splash for the <i>Daily!</i>&rdquo; And upon
+      this fine thought the young man stood with sparkling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George timidly touched the castles he had been building: &ldquo;Bill, where do I&mdash;where
+      do Mary and I come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill clapped his hands together. &ldquo;Why, my good old buck, don't you
+      see?-don't you realise?-you get this L500. Just do you, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Runnygate!&rdquo;</i> George burst out with a violent jerk; clasped his Mary
+      in an immense hug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Runnygate!&rdquo;</i> came thickly from his Mary, face squashed against this
+      splendid fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they unlocked my blushing Mary suddenly paled: &ldquo;Oh, but you, Mr.
+      Wyvern&mdash;you found it really.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much,&rdquo; Bill declared. &ldquo;Not likely. You found it. I couldn't have the
+      reward, anyway. I'm one of the staff.&rdquo; He repeated the fine words: &ldquo;One of
+      the <i>staff</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made to thank him. &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; he interrupted her, &ldquo;I'll make a lot out
+      of it. I'm doing awfully well. The chief was awfully pleased with the way
+      I ran that Rose of Sharon job. Of course this is twice as big a splash,
+      because Vivian Howard's mixed up in it. Look what a boost it is for our
+      new serial&mdash;look what a tremendous ad. it is for the paper! Directly
+      Howard came to us the editor dropped the Rose like a hot coal; plumped for
+      this and put me in charge. Now I've pulled it off, just think how bucked
+      up he'll be! It's a licker, George&mdash;a licker all round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bill,&rdquo; George said, &ldquo;I can't speak about it. My head's whirling. I
+      believe it's a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed this George had rushed through so much in the past hours, was now
+      suddenly come upon so much, that the excitement, as he attempted
+      realisation, was of stunning effect. He sat white, head in hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jolly soon show you!&rdquo; Bill cried. &ldquo;Come to the office straight away.
+      Bring the cat. I was to meet the chief and Vivian Howard there at twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George sprang to his feet; ruddy again of face. &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Bill, if it isn't his Abishag, if there's any hitch, I'll&mdash;I'll&mdash;oh,
+      Mary, don't build too highly on this, old girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I come, Georgie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George hesitated. &ldquo;Better not. Better not, if you don't mind. I couldn't
+      bear to see your face if Vivian Howard says it isn't the cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White-faced, between tears and smiles, his Mary waved from the window as
+      George, cat under arm, turned the corner with Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Excursions In A Newspaper Office.
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Silent, white and stern of face, occupied with immense thoughts, the young
+      men sat as the cab they had found outside Battersea Park station sped them
+      towards Fleet Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were upon the Embankment, rattling beneath Hungerford Bridge, when
+      from the tangle of his plans Bill at last drew a thread; weaved it to
+      words. &ldquo;George, we mustn't tell the chief anything about your being mixed
+      up with the other cat outrage&mdash;the Rose. It might be awkward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George shifted the hand that firmly held Abishag on the seat between them;
+      squeezed that fine creature's head to him with his arm; with his
+      handkerchief wiped his sweating palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's <i>going</i> to be awkward,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;damned awkward! I see
+      that. Oh, Bill!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He groaned. This young man was in desperate agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buck up,&rdquo; Bill told him. &ldquo;This is a cert. Safe as houses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All very well for you, Bill. I seem to have been living one gigantic lie
+      all the past week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you have, you know,&rdquo; Bill granted. &ldquo;By gum, you have! But you
+      aren't now. You didn't steal <i>this</i> cat. You found it just as anyone
+      else might have found it. All I tell you is: Don't say anything about the
+      Rose. Don't open your mouth, in fact. Leave the gassing to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was upon this repeated injunction that my poor George tottered up the
+      stairs of the <i>Daily</i> office, cat in arm, in Bill's wake.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Bill rapped upon Mr. Bitt's door; poked in his head at the answering call;
+      motioned my trembling George to wait; stepped over the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt sat behind a broad table; before him, deep in an armchair,
+      smoking a cigarette, lay Mr. Vivian Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Wyvern,&rdquo; spoke Mr. Bitt. &ldquo;Mr. Howard, this is Mr. Wyvern, one of my
+      brightest young men. From to-day he takes in hand this business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vivian Howard did not rise; stretched a white hand to Bill. This man
+      had an appreciation of the position he had won. This man stood for English
+      literature. Within a wide estimate of public opinion, and within that
+      immense estimate of him that was his own, this man stood for literature.
+      In a manner worthy of his proud standing this man comported himself. The
+      talents that were his belonged to the nation, and very freely he gave them
+      to the people. This man did not deny himself to the crowd as another might
+      have denied himself. Of him it never could be said that he missed
+      opportunity to let the public feed upon him. This man made such
+      opportunities. Where excitement was, there this man, pausing between his
+      novels, would step in. If a murder-trial had the public attention this man
+      would write upon that trial; if interest were fixed upon a trade dispute
+      this man would by some means draw that interest upon himself. Nothing was
+      too small for this man. Walking the public places he did not shrink from
+      recognition; he gladly permitted it. Not once but many times, coming upon
+      a stranger reading one of his novels, he had announced himself;
+      autographed the copy. This man's character was wholly in keeping with his
+      gifts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet beautifully he could preserve the dignity that was his right.
+      Preserving it now, he gave his hand to Bill but did not move his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great pleasure to me to meet you, sir,&rdquo; Bill told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have only lately joined the ranks of journalism, Mr. Bitt tells me,&rdquo;
+       Mr. Vivian Howard graciously replied. &ldquo;It is the stepping-stone to
+      literature. Never forget that. Never lose sight of that. I shall watch
+      your career with the greatest interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt broke in a trifle impatiently: &ldquo;Well, well, we must keep to
+      business just now. Mr. Howard will kindly give us a daily interview,
+      Wyvern, until the feuilleton starts, or until the cat is found. You'd
+      better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill took a pace back; faced them both. &ldquo;No need,&rdquo; he cried in bursting
+      words. &ldquo;The cat is found!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cigarette dropped from Mr. Vivian Howard's lip to his waistcoat. He
+      brushed at it violently; burnt his fingers; brushed again; swore with a
+      ferocity that would have astonished his admirers; sprang to his feet amid
+      a little shower of sparks and cloud of ash. &ldquo;Found!&rdquo; he exclaimed; jabbed
+      a burnt finger in his mouth and thickly repeated, &ldquo;Found!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt simultaneously rose. &ldquo;Found?&rdquo; cried Mr. Bitt. &ldquo;What the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the finder here,&rdquo; Bill told them; stepped to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On legs that shook my agitated George advanced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vivian Howard drew forth his suffering finger with a loud pop; made
+      three hasty strides to George; took the cat. &ldquo;Abishag!&rdquo; he cried in
+      ecstasy, &ldquo;Abishag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In very gloomy tones Mr. Bitt announced that he was bust. &ldquo;Well, I'm
+      bust!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm bust. It <i>is</i> your cat, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vivian Howard nodded the head he was bending over his Abishag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill signalled to George a swift wink. George drew a handkerchief; wiped
+      from his face the beaded agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt dropped heavily into his seat. &ldquo;Of course I'm very glad, Mr.
+      Howard,&rdquo; he announced stonily. &ldquo;<i>Very</i> glad. At the same time&mdash;at
+      the same <i>time</i>&mdash;&rdquo; He turned upon George with a note that was
+      almost savage. &ldquo;You, sir!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George started painfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the&mdash;How did you come to find this cat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George forced his pocket handkerchief into his trousers pocket; rammed it
+      down; cleared his throat; ran a finger round the inside of his collar;
+      cleared again; said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill hurried to the rescue. &ldquo;Like this, sir. Let me tell you. This
+      gentleman was at Paltley Hill, a place on the South-Western. He used to
+      live there. He found the cat in a deserted kind of hut, took charge of it.
+      I happened to meet him and brought him along. By Jove, sir, only published
+      this morning and found within a few hours! It's pretty good, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt spoke with great disgust. &ldquo;Pretty <i>good!</i>&rdquo; he cried
+      bitterly. &ldquo;Pretty <i>good!</i>&rdquo; He had no fit words in which to express
+      his feeling. &ldquo;Kindly step in there a moment,&rdquo; he addressed George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George trembled into the adjoining room indicated; closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt turned to Mr. Vivian Howard. &ldquo;It will always be a great pleasure
+      to me,&rdquo; he told the great novelist, &ldquo;to think that the <i>Daily</i> was
+      the means of restoring your cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never shall forget it,&rdquo; Mr. Vivian Howard assured him. The famous
+      author placed himself upon the couch, caressed Abishag the Shunamite upon
+      his lap. &ldquo;Never shall forget it. It was more than good of you, Mr. Bitt,
+      to take up the matter and offer so handsome a reward. It was
+      public-spirited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt's deprecatory little laugh had a rueful note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nerved himself to step upon the delicate ground that lay between him
+      and his purpose. This man had not known Mr. Vivian Howard sufficiently
+      long to put to him directly that the reward was offered, and gladly agreed
+      to by Mr. Howard, for purposes of respective self-advertisement agreeable
+      at once to the paper and to the man who stood for English literature. He
+      nerved himself:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you say public-spirited, Mr. Howard, you use the right term. I do
+      not attempt to deny that I fully appreciated that this reward for your
+      cat, and the interview you agreed to give us, would greatly benefit our
+      paper. Why should I deny it? We editors must be business men first,
+      nowadays; journalists afterwards. But I do ask you to believe me, Mr.
+      Howard, that in offering this reward, in arousing this interest, I had in
+      view also a matter that has been my aim since I was at College.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt's college was Rosa Glen College, 156 Farmer Road, Peckham; but he
+      preferred the briefer designation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The aim,&rdquo; he continued, gathering courage as he detected in Mr. Vivian
+      Howard's face a look which seemed to show that the famous author was
+      advancing upon the delicate ground to meet him, &ldquo;the aim of attracting the
+      people to good literature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vivian Howard, as standing for that literature, took the implied
+      compliment with a bow. &ldquo;I congratulate you, Mr. Bitt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, the <i>Daily</i> is young,&rdquo; Mr. Bitt earnestly continued. &ldquo;The <i>Daily</i>
+      has yet to make its way. If your 'Amy Martin' starts in normal
+      circumstances a week hence, it will mean that this contribution to our
+      highest literature will fall only to a comparatively small circle of
+      people. But if&mdash;but if, as I had hoped, we had morning by morning
+      attracted more and more readers by the great interest taken in your loss,
+      'Amy Martin' would then have introduced our best fiction to a public twice
+      or thrice as large as our present circulation represents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;?&rdquo; the great author inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; Mr. Bitt told him, &ldquo;that for this reason I cannot but regret
+      that the excitement aroused should disappear with our issue of to-morrow.
+      I mean, Mr. Howard, that for the reason I have named I do think it is
+      almost our <i>duty</i>&mdash;our <i>duty</i>, for the reason I have named&mdash;to
+      conceal the cat's recovery for&mdash;er&mdash;for a day or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt blew his nose violently to conceal his agitation. This man was
+      now in the precise centre of the delicate ground; was in considerable fear
+      that it might open and swallow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Vivian Howard's reply made that ground of rock-like solidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you put the matter, Mr. Bitt, I must say I agree. It would be false
+      modesty on my part to pretend I do not recognise the worth of 'Amy
+      Martin,' and the desirability of introducing it as widely as possible.
+      Certainly that could best have been accomplished by Abishag not having
+      been recovered so soon. But as it is&mdash;I do not see what can be done.
+      You do not, of course, suggest deliberate deception of the public?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly <i>not!</i>&rdquo; cried Mr. Bitt with virtuous warmth. Since this
+      was precisely what he did suggest and most earnestly desired, he repeated
+      his denial: &ldquo;Certainly <i>not</i>! At the same time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment,&rdquo; Mr. Vivian Howard interrupted. &ldquo;This cat was obviously
+      stolen by someone and placed in the hut where it was found. Very well. We
+      prosecute. We prosecute, and I could give you every morning my views on
+      the guilt or otherwise&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt shook his head. &ldquo;I had thought of that. It won't do. It won't do,
+      Mr. Howard. For one thing, a rigorous prosecution and sentence might
+      create bad feeling against the paper. You have no idea how curious the
+      public is in that way. For another, you, as the injured party, ought not
+      to comment; and certainly I could not publish your views. The matter would
+      be <i>sub judice</i> directly arrest was made; and I once got into very
+      serious trouble over a <i>sub judice</i> matter&mdash;very serious trouble
+      indeed. I shall not touch the law, Mr. Howard. It is unwise. At the same
+      time, I think the thief should be made to suffer&mdash;be given a thorough
+      fright. Now, if we inform the public that practically our Special
+      Commissioner has his hand on the cat&mdash;which will be perfectly true&mdash;and
+      is almost certain as to the identity of the thief&mdash;if we keep this up
+      for the few days necessary for the publication of those magnificent
+      articles of yours on 'What my Loss means to Me,' we shall be accomplishing
+      three excellent objects. We shall be terrifying an evil-doer&mdash;we may
+      take it for granted he reads the <i>Daily</i>; we shall be giving the
+      public those articles which most certainly ought not to be lost to
+      literature; and we shall be widening the sphere of influence of 'Amy
+      Martin.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vivian Howard did not hesitate. &ldquo;It is impossible to override your
+      arguments, Mr. Bitt. I think we shall be doing <i>right</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt concealed his immense joy. &ldquo;I am convinced of it, Mr. Howard,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;<i>Convinced</i>. The modern editor and the man of letters of your
+      standing have enormous responsibilities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Impelled by the virtuous public duty they were performing, the two men
+      silently grasped hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A Perfectly Splendid Chapter.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt turned to Bill; indicated the door behind which my poor George
+      was wrestling in prayer. &ldquo;The only difficulty is with that chap in there.
+      He knows the cat is found! How can we&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will leave that to me, sir,&rdquo; Bill told him, &ldquo;I think I can arrange
+      it without difficulty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or danger?&rdquo; added Mr. Vivian Howard, who, standing for English
+      literature, would not lightly imperil his integrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or the least danger,&rdquo; Bill affirmed. &ldquo;He's a kind of friend of mine&mdash;did
+      I mention that, sir? I'll fix it up in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped briskly to George; closed the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George said faintly: &ldquo;Say it quick, Bill. Quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got it, old man. Got it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      George rose to his feet; stretched his arms aloft; wildly waved them. The
+      tremendous shout for which he opened his mouth was stayed upon his lips by
+      Bill's warning finger. He hurled himself on a couch; rolled in ecstasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rapidly Bill outlined the proposals. Then he struck a heavy hand upon
+      George's shoulder. &ldquo;And I've got it too!&rdquo; he cried in an exultant whisper.
+      &ldquo;I've got it too! I've got Margaret!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret! However&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like this. Plain as a fiddle-stick. To-morrow, when we get out this story
+      about practically having our hand on the thief, I shall go bang down to
+      Marrapit with the paper and tell him I know it was Mrs. Major who took the
+      cat. You can imagine the state that'll put 'em both in. Then&mdash;then,
+      my boy, I shall say 'Let Margy and me carry on and fix it up forthwith,
+      and I'll promise Mrs. Major shall never hear a word more about the
+      matter.' He'll agree like a shot. The chief's not going to prosecute, you
+      see; so neither Mrs. Major nor you ever will hear a word more. George,
+      we've done it! Done it! You've got your Mary and I've got my Margy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With swelling bosoms, staring eyes, upon this tremendous happening the two
+      young men clasped hands; stood heavily breathing. These men were glimpsing
+      heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they unlocked, George said: &ldquo;There's one thing, Bill. Go in and tell
+      that precious pair they can hold over the discovery till they please and
+      that I shall never breathe a word. But tell 'em this: I don't agree unless
+      I have my cheque right away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill advised no stipulations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George stood firm: &ldquo;I don't care a snap, Bill. I will have it now. I've
+      been badgered about quite enough. I want to feel safe. I'll either lose it
+      all or have it all. No more uncertainty. Anything might happen during the
+      week, for all I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill took the message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon immediate payment Mr. Bitt at first stuck. &ldquo;He might turn back on us,
+      or start blackmailing us. He may have stolen the cat himself for all we
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more likely, in that case, to keep his mouth shut,&rdquo; commented Mr.
+      Vivian Howard. Despite he stood for literature, this man had strong
+      business instincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill urged compliance. He knew this finder of the cat; would speak for him
+      as for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bitt put a quill into his inkstand; took George's name; wrote a slip;
+      handed it to Bill. &ldquo;Take that to the cashier, Wyvern. He'll give you the
+      cheque. Clear your friend out. Eh? No&mdash;no need for me to see him
+      again. Of course you must get his story of how he found the cat, to use
+      when the 'What my Loss means to Me' articles run out. Then come back and
+      we'll fix up to-morrow's account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cabman drove to St. Peter's Hospital a seemingly insane young man, who
+      bounded into the cab with a piece of paper in his hand; who sang and
+      rattled his heels upon the foot-board, shouted to passers-by; who paid
+      with two half-crowns; who bounded, paper still fluttering in hand, up the
+      steps of the Dean's entrance with a wild and tremendous whoop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George had scarcely explained to the Dean an incoherent story of L500 won
+      through a newspaper competition, when the Mr. Lawrence, M.R.C.S.,
+      L.R.C.P., whose practice was at Runnygate, arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Informally the purchase was at once arranged; a further meeting settled.
+      George bolted to another cab; drove to Meath Street by way of the florist
+      near Victoria Station; took aboard an immense basket of flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the house he gathered the flowers beneath his arm; on the way upstairs
+      shifted them to his hands; flung wide the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Mary, white, a tooth on a trembling lip, her pretty hands clasped, was
+      before him. In a great whirling shower he flung the blossoms about her;
+      then took her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Runnygate, Mary! Darling old girl, Runnygate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed his Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last Shots from the Bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you had patience for another peep from the bridge that I can build, you
+      might catch a glimpse or so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bending over you might see Bill seated at the editor's table of the
+      editor's room of a monstrously successful monthly magazine of most
+      monstrous fiction that Mr. Bitt's directors have started; Margaret, that
+      sentimental young woman, by her husband's side is correcting the proofs of
+      a poem signed &ldquo;Margaret Wyvern.&rdquo; It is of the most exquisite melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bending over you might see George upon one of the summer evenings when,
+      his duties through, he is taking his Mary for a drive in the country
+      behind that rising seaside resort Runnygate. They are plunging along in a
+      tremendous dogcart drawn by an immense horse. George is fully occupied
+      with his steed; Mary, peeping at constant intervals through the veil that
+      hides the clear blue eyes and the ridiculous little turned-up nose of her
+      baby, at every corner says: &ldquo;Oh, George! Georgie, do be careful! We were
+      on <i>one</i> wheel then, I <i>know</i> we were!&rdquo; But along the level the
+      wind riots at her pretty curls as she sits up very straight and very
+      proud, smiling at this splendid fellow beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bending over you might see the garden of Herons' Holt, Mr. Fletcher
+      leading from the house the fat white pony and tubby wide car which Mrs.
+      Marrapit, formerly Mrs. Major, has prevailed upon her husband to buy. The
+      pony has all the docile qualities of a blind sheep, but Mr. Fletcher is in
+      great terror of it. When, while being groomed, it suddenly lifts its head,
+      Mr. Fletcher drops his curry-comb and retires from the stall at great
+      speed. &ldquo;It's 'ard,&rdquo; says Mr. Fletcher&mdash;&ldquo;damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I
+      am; not a 'orse-breaker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END.
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger, by
+Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
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+</pre>
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+</html>
diff --git a/6410.txt b/6410.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger, by
+Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Once Aboard The Lugger
+
+Author: Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6410]
+This file was first posted on December 8, 2002
+Last Updated: July 2, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Skip Doughty, Charles Aldarondo and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER--
+
+THE HISTORY OF GEORGE AND HIS MARY
+
+By A. S. M. Hutchinson
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ The Author's Advertisement Of His Novel
+
+
+ BOOK I.
+
+ _Of George._
+
+ I. Excursions In A Garden
+ II. Excursions In Melancholy
+ III. Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped
+ IV. Excursions In A Hospital
+ V. Upon Life: And May Be Missed
+ VI. Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine
+ VII. Moving Passages With A Heroine
+ VIII. Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine
+
+
+ BOOK II.
+
+ _Of his Mary._
+
+ I. Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine
+ II. Excursions In Vulgarity
+ III. Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine
+ IV. Excursions In A Nursery
+ V. Excursions At A Dinner-Table
+
+
+ BOOK III.
+
+ _Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: Of Love and of War._
+
+ I. Notes On The Building Of Bridges
+ II. Excursions Beneath The Bridge
+ III. Excursions In Love
+ IV. Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter
+ V. Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens
+ VI. A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens
+
+
+ BOOK IV.
+
+ _In which this History begins to rattle._
+
+ I. The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will
+ Lose Nothing By Not Accompanying Him
+ II. An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages
+ III. Alarums And Excursions By Night
+ IV. Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath
+ V. Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet
+ VI. The Girl Comes Near The Lugger
+
+
+ BOOK V.
+
+ _Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: Of George in Torment._
+
+ I. Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped
+ II. Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays
+ III. Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit
+ IV. The Rape Of The Rose
+ V. Horror At Herons' Holt
+ VI. A Detective At Herons' Holt
+ VII. Terror At Dippleford Admiral
+ VIII. Panic At Dippleford Admiral
+ IX. Disaster At Temple Colney
+
+
+ BOOK VI.
+
+ _Of Paradise Lost and Found._
+
+ I. Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise
+ II. Mrs. Major Finds The Lock
+ III. Mrs. Major Gets The Key
+ IV. George Has A Shot At Paradise
+ V. Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira
+ VI. Agony In Meath Street
+ VII. Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street
+ VIII. Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street
+ IX. Excursions In A Newspaper Office
+ X. A Perfectly Splendid Chapter
+
+ _Last Shots from the Bridge_
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS NOVEL.
+
+This book has its title from that dashing sentiment, "Once aboard the
+lugger and the girl is mine!" It is not to be read by those who in their
+novels would have the entertainment of characters that are brilliant or
+wealthy, noble of birth or admirable of spirit. Such have no place in
+this history. There is a single canon of novel-writing that we have
+sedulously kept before us in making this history, and that is the law
+which instructs the novelist to treat only of the manner of persons with
+whom he is well acquainted. Hence our characters are commonplace folks.
+We have the acquaintance of none other than commonplace persons, because
+none other than commonplace persons will have acquaintance with us.
+
+And there are no problems in this history, nor is the reader to be
+tickled by any risks taken with nice deportment. This history may be
+kept upon shelves that are easily accessible. It is true that you will
+be invited to spend something of a night in a lady's bedroom, but the
+matter is carried through with circumspection and dispatch. There shall
+not be a blush.
+
+Now, it is our purpose in this advertisement so clearly to give you the
+manner of our novel that without further waste of time you may forego
+the task of reading so little as a single chapter if you consider that
+manner likely to distress you. Hence something must be said touching the
+style.
+
+We cannot see (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a
+story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to
+come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something
+of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this
+history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or divert your
+attention as you read; but we too must be permitted to swing our legs
+and slide off upon matters that interest us, and that indirectly are
+relevant to the history. Life is not compounded solely of action. One
+cannot rush breathless from hour to hour. And, since the novel aims to
+ape life, the reader, if the aim be true, cannot rush breathless from
+page to page. We can at least warrant him he will not here.
+
+These are the limitations of our history; and we admit them to be
+considerable. Upon the other hand, the print is beautifully clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As touching the title we have chosen, this was not come by at the cost
+of any labour. Taken, as we have told, from that dashing sentiment,
+"Once aboard the lugger and the girl is mine!" it is a label that might
+be applied to all novels. It is a generic title for all modern novels,
+since there is not one of these but in this form or that sets out the
+pursuit of his mistress by a man or his treatment of her when he has
+clapped her beneath hatches. This is a notable matter. The novelist
+writes under the influences and within the limitations of his age, and
+the modern novelist correctly mirrors modern life when he presents woman
+as for man's pursuit till he has her, and for what treatment he may will
+when he captures her. The position is deplorable, is productive of a
+million wrongs, and, happily, is slowly changing; but that it exists
+is clear upon the face of our social existence, and is even advertised
+between the sexes in love: "You are mine" the man says, and means it. "I
+am yours" the woman declares, and, fruit of generations of dependence,
+freely, almost involuntarily, gives herself.
+
+But of this problem (upon which we could bore you to distraction) we
+are nothing concerned in our novel. Truly we offer you the pursuit of
+a girl; but my Mary would neither comprehend this matter nor wish to
+be other than her George's. From page 57 she waves to us; let us hurry
+along.
+
+
+
+
+  _.... Who so will stake his lot,
+  Impelled thereto by nescience or whim,
+  Cupidity or innocence or not,
+  On Chance's colours, let men pray for him._
+                         RALPH HODGSON.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+Of George.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Excursions In A Garden.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mr. Christopher Marrapit is dozing in a chair upon the lawn; his darling
+cat, the Rose of Sharon, is sleeping on his lap; stiffly beside him sits
+Mrs. Major, his companion--that masterly woman.
+
+As we approach to be introduced, it is well we should know something of
+Mr. Marrapit. The nervous business of adventuring into an assembly of
+strangers is considerably modified by having some knowledge of the first
+we shall meet. We feel more at home; do not rush upon subjects which are
+distasteful to that person, or of which he is ignorant; absorb something
+of the atmosphere of the party during our exchange of pleasantries with
+him; and, warmed by this feeling, with our most attractive charm of
+manner are able to push among the remainder of our new friends.
+
+Unhappily, the friendly chatter of the neighbourhood, which should
+supply us with something of the character of a resident, is quite
+lacking at Paltley Hill in regard to Mr. Marrapit. Mr. Marrapit
+rarely moves out beyond the fine wall that encircles Herons' Holt,
+his residence; with Paltley Hill society rarely mixes. The vicar,
+with something of a frown, might tell us that to his divers parochial
+subscription lists Mr. Marrapit has consistently, and churlishly,
+refused to give a shilling. Professor Wyvern's son, Mr. William Wyvern,
+has been heard to say that Mr. Marrapit always reminded him "of one
+of the minor prophets--shaved." Beyond this--and how little helpful it
+is!--Paltley Hill society can give us nothing.
+
+In a lower social grade of the district, however, much might be learned.
+In the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours of Paltley Hill, Mr.
+Marrapit is considerably discussed. Nicely mannered as we are,
+servants' gossip concerning one in our own station of life is naturally
+distasteful to us. At the same time it is essential to our ease on being
+introduced that we should know something of this gentleman. Assuring
+ourselves, therefore, that we shall not be prejudiced by cheap chatter,
+let us hear what the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours have
+to say.
+
+Let it, at least, be written down; we shall know how to value such
+stuff.
+
+Material for this gossip, then, is brought into the kitchens, the
+cottages, and the bar-parlours by Mr. Marrapit's domestic staff.
+
+Mrs. Armitage, his cook, has given tales of his "grimness" to the
+cottages where her comfortable presence is welcomed on Sunday and
+Thursday afternoons. She believes, however, that he must be a "religious
+gentleman," because (so she says) "he talks like out of the Bible."
+
+This would seem to bear out Mr. William Wyvern's allusion to the minor
+prophet element of his character.
+
+It is the habit of Clara and Ada, his maids, squeezing at the gate from
+positions dangerous to modesty into which their ardent young men have
+thrust them--it is their habit, thus placed, to excuse themselves
+from indelicate embraces by telling alarming tales of Mr. Marrapit's
+"carrying on" should they be late. He is a "fair old terror," they say.
+
+The testimony of Mr. Fletcher, his gardener, gloomy over his beer in
+the bar-parlours, seems to support the "stinginess" that the vicar has
+determined in Mr. Marrapit's character. Mr. Fletcher, for example, has
+lugubriously shown what has to be put up with when in the service of a
+man who had every inch of the grounds searched because a threepenny
+bit had been dropped. "It's 'ard--damn 'ard," Mr Fletcher said on that
+occasion. "I'm a gardener, I am; not a treasure-'unter." Murmurs of
+sympathy chorused endorsement of this view.
+
+Finally there are the words of Frederick, son of Mrs. Armitage, and
+assistant to Fletcher, whose pleasure it is to set on end the touzled
+hair of the youth of Paltley Hill by obviously exaggerated stories of
+Mr. Marrapit's grim rule.
+
+"'E's a tryant," Frederick has said.
+
+Such is an epitome of the kitchen gossip concerning Mr. Marrapit; it is
+wholesome to be away from such tattling, and personally to approach the
+lawn whereon its subject sits.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+This lawn, a delectable sight on this fine July afternoon, is set about
+with wire netting to a height of some six feet. By the energies of Mr.
+Fletcher and Frederick the sward is exquisitely trimmed and rolled; and
+their labours join with the wire netting to make the lawn a safe and
+pleasant exercise ground for Mr. Marrapit's cats.
+
+Back in the days of Mr. Marrapit's first occupancy of Herons' Holt,
+this man was a mighty amateur breeder of cats, and a rare army of cats
+possessed. Regal cats he had, queenly cats, imperial neuter cats; blue
+cats, grey cats, orange cats, and white cats--cats for which nothing was
+too good, upon which too much money could not be spent nor too much love
+be lavished. Latterly, with tremendous wrenchings of the heart, he had
+disbanded this galaxy of cats. Changes in his household were partly
+the cause of this step. The coming of his nephew, George, had seriously
+upset the peaceful routine of existence which it was his delight to
+lead; and a reason even more compelling was the gradual alteration in
+his attitude towards his hobby. This man perceived that the fancier's
+eye with which he regarded his darlings was becoming so powerful as to
+render his lover's eye in danger of being atrophied. The fancier's
+eye was lit by the brain--delighted only in "points," in perfection of
+specimen; the lover's eye was fed by the heart--glowed, not with pride
+over breed, but with affection for cats as cats. And Mr. Marrapit
+realised that for affection he was coming to substitute pride--that
+he was outraging the animals he loved by neglecting the less admirable
+specimens for those perfectly moulded; that even these perfect types he
+was abusing by his growing craze for breeding; polygamy in cats, he came
+to believe, desecrated and eventually destroyed their finer feelings.
+
+Therefore--and the coming of his nephew George quickened his
+determination--Mr. Marrapit dispersed his stud (the word had become
+abhorrent to him), keeping only four exquisite favourites, of which
+the Rose of Sharon--that perfect orange cat, listed when shown at the
+prohibitive figure of 1000 pounds, envy and despair of every cat-lover
+in Great Britain and America--was apple of his eye, joy of his
+existence.
+
+It was the resolve to keep but these four exquisite creatures that
+encompassed the arrival in Mr. Marrapit's household of Mrs. Major, now
+seated beside him upon the lawn--that masterly woman. The fine cat-house
+was pulled down, the attendant dismissed. A room upon the ground floor,
+having a southern aspect, was set apart as bed-chamber and exclusive
+apartment for the four favourites, and Mr. Marrapit sought about for
+some excellent person into whose care they might be entrusted. Their
+feeding, their grooming, constant attention to their wants and the sole
+care of their chamber, should be this person's duties, and it was not
+until a point some way distant in this history that Mr. Marrapit ceased
+daily to congratulate himself upon his selection.
+
+Mrs. Major, that masterly woman, was a distressed gentlewoman. The death
+of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning, seems
+to have given her her first chance of displaying those strong qualities
+which ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she was of those
+to whom plan of action comes instantly upon the arrival of opportunity.
+With lightning rapidity this woman welded chance and action; with
+unflagging energy and with dauntless perseverance used the powerful
+weapon thus contrived.
+
+The case of her husband's death may be instanced. Her hysterical
+distress on the day of the funeral (a matter that would have
+considerably surprised the late Mr. Major) was exchanged on the
+following morning for acute physical distress resulting from the means
+by which, overnight, she had tried to assuage her grief. Noticing, as
+she dressed, the subdued and martyrlike air that her face wore, noticing
+also her landlady's evident sympathy with the gentle voice and manner
+which her racking head caused her to adopt, Mrs. Major saw at once
+the valuable aid to her future which the permanent wearing of these
+characteristics might be. From that moment she took up the role of
+distressed gentlewoman--advertised by tight-fitting black, by little
+sighs, and by precise, subdued voice,--and in this guise sought
+employment at an Agency. The agency sent her to be interviewed by
+Mr. Marrapit. Ushered into the study, she, in a moment of masterly
+inspiration, murmured "The sweet! Ah, the sweet!" when viciously
+scratched by the Rose of Sharon, and upon those words walked directly in
+to Mr. Marrapit's heart.
+
+He required a lady--a _lady_ (Mrs. Major smiled deprecatingly) who
+should devote herself to his cats. Did Mrs. Major like cats? Ah, sir,
+she adored cats; her late husband--Words, at the recollection, failed
+her. She faltered; touched an eye with her handkerchief; wanly smiled
+with the resigned martyrdom of a true gentlewoman.
+
+As so-often in this life, the unspoken word was more powerful than
+mightiest eloquence. Mr. Marrapit is not to be blamed for the inference
+he drew. He pictured the dead Mr. Major a gentleman sharing with his
+wife a passion for cats; by memory of which fond trait his widow's
+devotion to the species would be yet further enhanced, would be
+hallowed.
+
+There is the further thought in this connection that once more, as so
+often in this life, the unspoken word had saved the lie direct. Once
+only, in point of fact, had Mrs. Major seen her late husband directly
+occupied with a cat, and the occasion had been the cause of their
+vacating their lodgings in Shepherd's Bush precisely thirty minutes
+later. Mr. Major, under influence of his unfortunate malady, with
+savage foot had sped the landlady's cat down a flight of stairs; and the
+landlady had taken the matter in peculiarly harsh spirit.
+
+All this, however, lay deeply hidden beneath Mrs. Major's unspoken word.
+The vision of a gentle Mr. Major that Mr. Marrapit conjured sealed
+the liking he had immediately taken to Mrs. Major, and thus was she
+installed.
+
+The masterly woman, upon this July afternoon, desisted from her
+crocheting; observed in the dozing figure beside her signs of movement;
+turned to it, ready for speech.
+
+This she saw. From the reluctant rays of a passing sun a white silk
+handkerchief protected a nicely polished head--a little bumpy, fringed
+with soft white hair. Beneath the head a long face, sallow of hue; in
+either cheek a pit; between them a dominating nose carrying eyeglasses.
+A long, spare body in an alpaca coat; long thin legs; brown morocco
+slippers without heels--upon the lap the peerless Rose of Sharon.
+
+"Time for the Rose to go in," Mrs. Major softly suggested.
+
+"The Rose," said Mr. Marrapit, passing a hand gently over the creature's
+exquisite form, "is, I fear, still ailing. Her sleep is troubled; she
+shivers. Her appetite?"
+
+"It is still poorly." The expression was that of a true distressed
+gentlewoman.
+
+"She has need," Mr. Marrapit said, "of the most careful attention, of
+the most careful dieting. Tend her. Tempt her. Take her."
+
+"I will, Mr. Marrapit." Mrs. Major gathered the Rose against her bosom.
+"You will not stay long? It is growing chilly."
+
+"I shall take a brief stroll. I am perturbed concerning the Rose."
+
+"Let me bring you a cap, Mr. Marrapit."
+
+"Unnecessary. Devote yourself, I pray, to the Rose. I am anxious.
+Nothing could console me should any evil thing come upon her. I am
+apprehensive. I look to you. I will take a stroll."
+
+Outside the wire fence Mr. Marrapit and Mrs. Major parted. The masterly
+woman glided swiftly towards the house; Mr. Marrapit, with bent head,
+passed thoughtfully along an opposite path.
+
+And immediately the sleeping garden awoke to sudden activity.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+First to break covert was Frederick, Mr. Fletcher's assistant.
+Abnormally steeped in vice for one so young (this wretched boy was
+but fourteen), with the coolness of a matured evil-doer Frederick
+extinguished his cigarette-end by pressing it against his boot-heel;
+dropped it amongst other ends, toilsomely collected, in a tin box;
+placed the box in its prepared hole; covered this with earth and leaves;
+hooked a basket of faded weeds upon his arm, and so appeared in Mr.
+Marrapit's path with bent back, diligently searching.
+
+Mr. Marrapit inquired: "Your task?"
+
+"Weedin'," said Frederick.
+
+"Weeding what?"
+
+"Weeds," Frederick told him, a little surprised.
+
+Mr. Marrapit rapped sharply: "Say 'sir'."
+
+"Sir," said Frederick, making to move.
+
+Mr. Marrapit peered at the basket. "You have remarkably few."
+
+"There ain't never many," Frederick said with quiet pride--"there ain't
+never many if you keep 'em down by always doin' your job."
+
+Mr. Marrapit pointed: "They grow thick at your feet, sir!"
+
+In round-eyed astonishment Frederick peered low. "They spring up the
+minute your back's turned, them weeds. They want a weed destroyer what
+you pours out of a can."
+
+"You are the weed-destroyer," Mr. Marrapit said sternly. "Be careful.
+It is very true that they spring up whenever _my_ back is turned. Be
+careful." He passed on.
+
+"Blarst yer back," murmured Frederick, bending his own to the task.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A few yards further Mr. Marrapit again paused. Against a laurel bush
+stood a pair of human legs, the seat of whose encasing trousers stared
+gloomily upwards at the sky. With a small twig he carried Mr.
+Marrapit tapped the seat. Three or four raps were necessary; slowly it
+straightened into line with the legs; from the abyss of the bush a back,
+shoulders, head, appeared.
+
+Just as the ostrich with buried head believes itself hid from
+observation, so it was with Mr. Fletcher, needing peace, a habit to
+plunge head and shoulders into a bush and there remain--showing
+nothing against the sky-line. Long practice had freed the posture from
+irksomeness. As a young man Mr. Fletcher had been employed in a public
+tennis-court, and there had learned the little mannerism to which he now
+had constant resort. In those days the necessity of freeing himself from
+the constant annoyance of nets to be tightened, or of disputes between
+rival claims to courts to be settled, had driven him to devise some
+means of escape. It was essential to the safety of his post, upon
+the other hand, that he must never allow it to be said that he was
+constantly absent from his duties. Chance gave him the very means he
+sought. Bent double into a bush one day, searching a tennis ball, he
+heard his name bawled up and down the courts; he did not stir. Those who
+were calling him stumbled almost against his legs; did not observe
+him; passed on calling. Thereafter, when unduly pressed, it became Mr.
+Fletcher's habit to bury head and arms in a bush either until the hue
+and cry for him had lulled, or until exasperated searchers knocked
+against his stern; in the latter event he would explain that he was
+looking for tennis balls.
+
+The habit had persisted. Whenever irritated or depressed (and this man's
+temperament caused such often to be his fate), he would creep to the
+most likely bush and there disappear as to his upper half. It is a fine
+thing in this turbulent life thus to have some quiet refuge against the
+snarlings of adversity.
+
+Mr. Fletcher drew up now and faced Mr. Marrapit; in his hand a snail.
+
+He said gloomily: "Another one"; held it towards his master's face.
+
+Here is an example of how one deception leads to another. This was no
+fresh snail; often before Mr. Marrapit had seen it. To lend motive to
+his concealment Mr. Fletcher carried always with him this same snail;
+needing peace he would draw it from his pocket; plunge to consolation;
+upon discovery exhibit it as excuse.
+
+"There is an abominable smell here," said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Mr. Fletcher inhaled laboriously. "It's not for me to say what it is."
+
+"Adjust that impression. Yours is the duty. You are in charge here. What
+is it?"
+
+"It's them damn cats."
+
+"You are insolent, sir. Your insolence increases. It grows unendurable."
+
+Mr. Fletcher addressed the snail. "He asts a question. I beg not to
+answer it. He insists. I tell him. I'm insolent." He sighed; the tyranny
+of the world pressed heavily upon this man.
+
+Mr. Marrapit advertised annoyance by clicks of his tongue: "You are
+insolent when you swear in my presence. You are insolent when you impute
+to my cats a fault that is not theirs."
+
+"I ain't blamin' the cats. It's natural to them. Whenever the wind sets
+this way I notice it. It's blamin' me I complain of. I don't draw the
+smell. I try to get away from it. It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener,
+I am; not a wind-shaft."
+
+Whenever Mr. Marrapit had occasion to speak with Mr. Fletcher, after the
+first few exchanges he would swallow with distinct effort. It was wrath
+he swallowed; and bitter as the pill was, rarely did he fail to force it
+down. Mr. Fletcher spoke to him as no other member of his establishment
+dared speak. The formula of dismissal would leap to Mr. Marrapit's
+mouth: knowledge of the unusually small wage for which Mr. Fletcher
+worked caused it to be stifled ere it found tongue. Thousands of
+inferiors have daily to bow to humiliations from their employers; it
+is an encouraging thought for this army that masters there be who,
+restrained by parsimony, daily writhe beneath impertinences from
+valuable, ill-paid servants.
+
+Mr. Marrapit swallowed. He said: "To the smell of which I complain my
+cats are no party. It is tobacco. The air reeks of tobacco. I will not
+have tobacco in my garden."
+
+Twice, with a roaring sound, Mr. Fletcher inhaled. He pointed towards an
+elm against the wall: "It comes from over there."
+
+"Ascertain."
+
+The gardener plunged through the bushes; nosed laboriously; his
+inhalations rasped across the shrubs. "There's no smoking here," he
+called.
+
+"Someone, in some place concealed, indubitably smokes. Yourself you have
+noticed it. Follow the scent."
+
+Exertion beaded upon Mr. Fletcher's brow. He drew his hand across it;
+thrust a damp and gloomy face between the foliage towards his master.
+
+"I'd like to know," he asked, "if this is to be one of my regular jobs
+for the future? Was I engaged to 'unt smells all day? It's 'ard-damn
+'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a blood-'ound."
+
+But Mr. Marrapit had passed on.
+
+"Damn 'ard," Mr. Fletcher repeated; drew the snail from his pocket;
+plunged to consolation.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+A short distance down the garden Mr. Marrapit himself discovered the
+source of the smell that had offended him. Bending to the left he came
+full upon it where it uprose from a secluded patch of turf: from the
+remains of a pipe there mounted steadily through the still air a thin
+wisp of smoke.
+
+Outraged, Mr. Marrapit stared; fuming, turned upon the step that sounded
+on the path behind him.
+
+The slim and tall young man who approached was that nephew George, whose
+coming into Mr. Marrapit's household had considerably disturbed Mr.
+Marrapit's peace. Orphaned by the death of his mother, George had
+gone into the guardianship of his uncle while in his middle teens. The
+responsibility had been thrust upon Mr. Marrapit by his sister. Vainly
+he had writhed and twisted in fretful protest; she shackled him to her
+desire by tearful and unceasing entreaty. Vainly he urged that his means
+were not what she thought; she assured him--and by her will bore out the
+assurance--that with her George should go her money.
+
+And the will, when read, in some degree consoled Mr. Marrapit for the
+sniffling encumbrance he took back with him to Herons' Holt after the
+funeral. It was a simple and trustful will--commended George into the
+keeping of her brother Christopher Marrapit; desired that George should
+be entered in her late husband's--the medical--profession; and for that
+purpose bequeathed her all to the said brother.
+
+George was eighteen when Mr. Marrapit entered him at St. Peter's
+Hospital in mild pursuit of the qualification of the Conjoint Board of
+Surgeons and Physicians. "I am entering you," Mr. Marrapit had said,
+consulting notes he had prepared against the interview--"I am entering
+you at enormous cost upon a noble career which involves, however, a
+prolonged and highly expensive professional training. Your mother wished
+it."
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not add that George's mother had expressly paid for
+it. This man had the knowledge that Youth would lose such veneration for
+Authority as it may possess were Authority to disclose the motives that
+prompt its actions.
+
+He continued: "For me this involves considerable self-denial and
+patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to
+your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you
+are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern
+life must be sternly faced."
+
+"I do not flinch," George had replied.
+
+"For your personal expenses I shall make you a small allowance. You will
+live in my house. Your wants should be insignificant."
+
+In a faint voice George squeezed in: "I have heard that one can work far
+better by living near the hospital in digs."
+
+"Elucidate."
+
+"Digs--lodgings. I have heard that one can work far better by living
+near the hospital in lodgings."
+
+"Adjust that impression," Mr. Marrapit had told him. "You are
+misinformed."
+
+George struggled: "I should have the constant companionship of men
+absorbed in the same work as myself. We could exchange views and notes
+in the evenings."
+
+"In your books seek that companionship. With them compare your views.
+Let your notes by them be checked. They are infallible."
+
+George said no more. At that moment the freedom of hospital as against
+the restraint of school, was a gallant steed upon which he outrid all
+other desires. The prospect of new and strange books in exchange for
+those he so completely abhorred, was an alluring delight. It is not
+until the bargain is complete that we discover how much easier to
+polish, and more comfortable to handle, are old lamps than new.
+
+Mr. Marrapit had referred to his notes: "In regard to the allowance I
+shall make you. I earnestly pray no spur may be necessary to urge you
+at your tasks. Yet, salutary it is that spur should exist. I arrange,
+therefore, that in the deplorable event of your failing to pass any
+examination your allowance shall be diminished."
+
+"Will it be correspondingly increased when I pass first shot?"
+
+The fearful possibilities of this suggestion Mr. Marrapit had hesitated
+to accept. Speculation was abhorrent to this man. Visions of success
+upon success demanding increase upon increase considerably agitated him.
+Upon the other hand, the sooner these successes were won, the sooner,
+he reflected, would he be rid of this incubus, and, in the long-run, the
+cheaper. He nerved himself to the decision. "I agree to that," he had
+said. "The compact is affirmed."
+
+It was a wretched compact for George.
+
+But the sum had not yet been fixed. George, standing opposite his uncle,
+twisted one leg about the other; twined his clammy hands; put the awful
+question: "By how much will the allowance be increased or cut down?"
+
+"By two pounds a quarter."
+
+George plunged: "So if I fail in my first exam. I shall get eleven
+pounds at the quarter? if I pass, fifteen?"
+
+Horror widened Mr. Marrapit's eyes; shrilled his voice: "What is the
+colossal sum you anticipate?"
+
+"I thought you said fifty-two pounds a year-a pound a week."
+
+"A monstrous impression. Adjust it. Four pounds a quarter is the sum.
+You will have no needs. It errs upon the side of liberality--I desire to
+be liberal."
+
+George twisted his legs into a yet firmer knot: "But two failures would
+wipe it bang out."
+
+"Look you to that," Mr. Marrapit told him. "The matter is settled."
+
+But it was further pursued by George when outside the door.
+
+"Simply to spite that stingy brute," vowed he, "I'll pass all my exams,
+with such a rush that I'll be hooking sixteen quid a quarter out of him
+before he knows where he is. I swear I will."
+
+It was a rash oath. When Youth selects as weapon against Authority some
+implement that requires sweat in the forging Authority may go unarmed.
+The task of contriving such weapons is early abandoned. In three months
+George's hot resolve was cooled; in six it was forgotten; at the end
+of three years, after considerable fluctuation, his allowance stood at
+minus two pounds for the ensuing quarter.
+
+Mr. Marrapit, appealed to for advance, had raved about his study with
+waving arms.
+
+"The continued strain of renewing examination fees consequent on your
+callous failures," he had said, "terrifies me. I am haunted by the
+spectre of ruin. The Bank of England could not stand it."
+
+Still George argued.
+
+With a whirlwind of words Mr. Marrapit drove him from the study:
+"Precious moments fly even as you stand here. To your books, sir. In
+them seek solace. By application to them refresh your shattered pocket."
+
+Shamefully was the advice construed. George sought and found solace in
+his books by selling his Kirke, his Quain and his Stone to Mr. Schoole
+of the Charing Cross Road; his microscope he temporarily lodged with Mr.
+Maughan in the Strand; to the science of bridge he applied himself with
+a skill that served to supply his petty needs.
+
+Notwithstanding, his career at St. Peter's was of average merit. George
+was now in the sixth year of his studies; and by the third part of his
+final examination, was alone delayed from the qualification which would
+bring him freedom from his uncle's irksome rule.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+His attempt at this last examination had been concluded upon this July
+day that opens our history, and thus we return to Mr. Marrapit, to
+George, and to the line of smoke uprising from the tobacco.
+
+Mr. Marrapit indicated the smouldering wedge.
+
+George bent forward. "Tobacco," he announced.
+
+"My nose informed me. My eyes affirm. Yours?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+"My simple rule. In the vegetable garden you may smoke; here you may
+not. Is it so hard to observe?"
+
+"I quite forgot myself."
+
+Mr. Marrapit cried: "Adjust that impression. You forgot me. Consistently
+you forget me. My desires, my interests are nothing to you."
+
+"It's a rotten thing to make a fuss about."
+
+"That is why I make a fuss. It _is_ a rotten thing. A disgusting and a
+noisome thing. Bury it."
+
+Into a bed of soft mould George struck a sullen heel; kicked the tobacco
+towards the pit. Mr. Marrapit chanted over the obsequies: "I provide you
+with the enormous expanse of my vegetable garden in which to smoke. Yet
+upon my little acre you intrude. I am Naboth."
+
+Ahab straightened his back; sighed heavily. Naboth started against the
+prick of a sudden recollection:
+
+"I had forgotten. Your examination?"
+
+George half turned away. The bitterest moment of a sad day was come. He
+growled:
+
+"Pipped."
+
+"_Pipped?_"
+
+"Pilled."
+
+"_Pilled?_"
+
+"Spun."
+
+"_Spun?"_
+
+"Three months."
+
+Mr. Marrapit put his hands to his head: "I shall go mad. My brain reels
+beneath these conundrums. I implore English."
+
+The confession of defeat is a thousandfold more bitter when made to
+unkind ears. George paled a little; spoke very clearly: "I failed. I was
+referred for three months."
+
+"I am Job," groaned Mr. Marrapit. "I expected this. The strain is
+unendurable. It is unnatural. The next chance shall be your last. What
+is the fee for re-examination?"
+
+"Five guineas."
+
+"My God!" said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He tottered away up the path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Excursions In Melancholy.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Gloom brooded over Herons' Holt that evening. Gloom hung thickly about
+the rooms: blanketed conversation; veiled eyes that might have sparkled;
+choked appetites.
+
+Nevertheless this was an atmosphere in which one member of the household
+felt most comfortable.
+
+Margaret, Mr. Marrapit's only child, was nineteen; of sallow complexion,
+petite, pretty; with large brown eyes in which sat always a constant
+quest--an entreaty, a wistful yearning.
+
+Hers was a clinging nature, readily responsive to the attraction of any
+stouter mind. Enthusiasm was in this girl, but it lay well-like--not
+as a spring. To stir it the influence of another was wanted; of itself,
+spontaneous, it could not leap. Aroused, there was no rush and surge
+of emotion--it welled, rose deeply; thickly, without ripple; crestless,
+flinging no intoxicating spume. Waves rush triumphant, hurtling forward
+the stick they support: the pool swells, leaving the stick quiescent,
+floating.
+
+Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is a clammy thing
+to attract. A curate with a glimpse at Shelley's mind once roused
+Margaret's enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly about him
+that he came near to damning Shelley and all his works; threw up his hat
+when opportunity put out a beckoning finger and drew him elsewhere.
+
+Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father; but she clung to him
+despite his oppressive foibles, because this was her nature. She loved
+church; incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound. She "wrote
+poetry."
+
+Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons' Holt upon this evening, she
+sat brooding upon her cousin George's failure until a beautiful picture
+was hatched. He had gone to his room directly after dinner; during the
+meal had not spoken. She imagined him seated on his bed, hands deep in
+pockets, chin sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that old devil despair.
+She knew that latterly he had worked tremendously hard. He had told her
+before the examination how confident of success he was, had revealed how
+much in the immediate prospect of freedom he gloried. She recalled
+his gay laugh as he had bade her good-bye on the first day, and the
+recollection stung her just as, she reflected, it must now be stinging
+him.... Only he must a thousand times more fiercely be feeling the burn
+of its venom....
+
+Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake into herself a
+profounder sense of her cousin's misfortune. By ten she was plunged in a
+most pleasing melancholy.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if
+they imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke
+lightness of heart in the majority. Only the surface of their
+spirits ripples under such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce
+the counterpart of a hearty laugh in your vigorous animal, a feast on
+melancholy must be provided. This is a quality that is common among the
+lower classes who find their greatest happiness in funerals. The sombre
+trappings; white handkerchiefs against black dresses; tears; the mystery
+of gloom--these trickle with a warm glow through all their senses. They
+are as aroused by grief, unpleasant to the majority, as the drunkard is
+quickened by wine, to many abhorrent.
+
+Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of melancholy in which
+she was now wrapped brought an added boon--arrayed in it she was best
+able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many of her
+brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at the heart
+she could be most merry--tinkling out her laughing little lines just as
+martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite of, they were
+devilishly racked.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A manuscript returned by the
+last post emphasised her gloom.
+
+Kissing her father good-night, Margaret crept to her room, aching with
+desire to write.
+
+She undressed, read a portion of the _Imitation_, then to her table by
+the open window.
+
+Two hours brought relief. Margaret placed her poem in an envelope
+against its presentation to George in the morning, then from her window
+leaned.
+
+From her thoughts at once George sped; they rushed across the sleeping
+fields to cling about the person of that Mr. William Wyvern who had
+spoken of Mr. Marrapit as reminding him of a minor prophet--shaved.
+This was Margaret's nightly practice, but to-night this girl was most
+exquisitely melancholy, and with melancholy her thoughts of her William
+were tinged. She had not seen him that day; and now she brooded upon the
+bitter happening that had forced all her meetings with her lover to be
+snatched--fugitive, secret.
+
+For Mr. William Wyvern was not allowed at Herons' Holt. When love first
+sent its herald curiosity into William's heart, the young man had sought
+to relieve its restlessness by a visit ostensibly on George, really upon
+Margaret, and extremely ill-advised in that at his heels gambolled his
+three bull-terriers.
+
+Korah, Dathan, and Abiram these were named, and they were abrupt dogs to
+a point reaching brusqueness.
+
+At the door, as William had approached, beamed Mr. Marrapit; upon the
+drive the queenly Rose of Sharon sat; and immediately tragedy swooped.
+
+The dogs sighted the Rose. Red-mouthed the shining pack flew at her.
+Dignity fell before terror: wildly, with streaming tail, she fled.
+
+Orange was the cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white
+ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt
+about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her
+pursuers--heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the
+doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief
+each time the parti-coloured ribbon flashed before his eyes.
+
+With Mr. Fletcher the end had come. Working indoors, aroused by the din,
+the gardener burst out past his master just as the ribbon fluttered into
+sight upon the completion of its fourth circuit. Like a great avalanche
+it poured against his legs; as falls the oak, so pressed he fell.
+
+Each eager jaw snapped once. Korah bit air, Dathan the cat's right ear.
+She wrenched; freed; sprang high upon the porch to safety, blood on her
+coat.
+
+Abiram put a steely nip upon Mr. Fletcher's right buttock.
+
+William called off his dogs; stood aghast. Mr. Marrapit stretched
+entreating arms to his adored. Mr. Fletcher writhed prone.
+
+The torn Rose slipped to Mr. Marrapit's bosom. Clasping her he turned
+upon William--"You shall pay for this blood!"
+
+William stammered: "I'm very sorry, sir. If--"
+
+"Never again enter my gates. I'll have your curs shot!"
+
+Curs was unfortunate; the evil three were whelped of a mighty strain.
+
+"If your fool of a man hadn't got in the way, the cat would have
+escaped," William hotly cried. Indignant he turned. Banishment was
+nothing then; in time it came to be a bitter thing.
+
+Mr. Marrapit had raged on to Mr. Fletcher, yet writhing.
+
+"You hear that?" he had cried. "Dolt! You are responsible for this!" He
+touched the blood-flecked side, the abrased ear; clasped close the Rose;
+called for warm water.
+
+Mr. Fletcher clapped a hand to his wound as shakily he rose.
+
+"I go to rescue his cat!" he said; "I'm near worried to death by 'ounds.
+I'm a dolt. I'm responsible. It's 'ard,--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I
+am; not a dog muzzle."
+
+A dimness clouded Margaret's beautiful eyes as this bitter picture--she
+had watched it--was again reviewed. She murmured "Oh, Bill!"; stretched
+her soft arms to the night; moved her pretty lips in a message to her
+lover; snuggled between the sheets and made melancholy her bedfellow.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+By seven she was up and in the fresh garden. George was before her.
+
+She cried brightly: "Why, how early you are!" and ran to him--very
+pretty in her white dress: at her breast a rose, the poem fluttering in
+her hand.
+
+"Yes; for once before you."
+
+George's tone did not give back her mood, purposely keyed high. She
+played on it again: "Turning a new leaf?"
+
+He drummed at the turf with his heel: "Yes--for to-day." He threw out a
+hand towards her: "But in the same old book. I've had eight--nine years
+of it, and now there are three more months."
+
+"Poor George! But only three months, think how they will fly!"
+
+He was desperately gloomy: "I haven't your imagination. Each single day
+of them will mean a morning--here; a night--here."
+
+"Oh, is it so hard?"
+
+"Yes, now. It's pretty deadly now. You know, when I wasn't precisely
+killing myself with overwork, I didn't mind so much. When it was three
+or four years, anyway, before I could possibly be free, a few extra
+months or so through failing an exam, didn't trouble me. But this
+is different. I was right up against getting clear of all this"--he
+comprehended garden and house in a sweep of the hand--"counted it a dead
+certainty--and here I am pitched back again."
+
+"But, George, you did work so hard this time. It isn't as though you
+had to blame yourself." She put a clinging hand into his arm. "You
+can suffer no--remorse. That is what makes failure so dreadful--the
+knowledge that things might have been otherwise if one had liked."
+
+George laughed quite gaily. Gloom never lay long upon this young man.
+
+"You're a sweet little person," he said. "You ought to be right, but
+you are wrong. When I didn't work I didn't mind failing. It's when I've
+tried that I get sick."
+
+Margaret's eyes brightened. There was melancholy here.
+
+"Oh, I know what you mean. I know so well. I have felt that. You mean
+the--the haunting fear that you may never be able to succeed; that you
+have not the--the talent, the capacity." She continued pleadingly:
+"Oh, you mustn't think that. You can--you _will_ succeed next time, you
+know."
+
+"Rather!" responded George brightly.
+
+Margaret was quite pained. She would have had him express doubt,
+despondently sigh; would have heartened him with her poem. The confident
+"rather!" jarred. She hurried from its vigour.
+
+She asked: "What had you intended to do?"
+
+"I was to have got a _locum tenens_. I think it would have developed
+into a permanency. A big, rough district up in Yorkshire with a man who
+keeps six horses going. His second assistant--a pal of mine--wants to
+chuck it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why? Oh, partly because he's fed up with it, partly because he wants a
+practice of his own."
+
+"Ah! ... But, George, don't you want a practice of your own? You don't
+want to be another man's assistant, do you?"
+
+George laughed. "I can't choose, Margi. You know, if you imagine there
+are solid groups of people all over England anxiously praying for the
+arrival of a doctor, you must adjust that impression, as your father
+would say. These things have to be bought. I've got about three pounds,
+so I'm not bidding. They seldom go so cheap."
+
+Margaret never bantered. She had no battledore light enough to return
+an airy shuttlecock. Now, as always, when this plaything came
+buoyantly towards her she swiped it with heavy force clean out of the
+conversational field.
+
+She said gravely: "Ah, I know what you mean. You mean that father ought
+to buy you a practice--ought to set you up when you are qualified. I
+can't discuss that, can I? It wouldn't be loyal."
+
+"Of course not. I don't ask you."
+
+They moved towards the sound of the breakfast bell.
+
+"You think," Margaret continued, "that father ought to buy you a
+practice because your mother left him money for the purpose?"
+
+"I know she left him nearly five thousand pounds for my education
+and all that. I think I may have cost him three thousand, possibly
+four--_so_ I think I am entitled to something, _but_ I shan't get it,
+_therefore_ I don't worry. My hump is gone; in three months I shall be
+gone. Forward: I smell bacon!"
+
+Margaret smiled the wan smile of an invalid watching vigorous youth at
+sport. Firmly she banged the shuttlecock out of sight.
+
+"How bright you are!" she told him. "Look, here is a little poem I wrote
+for you last night. It's about failure and success. Don't read it now."
+
+George was very fond of his cousin. "Oh, but I must!" he cried. "I think
+this was awfully nice of you. He's not down yet. Let's sit on this seat
+and read it together."
+
+"Oh, not aloud. It's a silly little thing--really."
+
+"Yes--aloud."
+
+He smoothed the paper. She pressed against him; thrilled as she regarded
+the written lines. George begged her read. She would not--well, she
+would. She paused. Modesty and pride gathered on her cheeks, tuned her
+voice low. She read:
+
+  "So you have tried--So you have known
+  The burning effort for success,
+  The quick belief in your own prowess and your skill,
+  The bitterness of failure, and the joy
+  Of sweet success."
+
+"'Burning effort,'" George said. "That's fine!"
+
+"I'm glad you like that. And 'quick belief'--you know what I mean?"
+
+"Oh, rather."
+
+The poet warmed again over her words.
+
+  "So you have tried--
+  So you have known
+  The blind-eyed groping towards the goal
+  That flickers on the far horizon of Attempt,
+  Gleaming to sudden vividness, anon
+  Fading from sight."
+
+"Sort of blank verse, isn't it?" George asked.
+
+"Well, sort of," the poet allowed. "Not exactly, of course."
+
+"Of course not," George agreed firmly.
+
+Margaret breathed the next fine lines.
+
+  "So you have tried--
+  So you have known
+  The bitter-sweetness of Attempt,
+  The quick determination and the dread despair
+  That grapple and possess you as you strive
+  For imagery."
+
+George questioned: "Imagery...?"
+
+"That verse is more for me than you," the poet explained. "'For
+imagery'--to get the right word, you know."
+
+"Rather!" said George. "It does for me too--in exams, when one is
+floored, you know."
+
+"Yes," Margaret admitted doubtfully. "Ye-es. Don't interrupt between the
+verses, dear."
+
+Now emotion swelled her voice.
+
+  "Success be yours!
+  May you achieve
+  To heights you do not dream you'll ever touch;
+  The power's to your hand, the road before you lies--
+  Forward! The gods not always frown; anon
+  They'll kindly smile."
+
+"Why, that's splendid!" George cried. He put a cousinly arm about
+the poet; squeezed her to him. "Fancy you writing that for me! What a
+sympathetic little soul you are--and how clever!"
+
+Breathless she disengaged herself: "I'm so glad you like it. It's a
+silly little thing--but it's _real_, isn't it? Come, there's father."
+
+She paused against denial of the poem's silliness, affirmation of its
+truth; but George, moody beneath Mr. Marrapit's eye, glinting behind the
+window, had moved forward.
+
+Margaret thrust the paper in her bosom, tucked in where heart might warm
+against heart's child. Constantly during breakfast her mind reverted to
+it, drummed its rare lines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped.
+
+
+Yet Margaret had called her poem silly. Here, then, was mock-modesty by
+diffidence seeking praise. But this mock-modesty, which horribly abounds
+to-day, is only natural product of that furious modesty which has come
+to be expected in all the arts.
+
+Modesty should have no place in true art. The author or the painter,
+the poet or the composer should be impersonal to his work. That which he
+creates is not his; it is a piece of the art to which he is servant, and
+as such (and such alone) he should regard it. His in the making and the
+moulding, thereafter it becomes the possession of the great whole to
+which it belongs. If it adorns that whole he may freely admire it; for
+he is impersonal to it.
+
+Unquestionably (or unconsciously) we accept this principle in regard to
+human life. The child belongs not to the mother who conceived it but to
+the race of which it is an atom. It hinders or it betters the race. The
+race judges it. By the race it is honoured or condemned; and to it the
+mother becomes impersonal. As it bears itself among its fellows, so she
+judges it--as the artist's work bears itself in the great art it joins,
+so should he judge it. And if the mother joins in his fellows' praise of
+her child, and if she proclaims her pride in it, is she called wanting
+in modesty?--and if the artist joins in praise of his work, and if he
+freely names it good, must he then be vain, boastful? The race grants
+that the mother who gave it this specimen of its kind has a first right
+to show her pride--to the artist who gives a fair specimen to his art we
+should allow a like voice.
+
+For in demanding modesty--in naming impersonality conceit--we have
+produced also mock-modesty; and because, as a people, we have little
+appreciation of the arts, hence little knowledge, hence no standard by
+which to judge, we continually mistake the one form of modesty for the
+other. Modesty we suspect to be mock-modesty, and mock-modesty we take
+to be pleasing humility.
+
+Coming to literature alone, the author should be impersonal to his work
+and must not cry that the writer is no judge of his own labour. Letters
+is his trade; and just as the mason well knows whether the brick he has
+laid helps or hinders, beautifies or insults the house, so the writer
+should be full cognisant whether his work helps make or does mar the
+edifice called literature. Nor must the term literature be denied to the
+ruck of modern writing. All that is written to interest or to instruct
+goes to make the literature of our day. We have introduced new
+expressions just as we have contrived new expressions in architecture;
+and as in the latter case so in the former the bulk of these is
+ephemeral. Nevertheless they are a part of literature, and all efforts
+in them better or sully the pages which in our day we are adding to the
+book of literature. From this book the winds of cycles to come will blow
+all that is unworthy--only the stout leaves will endure; but, no less
+because you write for the supplement than if you have virtue sufficient
+for the bound volume, remember that in every form of writing there
+are standards of good, and that every line printed helps raise or does
+tarnish the letters of our day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Excursions In A Hospital.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+By the half-past nine train George went to town; an hour later was at
+St. Peter's.
+
+From the bar of the Students' Club a throng of young men of his year
+loudly hailed him. He joined them; took with a laugh the commiserations
+on his failure; wrung the hands of those who had been successful.
+
+The successful young gentlemen were standing drinks-each man his
+round. There was much smoke and much laughter. Amusing experiences were
+narrated. You gathered that all who had passed their examination had
+done so by sheer luck, by astonishing flukes. Not one had ever worked.
+Each had been "ragged" on a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing.
+To the brilliancy with which he had gulled or bluffed his examiner, to
+the diplomacy with which he had headed him off the matters of which he
+knew absolutely less than nothing-to these alone were his success due.
+
+Such is ever Youth's account of battle with Age. Youth is a devil of
+a smart fellow, behind whom Age blunders along in the most ridiculous
+fashion. Later this young blood takes his place in the blundering ranks
+and then does learn that indeed he was right--Age knows nothing. For
+with years we begin to realise our ignorance, and the lesson is not
+complete when the grave slams the book. A few plumb the depths of their
+ignorance before death: these are able to speak--and these are the
+teachers of men. We get here one reason why giants are fewer in our day:
+with the growth of man's imaginings and his inventions there is more
+vanity to be forced through; the truths of life lie deeper hid; more
+phantasms arise to lure us from the quest of realities; the task of
+striking truth accumulates.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Soon after midday the party broke up. Its members lunched early;
+visiting surgeons and physicians went their rounds at half-past one.
+
+George strolled to the Dean's office.
+
+A woebegone-looking youth in spectacles stood before the table; opposite
+sat the Dean. He looked up as George entered, and nodded: he was fond of
+George.
+
+"Come along in," he said; "I shan't be a minute."
+
+He turned to the sad youth. "Now your case, Mr. Carter," he said, "is
+quite unique. In the whole records of the Medical School"--he waved at
+a shelf of fat volumes--"in the whole records of the Medical School we
+have nothing in the remotest degree resembling it. You have actually
+failed twice in--in--"
+
+The Dean searched wildly among a litter of papers; baffled, threw out an
+emphasising hand, and repeated, "_Twice_! Other hospitals, Mr. Carter,
+may have room for slackers--we have not. We have a record and a
+reputation of which we are proud. You are in your second year. How old
+are you?"
+
+A faint whisper said, "Nineteen."
+
+The Dean started. "Nineteen! Oh, dear me, dear me! this is worse than
+I thought--far worse. I am afraid, Mr. Carter, I shall have to write to
+your father."
+
+Guttural with emotion, Mr. Carter gasped: "I mean to work--indeed I do."
+
+Again the Dean frantically searched on his desk to discover the subject
+in which Mr. Carter had failed; again was unsuccessful. Deep thought
+ravelled his brow. His fingers drummed indecision on the table. It was a
+telling picture of one struggling between duty and kindliness--masterly
+as the result of long practice.
+
+"Mr. Carter," the Dean summed up, "I will consider your case more fully
+to-night. Against my better judgment I may perhaps decide not on this
+occasion to communicate with your father. But remember this. At the very
+outset of your career you have strained to breaking-point the confidence
+of your teachers. Only by stupendous efforts on your part can that
+confidence be restored. These failures, believe me, will dog you from
+now until you are qualified--nay, will dog your whole professional
+career. That will do."
+
+In a convulsion of relief and of agitation beneath this appalling
+prospect the dogged man quavered thanks; stumbled from the room.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+George laughed. "Same old dressing-down," he said. "Don't you ever alter
+the formula?"
+
+"It's very effective," the Dean replied. "That's the sixth this morning.
+Unfortunately I couldn't remember in what subject that boy had failed;
+so he didn't get the best part--the part about that being the one
+subject of all others which, if failed in, predicted ruin."
+
+"It was biology in my case," George told him. "I trembled with funk."
+
+"I think most of you do. It's fortunate that all you men when you first
+come up are afraid of your fathers. It gives us a certain amount of hold
+over you. If the thing were done properly, both at the 'Varsities and
+the hospitals, there would be a system of marks and reports just as at
+schools. You are only boys when you first come up, and you should be
+treated as boys; instead, you are left free and irresponsible. It ruins
+dozens of men every year."
+
+"Perhaps that's why I'm here now," George responded. "You know I got
+ploughed?"
+
+The Dean told George how sorry he had been to hear it. He questioned:
+"Bad luck, I suppose? I thought it was a sitter for you this time."
+
+"Yes, rotten luck."
+
+"It's unfortunate, you know. You would have got a house appointment. I'm
+afraid you will miss that mow. There will be a crowd of very hot men
+up with you in October, junior to you, who will get the vacancies. What
+will you do?"
+
+George shrugged and laughed.
+
+The Dean frowned; interpreted the shrug. "Well, you should care," he
+said. "You ought to be looking around you. Won't your uncle help you to
+buy a partnership?"
+
+"We are on worse terms than ever after this failure. Not he."
+
+"And you're not trying to be on good terms, I suppose?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"You are a remarkably silly young man. You want balance, Leicester, you
+want balance. It would be the making of you to have some serious purpose
+in life. You will run against something of the kind soon--you'll get
+engaged, perhaps, and then you'll regret your happy-go-lucky ways." He
+fumbled amongst a pile of correspondence and drew out a letter. "Now,
+look here, I was thinking of you only a few moments ago. Here's a letter
+from a man who--who--where is it?--Ah, yes--If you could raise 400
+pounds by the time you are qualified I could put you on to a splendid
+thing."
+
+"Not the remotest chance," said George. "The serious purpose must wait.
+I--"
+
+The Dean waved a hand that asked silence; consulted the letter. "This is
+from a man in practice at a place called Runnygate--one of these rising
+seaside resorts--Hampshire--great friend of mine. He's got money, and
+he's going to chuck it--doesn't suit his wife. I told him I'd find a
+purchaser if he would leave it with me. Merely nominal--only 400
+pounds. He says that in a year or so there'll be a small fortune in the
+practice, because a company is taking the place over to develop it. You
+shall have first refusal. Come now, pull yourself together, Leicester."
+
+George laughed. He stood up. "Thanks, I refuse now. What on earth's the
+good?"
+
+"Rubbish," said the Dean. "Think over that serious interest in life. You
+never know your luck."
+
+George moved to the door. "I know my luck all right," he laughed. "Never
+mind, I'm not grumbling with it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Upon Life: And May Be Missed.
+
+
+In the ante-room, as it were, of a very short chapter, we must make
+ready to receive our heroine. She is about to spring dazzling upon our
+pages; will be our close companion through some moving scenes. We must
+collect ourselves, brush our hair, arrange our dress, prepare our nicest
+manner.
+
+And as in ante-rooms there are commonly papers laid about to beguile the
+tedium, and as the faint rustle of our heroine's petticoats is warning
+that George's assertion that he knew his luck is immediately to be
+disproved, let us make a tiny little paper on the folly of such a
+statement.
+
+For of his luck man has no glimmer of prescience. Day by day we
+rattle the box, throw the dice; but of how these will fall we have no
+knowledge. We only hope with the gambler's feverishness; and it is this
+very hazard that keeps us crowding and pushing to hold our place at
+the tables where fortune spins. Grow we sick of the game, sour with our
+luck, weary of the hazard, and relinquish we our place at the table, we
+are pushed back and out--elbowed, thrown, trampled.
+
+We are all treasure-seekers set on a treasure-island in a boundless sea.
+Cruelly marooned we are--flung ashore without appeal, and here deserted
+until the ship that disembarked us suddenly swoops and the press-gang
+snatches us again aboard--again without heed to our desire. Whence the
+ship brought us we do not know, and whither it will carry us we do not
+know; there is none to prick a return voyage disclosing the ultimate
+haven, though pilots there be who pretend to the knowledge--we cannot
+test them.
+
+But the marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our
+thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a
+pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised,
+we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some
+seek to break new ground, but what the pick will next turn up no one
+knows.
+
+And it is this uncertainty, this hazard, that keeps us hammer, hammer,
+hammering; that keeps us, some from brooding against the marooners,
+their wanton desertion of us, our ultimate fate at their hands; others
+from making ready against the return voyage as entreated by the pilots.
+
+Certainly, when the pick strikes a pocket, we turn to carousing; cease
+cocking a timid eye at the horizon.
+
+And now our heroine is beckoning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant
+case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers,
+surgeons and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of the
+subject. He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts--three more
+months of dependency--to take greater interest.
+
+One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's side
+until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the cause,
+"Clumsy beast," said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: "Come on,
+Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West."
+
+In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's
+eye; a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the nose.
+"Tea," said he; "it is going to rain."
+
+He addressed the pretty waitress: "I have no wish to seem inquisitive,
+but which table do you attend?"
+
+The girl jerked her chin: "What's that to you?"
+
+"So much," Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, "that, until I know, here,
+beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand."
+
+"Well, all of 'em." She whisked away.
+
+"You're badly snubbed, Franklyn," George said. "This rain is nothing."
+
+A summer shower crashed down as he spoke; a mob of shoppers, breathless
+for shelter, drove them inwards.
+
+"George," said Mr. Franklyn, seating himself, "your base mind thinks I
+have designs on this girl. I grieve at so distorted a fancy. The child
+says prettily that she attends 'all of 'em.' It is a gross case of
+overwork into which I feel it my duty more closely to inquire."
+
+George laughed. "Do you always spend your afternoons like this?"
+
+"As a rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that
+day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will be a sad
+wrench to leave the dear old home." He continued, a tinge of melancholy
+in his voice: "You know, I am the last of the old brigade. The medical
+student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; he is a rabbit.
+Alone, undismayed, I uphold the old traditions. I am, so to speak,
+one of the old aristocracy. Beneath the snug characteristics of the
+latter-day student--his sweet abhorrence of a rag, his nasty delight
+in plays which he calls 'hot-stuff,' his cigarettes and his
+chess-playing--beneath these my head, like Henley's, is bloody but
+unbowed. Forgive a tear."
+
+The shower ceased; the tea was finished; the pretty waitress was
+coyly singeing her modesty in the attractive candle of Mr. Franklyn's
+suggestions. George left them at the game; strolled aimlessly towards
+the Marble Arch; beyond it; to the right, and so into a quiet square.
+
+Here comes my heroine.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The hansom, as George walked, was coming towards him--smartly, with
+a jingle of bells; skimming the kerb. As it reached him (recall that
+shower) the horse slipped, stumbled, came on its knees.
+
+Down came the shafts; out shot the girl.
+
+The doors were wide; the impetus took her in her stride. One tiny foot
+dabbed at the platform's edge; the other twinkled--patent leather and
+silver buckle--at the step, missed it, plunged with a giant stride for
+the pavement.
+
+"Mercy!" she cried, and came like a shower of roses swirling into
+George's arms.
+
+Completely he caught her. About his legs whipped her skirts; against him
+pressed her panting bosom; his arms--the action was instinctive--locked
+around her; the adorable perfume of her came on him like breeze from a
+violet bed; her very cheek brushed his lips--since the first kiss it was
+the nearest thing possible to a kiss.
+
+She twisted backwards. Modesty chased alarm across her face--caught,
+battled, overcame it; flamed triumphant.
+
+Fright at her accident drove her pale; shame at the manner of her
+descent--leg to the knee and an indelicacy of petticoats--agitated she
+had glimpsed it as she leapt--flushed her crimson from the line of her
+dress about her throat to the wave of her hair upon her brow.
+
+She twisted back. "Oh, what must you think of me?" she gasped.
+
+He simply could not say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Moving Passages With A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George could not say.
+
+His senses were washed aswim by this torrent of beauty poured unexpected
+through eyes to brain. It surged the centres to violent commotion, one
+jostling another in a whirlpool of conflict. Out of the tumult alarm
+flashed down the wires to his heart--set it banging; flashed in wild
+message to his tongue--locked it.
+
+The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He
+loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a moment
+the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down the
+street, a murderer with bloody hand, a liar with false words suddenly
+pumped.
+
+A moment later the driver is calm and aghast at the ruin he has
+contrived. Why, before God, did he pull the leg lever?--the arm
+lever?--the tongue lever? In an instant's action he has accomplished
+calamity; where sunshine laughed now darkness heaps; where the prospect
+smiled disaster now comes rolling up in thunder.
+
+These are your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes
+temporarily idiot--stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out some
+stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have
+fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an
+intolerable fellow.
+
+"Oh, what must you think of me?"
+
+That pause followed while the driver in George's brain stood gapingly
+inactive; and then came laughter to him like a draught of champagne. For
+the girl put up her firm, round chin and laughed with a clear pipe of
+glee--a laugh to call a laugh as surely as a lark's note will set a
+hedge in song; and it called the laugh in George.
+
+He said: "I am thinking the nicest things of you. But have you dropped
+from the skies?"
+
+"From a _cab_," she protested.
+
+She turned to the road; back to George in dismay, for the catapult, its
+bullet shot, had bolted up the street--was gone from view.
+
+"Oh!--I _was_ in a cab?" she implored.
+
+George said: "It _looked_ like a cab. But a fairy-car, I think."
+
+A pucker of her brows darkened the quick mirth that came to her eyes.
+She cried: "Oh, don't joke. She will be killed."
+
+"You were not alone?"
+
+"No--oh, no! What has happened to her?"
+
+"We had better follow."
+
+She corrected his number. "Yes, I had better. Thank you so much for your
+help." She took a step; faltered upon it with a little exclamation of
+pain; put a white tooth on her lip.
+
+"You have hurt your foot?" George said.
+
+"My ankle, I think. Oh dear!" and then again she laughed.
+
+It came even then to George that certainly she would have made her
+fortune were she to set up a gloom-exorcising bureau--waiting at the end
+of a telephone wire ready to rush with that laugh to banish the imps of
+melancholy. Never had he heard so infectious a note of mirth.
+
+"Oh, what must you think of me?" she ended. "I simply cannot help
+laughing, you know--and yet, oh dear!"
+
+She put the tips of the fingers of a hand against her lower lip, gazed
+very anxiously up the road, and then again she gave that clear pipe of
+laughter.
+
+"I can't help it," she told him imploringly. "I simply cannot help
+laughing. It is funny, you know. She was scolding me--"
+
+"_Scolding_!" George exclaimed.
+
+That beauty should be scolded!
+
+"Scolding--yes. Oh, I'm only a--well, scolding me, and I was wishing,
+_wishing_ I could escape. And then suddenly out I shot. And then I look
+around and she's--" A wave of her hand expressed a disappearance that
+was by magic agency.
+
+"But, _scolding_?" George said. "Need you trouble? She will be all
+right."
+
+"Oh, I must. I live with her."
+
+"Will she trouble about you?"
+
+"I think she will return for me. Please, _please_ go--would you
+mind?--to the corner, and see if there has been an accident."
+
+From that direction a bicyclist approached. George hailed. "Is there a
+cab accident round the corner?"
+
+The youth stared; called "Rats!"; passed.
+
+George interpreted: "It means No. Do you think if you were to take my
+arm you could walk to the turning?"
+
+Quite naturally she slipped a white glove around his elbow. The contact
+thrilled him. "No nice girl, you know, would do this," she said, "with a
+perfect stranger."
+
+George bent his arm a little, the better to feel the pressure of those
+white fingers. "I am not really perfect," he told her.
+
+She took his mood. "Nor I really nice," she joined. "In fact, I'm
+horrible--they tell me. But I think it is wise to follow, don't you?"
+
+"Profoundly wise. Who says you are horrible?"
+
+She gave no answer. Glancing, he saw trouble shade her eyes, tremble her
+lips.
+
+That beauty should know distress!
+
+Very slightly he raised his forearm so that the lock of his elbow felt
+her hand. He had no fine words. This George was no hero with exquisite
+ways. He was a most average young man, and nothing could he find but
+most painfully average words.
+
+"I say, what's up?" he asked.
+
+She spoke defiantly; but some stupid something that she hated yet could
+not repress trembled her lips, robbed her tone of its banter. "What's
+up?" she said. "Why, _you_ would say something was up if you'd just been
+shot plump out of a cab, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes, but you were laughing a minute ago." He looked down at her,
+but she turned her face. "Now, now, I believe--" He did not name his
+thought.
+
+She looked up. Her pretty face was red. He saw little flutters of
+eyelids, flutters round the eyes, flutters at the mouth. "Oh," she said,
+"oh, yes, and I don't know why. I'm--I believe--" She tried to laugh,
+but the little flutterings clouded the smile like soft, dark wings
+flickering upon a sunbeam.
+
+"I believe--it's ridiculous to a perfect--imperfect--stranger--I believe
+I'm nearly--crying."
+
+And this inept George could only return: "I say--oh, I say, can I help
+you?"
+
+She stopped; from his arm withdrew her hand. "Please--I think you had
+better go. Please go. Oh, I shall hate myself for behaving like this."
+
+So unhappy she was that George immediately planned her a backdoor of
+excuse. "But you have no occasion to blame yourself," he told her.
+"You've had an adventure--naturally you're shaken a bit."
+
+She was relieved to think he had misunderstood her agitation. "Yes, an
+adventure," she said, "that's it. And I haven't had an adventure for
+years, so naturally--But, please, I think you had better go. If my--my
+friend saw me with you like this she would be angry--oh, very angry."
+
+"But why? She saw you fall. She saw me save you."
+
+"You don't understand. She is not exactly my friend; she is my--my
+employer. I'm a mother's-help."
+
+The mirth that never lay deep beneath those blue eyes of hers was
+sparkling up now; the soft, dark wings were fluttering no longer.
+
+She continued: "A mother's-help. Doesn't that sound wretched? I'm
+terribly slow at learning the mother's-help rules, but I'm positive
+of this rule--mothers' helps may not shoot out of cabs and leave the
+mother; it's such little help--you must see that?"
+
+"But you will be less help still if you stay here for ever with your
+hurt ankle--you must see that? I must stay with you or see you to your
+home."
+
+When she answered, it was upon another change of mood. The soft, dark
+wings were fluttering again; and it was the banter of George's tone
+that had recalled them. For this was an adventure--and she had not known
+adventure for years; for these were flippant exchanges arising out of
+gay young hearts, and they recalled memories of days when such harmless
+bantering was of her normal life; for there had been sympathy in
+George's stammering inquiries, and it recalled the time when she lived
+amidst sympathy and amidst love.
+
+The soft, dark wings fluttered again: "I am very grateful to you for
+helping me," she told him. "You must not think me ungrateful; only, I
+think you had better go. In my position I am not free to--to do as I
+like, talk where I will. You understand?" Her voice trembled a little,
+and she repeated: "You understand?"
+
+George said, "I understand."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+And that was all that passed upon this meeting. A cab swung round the
+opposite corner; pulled up with a rattle; turned towards them; was
+alongside. Within, a brow of thunder sat.
+
+The cabman called, "I knowed you was all right, miss," raised the trap,
+and cheerfully repeated the information to his fare: "I knowed she was
+all right, mum."
+
+The mum addressed gave no congratulation to his prescience. He shut the
+lid; winked at George; behind his hand communicated, "Not 'arf angry,
+she ain't."
+
+The girl ran forward; agitation bound up her hurt ankle. "Oh!" she
+cried, "I am so glad you are safe!"
+
+The thunder-figure addressed said: "Please get in. I have had a severe
+shock."
+
+"This gentleman--" The girl half turned to George.
+
+"Please get in--instantly."
+
+Scarlet the girl went. "Thank you very much," she said to George;
+climbed in beside the cloud of wrath.
+
+Her companion slammed the door; dabbed at George a bow that was like a
+sharp poke with a stick; called, "Drive on."
+
+George stepped into the road, held half a crown to the driver: "The
+address?"
+
+The man stooped. With a tremendous wink answered, "Fourteen Palace
+Gardens, St. John's Wood."
+
+Away with a jingle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George did not return to St. Peter's that afternoon; watched the cab
+from view; walked back to Waterloo; thence took train to Paltley Hill
+with mind awhirl.
+
+Recovering from stunning shock the mind first sees a blur of
+events--formless, seething, inextricably tangled. Deep in this boiling
+chaos is one fact struggling more powerfully than the rest to cool and
+so to shape itself. It kicks a leg free here, there an arm, then another
+leg. Its exertions cause the whole more furiously to agitate--the brain
+is afire. Very suddenly this struggling fact jumps free. Laid hold of it
+is a cold spoon which, plunged back into the seething cauldron, arrests
+the turmoil of its contents.
+
+Or again, recovering from sudden shock the mind first sees a great
+whirling, blinding cloud of dust which hides and wreathes about the
+sudden topple of masonry that has provoked it. Here the slowly emerging
+fact may be likened to a clear gangway through the ruin up which the
+fevered owner may walk to investigate the catastrophe's cause and
+extent.
+
+So now with George. If not dazed by stunning shock, he was at least
+awhirl by set back of the swift sequence of events which suddenly
+had buffeted him; and it was not until strolling up from Paltley Hill
+railway station to Herons' Holt that one cooling fact emerged from which
+he might make an ordered examination of what had passed.
+
+The address that the cabman had given him was this fact--14 Palace
+Gardens, St. John's Wood. Here was the gangway through the pile of
+disorder, and here George resolutely made a start of examining events in
+place of wildly beating about through the dust of aimless conjectures.
+
+He visualised this Palace Gardens residence. A gloomy house, he
+suspected,--prison-like; its inhabitants warders, the girl their
+captive. A beautiful picture was thus presented to this ridiculous
+young man. For if the girl were indeed captive, warder-surrounded, how
+gratefully her heart must press towards him who was no turnkey! The more
+irksomely her captors held her, the more warmly would she remember him.
+Subconsciously he hoped for a rattle of chains, a scourging with whips.
+Every bond, every stroke would speed her spirit to the recollection of
+their meeting.
+
+But this delectable picture soon faded. Love--and this ridiculous George
+vowed he was in love--love is a mental see-saw. The nicely-balanced
+mind is set suddenly oscillating: now up, commandingly above the world,
+intoxicated with the rush and the elevation; now down to depths made
+horribly deep by contrast, wretchedly jarred by the bump.
+
+A new thought impelled a downward jolt of this kind. Failing a gloomy
+14 Palace Gardens, supposing the girl to be happily situated, it was
+horribly improbable that she would give him a moment's thought. This was
+a most chilling idea. Shivering beneath the douche, George's mind ran
+back along the episode of their meeting to discover arguments that would
+build up the chains and the whips.
+
+Memories banked high on either side. In search of his desire George
+gathered them haphazard, closely examined each.
+
+It was an unsatisfactory business. Here was a memory. She had said
+so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that might mean anything. He flung it
+down; took another. She had said so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that
+might have meant nothing.
+
+This was very disturbing. He must systematically go through the whole
+pile of memories--upon an ordered plan reconstruct each step of the
+episode.
+
+At first attempt it was a wretched business. Never was builder set to
+work with bricks so impossible as the bricks of conversation with which
+this reconstruction must be done. Each that the girl had supplied
+might dovetail in as he would have it go; upon the other hand it fitted
+equally well when twisted into the form in which, for all he knew, she
+might have constructed it. The bricks George had himself supplied he
+found even more disconcerting--they were stupid, ugly, laughable. He
+shoved them in, and they grinned at him--mocked him. None the less
+he persevered--he must get his answer; he must see both what she had
+thought of him and if she were likely still to be thinking of him. And
+at last the whole passage was reconstructed. He examined it, and once
+more down came the see-saw with a most shattering bump: he had made
+himself an idiot, and stood champion idiot if he believed she were
+likely to remember him.
+
+With a crash George sent the whole pile flying. Let him wander blindly
+in the dust of imaginings rather than be tortured by the grim austerity
+of ordered facts. More than this, there was one most comfortable memory
+to which he desperately clung--that falter in her voice when she had
+said "You understand?" Whenever, during that evening, doubt stirred and
+bade him recognise himself for a fool, George flattened the ugly spectre
+with the arm he contrived out of this memory.
+
+It was a lusty weapon.
+
+But a fresh vexation that lies in wait for all new lovers tore him when
+he got to bed. In the darkness he set his mind solely to recalling the
+girl's face. The picture tantalisingly eluded him. Generalities he could
+recall. She was fair, very, very fair; her hair was shining golden; but
+how was it arranged? In desperation he squirmed off to her eyes--blue;
+no, grey; no, blue. Damn it, he would forget whether she were black or
+white in a minute. Her chin? Ah, he had that!--white and firm and round.
+And her nose?--small, and a trifle tip-tilted. And her mouth?--her
+mouth, oh, heaven, he could not fix her mouth! The distracted young man
+tossed upon his pillow and went elsewhere. Distinctly he could remember
+her little feet with those silver buckles, quite different from any
+other feet. And she held herself slim and supple. Held herself? Why,
+good heavens! she was tall, and he had been thinking of her as short!
+This was appalling! He might meet her and pass her by. He might ... he
+rushed into troubled slumber.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The night gave him little rest. Whilst his body lay heavy, his brain,
+feverishly active, chased through the hours glimpses of the queen of
+his adventure. By early morning he was prodded into consciousness, and
+awaked to find himself instantly confronted with a terrible affair. Into
+his life, so he assured himself, had come a serious interest such as
+that which the Dean had hoped for him.
+
+Here, lying abed with fresh morning smiling in through the open window,
+for the first time he looked forward, following the face he had pursued
+through his dreams, into the future. Its chambers he found ghastly
+barren. He visualised it as a vast unfurnished house. To the merry eye
+with which two days ago he had looked upon the world, the picture,
+had he then conjured it, would have given him no gloom. He would have
+thought it a fine thing, this empty house that was his own--empty, but
+representing freedom.
+
+The matter was different now. Into this empty house had danced the girl.
+Her gay presence discovered its barrenness. There was not a chair on
+which she could sit, not a dish in the larder.
+
+George recalled that tight little practice at Runnygate that might be
+had for 400 pounds; went down to breakfast rehearsing a scene with his
+uncle; was moody through the meal.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The breakfast dragged past its close. Mr. Marrapit spoke. "The moments
+fly," he observed.
+
+Margaret said earnestly: "Oh, yes, father."
+
+"I was addressing George."
+
+"Ur!" said George, suddenly aroused.
+
+Mr. Marrapit looked at his watch; repeated his observation.
+
+George read his meaning. "I thought of going up by the later train
+to-day," he explained.
+
+"A dangerous thought. Crush it." Mr. Marrapit continued: "Margaret, Mrs.
+Major, I observe you have concluded"; and when the two had withdrawn
+addressed himself again to George: "A dangerous thought. You recall our
+conversation of the day before yesterday?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Yet by later trains, by idleness, you deliberately imperil your
+future?"
+
+George did not answer the question. This was the very opportunity for
+which he had wished. "I would like to talk about my future," he said.
+
+"I dare not dwell upon it," replied Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"I have to. I shall pass all right this time. I want to know--the fact
+is, sir, I know I have slacked in the past; I am a man now, and I--I
+regret it. I fully realise my responsibilities. You may rely that I
+shall make a certainty of the October examination."
+
+"Commendable," Mr. Marrapit criticised.
+
+"I want to know what help I may expect when I qualify."
+
+"I cannot tell you." Mr. Marrapit threw martyrdom into his tone. "I
+am so little," he said, "in your confidence. Your expectations when
+qualified may be enormous. I am not favoured with them." He sighed.
+
+George said: "I mean what help I may expect from you."
+
+The piece of toast rising to Mr. Marrapit's mouth slowly returned
+towards his plate: "Reiterate that. From _me_?"
+
+"From you," said George.
+
+The toast dropped from trembling fingers. "_I_?" Mr. Marrapit dragged
+the word to tremendous length. "I? Is it conceivable that you expect
+money from me?"
+
+"I only ask."
+
+"I only shudder. Might I inquire the amount?"
+
+"The Dean told me of a practice I could have for 400 pounds."
+
+"Tea!" exclaimed Mr. Marrapit on a gasp. "I must steady myself! Tea!" He
+paused; gulped a cup; with alarmed eyes stared at George.
+
+The affair was going no better than George had expected. He remembered
+the face that was dear to him; nerved himself to continue. "I would pay
+it back," he said. "Will you lend me the 400 pounds?"
+
+"I must have air!" Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. "I reel before
+this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have supported
+you. Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I totter always
+through life with you upon my bowed back? I am Sinbad."
+
+"There's no need to exaggerate or make a scene."
+
+"Did I impel the scene?"
+
+"I only asked you a question," George reminded.
+
+"You have aroused a spectre," Mr. Marrapit answered.
+
+"Well, I may understand that I need expect nothing?"
+
+"I dare not answer you. I am shaken. I tremble."
+
+George rose. Though what hope he had possessed was driven by his uncle's
+attitude, he was as yet only upon the threshold of his love. Hence the
+refusal of what he suddenly desired for that love's sake was not so
+bitter an affair as afterwards it came to be. "This is ridiculous," he
+said; moved to the door.
+
+"To me a tragedy," Mr. Marrapit declaimed from the window, "old as
+mankind; not therefore less bitter--the tragedy of ingratitude. At
+stupendous cost I have supported, educated, clothed you. You turn
+upon me for more. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a
+thankless child! I am Lear."
+
+George tried a thrust: "I always understood my mother left you ample for
+me."
+
+"Adjust that impression. She left me less than a sufficiency--nothing
+approaching amplitude. To the best of my ability I have fulfilled
+my task. It has been hard. I do not complain. I do not ask you for
+repayment of any excess that may have been incurred. But I am embittered
+by yet further demands. I have been too liberal. Had I meted out strict
+justice as I have striven to mete out kindness, my grey hairs would not
+be speeding in poverty to the grave. I am Wolsey."
+
+Upon Wolsey George slammed the door; started for the station.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Palace Gardens, St. John's Wood, was his aim. There could be no work,
+nor even thought of work, until again he had met his lady. Yet how to
+meet her cost him another of the wrestles with conjecture that had been
+his lot since the cab carried her away.
+
+At first it was easy work. He would call, he decided, with polite
+inquiries; and as he pictured the scene his spirits rose. The
+thunder-figure that had poked a bow at him from the cab would come
+dragonish into the drawing-room where he waited. Her he would charm with
+the suavity of his manners; she would doff the dragon's skin; would
+say (he had read the scene in novels), "You would like to see Miss
+So-and-so?"
+
+The girl would come in ....
+
+With her appearance in his thoughts George's mind swung from coherent
+reasoning into a delectable phantasy ....
+
+A sudden thought swept the filmy clouds-landed him with a bump upon hard
+rock. He was not supposed to know their address. How, to the dragon,
+could he explain the venal trick by which he had acquired it? Now he
+beheld a new picture. Himself in the drawing-room; to him the dragon;
+her first words, "How did you know where we lived?"; his miserable
+answer.
+
+This was very unpleasant. As a red omnibus took him on towards St.
+John's Wood he decided that the meeting must be otherwise effected. The
+girl must sometimes go out. She had called herself a mother's-help; it
+suggested children; and, if children, doubtless her task to take them
+walking. Well, he would take up a post near to the house, and wait--just
+wait.
+
+And then there came a final thought that struck him cold and staring.
+What if she did not live at the house?--was merely about to visit there
+when the accident befell the cab?
+
+It was a sorely agitated young man that stepped off the 'bus and struck
+up Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+Of his Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+AS that cab swung round the corner bearing away the nameless haunter of
+George's dreams, she to the red wrath beside her turned, and, "Oh, Mrs.
+Chater," she said, "I hope you are not hurt!"
+
+By a mercy Mrs. Chater was not hurt. By a special intervention of
+Providence she had escaped a fearful death. Whether she would ever
+recover from the shock was another matter. Whether the shock would prove
+to be that sudden strain on her heart which she had been warned would
+end fatally, might at any moment be proved. Much anybody, except her
+darling children, would care if she were brought home dead in this very
+cab. Never had she known a heart to act as hers was acting now--thumping
+as if it would burst, first quickly then slowly. Perhaps Miss Humfray
+would feel it, and give her opinion.
+
+Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant Chaters had been
+nourished; the massive bosom was advertisement that they had done
+well. Beneath the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently
+contracted and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though Mrs. Chater
+said it throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned.
+
+The agitated woman panted, "Can it go on like that?"
+
+"I'm afraid I hardly--" Miss Humfray shifted her hand.
+
+"_Stupid!_ Take off your glove!"
+
+The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous and clumsy the girl
+struggled with it.
+
+"Miss _Humfray!_ How slow you are! _Pull_ it!"
+
+Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A crack answered the jerk,
+and the glove split away in her hand. "_There!_ Not my fault. Next time,
+perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently large. Oh, my poor heart! Now,
+feel. _Press!_"
+
+The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her throat. She pressed, as
+bid, into that heaving blouse; said she could feel it. It was not very
+violent, she thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater lay back and closed her
+eyes--
+
+"_I_ was not able to jump out, you see," said Mrs. Chater, sinking.
+
+"Oh, you don't think I _jumped_ out--and left you? I _wouldn't_.
+Besides, it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would have prevented
+me in any case. I was thrown. I thought I was going to be killed."
+
+"You were with a young man."
+
+"He caught me."
+
+The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying. That lump in her
+throat seemed to be squeezing tears from her eyes--silly tears. She
+did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy, yet could not but reflect what
+disregard for her the utter absence of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts
+yet more dangerously squeezed the tears. She was a paid _thing_, that
+was all--not even a servant. Mrs. Chater was on kindly terms with her
+servants--had experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded it by
+the familiarity that was too useful to produce contempt--knew her maids'
+young men, entered into their quarrels with their young men, read their
+young men's letters.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner, the girl felt
+herself friendless, outcast, alone. Again she told herself that she did
+not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy; yet it was the studied withholding of
+it--studied or callous because so natural, the merest conventionalism,
+to have asked, "Were you hurt?"--that made her acutely feel her
+position.
+
+A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet to be wounded
+because it was not hers. A ridiculous paradox--and brightly she tried to
+smile at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were swelling now,
+her face turned against the window towards the pavement.
+
+A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of a nice-looking little
+old man with a grey moustache and military air. The tall, slim girl
+was laughing down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily, just
+as--Her mind swung off, and the tears must be blinked again.
+
+They reminded her, those two, of herself and her father. Such familiar
+friends as they looked so she had been with Dad who idolised her
+and whom she had idolised. Just like that--arm in arm, joking,
+"ragging"--she used to walk with him round about the home in
+Ireland--the world to one another and none else in the world, except the
+mother who was so intimately and inseparably of them that years past her
+death they still spoke of her as if she were alive.
+
+Thus, long after her death, it would be: "Dad, we can't go home by the
+hill; mother never lets Grizzle do that climb after a long day." And:
+"Mary, your mother won't like you being so late; we must turn back."
+And: "Mary, there's the pig by mother's almond tree; run and shoo him."
+
+Partly this refusal to recognise that, though dead, Mother was actually
+gone from them, no longer was sharing their little jokes and duties, was
+because death came with such steady, appreciable, unfrightening steps.
+First the riding stopped, and then the walks made shorter and shorter;
+then the strolls in the garden stopped, and then carrying the couch out
+under the trees--and none of them very fearful, because prepared: it was
+to be--almost the very day could have been named. Thus, when it came,
+though the blow swooped heavy, terrific, she never seemed actually to
+have left them.
+
+"Well, now, dear dears," she had said with a little smile and a little
+sigh, "we have been happy ... only a little way away...."
+
+But with Dad it was different. Somehow, looking back on it, one had
+supposed that nothing would ever touch the cheery little man; that
+she and he would go on and on and on--well, till they grew very old
+together.
+
+Nothing could ever touch him....
+
+"What a wicked beauty, eh, Mary?" he had said when the man brought round
+the half-broken filly that its owner "funked."
+
+And she had laughed and said: "Yes, an angel in a temper--what a run you
+will have, Dad!" and had waved from the gate as the angel in a temper
+curveted away around the corner.
+
+Nothing could ever touch him....
+
+And then the man on a bicycle--with a dent in his hat, she noticed.
+
+"If you can come quickly, missy. Top of the Three Finger field he lays."
+
+Bare-backed she had galloped Grizzle there, and as she sped could not
+for the life of her think of aught else than the dent in the man's hat;
+rode up Three Finger Lane wondering how it came there; approached the
+little group wondering why he did not push it out.
+
+Just as she galloped up they took off their hats. Someone who had been
+on his knees stood upright--she saw the stain of wet earth where he had
+been kneeling; forgot the dented hat; wondered if he knew of the Marvel
+Cleaning Pad that had done so wonderfully with Dad's breeches when he
+took a toss last Friday.
+
+Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
+
+Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him
+home ... could do no good--now.
+
+"Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders."
+
+Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her
+because of the pain.... Better come away.
+
+She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ... all
+crumpled up....
+
+Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp as
+the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending over
+the twisted face.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but
+to which memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin
+touched the earth seven feet down....
+
+Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of
+documents; interminable writing of signature; interminable making of
+lists. And then the word LOT. "Lot I," "Lot 2," "Lot 50," "Lot 200"--a
+hammerlike word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep,
+producing grotesque nightmares, as "Lot 12, a polished oak coffin,
+finished plain, brass Handles."
+
+No! No! That was not to be sold!--leaden hands holding her down;
+stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting "Stop!"
+
+Then sudden consciousness--only a dream! Bolt upright in bed staring
+into the darkness. A dream? How much of it a dream? Was it all a dream?
+The fevered brain would fetch her from her bed, groping to Dad's
+room, striking a match--no familiar form upon the bed; a big white
+ticket--"Lot 56."
+
+Back to the hot, crumpled couch, there, tossing, to lie attempting a
+grasp, a realisation of what it all meant....
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A dark little office in Dublin.... So much the "Lots" had fetched, so
+much the balance at the bank; no investments, it was to be feared; no
+insurance, my dear Miss Humfray; so much the bills and other claims on
+the estate.... "Don't wish to be bothered with figures? Of course not,
+my dear.... And then we come to the balance--I'm afraid a few pounds,
+practically nothing...."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+On the steamer bound for Holyhead.... During the crossing the stifling
+weight that had benumbed her intellect ever since the man with the dent
+in his hat came riding up the drive seemed suddenly to lift. Whipped
+away perhaps by the edged wind that rushed past her from England to
+Ireland sinking in the sea--a wind to cut you to the bone; discovering
+sensation in every marrow; stinging her to clear thought.... That
+idyllic life with Mother and Dad--the world to one another and none else
+in the world beside--had been rather the creation of circumstance than
+of design. Dad's people were furious when he married Mother; in defiance
+of hers, Mother married Dad. Relations on either side had shrieked their
+disapproval of the match, then left the couple to their own adventures.
+A thing to laugh at in those days, but bringing now to the child that
+was left the realisation of not a support in the world.
+
+Her mother's sisters had written after the funeral inviting her to come
+to them in England "while she looked about her." She could recall every
+sentence of that letter. It had burned. Each word, each comma was fresh
+before her eyes as the cab jolted on to Palace Gardens.
+
+"It would have been our pleasure constantly to have entertained you
+during your mother's life-time," they had written, "but she wilfully
+flouted our desires at her marriage and thereafter utterly ignored us.
+The fault for the rift between us was of her making, not ours; we sent
+her an Easter card one year, and had no reply; though we have no
+doubt that your father, not that we would say a word against him now,
+influenced her against her better judgment. However...."
+
+She had written back a hysterical letter.
+
+"Your letter came just after I had returned from burying my dear, dear
+father, who worshipped my darling mother. If I were begging in the
+street, starving, dying, I would not touch a crumb or a penny of
+yours. You are wicked--yes, you are wicked to write to me as you have
+written...."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+She could not stay in Ireland. Her only friends there lived about the
+dear home that was now no longer a home but a "desirable residence with
+some acres of garden and paddock." Her only friends there were friends
+who had been shared with Mother and Dad--whose presence now would be
+constant reminder of that happy participation now lost. One and all
+offered her hospitality, but she must refuse. "No, no silly idea of
+being a burden to you, dear, dear Mrs. Sullivan--only I can't, can't
+live anywhere near where we used to live."
+
+Years before a great friend of hers had married an English clergyman;
+had written often to her from London of the numerous activities in which
+she was engaged--principal among them a kind of agency and home for
+gentlewomen. "Governesses, dear, and all that kind of thing ... poor
+girls, many of them, who have suddenly had to earn a living."
+
+The correspondence had died, as do so many, from the effects of undue
+urgency at the outset; but she had the address, and was certain there of
+welcome and of aid. "Poor girls who have suddenly had to earn a living."
+The words took on a new meaning: she was of these.
+
+From Euston she drove to the address. Her friend had gone. Yes, the
+present occupant remembered the name. The present occupant had been
+there two years; had taken over the lease from the former tenant because
+the lady was ill and had been ordered abroad. That was all the present
+occupant knew; saw her to the door; closed it behind her.
+
+Alone in London. "Alone in London"--it had been one of Dad's jokes; he
+had written a burlesque on it, and they had played it one Christmas
+to roars of fun. O God! what a thing at which to laugh now that the
+realisation struck and one stood on the pavement in the dark with this
+great city roaring at one!
+
+Cabmen, she had heard, were brutes; but the man who had brought her
+to the house must be appealed to.... Where could she get the cheapest
+lodging of some kind?
+
+How did he know? What was she wanting to pay? ...
+
+The great city roared at her. Her head swum a little. An idler or two
+took up a grinning stand: the thing looked like a cab-fare dispute....
+What was she wanting to pay? ... Well, as little as possible. "I have
+never been in London before, and I don't know anybody. My friend here
+has gone. I have just arrived from Ireland." She began to cry.
+
+He from his box in a moment. "From Ireland!"
+
+Why, he was from Ireland! ... Not likely she was from Connemara? ... She
+was? ... From Kinsloe? ... Why, he knew it well; he was from Ballydag!
+
+He rolled his tongue around other names of the district; she knew them
+all; could almost have laughed at the silly fellow's delight.
+
+Why, the honour it would be if she would come and let his missus make
+her up a bed! "Don't ye cry, missie. Don't ye take on like that. It's
+all right ye are now." He put a huge, roughly great-coated arm about
+her--squeezed her, she believed; helped her into the cab.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Missus in the clean little rooms over the rattling mews was no less
+delighted. From Kinsloe? Why, missie saw that canary?--that was a
+present from Betty Murphy in Kinsloe, not three months before!
+
+The canary, aroused by the attention paid it, trilled upward in a
+mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her
+head ... louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and
+cage became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have carried
+her to the bed in which she awoke.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Friends in Ireland had given her the addresses of friends in London
+on whom she must call. She visited some houses; then in a sudden wild
+despair tore the list. Either these people were dense of comprehension
+or she clumsy of explanation. To make them realise her position she
+found impossible. They were warmly kind, sympathetic--cheery in that
+lugubrious fashion in which we are taught to be "bright" with the
+afflicted. But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment they
+would warmly cry, "Oh, but you must not think of that yet, Miss Humfray
+... after all you have been through.... You must keep quiet for a
+little."
+
+One and all gave her the same words. An impulse took her to kick over
+the tea-table--anything to arouse these people from their stereotyped
+mood of sympathy with a girl suddenly bereaved,--and to cry, "But don't
+you _understand_? I am living over a mews--over a _mews_ with twelve
+pounds and a few shillings, and then _nothing_--nothing at all."
+
+Wise, perhaps, had she indulged the outburst without the action; wiser
+had she written to some of the friends in Ireland, asked to go back to
+one of them for a while. But the dull grief beneath which she still lay
+benumbed prevented her from other course than tonelessly accepting
+the proffered sympathy; and the thought of returning to Ireland was
+impossible. She tore the list of London friends; appealed to Tim and
+Missus.
+
+Tim was helpful. He had taken fares to an Agency in Norfolk Street--an
+Agency for "Disturbed Gentlewomen," he called it; there took her one
+morning.
+
+"Distressed Gentlewomen," she found the brass plate to read--"The
+Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed Gentlewomen."
+
+A lymphatic-looking young woman, assisting the growth of a singularly
+stout face by sucking a sweet, and wearing brown holland sleeve
+protectors hooked up with enormous safety-pins, received her in the room
+marked "Enquiries"; put her into that labelled "Waiting." Here were two
+copies of the _Christian Herald_, some emigration pamphlets, a carafe
+of water covered by an inverted tumbler dusty with disuse, and three
+elderly females--presumably gentlewomen, possibly distressed, but not
+advertising either condition.
+
+In due time her turn for the room marked "Private"; interrogation by
+Miss Ram, a short, thin lady in black, who bowed more frequently than
+she spoke, possessing a range of inclinations of the head each of which
+had unmistakable meaning.
+
+Position sought?--Oh, anything; governess, companion. Last
+situation?--None; she was inexperienced. Capabilities?--Equally lacking,
+as discovered by a probing cross-examination. Salary required?--Oh,
+anything; whatever was usual; a _home_--that was the chief object in
+view.
+
+Miss Ram entered the details in a severe-looking book with a long
+thin pen--could hold out but faint hopes. The applicants whom she was
+accustomed to suit were "in nine and ninety cases out of one hundred
+cases" accomplished in the domestic or scholastic arts. However. Yes,
+Miss Humfray should call every morning. Better still, stay in the
+waiting-room. Be On the Spot--that was the first requisite for success,
+as Miss Humfray would find whether in a situation or awaiting a
+situation; be On the Spot.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+On the Spot. A nightmare week in the dingy waiting-room ... thoughts
+probing the mind, stabbing the heart.... Nine till one, a cup of tea
+and a roll at an A.B.C. shop, an aimless walk in the park; two till six,
+good-night to the stout young woman named Miss Porter in "Enquiries,"
+home to the rattling mews and to Missus.
+
+On the Spot. Occasional interviews. "Miss Humfray, a lady will see you."
+... "Oh, too young--far too young." ... "Thank you, that will do, Miss
+Humfray." ... "Oh, not my style at all." ... "Thank you, that will do,
+Miss Humfray."
+
+On the Spot. Fortunately On the Spot one day--a Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, as
+nursery governess, Streatham.
+
+For a week very much On the Spot with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton. Nursery
+governess was a comprehensive word in the Eyton-Eyton vocabulary;
+covered every duty that in a nursery must be performed. One must do
+the nursery fire, sweep the nursery floor, bring up and carry down the
+nursery meals--servants, you see, object to waiting upon one whom, as
+Mrs. Eyton-Eyton with a careless laugh pointed out, they regard as one
+of themselves. Quickly the lesson was appreciated that while a servant
+must never be "put upon," the same consideration need not be extended to
+a lady. Servants are rare in the market, young ladies cheap.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The lesson of dependence, subserviency, Mary found harder in the
+learning; did not study it; therein reaped disaster.
+
+She arrived on a Tuesday. Upon that day of the following week Mrs.
+Eyton-Eyton paid to the nursery one of her rare visits, beautifully
+gowned, the hired victoria waiting to take her a round of calls.
+
+Lunch, delayed not to disturb the midday sleep of Masters Thomas and
+Richard Eyton-Eyton, was not cleared--Master Thomas still struggling
+with a plate of sago pudding.
+
+Betwixt her children Mrs. Eyton-Eyton--beautifully gowned, hired
+victoria in waiting--took her seat; Mary hovered behind--and catastrophe
+swooped. Master Thomas grabbed for a glass of milk; Mary strove to
+restrain him. There was an awkward struggle, her elbow--or his--caught
+the plate of pudding, tipped the sticky mass into the silken lap of Mrs.
+Eyton-Eyton, beautifully gowned, hired victoria in waiting.
+
+Infuriated, Mrs. Eyton-Eyton turned upon Mary. "Oh, you little fool!"
+
+The rebuke that should have been taken with downcast eyes, murmured
+apologies, was otherwise received.
+
+"Mrs. Eyton! How dare you call me a fool!"
+
+Pause of blank amazement; sago-messed table-napkin in the scented hand;
+sago creeping down the silken skirt. That a nursery governess--not even
+a servant--should so presume!
+
+"Miss Humfray! You forget yourself!"
+
+"No!-No! It is you who forget yourself. How dare you speak to me like
+that!"
+
+Another moment of utter bewilderment; small Eyton-Eytons gazing
+round-eyed; the girl white, heaving; the woman dully red. Then "Pack
+your boxes, Miss!"
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+She was upon the platform at Victoria Station, a porter asking commands
+for her box, before she realised what she had done. A few pounds in her
+purse, and infinitely worse off now than a week before. Then she had no
+"character"; now employment was to be sought with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton as
+her "last place." She would not go back to Missus and Tim. Though they
+had tried to conceal it, secretly, she had seen, they were relieved
+when she left. They had not accommodation for her; latterly she had
+dispossessed of his bed a sailor son on leave from his ship.
+
+She left her box in the cloak-room; turned down Wilton Road from the
+station; penetrated the narrow thoroughfares between Lupus Street and
+the river; secured a bedroom with Mrs. Japes at six shillings a week.
+
+Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received a
+furious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel line
+of red ink ruled through the page that began "Name: Mary Humfray," and
+ended "Salary:--"
+
+"But I don't know a soul in London."
+
+"You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have a
+reputation for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk."
+
+A bow closed the interview.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+It was her landlady's husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, who
+dealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
+
+Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shops
+that had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and her
+presumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she found
+Mrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
+
+What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs. Up
+to her room--the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents scattered
+across the floor, the little case in which with her pictures of Mother
+and Dad she kept her money gone.
+
+A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which Mrs. Japes's property
+had also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ... had done
+time ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she'd best go
+... of course she could tell the police.
+
+Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered and
+frightened her.
+
+To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new landlady
+into the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe....
+Answering of advertisements found in the public library in Great Smith
+Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Always
+the same outcome. ... Experience?--None. References?--None.... "Thank
+you; I'm afraid--I'm sure it's all right, but one has to be so careful
+nowadays. Good morning." ... Always the same outcome.... The idea of
+writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ... That life, those friends,
+seemed of a period that was dead, done, gone--ages and ages ago....
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow--a gentlemanly-looking
+person of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to an
+address copied from the _Daily Telegraph_. Why, by an extraordinary
+coincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!--flat,
+rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help.
+Might he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
+
+Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though putting
+now and then curious little questions which she could not understand....
+Hadn't he seen her at the Oxford one night? ... Assuredly he had not;
+what was the Oxford?
+
+He laughed, evidently pleased. "Gad, you do keep it up!" he cried.
+
+So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
+
+"You understand why I can't use the lift?" he said. "They're beastly
+particular here."
+
+She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thus
+to a door where he took out a latch-key.
+
+It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, took
+her, trembling her limbs.
+
+She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
+
+"Why, it is the wrong number!" she cried.
+
+He had turned the key. "Lord! you do keep it up!" he laughed, his hand
+suddenly about her arm.
+
+Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the thing.
+
+"Ah, let me go--let me go!"
+
+"Oh, chuck it, you little ass!" His arm was about her waist now,
+dragging her; his face close.
+
+With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched
+from his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered his
+wits; across the hall and running--shaking, hysterical--down the street.
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Thereafter men were a constant horror to her--adding a new and most
+savage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair that
+bayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, she
+went again to Miss Ram at the Agency--almost upon her knees, crying,
+trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat to
+the man in Wilton Road.
+
+Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grim
+exterior; had never realised the actual circumstances; would do what she
+could; no need to be frightened.
+
+Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. No
+sharpness, no slight now could prick her spirit; she had learned too
+well; she would not face those streets again.
+
+That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds were
+healing now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at present
+discomforts. It was only now and again--as now--that she, driven by some
+sudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander--bruising itself in
+those dark passages.
+
+The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob; was
+herself.
+
+Mrs. Chater said: "Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Excursions In Vulgarity.
+
+
+A violent dispute with the cabman set that disturbed heart yet more
+wildly thumping in Mrs. Chater's bosom; the sight of her husband
+uneasily mooning in the dining-room heated her wrath to wilder
+bubblings.
+
+Mr. Chater--a 'oly dam' terror in Mincing Lane, if his office-boy may be
+quoted--was an astonishingly mild man in his own house.
+
+He said brightly, noting with a shiver the gusty stress of his wife's
+deportment: "You _drove_ up, my dear?--And quite right, too," he hastily
+added, upon a sudden fear that his remark might be interpreted as
+reproach.
+
+"How do you know?" Mrs. Chater's nose went into the brandy-and-soda.
+
+"I saw you from the window," her husband beamed. He repeated, "The
+window," and nervously pointed at it. There was a strained atmosphere in
+the room, and he was a little frightened.
+
+"_Oh!_" Out from the brandy-and-soda came the nose; down went the glass
+with an emphasising bang: "_Oh!_"
+
+Mr. Chater gave a startled little jump. He saw, immediately he had
+spoken, the misfortune into which his admission had plunged him; the
+bang of the glass twanged his already apprehensive nerves, and he jerked
+out, "Certainly, my dear," without any clear grasp as to what he was
+affirming.
+
+"If you had been a _man_," said Mrs. Chater, speaking with a slow and
+extraordinary bitterness--"if you had been a _man_, you would have come
+out and helped me."
+
+"But you had got out when I came to the window, my dear."
+
+"With the _cabman_, I mean." Mrs. Chater fired the word with alarming
+ferocity. "With the _cabman_. Did you not see that violent brute
+insulting me?"
+
+It was precisely because he had observed the episode that Mr. Chater had
+kept well behind the curtain; but he did not adduce the fact.
+
+"I certainly did not," he affirmed.
+
+"Ah! I expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the same
+thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut
+outside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. Making me--"
+
+Mr. Chater implored: "Oh, my dear, don't drag that up again!"
+
+"But I _do_ drag it up!" Mrs. Chater a little unnecessarily cried. "I
+_do_ drag it up, and I shall always drag it up--making me a fool as you
+did! I was ashamed of you. I was--"
+
+Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket handkerchief:
+"I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I never understood
+the circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was very much pushed
+about. If I had known the circumstances--"
+
+Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: "Circumstances!"
+
+"My dear," the agitated man replied, ticking off the points on soft
+fingers, "my dear, I had gone to the window of Swan and Edgar's, leaving
+you, as you expressly desired, to pay the man _yourself_. When I came
+_back_ to you, what I gathered was that the man was entitled to a
+further _sixpence_ and that you had no _change_."
+
+Mrs. Chater lashed herself with the recollection: "Nothing of the kind!"
+she burst. "Nothing of the kind! What did the man say to you when you
+asked what was the matter?"
+
+"I quite forget."
+
+"You do not forget."
+
+"My dear, I really and truly do forget."
+
+"For the hundredth time, then, let me tell you. He said that if you
+pushed your ugly mug into it he would knock off your blooming head."
+
+"Did he say _mug?_" asked Mr. Chater, assuming the air of one who,
+knowing this at the time, would have committed a singularly ferocious
+murder.
+
+"Well you know that he _did_ say mug--_ugly_ mug. Was _that_ a thing for
+a man of spirit to take quietly? Was _that_ a thing for a wife to
+hear bawled at her husband in the open street with the commissionaire
+grinning behind his hand? To my dying day I shall never forget my
+humiliation when you handed him sixpence."
+
+The unhappy husband murmured: "I do so wish you could, my dear."
+
+Mrs. Chater shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfect
+tactician, and hurled in the attack upon another quarter.
+
+She said: "Ah, now insult me! Insult me before Miss Humfray! That's
+right! _That's_ right! That's what I'm accustomed to. We all have our
+cross to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from my
+husband is mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open."
+
+Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice which
+implied that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyes
+tightly closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered nerves,
+swallowed it with the air of one draining a poison flask by way of happy
+release from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and, before her amazed
+husband could open his lips, hammered in the attack from a third
+quarter.
+
+"Little you would have cared," cried she, "if a miracle had not saved my
+life this afternoon!"
+
+Mr. Chater stood aghast. "My dearest! Saved you! From what?"
+
+His dearest bitterly inquired: "What does it matter to you? You take no
+interest. If my battered corpse--" Swept to tremendous heights by
+the combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her two
+brandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. "If my battered
+corpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this very
+afternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?"
+
+Mr. Chater, apprehension creeping among the roots of his hair, affirmed
+that he would have dropped dead in the precise spot at which he happened
+to be standing at the moment.
+
+Mrs. Chater trumpeted "Never!"--dropped to her chair, and continued.
+"You would have been glad." Her voice shook. "Glad--and in all this wide
+world only my Bob and my blessed lambs in the nursery would have wept
+o'er my body."
+
+Of so melancholy a character was the picture thus presented to her mind,
+augmenting her previous agitation, that the tumult within her welled
+damply through her eyes, with noisy distress through her lips.
+
+Patting her distressed back, imploring her to calm, Mr. Chater begged
+some account of the catastrophe from which she had escaped.
+
+Between convulsive sobs she told him, he bridging the hiatuses of
+emotion with "Oh-dear-oh-dears," in which alarm and sympathy were nicely
+mingled.
+
+Painting details with a masterly hand, "And there was I alone," she
+concluded--"alone, at the mercy of a wild horse and a drunken cabman."
+
+"But Miss Humfray was with you?"
+
+"Miss Humfray managed to jump out and leave me."
+
+Through all this scene--in one form or another a matter of daily
+occurrence, and therefore not to arouse interest--Mary had stood waiting
+its cessation and her orders. Mr. Chater turned upon her. Naturally
+disposed to be kind to the girl, he yet readily saw in his wife's
+statement a way of escape from the castigation he had been enduring.
+As the small boy who has been kicked by the bully will with delighted
+relief rush to the bully's aid when the kicks are at length turned to
+another, urging him on so that he may forget his first prey, so Mr.
+Chater, delighted at his fortune, eagerly joined in turning his wife's
+wrath to Mary's head. For self-preservation, at whatever cost to
+another, is the most compelling of instincts: its power great in
+proportion as we have allowed our fleshly impulses to master us. If,
+when they prompt, we coldly and impersonally regard them, find
+them unworthy and crush them back humiliated, they become in time
+disciplined--wither and die. In proportion as we permit them, upon the
+other hand, they come in time to drive us with a fierceness that cannot
+be checked.
+
+Mr. Chater had disciplined no single impulse that came to him with his
+flesh.
+
+In pious horror he turned upon the girl.
+
+"Managed to jump out!" he exclaimed, speaking as one re-echoing a horror
+hardly to be believed.
+
+"Managed to jump out! Miss Humfray, I would not have thought it of you!"
+
+She cried: "Mr. Chater, I fell!"
+
+Disregarding, and with a deeper note of pained reproach, he continued:
+"So many ties, I should have thought, would have bound you to my wife
+in such an emergency--the length of time you have been with us;
+the unremitting kindness she has shown you, treating you as one of
+ourselves, in sickness tending you, bountifully feeding and clothing
+you, going out of her way to make you happy. Oh, Miss Humfray!"
+
+The strain on his invention paused him. Mrs. Chater, moved by this
+astonishing revelation of her love, assumed an air in keeping--an air
+of some pain but no surprise at such ingratitude. She warmed to this
+husband who, if no hero in the matter of ferocious cabmen, could at
+least champion her upon occasion.
+
+Mary cried: "But I did not jump out! Indeed I did not, Mr. Chater; I
+fell."
+
+Mrs. Chater said _"Fell!"_ With sublime forbearance she added, "Never
+mind; the incident is past."
+
+"Mrs. Chater, you must know that I fell out. I was leaning out--you had
+asked me to see the name of the street--when the horse stumbled."
+
+"It is curious," said Mrs. Chater, with a pained little smile, "that you
+managed to 'fall out' before the horse could recover and bolt."
+
+"Very, very curious," Mr. Chater echoed.
+
+How hateful they were, the girl felt. She broke out: "I--"
+
+"Miss Humfray, that is enough. Help me upstairs. I will lie down."
+
+Mr. Chater jumped brightly to the bell. "My dear, do; I will send you a
+hot-water bottle."
+
+His wife recalled the shortcomings for which she had been taking him to
+task. "Send a fiddlestick," she rapped; "on a boiling day like this!"
+
+She took Mary's arm; leaning heavily, passed from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.
+
+
+Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted,
+eau-de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull the
+tumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.
+
+About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched it
+in the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she had
+learned to take buffetings.
+
+To be dispassionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upon
+a wounded spirit--to regard this Mary with the comically twitching face
+whom now she saw in the glass as a second person whose sufferings might
+be coldly regarded and dissected.
+
+It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to be
+philosophic upon the cares of another--nothing so easy as to wax
+impatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden by
+troubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, we
+can school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as one
+person, and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chiding
+that figure out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.
+
+With some success Mary had studied the art; now gave that
+Mary-in-the-glass who stood before her a healthy reproof.
+
+"The ridiculous thing you did," Mary-in-the-glass was told--"the
+ridiculous thing you did to make yourself miserable was to go thinking
+about--about Ireland."
+
+The mouth of Mary-in-the-glass ominously twitched.
+
+"There you go again. And it is so absolutely forbidden to think about
+that. Whatever's the use of it?"
+
+Mary-in-the-glass could adduce no reason, and must be prodded.
+
+"Does it do you any good? Does it do _them_ any good, do you suppose, to
+know that you can never think of them without making yourself unhappy?"
+
+Mary-in-the-glass attempted a weak quibble; was instantly snapped.
+
+"I'm not saying you are _never_ to think of them. Goodness knows what
+I should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you are
+happy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you choose
+to be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whining
+anywhere near them--understand? You only make them unhappy and make your
+troubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs. Chater, you
+must be a wretched sort of person. Her face when the cab brought her
+back! And trying to feel her heart! And her rage with that little worm
+of a Mr. Chater! Can't you see the fun of it instead of crying over it?"
+
+Mary-in-the-glass could. The successive recollections induced the
+prettiest dimples on her face. She was at once forgiven.
+
+Indeed, to snuggle back into her and to merge into her again was just
+now very desirable to the censorious Mary-outside-the-glass. For, merged
+in her sentimental and romantic personality, a most delectable line of
+thought could be pursued--a delectable line, since along this trail was
+to be encountered that stranger who had caught her in her wild ejection
+from the cab.
+
+Sinking in a chair, Mary adventured upon it; she was instantly met.
+
+Mary-outside-the-glass essayed her best to prevent the interview.
+"Poof!" Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young person, sneered. "Poof!
+You little idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five minutes, whom
+you will never again see, and from whose recollections you have most
+certainly passed unless to be recalled as a joke--perhaps to some
+other girl!" (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters these
+Marys-outside-the-glass.) "Why, you must be a donkey to think about
+him! For goodness' sake come away before you make yourself too utterly
+ridiculous! You won't. Well, perhaps you will try to recall the figure
+you must have cut in his eyes? Do you remember what you must have looked
+like as you shot out of the cab like a sack of straw? Pretty sight, eh?
+And can you imagine the expression on your face as you banged into his
+arms? Charming you must have looked, mustn't you? And can you by any
+means realise the idiot you must have looked when Mrs. Chater came
+up and swept you off like an escaped puppy, recaptured and in for a
+whipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you? You didn't happen to
+peep back through the little window at the back of the cab and see him
+laughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have looked...."
+
+And so on. This was the attitude of that cold, calculating,
+dispassionate Mary-outside-the-glass. But Mary smothered the
+voice--would not hear a word of it. Completely she became
+Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, and in that personality
+tripped along the path of thought where stood her stranger.
+
+Delectably she relived the encounter. Paced down the street, took again
+his arm; without a fault recalled his words, without a check gave her
+replies; recalled the pitch of his voice to the nicest note, struck
+again the light in his eyes.
+
+Now why? She had met other men; in Ireland had thrice wounded her tender
+heart by negations that had caused three suitors most desperate
+anguish. None had awakened in her a deeper interest; and yet here was
+a stranger--suddenly encountered, as suddenly left--who in her mind had
+appropriated a track which she was eager to make a well-beaten path.
+Why?
+
+But Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, was no prober of
+emotions. They veiled the hard business of commonplace life; and amid
+them mistily she now floated afar into dim features where her stranger,
+stranger no more, walked with her hand in hand.
+
+There was attempt at first to construct an actual re-encounter.
+Mary-in-the-glass, that romantic young woman, very speciously pointed
+out that in London when once you see a man you may reasonably suppose
+that you will again meet him. For in London one does not aimlessly
+wander; one has some set purpose and traverses a thousand times the same
+streets, crossing daily at the same points as though upon the pursuit
+of a chalked line. Mary-in-the-glass, therefore, constructing a
+re-encounter, happened to be strolling along the scene of the accident,
+and lo! there was he!
+
+Unhappily this vision was transient. Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold
+young woman, got in a word here that erased the picture. The square
+where the cab crashed was too far afield to take the children for
+their walk; holiday was a boon rarely granted and never granted at
+the particular hour of the catastrophe--the only time of day at which,
+according to the chalked-line theory, she might reasonably expect to
+find the stranger in the same spot.
+
+But Mary did not brood long upon this melancholy obstacle; drove away
+Mary-outside-the-glass; became again Mary-in-the-glass. And they are
+impossible creatures these Marys-in-the-glass. They will approach
+an unbridged chasm across which no Mary-out-side could by any means
+adventure, and, floating the gulf, will deliriously roam in the fields
+beyond.
+
+So now. And in that dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her
+stranger sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all
+the favourite spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in
+them; introduced other persons, and marked their comment on her dear
+companion.
+
+It was he whom she made to do mighty deeds in those misty fields; of
+herself hers were merely a girl's gentle fancies, held modest by
+her sex's natural desire to be loved for itself alone--not for big
+behaviour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Excursions In A Nursery.
+
+
+The loud bang of a door was the gong that called Mary back from
+those pleasant fields. They whirled from her, leaving her in sudden
+realisation of the material.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+"Goodness!" cried she, and fell to scattering her outdoor finery at a
+speed dangerous under any but the deftest fingers. Into a skirt of black
+and a simple blouse she slipped, and down, skimming the stairs, to where
+her charges bided their bedtime.
+
+Opening the nursery door she paused upon the threshold with a little
+"Oh!" of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between
+the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon the
+window-pane.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater turned at her entry. "I've been waiting for you a long
+time," he said.
+
+She asked, "Whatever for?" and in her tone there was a chill.
+
+"Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids tubbed?"
+
+"I didn't think you meant it."
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed. "Well, now you see that I did. I've been looking
+forward to this all day."
+
+Plainly she was perturbed. She said: "Mr. Chater, I really would rather
+you did not, if you don't mind."
+
+"Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be
+the bitterest disappointment."
+
+His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man,
+black-eyed, dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.
+
+She would not catch his mood. "I am sure when I ask you--"
+
+"Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know," he laughed; "'cause I ain't
+going."
+
+Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and
+Angela, her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.
+
+It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.
+
+"I say, be decent to a fellow, Miss Humfray," he said. "Look here, I
+hadn't seen the kids for two years when I came back yesterday. They
+hardly remember their kind big brother." He addressed the small girl
+whose round eyes, moving from speaker to speaker since Mary had entered,
+were now upon him. "Do you, Angela?" he asked.
+
+"I--hate--you," Angela told him, in the slow utterance of one giving
+completest effect to a carefully weighed sentiment.
+
+With equal impressiveness, David, seated beside her, lent his authority
+to the statement. "I--hate--you--too," he joined.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed a little stupidly.
+
+Mary cried: "Oh, Angela! Oh, David! How can you speak like that!"
+
+"He is perfectly abom'able," Angela said, unmoved. "He made Davie cry.
+He trod on Davie's beetle."
+
+The cracked corpse of a mechanical beetle, joy of David's heart, was
+produced in evidence; its distressed owner reddening ominously at this
+renewed recollection of the calamity.
+
+Mary took the sad pieces tenderly. "Silly children! He never meant to
+break it. Oh, such silly children!"
+
+Angela protested, "He did! He did! He put his foot over it while it was
+running, and stopped it. He told David to get it away if he could, and
+David bit his leg, and he said 'Damn you!' and crushed it crack."
+
+Mary whipped a glance at the murderer. She ignored the evidence.
+"To-morrow!" said she. "Why, what fun! To-morrow we'll play hospital
+like we did when Christabel broke her arm. We'll make Mr. Beetle just as
+well as ever he was before!"
+
+"I'll be doctor!" cried David, transported into delight.
+
+"Yes, and Angela nurse. Look, we'll put poor Mr. Beetle on the
+mantelpiece to-night, right out of the draughts. If he got a draught
+into that crack in his back, goodness knows what wouldn't happen. He
+must eat slops like Christabel did. _What_ fun! Now, bed--_bustle!_"
+
+Their adored Mary had restored confidence. They clung about her.
+
+"It was a pure accident," explained Mr. Bob Chater, gloomily watching
+this scene. "I'll buy you another to-morrow."
+
+"There!" Mary cried. "Think of that!"
+
+David reflected upon it without emotion. He regarded his big brother
+sullenly; sullenly said, "I don't want another."
+
+Mary cried brightly: "Rubbish! Come, kiss your brother good-night, and
+say 'thank you!' Both of you. Quick as lightning!"
+
+They hung back.
+
+Mary had obtained so complete a command of their affections that her
+word was the wise law which, ordinarily, they had come unquestioningly
+to accept. In their short lives David and Angela had experienced a
+procession of nurses, of nursery-governesses, of lady-helps, each one of
+whom received or gave her month's notice within a few weeks of arrival,
+and against whom they had conducted a sullen or a violent war. From the
+first it had been different with Miss Humfray. As was their custom (for
+this constant change tried tempers) upon the very day of her arrival
+they had met her with frank hostility, had declared mutiny at her
+first command. But her reception of this attitude they found a new and
+astonishing experience. She had not been shocked, had not been angry,
+had ventured no threat to tell their mother. Instead, at the outbreak of
+defiance, she went into the gayest and most infectious laughter, kissed
+them--and they had capitulated before they realised the event.
+
+A second attempt at mutiny, made upon the following day, met with a
+reception equally novel. Again this pretty Miss Humfray had laughed, but
+this time had fully sympathised with their view of the point at issue
+and had made of the affair a most entrancing game. She, behold, was a
+pirate captain; they were the rebellious crew. In five minutes they had
+marooned her upon the desert island represented by the hearthrug; had
+rowed away with faces which, under her instructions, were properly
+stern; and only when she waved the white flag of truce had they
+taken her aboard again. Meanwhile the subject of the quarrel had been
+forgotten.
+
+Never a dispute arose thereafter. They idolised this pretty Miss
+Humfray: whatsoever she said was clearly right.
+
+Here, however, was a dangerous conflict of opinion. They hung back.
+
+"Quickly," Mary repeated. "Kiss him, and say thank-you quickly, or there
+will be no story when you are in bed."
+
+It was a terrific price to pay; their troubled faces mirrored the
+conflict of decision.
+
+David found solution. In his slow, solemn voice, "You kiss him first,"
+he said. Miss Humfray always took their medicine first, and David argued
+from the one evil necessity to this other.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed delightedly. "That's a brilliant idea!" he cried;
+came two strides towards Mary; put a hand upon her arm.
+
+So sudden, so unexpected was his movement, that by the narrowest chance
+only did she escape his purpose. A jerk of her head, and he had mouthed
+at the air two inches from her face.
+
+She shook her arm free. "Oh!" she cried; and in the exclamation there
+was that which would have given a nicer man pause.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater was nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air
+had made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who
+worked for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be agreeable
+to her--at all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped affairs that
+this was the first time his theory had found disproof. He saw she was
+offended; so much the more tickling; conquest was thereby the more
+enticing.
+
+He laughed; said he was only "rotting."
+
+Mary did not reply. The command to kiss their brother went by default;
+she hurried her charges through the door to the adjoining night nursery.
+
+When they were started upon undressing she came back.
+
+"You're going to let me see you tub them?" Bob asked her.
+
+Busy replacing toys in cupboards, she did not reply.
+
+"You're not angry, are you?"
+
+She gave him no answer.
+
+Bob Chater discarded the laugh from his tone. "If you are angry, I'm
+very sorry. You must have known I was only fooling. It was only to make
+the kids laugh."
+
+So far as was possible she kept her back to him.
+
+The continued slight pricked him. His voice hardened. "When I have the
+grace to apologise, I think you might have the grace to accept it."
+
+Mary said in low tones: "If you meant only to make them laugh, of course
+I believe you. It is all right."
+
+"Good. Well, now, may I see them tubbed?"
+
+"I have told you I would rather not."
+
+"Dash it all, Miss Humfray, you're rather unkind, aren't, you? Here have
+I been away nearly two years--I've been travelling on the Continent for
+the firm-you know that, don't you?"
+
+She said she had heard Mr. and Mrs. Chater talking of it.
+
+"Well, and yet you won't let me come near my darling little sister and
+my sweet little brother to tell 'em all about it?"
+
+"But I'm not keeping you from them, Mr. Chater. You have had plenty of
+time."
+
+"Time! Why, I only got back yesterday!"
+
+"You have been in here this afternoon."
+
+"Ah, they were shy. They're better when you are here."
+
+She had finished her task, and she turned to him. "Mr. Chater, you know
+I could not keep David and Angela from you even if I dreamed of doing
+such a thing. Only, I say I would rather you did not come in while I
+bath them, that is all."
+
+"Yes, but why?"
+
+"Mrs. Chater would not like it for one thing, I feel sure."
+
+"Oh, that's all rot. Mother wouldn't mind--anyway, I do as I like in
+this house."
+
+From all she had heard of Mrs. Chater's beloved Bob, Mary guessed this
+to be true. Long prior to his arrival she had been prejudiced against
+him; acquaintance emphasised the prophetic impression.
+
+"Another night, then," she said.
+
+He felt he was winning. No girl withstood him long.
+
+"No, to-night. Another thing--I want to know you better. This
+arrangement is all new to me. There was a nurse here in your place when
+I went. I've hardly spoken to you. Have you ever been abroad?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you--and the kids--some of my adventures while you're
+tubbing 'em. Lead on."
+
+She was at the night-nursery door. Evidently this man would not see her
+conventional reason for not wishing him at the tubbing. Angela had grown
+a biggish girl since he went away.
+
+She said, "Please not to-night."
+
+"I'm jolly well coming," he chuckled.
+
+The lesson of dependence was wilfully forgotten. Mary agreed with Angela
+and David: she hated this Bob.
+
+"No," she said sharply, "you are not."
+
+He had thrown his cigar into the grate; taken out another; stooped to
+the hearth to scratch a match. His back was to her; to him all her tone
+conveyed was that a "rag" was on hand.
+
+"We'll see," he laughed; struck the match.
+
+She stepped swiftly within the door; closed it.
+
+Bob Chater laughed again; ran across.
+
+The lock clicked as she turned the key.
+
+"Let me in!" he cried, rattling the handle. "Let me in!"
+
+The splash of water answered him.
+
+He thumped the panel. "Open the door!"
+
+"Now, Angela," he heard her say, "quick as lightning with that chimmy."
+
+Bob's face darkened; he damned beneath his breath. Then with a laugh
+he turned away. "I'm going to have some fun with that girl," he told
+himself; and on the way downstairs, her pretty face and figure in his
+mind, pleased himself with vicious anticipation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Excursions At A Dinner-Table.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two distressing reasons combined to compel Mrs. Chater to give
+Mary place at the evening meal. There was the aggravating fact that
+mothers'-helps, just as if they were ordinary people, must be fed; there
+was also the contingency that servants most strongly objected to serving
+a special meal--even "on a tray"--to one who was not of the family, yet
+who had airs above the kitchen.
+
+Except, then, when there were guests Miss Humfray must be accommodated
+at late dinner. Mrs. Chater considered it annoying, yet found in it
+certain comfortable advantages--as sympathy from friends: "Mustn't it
+be rather awkward sometimes, Mrs. Chater?" A plaintive shrug would
+illustrate the answer: "Well, it is, of course, very awkward sometimes;
+but one must put up with it. That class of person takes offence so
+easily, you know; and I always try to treat my lady-helps as well as
+possible."
+
+"I'm sure you do, Mrs. Chater. How grateful they should be!" And this
+time a sad little laugh would illustrate: "Oh, one hardly expects
+gratitude nowadays, does one?"
+
+Mary at dinner must observe certain rules, however. Certain dishes--a
+little out of season, perhaps, or classed as luxuries--were borne
+triumphantly past her by a glad parlour-maid acting upon a frown and
+a glance that Mrs. Chater signalled. Certain occasions, again, when
+private matters were to be discussed, were heralded by "Miss Humfray,"
+in an inflexion of voice that set Mary to fold her napkin and from the
+room.
+
+The girl greeted these early dismissals with considerable relief.
+Dinner was to her a nightly ordeal whose atmosphere swept appetite
+sky-high--took the savour from meats, dried the throat.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Descending to the dining-room upon this evening, her normal shrinking
+from the meal was considerably augmented. On the previous night--the
+first upon which Mr. Bob Chater's legs had partnered hers beneath the
+table--his eyes (like some bold gallant popping out on modesty whenever
+it dared peep from the doorway) had captured her glance each time
+she ventured look up from her plate. The episode of the nursery was
+equivalent to having slapped the gallant's face, and the re-encounter
+was proportionately uncomfortable.
+
+Taking her place she was by sheer nervousness impelled to meet his
+gaze--so heavily freighted it was as to raise a sudden flush to
+her cheek. Her eyes fled round to Mrs. Chater, received a look that
+questioned the blush, drove it duskier; through an uncomfortable
+half-hour she kept her face towards her plate.
+
+It was illuminative of the relations between husband and wife that Mrs.
+Chater carved; her husband dealt the sweets. The carving knife is the
+domestic sceptre of authority: when it is wielded by the woman, the man,
+you will find, is consort rather than king.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Upon the previous evening Mr. Bob Chater had led the conversation.
+To-night he was indisposed for the position--would not take it despite
+his mother's desperate attempts to board the train of his ideas and
+by it be carried to scenes of her son's adventures. A dozen times she
+presented her ticket; as often Bob turned her back at the barrier.
+
+It was a rare event this refusal of his to carry passengers. So loudly
+did he whistle as a rule as to attract all in the vicinity, convinced
+that there was an important train by which it would be agreeable to
+travel.
+
+For Mr. Bob Chater was a loud young man, emanating a swaggering air
+that the term "side" well fitted. To have some conceit of oneself is
+an excellent affair. The possession is a keel that gives to the craft a
+dignified balance upon the stream of life--prevents it from being sailed
+too close to mud; helps maintain stability in sudden gale. Other craft
+are keelless--they are canoes; bobbing, unsteady, likely to capsize in
+sudden emergency; prone to drift into muddy waters; liable to be swept
+anywhither by any current. Others, again--and Mr. Bob Chater was of
+these--are over-freighted upon one quarter or another: they sail with a
+list. Amongst well-trimmed boats these learn in time not to adventure,
+since here they are greeted with ridicule or with contempt; yet among
+the keelless fleets they have a position of some authority; holding
+it on the same principle as that by which among beggars he who has a
+coin--even though base--is accounted king.
+
+Bob Chater's list was ego-wards. His mighty "I"--I am, I do, I say, I
+know, I think--bulged from him, hanging from his voice, his glance, his
+gesture, his walk. In it Mrs. Chater bathed; to be carried along in the
+train of his mighty "I" was delectable to her. But to-night she could
+not effect the passage.
+
+A final effort she made to get aboard. "And in St. Petersburg!" she
+tempted. "I wonder if you ever saw the _Tsar_ when you were in St.
+Petersburg?"
+
+Bob drove her back: "St. Petersburg's a loathsome place."
+
+Mrs. Chater tried to squeeze through. "So _gay_, they say."
+
+Bob slammed the gate. "I wish you'd _tell_ me something instead of
+expecting _me_ to do all the talking. I want to hear all that's been
+going on here while I've been away, but I'm hanged if I can find out."
+
+A little mortified, Mrs. Chater said: "I've hardly seen you, dear,
+except at meals"--then threw the onus for her son's lack of local
+gossip upon her husband. Addressing him, "You've been with Bob all the
+morning," she told him. "I wonder you haven't given him all the news.
+But, there! I suppose you've done nothing but question him about what
+business he's done!"
+
+Mr. Chater, startled at the novelty of being drawn into table
+conversation while his son and his wife were present, dropped his
+spoon with a splash into his soup, wiped his coat, frowned at the
+parlour-maid, cleared his throat, and, to gain time to determine whether
+he had courage to say that which was burning within him, threw out an
+"Eh?" for his pursuing wife to Worry.
+
+Mrs. Chater pounced upon it; shook it. "What I said was that I suppose
+you've been doing nothing but question poor Bob about what he has done
+for the firm while he's been away."
+
+Mr. Chater nerved himself to declare his mind. "There wasn't very much
+to question him about," he said.
+
+His words--outcome of views forcibly expressed by his partners in
+Mincing Lane that morning--were the foolhardy action of one who pokes a
+tigress with a stick.
+
+The tigress shook herself. "Now, I wonder what you mean by _that_?" she
+challenged.
+
+Mr. Chater dropped the stick; precipitantly fled. "Of course it was all
+new to Bob," he granted, throwing a bone.
+
+Very much to his alarm the tigress ignored the bone; rushed after him.
+"All you seem to think about," cried she, "is making the boy slave. He's
+never had a proper holiday since he left school, and yet the very first
+time he goes off to see the world you must be fidgeting yourself to
+death all the time that he's not pushing the firm sufficiently; and
+immediately he comes back you must start cross-examining just as if he
+was an office-boy--not a word about his health or his pleasure. Oh, no!
+of course not!"
+
+Squirming in misery, Mr. Chater remarked that he had his partners to
+consider. "I'm only too glad that Bob should enjoy himself--only too
+glad. But you must remember, my dear, that part of his expenses for this
+trip was paid for by the firm--the _firm_. He was to call on foreign
+houses--"
+
+The tigress opened her mouth for fresh assault. Mr. Chater hurriedly
+thrust in a bone. "I don't say he hasn't done a great deal for us--not
+at all; I'd be the last to say that. What I say is that in duty to my
+partners I must take the first opportunity to ask him a few questions
+about it. Bob sees that himself; don't you, Bob?"
+
+"Oh, do let's keep shop off the table," Bob snarled. "Fair sickens me
+this never getting away from the office."
+
+"There you are!" Mrs. Chater cried. "There you are! Always business,
+business, business--that's what _I_ complain of."
+
+With astounding recklessness Mr. Chater mildly said: "My dear, you
+started it."
+
+Mrs. Chater quivered: "Ah, put it on me! Put it on me! Somehow you
+always manage to do that. Miss Humfray, when you've _quite_ finished
+your soup _then_ perhaps Clarence can take the plates."
+
+Mary's thoughts, to the neglect of her duty, had crept away beneath
+cover of these exchanges. Now she endured the disaster of amid silence
+clearing her plate with four pairs of eyes fixed upon her. Clarence
+removed the course; Mr. Chater, leaping as far as possible from the
+scene of his ordeal, broke a new topic.
+
+He enticed tentatively: "I saw a funny bit in the paper this morning."
+
+The tigress paused in the projection of another spring; sniffed
+suspiciously. "Oh!"
+
+"About that young Lord Comeragh," Mr. Chater hurried on, delighted
+with his success. "He was up at Marlborough Street police-court this
+morning--at least his butler was; of course his lordship wouldn't go
+himself--charged with furiously driving his motorcar; and who do you
+think was in the car with him at the time? Ah!"
+
+Mrs. Chater, naming a young lady who nightly advertised a pretty leg
+from the chorus of a musical comedy, announced that she would not be
+surprised if that was the person. Being told that it was none other, and
+that Mr. Chater had heard in the City that morning that Lady Comeragh
+was taking proceedings and had named the nicely-legged young lady the
+cause of infidelity, became highly astonished and supremely diverted.
+
+Conversation of a most delectable nature was by this means supplied. A
+pot of savoury gossip, flavoured with scandal, was upon the table; and
+Mary, lost to sight behind the cloud of steam that uprose as the three
+leaped about it, finished her dinner undisturbed.
+
+A nod bade her leave before dessert. As she passed out the signaller
+spoke. "I want to see you," Mrs. Chater said. "Wait for me in the
+drawing-room."
+
+The command was unusual, and Mary, waiting as bid, worried herself with
+surmises upon it. She prayed it did not mean she was to soothe Mr.
+Bob Chater's digestion with lullabies upon the piano; that it boded an
+unpleasant affair she was assured.
+
+She did not err. Mrs. Chater came to her, dyspeptic-flushed, sternly
+browed.
+
+"Miss Humfray, I have one thing to say to you, no more. No explanations,
+no excuses, please. I hear you have been trying to entertain my son
+in the nursery this evening. If that, or anything like it, occurs
+again--You understand?"
+
+"Mrs. Chater--"
+
+A massive hand signalled Stop. "I said 'not a word.' That is all. Good
+night."
+
+And Mary, crimson, to her room.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: of Love and of War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Notes On The Building Of Bridges.
+
+
+Within the limits of this short section of our story we shall cram two
+months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as
+they plod through it.
+
+This is well within our power, since the position of the novelist in
+regard to his characters may be compared with that of the destiny which
+in the largest comedy moves to and fro mankind its actors. As destiny
+moves its puppets, so the novelist moves his--upraising, debasing;
+favouring, tormenting; creating, wiping from the page.
+
+And of the pair the novelist is the more just. Has villainy in a
+novel ever gone unpunished? Has virtue ever failed of its reward?
+Your novelist is of all autocrats the most zealous of right and wrong.
+Villain may through two-thirds of his career enjoy his wicked pleasures,
+exceedingly prosper despite his baseness; but ever above him the cold
+eye of his judge keeps watch, and in the end he is apportioned the most
+horrible deserts that any could wish. Virtue may by the gods be hounded
+and harried till the reader's heart is wrung. But spare your tears;
+before Finis is written, down swoops the judge; the dogs are whipped
+off; Virtue is led to fair pastures and there left smiling.
+
+Contrasted with this autocrat of the printed page, the destiny whose
+comedy began with the world and is indefinitely continued makes sorry
+show. Here the wicked exceedingly flourish and keep at it to the end of
+their chapter; here virtue, battling with tremendous waves of adversity,
+is at last engulfed and miserably drowned. Truly, their fit rewards are
+apportioned, we are instructed, after death. But there is something of a
+doubt; the novelist, in regard to his characters, takes no risks.
+
+Upon another head, moreover, the novelist shows himself the more kindly
+autocrat. There is his power, so freely exercised, to bridge time.
+Whereas destiny makes us to watch those in whom we are interested plod
+every inch and step of their lives-over each rut, through each swamp,
+up each hill,-the novelist, upon his characters coming to places dull or
+too difficult, immediately veils from us their weary struggles. Destiny
+will never grant such a boon: we must watch our friends even when they
+bore us, even when they cause us pain. Yet this boon is the commonest
+indulgence of the novelist-as it now (to become personal) is mine.
+
+I bridge two months.
+
+And you must imagine this bridge as indeed a short and airy passage
+across a valley, down into which the persons of our story must carefully
+climb, across which they must plod, and up whose far side they must
+laboriously scramble to meet us upon the level ground. For we are
+much in the position, we novel readers, of village children curiously
+watching a caravan of gipsies passing through their district. The
+gipsies (who stand for our characters) plod wearily away along a bend
+of dusty road. The children cease following, play awhile; then by a
+short-cut through the fields overtake the travellers as again they come
+into the straight.
+
+So now with you and me. We have no need to follow our gipsies down
+the valley that takes two months in the traversing: we skip across the
+bridge.
+
+But, leaning over, we may take a shot or two at them as here and there
+they come into view.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Excursions Beneath The Bridge.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Thus we see the meeting again of George and Mary.
+
+When the agitated young man on the day following the cab accident
+had alighted from the omnibus at the bottom of Palace Gardens he was
+opposite No. 14 by half-past ten; waiting till eleven; going, convinced
+she did not live there; returning, upon the desperate hope that indeed
+she did; waiting till twelve--and being most handsomely rewarded.
+
+Her face signalled that she saw him, but her eyes gave no
+recognition--quickly were averted from him; the windows behind her had
+eyes, she knew.
+
+My agitated George, who had made a hasty step at the red flag that
+fluttered on her cheeks, as hastily stepped away beneath the chill of
+her glance; in tremendous perturbation turned and fled; in tremendous
+perturbation turned and pursued. In Regent's Park he saw her produce a
+brilliant pair of scarlet worsted reins, gay with bells; heard her hiss
+like any proper groom as tandemwise she harnessed David and Angela,
+those restive steeds.
+
+The equipage was about to start--she had cracked her whip, clicked her
+tongue--when with thumping heart, with face that matched the flaming
+reins, hat in hand he approached; spoke the driver.
+
+Her steeds turned about; with wide, unblinking eyes, searched his face
+and hers.
+
+"Your faces are very red," Angela said. "Are you angry?"
+
+"You have got very red faces," David echoed. "Are you in a temper?"
+
+Mary told them No; George said they were fine horses; felt legs; offered
+to buy them.
+
+His words purchased their hearts, which were more valuable.
+
+After the drive they would return to the stable, which was this seat,
+Mary told him; she could not stay to speak to him any longer. George
+declared he was the stable groom and would wait.
+
+Away they dashed at handsome speed, right round the inner circle;
+returned more sedately, a little out of breath. There had been,
+moreover, an accident: leader, it appeared, had fallen and cut his
+knees.
+
+"I shied at a motor," David explained, proud of the red blood now that
+the agony was past.
+
+George unharnessed them; dressed the wounds; scolded the coachman
+because no feed had been brought for the horses; promised that to-morrow
+he would bring some corn--bun corn.
+
+"Will you come to-morrow?" Angela asked.
+
+George glanced at Mary. "Yes," he told them.
+
+"Every to-morrow?"
+
+"Every to-morrow."
+
+Tremendous joy. Well delighted, they ran to a new game.
+
+Every to-morrow ran but to three: George and Mary had by then exchanged
+their histories. The pending examination was discussed, and Mary simply
+would not speak to him if, wasting his time, he came daily to idle with
+the children (so she expressed it). She would abandon the Park, she told
+him--would take her charges to a Square gardens of which they had the
+entry, where George might not follow.
+
+George did not press the point. As he wrestled out the matter in the
+hours between their meetings she was a fresh incentive to work. But once
+a week he must be allowed to come: here he was adamant, and she gladly
+agreeable. Saturday mornings was the time arranged.
+
+Mary had been fearful at this first re-encounter that it would be the
+last. The children would certainly tell their mother; Mrs. Chater would
+certainly make an end to the acquaintance.
+
+"Ask them not to tell," George had suggested.
+
+Impossible to think of such a thing: it would be to teach them deceit.
+
+"Well, I'll ask them."
+
+"But that would be just as bad. No--if they tell, it cannot be helped.
+And after all--"
+
+"Well, after all...?"
+
+"After all--what would it matter?"
+
+George said: "It would matter to me--a lot."
+
+He glanced at her, but she was looking after Angela and David. He asked:
+"Wouldn't it matter to you?"
+
+She flushed a little; answered, with her eyes still averted towards the
+children, "Why--why, of course I should mind. I mean--"
+
+But there are meanings for which it is difficult to find clothes in
+which they may decently take the air; and here the wardrobe of Mary's
+mind stood wanting.
+
+George enticed. "Do you mean you would be sorry not to--not to--"
+
+He also found his wardrobe deficient.
+
+Then Mary sent out her meaning, risking its decency. "Why, yes, I would
+be sorry not to see you again; why should I mind saying so? I have liked
+meeting you." And, becoming timid at its appearance, she hurried after
+it a cloak that would utterly disguise it. "I meet so few people," she
+said.
+
+But George was satisfied; she had said she would mind--nay, even though
+she had not spoken it, her manner assured him that indeed she would
+regret not again meeting him. It was a thought to hug, a memory to spur
+his energies when they flagged over his studies; it was a brush to paint
+his world in lively colours.
+
+Nor, as the future occurred, need either have had apprehension that the
+children would tell their mother and so set up an insurmountable barrier
+between them. A previous experience had warned Angela that it were
+wise to keep from her mother joys that were out of the ordinary run of
+events.
+
+Returning homeward that day, a little in advance of Mary, she therefore
+addressed her brother upon the matter.
+
+"Davie, I hope that man will come to-morrow."
+
+"I hope it, too."
+
+"We won't tell mother, Davie."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because mother'll say No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she _always_ says No, stupid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, Davie, you _are_ stupid! I don't know why; I only _know_. Don't you
+remember that lady that used to talk to Miss Humf'ay and play with us?
+Well, when we told mother, mother said No, didn't she? and the lady
+played with those abom'able red-dress children that make faces instead."
+
+"Will he play with the abom'able red-dress children that make faces if
+we tell mother?"
+
+"Of _course_ he will."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They always _do_, stupid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Angela ran back. "Oh, Miss Humf'ay, Davie is so _irrating!_ He will say
+_Why_ ...."
+
+There is a lesson for parents in that conversation, I suspect.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Leaning from our bridge we may content ourselves with a hurried shot
+at George, laboriously toiling at his books, sedulously attending his
+classes, with his Mary spending glorious Saturday mornings that, as
+they brought him nearer to knowledge of her, sent him from her yet more
+fevered; and, straining towards another point, we will focus for an
+instant upon Margaret his cousin, and Bill Wyvern, her adored.
+
+Mr. William Wyvern had most vigorously whacked about among events since
+that evening when his Margaret had composed her verses for George. At
+that time a fellow-student with George at St. Peter's Hospital, he had
+now abandoned the profession and was started upon the literary career
+(as he named it) that long he had wished to follow. The change had been
+come by with little difficulty. Professor Wyvern--that eminent biologist
+whose fame was so tremendous that even now a normally forgetful Press
+yet continued to paragraph him while he spent in absent-minded seclusion
+the ebb of that life which at the flood had so mightily advanced
+knowledge--Professor Wyvern was too much attached to his son, too docile
+in the hands of his loving wife, to gainsay any wish that Bill might
+urge and that Mrs. Wyvern might support.
+
+Bill achieved his end: the stories he had had printed in magazines,
+secretly shown to his proud mother, were now brought forth and chuckled
+over with glee by the Professor. The famous biologist struggled through
+one of the stories, vowed he had read them all, cheerily patted Bill's
+arm with his shaky old hand, and cheerfully abandoned the hope he had
+held of seeing his son a great surgeon.
+
+It was Bill's burning ambition to obtain a post upon a paper. Not until
+later did he learn that it is the men outside the papers who must have
+a turn for stringing sentences; that those inside are machines, cutting
+and serving the material with no greater interest in it than has the
+cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals. Meanwhile, the glimpse
+we may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging along his pen until clean
+paper became magic manuscripts; living upon a billow of hope when the
+envelopes were sped, submerged beneath oceans of gloom when they were
+returned; trembling into Fleet Street deliciously to inhale the thick
+smell of printer's ink that came roaring up from a hundred basements;
+with goggle eyes venerating the men who with assured steps passed in
+and out the swing-doors of castles he burned to storm; snatching brief
+moments for the boisterous society of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, those
+rare bull-terriers; and finally, expending with his Margaret moments
+more protracted--stealthy meetings, for the most part--in Mr. Marrapit's
+shrubbery.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+But two more peeps from our bridge need we take, and then our characters
+will be ready to meet us upon the further side.
+
+A glance from here will reveal to us Mrs. Major, that masterly woman,
+inscribing in her diary:
+
+"_Getting on with Mr. M. Should sue. Precip. fat._"
+
+Fill out the abbreviations to which Mrs. Major, in her diary, was prone,
+and we have:
+
+"_Getting on with Mr. Marrapit. Should succeed. Precipitancy fatal._"
+
+Succeed in what? To what would precipitancy of action be irreparable?
+Listen to a conversation that may enlighten us--spoken upon the lawn
+of Herons' Holt; Mr. Marrapit in his chair making a lap for the Rose of
+Sharon; Mrs. Major on a garden seat, crocheting.
+
+A stealthy peep assuring her that his eyes were not closed, Mrs. Major
+nerved herself with a deep breath; with a long sigh let it escape in the
+form, "A year ago!"--dropped hands upon her lap and gazed wistfully at
+the setting sun. She had seen the trick very successfully performed upon
+the stage.
+
+Mr. Marrapit turned his eyes upon her.
+
+"You spoke, Mrs. Major?"
+
+With an admirable start Mrs. Major appeared to gather in wandering
+fancies. "I fear I was thinking aloud, Mr. Marrapit. I beg pardon."
+
+"Do not. There is no occasion. You said 'A year ago.'"
+
+"Did I, Mr. Marrapit?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+A pause followed. The wistful woman felt that, were the thing to be done
+properly, the word lay with her companion. To her pleasure he continued:
+
+"To-day, then, is an anniversary?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Of a happy event, I trust?"
+
+Mrs. Major clasped her hands; spoke with admirable ecstasy. "Oh, Mr.
+Marrapit, of a golden--golden page in my life."
+
+"Elucidate," Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+Mrs. Major put into a whisper:
+
+"The day I came here."
+
+Mr. Marrapit slowly moved his head towards her.
+
+Her eyes were averted. "The time has passed swiftly," he said.
+
+Mrs. Major breathed: "For me it has flown on--on--" She searched wildly
+for a metaphor. "On wings," she concluded.
+
+Again there was a pause, and again Mrs. Major felt that for this passage
+to have fullest effect the word lay with Mr. Marrapit. But Mr. Marrapit,
+himself considerably perturbed, did not speak. The moments sped. Fearful
+lest they should distance beyond recovery the sentiments she felt she
+had aroused, Mrs. Major hastened to check them.
+
+She said musingly: "I wonder if they are right?"--sighed as though
+doubtful.
+
+"To whom do you refer?"
+
+"Why, the people who say that time flies when it is spent in pleasant
+company."
+
+"They are correct," Mr. Marrapit affirmed.
+
+"Oh, I do not doubt it for my part, Mr. Marrapit. I never knew what
+happiness was until I come here--came here. But if--" The masterly woman
+paused.
+
+"Continue" Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+The hard word was softly spoken. Mrs. Major's heart gave two little
+thumps; her plan clear before her, pushed ahead. "But if to you also,
+Mr. Marrapit, the time has seemed to fly, then--then Mr. Marrapit, my
+company has--has been agreeable to you?"
+
+Certainly there was a softness in Mr. Marrapit's tones as he made
+answer.
+
+"It has, Mrs. Major," he said, "it has. Into my establishment you have
+brought an air of peace that had for some time been lacking. Prior to
+your arrival, I was often worried by household cares that should not
+fall upon a man."
+
+Earnestly Mrs. Major replied: "Oh, I _saw_ that. I strove to lift them."
+
+"You have lifted them. You have attended not only my cats but my
+kitchen. I am now able often to enjoy such evenings as these. This peace
+around us illustrates the tranquillity you have brought--"
+
+The tranquillity was at that moment disastrously shattered. A bed of
+shrubbery lay within a few feet of where they sat. What had appeared
+to be a gnarled stump in its midst now quivered, broadened, fell into a
+line with the straightening back of Mr. Fletcher.
+
+Mr. Marrapit was startled and annoyed. "What are you doing there, sir?"
+
+"Snailin'," said Mr. Fletcher gloomily; exhibited his snail.
+
+"Snail elsewhere. Do not snail where I am."
+
+"I snails where there's snails."
+
+"Cease snailing. You must have been there hours."
+
+"What if I have? This garden's fair planted with snails."
+
+"Snail oftener. Depart."
+
+Mr. Fletcher moved a few steps; then turned. "I should like to ast if
+this is to be part of my regular job. First you says 'cease snailin','
+then you says 'snail oftener,' then you says 'snail elsewhere.'
+Snails take findin'. They don't come to me; I has to go to them. It's
+'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a lettuce-leaf."
+
+He gloomily withdrew.
+
+Mr. Marrapit's face was angrily twitching. The moment was not propitious
+for continuing her conversation, and with a little sigh Mrs. Major
+withdrew.
+
+But it was upon that night that she inscribed in her diary:
+
+_"Getting on with Mr. M. Should suc. Precip. fat."_
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A last peep, ere we hurry across the bridge, will disclose to us Mr. Bob
+Chater still pressing upon Mary the attentions which her position, in
+relation to his, made it so difficult for her to escape. Piqued by her
+attitude towards him, he was the more inflamed than ordinarily he would
+have been by the fair face and neat figure that were hers. Yet he made
+no headway; within a month of the date of his return to Palace Gardens
+was as far from conquest as upon that night in the nursery.
+
+To a City friend, Mr. Lemuel Moss, dining at 14 Palace Gardens with him
+one night, he explained affairs.
+
+"Dam' pretty girl, that governess of yours, or whatever she is," said
+Mr. Moss, biting the end from a cigar in the smoking-room after dinner.
+"Lucky beggar you are, Bob. My mater won't have even a servant in the
+place that wouldn't look amiss in a monkey-house. Knows me too well,
+unfortunately," and Mr. Moss, taking a squint at himself in the
+overmantel, laughed--well enough pleased.
+
+Bob pointed out that there was not so much luck about it as Mr. Moss
+appeared to think. "Never seen such a stand-offish little rip in all my
+life," he moodily concluded.
+
+"What, isn't she--?"
+
+Bob understood the unvoiced question. "Won't even let a chap have two
+minutes' talk with her," he said, "let alone anything else."
+
+Mr. Moss stretched himself along the sofa; rejoined: "Oh, rats! Rats!
+You don't know how to manage 'em--that's what it is."
+
+"I know as well as you, and a dashed sight better, I don't mind
+betting," Bob returned with heat. In some circles it is an aspersion
+upon a man's manliness to have it hinted that a petticoat presenting
+possibilities has not been ruffled.
+
+"Well, it don't look much like it. I caught her eye in the passage when
+we were coming downstairs, and you don't tell me--not much!"
+
+"Did you though?" Bob said. Himself he had never been so fortunate.
+
+"No mistake about it. Why, d'you mean to say you've never got as far as
+that, even?"
+
+"Tell you she won't look at me."
+
+Mr. Moss laughed. Enjoyed the "score" over his host for a few moments,
+and then:
+
+"Tell you what it is, old bird," said he, "you're going the wrong way
+about it. I know another case just the same. Chap out Wimbledon way.
+His people kept a girl--topper she was, too--dark. He was always messing
+round just like you are, and she was stand-offish as a nun. One night
+he came home early, a bit screwed--people out--girl in. Met her in the
+drawing-room. Almost been afraid to speak to her before. Had a bit of
+fizz on board him now--_you_ know; didn't care a rip for anybody. Gave
+her a smacking great kiss, and, by Gad!--well, she _was_ all right. Told
+him she'd always stood off up to then because she was never quite sure
+what he meant--afraid he didn't mean anything, and that she might get
+herself into no end of a row if she started playing around. Same with
+this little bit of goods, I'll lay."
+
+Bob was interested. "Shouldn't be surprised if you're right," he said;
+and moodily cogitated upon the line of action prescribed.
+
+Mr. Moss offered to bet that where girls were concerned he was never
+far wrong. "Slap-dash style is what they like," he remarked, and with a
+careless "It's all they understand" dismissed the subject.
+
+It remained, however, in Bob's mind throughout the evening; sprang
+instantly when, after breakfast upon the following day, he caught a
+glimpse of Mary as he prepared for the City.
+
+Standing for a moment in the hall, it occurred to him that this very
+evening offered the opportunity he sought. Mr. and Mrs. Chater were
+to dine at the house of a neighbour. The invitation had included
+Bob--fortunately he had refused it. Returning to the morning-room, "I
+shan't be in to-night," he told his mother.
+
+"Then I needn't order any dinner for you?"
+
+"No." He hung about irresolute, then lit a cigar, and between the puffs,
+"Shall you be late?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Sure to be," Mrs. Chater told him. "It's going to be a big bridge
+drive, you know. We shan't get back before midnight. Don't sit up for
+us, dear."
+
+Bob inhaled a long breath from his cigar, exhaled it deliciously. The
+chance for the slap-dash style was at hand.
+
+"Oh, I'll be later than you. Lemmy Moss has got a bachelors' party on.
+We're going to have a billiard match."
+
+"That's capital then, dear. I shall let the servants go to Earl's
+Court--I've promised them a long time."
+
+Bob whistled gaily as he mounted his 'bus for the City. The opportunity
+was surely exceptional.
+
+At eight o'clock he returned; noiselessly let himself in.
+
+The gas in the hall burned low. Beneath the library door gleamed a
+stronger light. Bob turned the handle.
+
+Mary was curled in a big chair with a book. Certainly the opportunity
+was exceptional.
+
+At the noise of his entry she sprang to her feet with a little cry. "Oh,
+dear!" she exclaimed: "what a fright you gave me!"
+
+Bob pushed the door. He laughed. "Did I?"; came towards her. "Are you
+all alone? What a shame!"
+
+"Minnie is in the kitchen, I think. Mrs. Chater said you wouldn't be in
+to-night."
+
+"Why do you think I came?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I came to see you."
+
+She gave a nervous little laugh and made to pass him.
+
+Bob fell back a pace, guarding the door. "Don't you think that was
+thoughtful of me?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean. There was no need."
+
+"What! No need! You all alone like this when all the rest are enjoying
+themselves!"
+
+"So was I. A long evening with a book."
+
+She had fallen back as he, speaking, had slowly advanced.
+
+Now the great chair in which she had been seated was alone between them.
+
+"Oh, books! Books are rot." He stepped around the chair.
+
+She fell back; was cornered between the hearth and a low table.
+
+Bob dropped into the chair; boldly regarded her; his eyes as expressive
+of his slap-dash intentions as he could make them: "Look here, I want
+you to enjoy yourself for once. I'm going to take you to a music-hall or
+somewhere."
+
+He stretched a foot; touched her.
+
+She drew back close against the mantelpiece, her agitation very evident.
+
+"Well, don't that please you?"
+
+"You know it is impossible."
+
+Bob paid no regard. This was that same diffidence with which the chap
+near Wimbledon had had to contend.
+
+"We'll come out of the show early and have a bit of supper and be back
+before half-past eleven. Who's to know? Now, then?"
+
+"It's very kind of you. I know you mean it kindly--"
+
+"Of course I do--"
+
+"But I'd rather not."
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+She was desperately afraid. Her face, the shaking of her hand where it
+was pressed back against the wall, and the catch in her voice advertised
+her apprehension. She was afraid of this big young man confidently
+lolling before her.
+
+She said weakly: "It would not be right."
+
+Bob sat up. "Is that all?" he laughed. His hands were upon the arms of
+the chair, and he made to pull himself up towards her.
+
+She saw her mistake. "No," she cried hurriedly--"no; I would not go with
+you in any case."
+
+A shadow flickered upon Bob's face. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean what I say. Please let me pass."
+
+"I want to be friends with you. Why can't you let me?"
+
+"Please let me pass. Mr. Chater."
+
+Bob lay back. He said with a laugh, "Well, I'm not stopping you, am I?"
+
+She hesitated a moment. The passage between the table and the long
+chair was narrow. But truly he was not stopping her--so far as one might
+judge.
+
+She took her skirts about her with her left hand; stepped forward; was
+almost past the chair before he moved.
+
+Then he flung out a hand and caught her wrist, drawing her.
+
+"Now!" he cried, and his voice was thick.
+
+She gave a half-sound of dismay--of fear; tried to twist free. Bob
+laughed; pulled sharply on her arm. She was standing sideways to
+him--against the sudden strain lost her balance and half toppled across
+the chair.
+
+As Bob reflected, when afterwards feeding upon the incident, had he not
+been as unprepared as she for her sudden stumble, he would have made--as
+he put it--a better thing of it. As it was, her face falling against
+his, he was but able to give a half kiss when she had writhed herself
+free and made across the room.
+
+But that embrace of her had warmed Bob's passions. Springing up, he
+caught her as she fumbled with the latch; twisted her to him.
+
+For a moment they struggled, he grasping her wrists and pressing towards
+her.
+
+With the intention of encircling her waist he slipped his hold. But
+panic made her the quicker. Her outstretched arms held him at bay for
+a breathing space; then as he broke them down she dealt him a swinging
+blow upon the face that staggered him back a step, his hand to his
+cheek.
+
+Mrs. Chater opened the door.
+
+"Oh, he kissed me! He kissed me!" Mary cried.
+
+Bob said very slowly, "You--infernal--little--liar."
+
+Mrs. Chater glowered upon Mary with cruel eyes. "It was a fortunate
+thing," she said coldly, "that a headache brought me home. Go to your
+room, miss."
+
+We may hurry across the bridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Excursions In Love.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Saturday was the day immediately following this scene.
+
+George, on a 'bus carrying him towards Regent's Park, was in spirit
+at one with the gay freshness that gave this September morning a
+spring-like air.
+
+A week of torrid heat, in which London crawled, groaned, and panted, had
+been wiped from the memory by an over-night thunderstorm that burst the
+pent-up dams of heaven and loosed cool floods upon the staring streets.
+No misty drizzle nor gusty shower it had been, but a strong, straight,
+continuous downpour, seemingly impelled by tremendous pressure. Dusty
+roofs, dusty streets, dusty windows it had scoured and scrubbed and
+polished; torrents had poured down the gutters--whenever temporarily the
+pressure seemed to relax, the ears of wakeful Londoners were sung to by
+the gurgle and rush of frantic streams driving before them the collected
+debris of many days.
+
+Upon this morning, in the result, a tempest might have swept the town
+and found never a speck of dust to drive before it. The very air had
+been washed and sweetened; and London's workers, scurrying to and from
+their hives, seemed also to have benefited by some attribute of the
+downpour that tinted cheeks, sparkled eyes, and, rejuvenating limbs,
+gave to them a new sprightliness of movement.
+
+George, from his 'bus, caught many a bright eye under a jaunty little
+hat; gave each back its gleam from the depths of gay lightness that
+filled his heart. Nearing the Park he alighted; made two purchases. From
+a confectioner bun-corn for David and Angela, those ramping steeds;
+from a florist the reddest rose that an exhaustive search of stock could
+discover.
+
+Mary had from him such a rose at their every meeting. She might not wear
+it back to Palace Gardens--it would not flourish beneath Mrs. Chater's
+curiosity; but while they were together she would tuck it in her bosom,
+and George tenderly would bear it home and set it in a vase before him
+to lend him inspiration as he worked.
+
+It is almost certain that such a part is one for which flowers were
+especially designed.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Those splendid steeds, David and Angela, having been duly exercised,
+groomed, and turned out to browse upon bun-corn, George rushed at once
+upon the matter that was singing within him.
+
+Where he sat with his Mary they were sheltered from any but chance
+obtrusion. She had taken off her gloves, and George gave her hands, as
+they lay in her lap, a little confident pat. It was the tap of the baton
+with which the conductor calls together his orchestra--for this was a
+song that George was about to tune, very confident that the chords of
+both instruments that should give the notes were in a harmony complete.
+
+He said: "Mary, do you know what I am going to talk about?"
+
+She had been a little silent that morning, he had thought; did not
+answer now, but smiled.
+
+He laid a hand upon both hers. "You must say 'yes.' You've got to say
+'yes' about twenty times this morning, so start now. Do you know what
+I'm going to talk about?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No objections this time?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He laughed; gave her hand a little smack of reproof. (You who have loved
+will excuse these lovers' absurdities.) "No, no; you are only to say
+'yes' when I tell you. No objections to the subject this morning?"
+
+His Mary told him "No."
+
+"Couldn't have a better morning for it, could we?"
+
+She took a little catch at her breath.
+
+George dropped the banter in his tone. "Nothing wrong to-day, is there,
+dear? Nothing up?"
+
+How sadly wrong everything in truth was she had determined not to
+tell him until she more certainly knew its extent. She shook her head;
+reassuringly smiled.
+
+"Well, that's all right--there couldn't be on a morning like this. Now
+we've got to begin at the beginning. Mary, I planned it all out last
+night--all this conversation. We've got to begin at the beginning--Do
+you know I've never told you yet that I love you? You knew it, though,
+didn't you, from the first, the very first? Tell me from when?"
+
+"George, this is awfully foolish, isn't it?"
+
+"Never mind. It's jolly nice. It's necessary, too. I've read about it.
+It's always done. Tell me from when you knew I loved you."
+
+"After last Saturday."
+
+"Oh, Mary! Much earlier than _that_! You must have!"
+
+"Well, I thought perhaps you--you cared after that first day when you
+came here."
+
+"Not before that?"
+
+She laughed. "Come, how _could_ I? Why, I'd hardly seen you."
+
+"Well, I did, anyway," George told her. "I loved you from the very
+minute you shot out of the cab that day. There! But even this isn't the
+proper thing. I've been promising myself all night to say four words to
+you--just four. Now I'm going to say them: Mary, I love you."
+
+She looked in his eyes for a moment, answering the signal that shone
+thence; and then she laughed that clear pipe of mirth which was so
+uniquely her own possession.
+
+"Oh, I say, you mustn't do that," George cried. He was really perturbed.
+
+"I can't help it. You are so utterly foolish."
+
+"I'm not. It's the proper thing. I tell you I've planned it all out. I
+love you. I've never said it to you before. Now it's your turn."
+
+"But what on earth am I to say?"
+
+"You've got to say that you love me."
+
+"You're making a farce of it."
+
+"No, I tell you I've planned it all out. I can't go on till you've said
+it."
+
+"You can't expect me to say: 'George, I love you.' It's ridiculous. It's
+like a funny story."
+
+"Oh, never mind what it's like. Do be serious, Mary. How can I be sure
+you love me if you won't tell me?"
+
+For the first moment since its happening the thought of Bob Chater and
+of Mrs. Chater passed completely from Mary's mind. She looked around:
+there was no soul in sight. She listened: there was no sound. She
+clasped her fingers about his; leaned towards him, her face upturned....
+
+He kissed her upon the lips....
+
+"The plans," said George after a moment, "have all gone fut. I never
+thought of that way."
+
+"It's much better," Mary said.
+
+"The other's not a patch upon it," said George.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+You must conjecture of what lovers think when, following their first
+kiss, they sit silent. It is not a state that may be written down in
+such poor words as your author commands. For the touch of lips on lips
+is the key that turns the lock and gives admission to a world dimly
+conceived, yet found to have been wrongly conceived since conceived
+never to be so wonderful or so beautiful as it does prove. Nor, ever
+again, once the silence is broken and speech is found, has that world an
+aspect quite the same. For the door that divides this new world from the
+material world can never from the inside be closed. It is at first--for
+the space of that silence after the first kiss--pushed very close by
+those who have entered; but, soon after, the breath of every rushing
+moment blows it further and further ajar. Drab objects from the outer
+world drift across the threshold and obtrude their presence--vagabond
+tramps in a rose-garden, unpleasant, marring the surroundings, soiling
+the atmosphere. Cares drift in, worldly interests drift in; in drift
+smudgy, soiled, unpleasant objects brushing the door yet wider upon
+its hinges till it stands back to its furthest extent and the
+interior becomes at one with the outer world. The process is gradual,
+indiscernible. When completed the knowledge of what has been done dawns
+suddenly. One knocks against an intruder especially drab, starts into
+wakefulness to rub the bruise, and looking around exclaims, "And this is
+love!"
+
+Well, it was love. But a rose-garden will not long remain beautiful if
+no care is taken of what may intrude.
+
+If we but stand sentinel at the door, exercising a nice discretion, the
+garden may likely remain unsoiled, its air uncontaminated.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+George said that though across the first portion of the scheme he had so
+laboriously planned he had been shot at lightning speed by the vehicle
+of Mary's action, its latter portion yet remained to be discussed.
+"We've got to marry, dearest--and as quick as quick. We can't go on like
+this--seeing each other once a week. No, not even if it were once a day.
+It's got to be always."
+
+"Always and always, dear," Mary said softly.
+
+Women are more intoxicated than men by the sudden atmosphere of that
+new world. The awe of it was still upon her. The light of love comes
+strongly to men, with the sensation of bright sunshine; to women as
+through stained glass windows, softly.
+
+She continued: "Fancy saying 'always' and being glad to say it! I never
+thought I could. Do you know--will this frighten you?--I am one of those
+people who dread the idea of 'always.' I never could bear the idea of
+looking far, far ahead and not seeing any end. It frightened me. Ever
+since father died, I've been like that--even in little things, even in
+tangible things. When we go to the seaside in the summer I never
+can bear to look straight across the sea. That gives me the idea of
+always--of long, long miles and miles without a turn or a stop. I
+want to think every day, every hour, that what I am doing can't go
+on--mustchange. It suffocates me to think otherwise. I want to jump out,
+to scream."
+
+Then she gave that laugh that seldom failed to come to her relief,
+and said: "It's a sort of claustrophobia--isn't that the word?--on a
+universal scale. But why is it? And why am I suddenly changed now? Why
+does the thought of always, always, endless always with you, bring a
+sort of--don't laugh, dear--a sort of bliss, peace?"
+
+This poor George of mine, who was no deep thinker, nevertheless had the
+reason pat. He said:
+
+"I think because the past has all been unhappy and because this, you
+know, means happiness."
+
+She gave a little sigh; told him: "Yes, that's it--happiness."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+And now they fell to making plans as mating birds build nests. Here a
+bit of straw and there a tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred
+of wool--George would do this and George would do that; here the
+house would be and thus would they do in the house. Probabilities were
+outraged, obstacles vaulted.
+
+Castles that are builded in the air spring into being quicker than
+Aladdin's palace--bricks and mortar, beams and stones are featherweight
+when handled in the clouds; every piece is so dovetailed, marked and
+numbered that like magic there springs before the eye the shining
+whole--pinnacled, turreted, embattled.
+
+Disaster arrives when the work is completed. "There!" we say, standing
+back, a little flushed and out of breath with the excitement of the
+thing. "There! There's a place in which to live! Could any existence be
+more glorious?" And then we advance a step and lean against the walls
+to survey the surrounding prospect. It is the fatal action. The material
+body touches the aerial structure and down with a crash the castle
+comes--back we pitch into the foundations, and thwack, bump, thwack,
+comes the masonry tumbling about us, bruising, wounding.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+George had built the castle. Mary had sat by twittering and clapping her
+hands for glee as higher and higher it rose. He knew for a fact, he told
+her, that his uncle had not expended upon his education much more than
+half the money left him for the purpose. He was convinced that by
+hook or by crook he could obtain the 400 pounds that would buy him the
+practice at Runnygate of which the Dean had told him. They would have
+a little house there--the town would thrive--the practice would
+nourish--in a year--why, in a year they would likely enough have to be
+thinking of getting a partner! And it would begin almost immediately!
+In three weeks the examination would be held. He could not fail to
+pass--then for the 400 pounds and Runnygate!
+
+And then, unhappily, George leaned against this castle wall; provoked
+the crash.
+
+"Till then, dear," he said, "you will stay with these Chater people.
+I know you hate it; but it will be only a short time, a few weeks at
+most."
+
+Instantly her gay twittering ceased. Trouble drove glee from her eyes.
+Memory chased dreams from her brain. Distress tore down the gay colours
+from her cheeks. She clasped her hands; from her seat half rose.
+
+"Oh!" she cried; and again, "Oh! I had forgotten!"
+
+"Forgotten? Forgotten what?"
+
+"Dearest, I should have told you at the beginning, but I could not. I
+wanted to wait until I knew. I have not seen her yet this morning."
+
+My startled George was becoming pale. "Knew what? Seen whom? What do you
+mean?"
+
+She said, "No, I won't tell you. I won't spoil all this beautiful
+morning we have spent. I will wait till next week."
+
+"Mary, what do you mean? Wait till next week? No. You must tell me now.
+How could I leave you like this, knowing you are in some trouble? What
+has happened? You must tell. You must. I insist."
+
+"Ah, I will." Her agitation, as her mind cast back over the events of
+the previous night, was enhanced by the suddenness of the change from
+the sunshine in which she had been disporting to the darkness that now
+swept upon her. She was as a girl who, singing along a country lane, is
+suddenly confronted from the hedgeside by some ugly tramp.
+
+She said, "You know that young Mr. Chater?"
+
+Dark imaginings clouded upon George's brow. "Yes," he said. "Yes;
+well--?"
+
+"Last night--" And then she gave him the history of events.
+
+This simple George of mine writhed beneath it.
+
+It was a poison torturing his system, twisting his brow, knotting his
+hands. Her presence, when she finished, did not stay his cry beneath
+his rackings: he was upon his feet. "By Gad," he cried, "I'll thrash the
+life out of him! The swine! By Gad, I'll kill him!"
+
+She laid a hand upon his arm. "Georgie, dear," she pleaded. "Don't,
+don't take it like that. I haven't finished."
+
+Roughly he turned upon her. "Well, what else? What else?"
+
+"I haven't seen him since. He went away early this morning for the
+week-end. And I have not seen Mrs. Chater again either. I am to see her
+this afternoon. She sent me word to take the children as usual and that
+she would see me at three."
+
+My poor George bitterly broke out: "Oh! Will she? That's kind of her!
+That's delightful of her! Are you going to see her?"
+
+"Of course I shall see her."
+
+"'Of course'! 'Of course'! I don't know what you mean by talking in that
+tone. You won't stay there another minute! That's what you'll tell her
+if you insist upon seeing her. If you had behaved properly you'd have
+walked out of the house there and then when it happened last night."
+
+Spite of her trouble Mary could not forbear to laugh. "Dearest, how
+could I?"
+
+But this furious young man could not see her point. His fine passion
+swept him above contingencies.
+
+"Well, then, this morning," he laid down. "The first thing this morning
+you should have gone." He supplied detail: "Packed your box, and called
+a cab and gone."
+
+His dictatory air drew from her another sad little laugh.
+
+"Oh, George, dear," she cried, "gone where?"
+
+It was a bucket of water dashed upon his flames, and for a moment they
+flickered beneath it--then roared again: "_Where? Anywhere!_"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "you are stupid! You don't see--you don't understand!
+Easy to say 'anywhere,' but where--_where_? I have no money. I have no
+friends--I--"
+
+The knowledge of her plight and her outlook crowded upon her speech;
+broke her voice.
+
+Her distracted George in a moment had her hands in his. "Oh, my dear,"
+he cried, "what a fool I am! What a beast to storm like that! I was
+so wild. So mad. Of course you had to think before you moved. You were
+right, of course you were right. But, my darling, I'm right now. You see
+that, don't you? You can't stay a moment longer with those beasts."
+
+And then he laughed grimly. "Especially," he added, "after what I'm
+going to do to Master Bob."
+
+She too laughed. The thought of Bob learning manners beneath the tuition
+of those sinewy brown hands that were about hers was very pleasant to
+her. But it was a pleasure that must be denied--this she saw clearly as
+the result of weary tossings throughout the night; and now she set about
+the task of explaining it to George.
+
+She said: "Oh, my dear, you're not right. Georgie, I can't go--if Mrs.
+Chater will let me stay I must stay."
+
+He tried to be calm, to understand these women, to understand his Mary.
+"But why?" he asked. "Why?"
+
+"Dearest, because I must bridge over the time until you are ready to
+take me. You see that?"
+
+"Of course. But why there? You can easily get another place."
+
+"Oh, easily! If you had been through it as I have been! The first thing
+they ask you for is a reference from your former situation. Think what a
+reference Mrs. Chater would give me!"
+
+He would not agree. He plunged along in his blundering, man fashion:
+"In time you could get a place where they would not ask questions--or
+rather--yes, of course this is it. Tell them frankly all that happened.
+Who could see you and not believe you? Tell them everything. There must
+be some nice people in the world."
+
+"There may be. But they don't want helps or governesses--in my
+experience." The little laugh she gave was sadly doleful.
+
+He was still angry. "You can't generalise like that. There are thousands
+who would believe you and be glad to take you. Suppose you have to wait
+a bit--well, you have a little money that she must give you; and I--oh,
+curse my poverty!--I can borrow, and I can sell things."
+
+The help that a man would give a woman so often has lack of sympathy; he
+is unkind while meaning to be kind. George's obdurateness, coming when
+she was most in need of kisses, hurt her. Trouble welled in her eyes.
+
+"I wouldn't do that," she said. "For one thing, we want all our money.
+Why throw it away to get me out of a place in which I shall only be
+for a few weeks longer? Another thing--another thing--" She dragged
+a ridiculous handkerchief from her sleeve; dabbed her brimming eyes.
+"Another thing--I'm afraid to risk it. I'm afraid to be alone and
+looking for a place again. There--now you know. I'm a coward."
+
+She fell to sniffing and sobbing; and her wretched George, cursing
+himself for the grief he had evoked, cursing Bob Chater, cursing Mrs.
+Chater, cursing his uncle Marrapit, put his arms about her and drew her
+to him. She quivered hysterically, and he frantically moaned that he
+was a beast, a brute, unworthy; implored forgiveness; entreated calm; by
+squeezing her with his left arm and with his right hand dabbing her eyes
+with her handkerchief, screwed to a pathetic little damp ball, strove to
+stem the flood that alarmingly welled from them.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+It was an awful position for any young man; and just as my poor George,
+distinguished in nothing, inept, bewildered, was in a mood murderous to
+the whole world save this anguished fairy, a wretched old gentleman
+must needs come sunning himself down the path, making for this seat with
+hobbling limbs.
+
+He collapsed upon it, and then, glancing to his right, was struck with
+palpitations by sight of the heaving back of a young woman over whose
+shoulder glared at him with hideous ferocity the face of a young man.
+
+"Dear me, dear me," said he; "nothing wrong, sir, I trust?"
+
+"Go away!" roared my distracted George.
+
+"Eh?" inquired the old gentleman, horribly startled.
+
+"Go away! Go away!"
+
+The fire of those baleful eyes, of that bellowing voice, struck terror
+into the aged heart. He clutched his stick.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear," said he; hobbled away at a speed dangerous to his
+life and limbs to seek protection of a park-keeper.
+
+The sobs grew longer, less hysterical: changed into long "ohs" of
+misery; died away.
+
+"There, there," said George, patting, dabbing. "There, there."
+
+With a final frantic sniff she recovered her self-possession.
+
+"I'm a little f--fool," said she.
+
+"I'm a brute," said George.
+
+The bitter knowledge nerved each to better efforts. Calm reigned.
+
+Mary said, "Now you must listen and believe, dear."
+
+"Let me have your hand, then."
+
+She gave it with a little confiding, snuggling movement, and she
+continued: "You must believe, because I have thought it all out, whereas
+to you it is new. If I were a proper-spirited girl"--she rebuked his
+negation with a gesture--"if I were a proper-spirited girl I know I
+should leave Mrs. Chater at once--walk out and not care what I might
+suffer rather than stay where I had been insulted. Girls in books would
+do it. Oh, Georgie, this isn't books. This is real. I have been through
+it, and I would die sooner than face it again. You know--I have told
+you--what it is like being alone in cheap lodgings in London. Afraid of
+people, dear. Afraid of men, afraid of women. I couldn't, could not go
+through it again. And after all-don't you see?--if Mrs. Chater will
+let me stay, what have I to mind? I shall be better off than before, if
+anything. Mrs. Chater has always been--well, sharp. She may be a little
+worse--there's nothing in that. But this Bob Chater, since he came, has
+been the worst part of it. And as things are now, his mother watchful
+and he--what shall I say? angry, ashamed--why, he will pay no further
+attention to me. Come, am I not right? Isn't it best?--if only she will
+let me stay."
+
+"I don't like it," George said. "I don't like it."
+
+"Dearest, nor I. But we can't, can't have what we like, and this will be
+the best of the nasty things. For so short a time, too. I'm quite bright
+about it. Am I not? Look at me."
+
+George looked. Then he said, "All right, old girl."
+
+She clapped her hands. "Only one thing more. You mustn't seek out--you
+mustn't touch the detestable Bob."
+
+With the gloom of one relinquishing life's greatest prize George said,
+"I suppose I mustn't." He added, "I tell you what, though. You mustn't
+interfere with this. I'll save it up for him. The day I take you out and
+marry you I'll pull him out--and pay him."
+
+They parted upon the promises that Mary would write that evening to tell
+him of the result of her interview with Mrs. Chater, and that, in the
+especial circumstances, he might come to see her in the Park for just
+two minutes on Monday morning.
+
+And each went home, thinking, not of that portending interview with Mrs.
+Chater, but upon the love they had declared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+At ten o'clock that night Mary took up her pen.
+
+"First, my dear, to tell you that it is all right. I may stay. I had
+lunch with the children in the nursery, and just as we had finished
+a maid came to say that Mrs. Chater would see me in the study. Down I
+crawled, wishing that I was the heroine of a novel who would have passed
+firmly down the stairs and into the room, 'pale, but calm and serene.'
+Oh! I was pale enough, I feel sure. But as to serene!--my heart was
+flapping about just like a tin ventilator in a wind, and I was jumpy all
+over. You see what a coward am I.
+
+"Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her. Of that I am convinced. She
+sat, enormous, thunder-browed, bolt upright in a straight chair. I stood
+and quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books the consciousness of
+virtue gives one complete self-possession in the face of any accusation,
+however terrible. In books it is the accuser of the innocent who is ill
+at ease. Oh, don't believe it! Mrs. Chater had the self-possession, I
+had the jim-jams.
+
+"'I have not seen you since last night,' she said.
+
+"I gave a kind of terrified little squeak. I had no words.
+
+"'Your version of what happened I do not wish to hear,' she went on.
+
+"This relieved me, because for the life of me I could not have told her
+had she wished to hear it. So I gave another little mouse-squeak.
+
+"'My son has told me.' Her voice was like a deep bell. 'How you can
+reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you have received at my
+hands, here beneath my roof'--she was very dramatic at this point--'I do
+not know.'
+
+"Nor did I--but not in the way she meant. I was thinking how ignoble was
+my meek attitude in light of what had happened. But you don't know what
+it was like, facing that woman and dreading the worse fate of being
+turned out into this awful London again. Another wretched little squeak
+slipped out of me, and she went on.
+
+"'My boy,' said she, 'has implored me to overlook this matter. My
+boy has declared there were faults on both sides' (!!!!). 'If I acted
+rightly as a mother, what would I do?'
+
+"I didn't tell her, Georgie. Could I tell her that if she acted rightly
+as a mother she would box her boy's fat ears until his nose bled? I
+couldn't. I squeaked instead.
+
+"'If I acted rightly as a mother,' said she, 'I would send you away. I
+am not going to.'
+
+"I squeaked.
+
+"'I choose to believe that your behaviour in this matter was a slip. I
+believe the episode will be a lesson to you. That is all. Go.' I goed."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George, when he had read thus far, was broadly grinning. Obviously
+Mrs. Chater was not such a bad sort after all. If--as no doubt--she
+implicitly believed her son's version of the incident, then her attitude
+towards Mary was, on the whole, not so bad.
+
+But his Mary, when she had written thus far, laid down her pen, put her
+pretty head upon the paper and wept.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" she choked. "There, that will make you think it was all
+right. You shall never know--never--what really happened. Oh, Georgie,
+Georgie, come very quick and take me away! How can I go on living with
+these beasts? Oh, Georgie, be quick, be quick!"
+
+Then this silly Mary with handkerchief, with india-rubber, and with
+pen-knife erased a stain of grief that had fallen upon her pretty story;
+sniffed back her tears; lifted again her pen.
+
+Now she wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been so
+very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference between
+that first portion so neatly penned--parti-coloured words showing where
+the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled and planned at
+every syllable--and this where emotion sped the thoughts.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"So that's all right" (she wrote), "and now we've only got to wait, a
+few, few weeks. Dearest, will they fly or will they drag? What does love
+do to time, I wonder--whip or brake?--speed or pull? Georgie mine, I
+feel I don't care. If the days fly I shall be riding in them--galloping
+to you, wind in the face; shouting them on; standing up all flushed with
+the swing and the rush of it; waving to the people we go thundering past
+and gazing along the road where soon I will see you--nearer and nearer
+and nearer.
+
+"And if the days creep? Well, at first, after that picture, the thought
+seems melancholy, unbearable. But that is wrong. The realisation will
+not be unbearable. If they creep, why, then I shall lie in them, very
+comfortable, very happy; dreaming of you, seeing you, speaking with you,
+touching you. Yes, touching you. For, my dear, you are here in the
+room with me as I write. I look up just to my right, and there you are,
+Georgie mine; sitting on the end of my bed, smiling at me. You have
+not left me, my dear, since we parted on the seat this morning. Why, I
+cannot even write that it is only in imagination that I see you. For me
+it is not imagination. I do, do see you, Georgie mine. You are part of
+me, never to leave me.
+
+"How new, how different, love makes life! Everything I do, everything
+I see, everything I hear has a new interest because it is something to
+share with you, something to save up and tell you. I am in trouble
+(you understand that I am not, shall never be again; this is only
+illustration--you must read it 'if I were in trouble'). I am in trouble,
+and you are sharing it with me, sympathising so that trouble is an
+unkind word for what is indeed but an opportunity acutely to feel
+the joy of loving and being loved. I am happy, and the happiness is a
+thousandfold increased because it comes to me warmed through you. I
+am amused, and it is something to tell you and to laugh at the more
+heartily by the compelling sound of your own laughter.
+
+"Everything is new. Why, my very clothes are new. Look, here in my left
+hand is my handkerchief. Only a handkerchief this morning, and to other
+eyes still but a handkerchief. But to mine! Why, you have had it in your
+hand and indeed it speaks to me of you. Here you laid your arm, this was
+the side upon which you touched me as we sat together, here in my hair
+your fingers caressed me--each and all they are new--different from this
+morning.
+
+"Are you thinking me silly when I write like this, or are you dreadfully
+bored with it? I can't help it, Georgie; love means so much more to us
+women than to you men. It is essentially different. When a man in
+love thinks of the woman he thinks of her as 'mine,' and that thrills
+him--possession. But when the woman thinks of him she thinks of
+herself as 'his,' and that moves every fibre of her, strikes every
+chord--capitulation. The man expresses love by saying 'You are mine';
+the woman by 'I am yours.' That is how it is with me. I sing to myself
+that I am yours, yours, yours. I want you to have every bit of me. I
+want you to know every thought I have. If I had bad thoughts, I would
+tell them you. If I had desires, I would make them known and would
+not blush. I want you to see right into my very heart. I want to lay
+everything before you--to come to you bound and naked. That is what love
+is with women, dear. Some of us resist it, school it otherwise--but I do
+not think they are happy; not really happy. It is our nature to be as I
+have said, and to fight against nature is wearying work, leaving marks:
+it is to get tossed aside out of the sun.
+
+"Are you thinking me unutterably tiresome and foolish?--but you will not
+think that; because you love me.
+
+"Ah, let me write that again!-because you love me. And let me write
+this: I love you.
+
+"My dear, is not that curious?--the precious joy of saying 'I love you,'
+and the constant yearning to hear it said. Not lovers alone have this
+joy and this desire. Mothers teach their babies to say 'I love you,
+mother,' and constantly and constantly they ask, 'Do you love me, baby?
+'--yes, and are not satisfied until they have the assurance. And babies,
+too, will get up suddenly from their toys to run to say, 'Mother, I _do_
+love you.'
+
+"Why is it? Why is love so doubted that it must for ever be declared? So
+doubted that even those who do love must constantly be proclaiming
+the fact to the object of their affections, impelled either by the
+subconscious fear that that object mistrusts the devotion, or by the
+subconscious fear that they themselves are under delusion and must
+protest aloud--just as a child upon the brink of being frightened in the
+dark will say aloud, 'I'm not afraid!' Why is it?
+
+"Actions are allowed to proclaim hate, deeds suffice to advertise
+sympathy, but love must be testified by bond. To what crimes must love
+have been twisted and contorted that it should come to such a pass? How
+often must it have been used as disguise to be now thus suspected?
+
+"You never knew I thought of things like this, did you?
+
+"My dear dear, I who am so frivolous think of yet deeper things. And I
+would speak of them to you tonight, for I would have you know my heart
+and mind as, dearest (how dear to think!), you know my face. Yes, of
+deeper things. I suppose clever people would laugh at the religion my
+mother and father lived in, taught me, died in, and now is mine. They
+believed--and I believe--in what I have heard called the Sunday School
+God! the God who lives, who listens, and to whom I pray. I have read
+books attempting to shatter this belief--yes, and I think succeeding
+because written with a cunning appeal only to the intelligence of man.
+Can such a Being as God exist? they ask. And since man's intelligence
+can only grasp proved facts, proofs are heaped upon proof that
+He cannot. The impossibilities are heaped until man must--of his
+limitations--cry that it is impossible. But in my belief God is above
+the possibilities--not to be judged by them, not to be reduced to them.
+I suppose such a belief is Faith--implicit Faith--the Faith that we are
+told makes all things possible. Well, fancy, for the sake of having a
+'religion' that comes into line with 'reason,' abandoning the sense of
+comfort that comes after prayer! Fancy receiving a 'reasoned' belief and
+paying for it the solace of entreating help in the smallest trouble and
+in the largest!
+
+"Do you know, my dear dear, that I pray for you every night?--for your
+health, your happiness, and your success?
+
+"Now you know a little more of me. Is there more to learn, I wonder? Not
+if I can make it clear.
+
+"The candle is in a most melancholy condition: in the last stage of
+collapse. I have prodded it out from its socket with my knife and set it
+flabbily on a penny--so it must work to its very last drop of life. That
+will not be long delayed. I shall suddenly be plunged into darkness
+and must undress in the dark. I shall be smiling all the time I am
+undressing, my thoughts with you.
+
+"At eleven--ten minutes' time--I am to be leaning from the window gazing
+at Orion as you too--so we agreed--will be gazing. Each will know
+the other has his thoughts, and we will say 'good-night.' How
+utterly foolish! How contemptibly absurd, common!--and how mystically
+delightful! You and I with Orion for the apex of eye's sight and our
+thoughts flying from heart to heart the base!
+
+"Georgie mine, if we had never met could we have ever been so happy?
+Impossible! Impossible! Before I pray for you to-night, I thank God for
+you.
+
+"I have kissed the corner where I shall just be able to squeeze
+in--good-night."
+
+Such was her letter-disloyal to women in its exposure of those truths
+of women's love which are theirs by the heritage of ages, by their
+daily training from childhood upward, and against which they should most
+desperately battle; simple in its ideas of religion; silly in its baby
+sentiment.
+
+Such was my Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Friday was the night of the incident in the library between Bob Chater
+and Mary; Saturday the exchange of love in the Park between Mary and
+her George; Saturday evening the writing of Mary's letter; upon Monday
+George read it.
+
+Now it was Monday morning, and precisely at ten o'clock three persons
+set out for the same seat in Regent's Park--the mind of each filled with
+one of the others, empty of all thought of the third.
+
+Mary--accompanied by David and Angela--carried towards the seat the
+image of her George, but had no heed of Mr. Bob Chater's existence; she
+was the magnet that drew Bob, ignorant of George; George sped to his
+Mary and had no thought of Bob.
+
+Our young men were handicapped in point of distance. Mary, with but
+a short half-mile to go, must easily be first to make the seat; Bob,
+coming to town from a week-end up the river, would occupy little short
+of an hour. George from Herons' Holt to that dear seat, allowed full
+seventy-five minutes.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon the whole, Mr. Bob Chater had not enjoyed his week-end; ideally
+circumstanced, for once the attractions it offered had failed to allure.
+
+Mr. Lemmy Moss, in the tiny riparian cottage he rented for the summer
+months, was the most excellent of hosts; Claude Avinger was widely known
+as a rattling good sort; the three young ladies who came down early on
+Sunday morning and had no foolish objections to staying indecorously
+late, were in face, figure and morals all that Bob, Lemmy, and Claude
+could desire. Yet throughout that day in the cushioned punt Bob won more
+pouts than smiles from the lady who fell to his guardianship.
+
+Disgustedly she remarked to her friends on the home journey, "Fairly
+chucked myself at him, the deadhead "--wherein, I apprehend, lay her
+mistake. For whether a man's assault upon a woman be dictated by love
+or desire, its vehemence is damped by acquiescence, spurred by rebuff.
+Doubtless for our lusty forefathers one-half the fascination of
+obtaining to wife the naked ladies who caught their eye lay in the
+tremendous excitement of snatching them from their tribes; while for the
+ladies, the joy of capture comprised a great proportion of the amorous
+delights.
+
+The characteristics remain. Maidens are more decorously won to-day;
+their tribes do not defend them; but they do the fighting for
+themselves. The sturdier the defence they are able to make, the greater
+the joy of at length being won; while, for the suitor, the more pains he
+hath endured in process of conquest the more keenly doth he relish his
+captive.
+
+So with Bob. The young lady fairly chucking herself at him in the punt
+he could not forbear to contrast with the enticing reserve of Mary. The
+more playfully (or desperately, poor girl) she chucked herself at him,
+the more did her charms cloy as against those of that other prize who so
+stoutly kept him at arm's-length. Nay, the more strenuously did she
+seek to entice his good offices, the more troubled was he to imagine why
+another of her sex should so slightingly regard him.
+
+Thus, as the day wore on, was Bob thrice impelled towards Mary--by
+initial attraction of her beauty; by natural instinct to show himself
+master where, till now, he had been bested; and by the stabbings of his
+wounded vanity.
+
+On Monday morning, then, he caught the ten o'clock train to town, hot
+in the determination immediately to see her and instantly to press his
+suit. He would try, he told himself, a new strategy. Bold assault had
+been proved ill-advised; for frontal attack must be substituted an
+advance more crafty. Its plan required no seeking. He would play--and,
+to a certain extent, would sincerely play--the part of penitent. He
+would apologise for Friday's lapse; would explain it to have been the
+outcome of sheer despair of ever winning her good graces.
+
+As to where he would find her he had no doubts. Dozing one day over a
+book, he had not driven David and Angela from the room until they
+had forced upon him a wearisome account of the secluded seat they had
+discovered in Regent's Park. His patience in listening was an example of
+the profit of casting one's bread upon the waters; for, making without
+hesitation for the seat, he discovered Mary.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The children, as he approached, were standing before her. David had
+scratched his finger, and the three were breathlessly examining the
+wounded hand for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was explaining
+that the place of the wound was over the home of very big drops of
+"blug," which could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window; when
+Angela, turning at footsteps, exclaimed: "Oh, dear, oh, dear, what
+_shall_ we do? Here's Bob!"
+
+Alarm drummed in Mary's heart: fluttered upon her cheeks. She had felt,
+as she told her George, so certain that from Bob she had now not even
+acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion set her mind
+bounding into disordered apprehensions--stumbling among them, terrified,
+out of breath.
+
+When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning, she could but sit
+dumbly staring at him-questioning, incapable of speech.
+
+It was Angela that answered his salutation: "Oh, why _have_ you come
+here? You spoil _everything_."
+
+"Hook!" said Bob.
+
+David asked: "What's hook?"
+
+"Run away."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I tell you to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Bob exclaimed: "Hasn't mother told you not to say 'Why' like that? Run
+away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray."
+
+David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted instead an
+observant poke: "Miss Humfray doesn't want to speak to you. She hates
+you."
+
+The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross
+ill-mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to
+his mother. The belief that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary's
+mouth served further to harden his tones.
+
+He said: "Look here, you run away when I tell you, or I'll see you don't
+come out here any more."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Bob swallowed. It was necessary before he spoke to clear his tongue of
+the emotions that surged upon it.
+
+Angela, in the pause, entreated David: "Oh, don't keep saying 'Why?',
+David," and before he could ask the reason she addressed Bob: "We won't
+go for you. If Miss Humf'ay tells us to go, _then_ we will go."
+
+Bob looked at Mary. "I only want to speak to you for a minute."
+
+Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary
+had struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have
+been chance, not deliberate--how should he have known where to seek
+them? Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to take
+the apology with which doubtless he had come--well to be on good terms.
+
+Encouraged by these supports, "Shoo!" she cried to her charges. "Don't
+you hear what your brother asks?"
+
+"Do _you_ want us to go?"
+
+"Oh, shoo! shoo!"
+
+Laughing, they shoo'd.
+
+Bob let them from earshot. "I want to say how sorry I am about Friday
+night."
+
+"I have forgotten all that."
+
+"I want to know that you have forgiven me."
+
+"I tell you I have forgotten it."
+
+"That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it." He took a seat beside
+her; repeated: "You can't have forgotten it. How can you have forgotten
+a thing that only happened three days ago?"
+
+"In the sense that I have wiped it out--I do not choose to remember it."
+
+"Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want
+to know that you forgive me."
+
+She told him: "Yes, then--oh yes, yes." His persistence alarmed her, set
+her again to flight among her apprehensions.
+
+"Not when you say it like that."
+
+Her breath came in jerks, responsive to the unsteady flutters of her
+heart. She made an effort for control; for the first time turned to him:
+"Mr. Chater, please go."
+
+Her words pricked every force that had him there--desire, obstinacy,
+wounded vanity.
+
+"Why do you say that?" he asked.
+
+"You happened to be passing--"
+
+"Nothing of the kind," he told her.
+
+"You have come purposely?" One foothold that seemed safe was proving
+false.
+
+"Of course. I tell you--why won't you believe me?--that I have been
+ashamed of myself ever since that night. At the first opportunity I have
+come straight to tell you so, I ought to be in the City. I could not
+rest until I had made my apology."
+
+"Well, you have made it--I don't mean to say that sharply. I think--I
+think it is very nice of you to be so anxious, and I freely accept your
+apology. But don't you see that you are harming me by staying here? I
+beg you to go."
+
+"How am I harming you? Am I so distasteful to you that you can't bear me
+near you?"
+
+This was the personal note that of all her apprehensions had given Mary
+greatest alarm. "Surely you see that you are harming me--I mean hurting
+me--I mean, yes, getting me into trouble by staying like this with me.
+Mrs. Chater might have turned me off on Saturday--"
+
+"I spoke for you."
+
+"Yes." The words choked her, but she spoke them--"I am grateful to you
+for that. But if she found me talking to you again--especially if she
+knew you came here to see me, she would send me away at once. She told
+me so."
+
+"How is she to know?"
+
+"The children--"
+
+"I'll take care of that."
+
+"You can't prevent it. In any case--"
+
+Bob said bitterly: "In any case! Yes, that's it. In any case you hate
+the sight of me."
+
+She cried: "Oh, why will you speak like that? I mean that in any case it
+is not right. I promised."
+
+Bob laughed. "If that's all, it is all right. You didn't promise for
+me."
+
+"It makes no difference. You say you are sorry--I believe you are sorry.
+You can only show it one way. Mr. Chater, please leave me alone."
+
+Her pretty appeal was fatal to her desire. It enhanced her graces.
+In both phrase and tone it was different from similar request in the
+petulant mouths of those ladies amongst whom Bob purchased his way.
+Dissatisfied, they would have said "Oh, chuck it! Do!" But "Mr. Chater,
+please leave me alone!"--that had the effect of moving Mr. Chater a
+degree closer along the seat.
+
+He said: "You shan't have cause to blame me. Look here, you haven't
+asked me to explain my conduct on Friday."
+
+"I don't wish you to."
+
+"Don't you want to know?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Aren't you curious?" His voice was low with a note of intensity. This
+was love-making, as he knew the pursuit.
+
+He went on: "I'm sure you're curious. Look here, I'm going to tell you."
+
+"I'm going," she said; made to rise.
+
+He caught her hand where it lay on her lap; pressed her down. "You're
+not. If you do I shall follow--but I won't let you," and he pressed
+again in advertisement.
+
+Now she was alarmed--not for the result of this interview, but for its
+very present perils. Fear strangled her voice, but she said, "Let me
+go."
+
+"You must hear me, then."
+
+"I wish to go."
+
+"You must stay to hear me." He believed a fierce assault would now win
+the heights. He released her hand; but she was still his prisoner, and
+he leant towards her averted head.
+
+"I'm going to tell you why I behaved like that that night. It was
+because I could not contain myself any longer. You had always been so
+icy to me; kept me at arm's-length, barely let me speak to you; and all
+the time I was burning to tell you that I loved you--there, you know
+it now. On that night you were still cold when you might have been only
+barely civil and I could have contained myself. But you would not give
+me a word, and at last all that was in me for you burst out and I could
+not hold myself. It was unkind; it was frightening to you, perhaps; but
+was it a crime?--is it a crime to love?"
+
+His flow checked, waiting an impulse from her.
+
+She was but capable of a little "Oh!"--the crest of a gasp.
+
+He misread her emotion. "Has it all been pretence, your keeping me from
+you like this? I believe it has. But now that you know you will be kind.
+Tell me. Speak."
+
+Encouraged by her silence he took her hand.
+
+That touch acted as a cold blast upon her fevered emotions. Now she was
+calm.
+
+She shook off his hand. "Have you done?"
+
+The tone more than the question warned him.
+
+"Well?" he said; sullen wrath gathering.
+
+"Well, never speak to me again."
+
+"You won't be friends?"
+
+"Friends! With you!"
+
+Her meaning--that he had lost--stung him; her tone--that she despised
+him--was a finger in the wound.
+
+He gripped her arm. "You little fool! How are you going to choose? If
+I want to be friends with you, how are you going to stop it? By God,
+if you want to be enemies it will be the worse for you. If I can't be
+friends with you at home, I'll get you turned out and I'll make you be
+friends outside."
+
+She was trying to twist her arm from his grasp.
+
+He gripped closer. "No, I don't mean that. I love you--that's why I talk
+so when you rebuff me. I'll not hurt you. We shall--I will be friends."
+
+His right arm held her. He slipped his left around her, drew her to
+him, and with his lips had brushed her cheek before she was aware of his
+intention.
+
+The insult swept her free of every thought but its memory. By a sudden
+motion she slipped from his grasp and to her feet; faced him.
+
+"You beast!" she cried. "You beast!"
+
+He half rose; made a half grab at her.
+
+She stepped back a pace; something in her action reminded him of that
+stinging blow she had dealt him in the library; he dropped back to his
+seat and she turned and fled up the path whither Angela and David had
+toddled.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was while Bob sat gazing after her, indeterminate, that he felt a
+hand from behind the seat upon his shoulder; looked up to see a tall
+young man, fresh faced, but fury-browed, regarding him.
+
+"What's your name?" asked George.
+
+"What the devil's that to do with you?"
+
+The tone of the first question had been of passion restrained. The
+passion broke now from between George's clenched teeth, flamed in his
+eyes.
+
+He tightened his grip upon the other's shoulder so that he pinched the
+flesh.
+
+"A lot to do with me," he cried. "Is it Chater?"
+
+"What if it is? Let me go, damn you!"
+
+"Let you go! I've been itching for you for weeks! What have you been
+saying to Miss Humfray?"
+
+"Damn you! Take off your hand! She's a friend of yours, is she?"
+
+My furious George choked: "Engaged to me." Further bit upon his passion
+he could not brook. He brought his free hand down with a crash upon
+the face twisted up at him; relaxed his hold; ran round the seat--those
+brown hands clenched.
+
+If Bob Chater at no time had aching desire for a brawl, he was at least
+no coward: here the events he had suffered well sufficed to whip
+his blood to action. He sprang to his feet, was upon them as George,
+sideways to him, came round the arm of the seat; lunged furiously and
+landed a crack upon the cheekbone that spun George staggering up the
+path.
+
+It was a good blow, a lusty blow--straight from the shoulder and with
+body and leg work behind it; a blow that, happier placed, might well
+have won the battle.
+
+A ring upon Bob's finger cut the flesh he struck, and he gave a savage
+"Ha!" of triumph as he saw George go spinning and the red trickle come
+breaking down his cheek.
+
+A great ridge in the gravel marked the thrust of foot with which George
+stayed his stagger, from which he impelled the savage spring that
+brought him within striking distance.
+
+There was no science. This was no calmly prepared fight with cool brains
+directing attack, searching weak points, husbanding strength, deft in
+defence. Here was only the animal instinct to get close and wound; to
+grapple and wound again.
+
+George it was that provoked this spirit. Till now he had not seen this
+flushed face before him. But he had for many days conjured it up in
+his fancy--sharpening upon it the edge of his wrath, bruising himself
+against the wall of wise conduct that kept him from meeting and visiting
+upon it the distress his Mary had endured.
+
+Now that he saw it in the flesh (and it was not unlike his conception),
+he came at it with the impulse of one who, straining against a rope,
+rushes headlong forward when a knife parts the bond.
+
+The impulse thus given more than countered the greater bulk and reach
+that should have told in Bob's scale. Bob felt his wits and his courage
+simultaneously deserting him before the pell-mell of blows that came
+raining against his guard. Whensoever he effected a savage smash that
+momentarily checked the fury, it served but to bring back this seemingly
+demented young man with a new rush and ardour.
+
+Bob gave step by step, struck short-arm, felt the faint saltness of
+blood upon his lips, staggered back before a tremendous hit between the
+eyes, stumbled, tripped, fell.
+
+"Get up!" George bellowed; waited till Bob came rushing, and sent him
+reeling again with a broken tooth that cut the brown knuckles.
+
+Bob lacked not courage and had proved it, for he was sorely battered.
+But the pluck in him was whipped and now venom alone bade him make what
+hurt he could.
+
+His heavy stick was leaning against the seat. He seized it; swung it
+high; crashed a blow that must have split the head it aimed.
+
+George slipped aside; the blow missed. He poised himself as Bob,
+following the impulse, went staggering by; put all his weight behind a
+crashing hit and sent him spinning prone with a blow that was fittingly
+final to the exhibition of lusty knocks.
+
+Bob propped himself on one arm, rose to his feet; glared;
+hesitated--then fell to brushing his knees.
+
+It was a masterly white flag.
+
+"Had enough?" George panted. "Had enough? Are you whipped, you swine?"
+
+Bob assiduously brushed.
+
+"When you're better, let me know," George cried; turned and hurried up
+the path whither Mary had disappeared.
+
+The forced draught of fury, pain, and exertion sent Bob's breath roaring
+in and out in noisy blasts--now long and laboured, now spasmodic quick.
+
+He examined his bill of health and damage. Face everywhere tender to the
+touch; clothes dust-covered and torn; both knees of trousers rent; silk
+hat stove in when in a backward rush he had set his foot upon it. His
+tongue discovered a broken tooth, his handkerchief a bleeding nose, his
+fingers blood upon his chin, trickling to his shirt front.
+
+So well as might be he brushed his person; straightened his hat; clapped
+handkerchief to his mouth; past staring eyes, grinning faces, hurried
+out of the Park to bury himself in a cab.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+From a window Mrs. Chater saw the bruised figure of her darling boy
+alight; with palpitating heart rushed to greet him.
+
+"Bob! My boy! My boy! What has happened?"
+
+Her boy brushed past; bounded to his room. Laboriously, sick with fear,
+the devoted mother toiled in pursuit--found him in his room tearing off
+his coat.
+
+"My boy! My boy!"
+
+Her boy bellowed: "_Hot water!_"
+
+Can a mother's tender care cease towards the child she bare?
+
+Oh! needless to ask such a question, you for whom is pictured this
+devoted woman plunging at breakneck speed for the bathroom, screaming as
+she runs: "Susan! Kate! Jane! Jane! Kate! Susan!"
+
+Doors slammed, cries echoed, stairs shook, as trembling servants rushed
+responsive.
+
+Crashing of cans, rushing of water, called them to the bathroom.
+
+"Oh, m'am! What is it?"
+
+Water flew in sprays as the agonised mother tested its temperature with
+her hands; cans rattled as she kicked them from where, in dragging one
+from the shelf, the others had clattered about her feet.
+
+Jane, Kate, and Susan clustered in alarm about the door: "Oh, m'am!
+M'am! Whatever is it?"
+
+Mrs. Chater gave no reply. Her can full, she plunged through them. This
+way and that they dodged to give her passage; dodge for dodge, demented,
+hysterical, she gave them--slopping boiling water on to agonised toes;
+bursting through at last; thundering up the stairs.
+
+The three plunged after her: "Oh, m'am! M'am! Whatever is it?"
+
+The devoted woman paused at the head of the stairs; screamed down
+orders: "Sticking-plaster! Lint! Cotton-wool! Mr. Bob has had an
+accident! Hot-water bottles! Ice! Doctor! Go for the doctor, one of
+you!"
+
+A figure with battered face above vest and pants bounded from its room.
+"No!" Bob roared. "No!"
+
+"No!" Mrs. Chater echoed, not knowing to what the negative applied, but
+hysterically commanding it.
+
+"No!" screamed the agitated servants, one to another.
+
+"No! no doctor!" bellowed Bob; grabbed the can from his mother; shot
+back to his room.
+
+"No doctor!" Mrs. Chater screamed to the white-faced pack upon the
+stairs; fled after him.
+
+"My boy! Tell me!"
+
+Her boy raised his dripping face from the basin. "For God's sake shut
+the door!" he roared.
+
+She did. "Tell me!" she trembled.
+
+"It's that damned girl."
+
+"That girl?"
+
+"Miss Humfray!"
+
+"Miss Humfray! Done that to you! Oh, your poor face! Your poor face!"
+
+"No!--no! Do be quiet, mother! Some infernal man she goes about with in
+the Park! I spoke to him and he set on me!"
+
+"The infamous creature! The wicked, infamous girl! A bad girl, I knew
+it!--"
+
+Agitated tapping at the door: "The cotton-wool m'am." "Sticking-plaster,
+m'am." "'Ot bottle, m'am."
+
+"Go away!" roared Bob. "Go away! O-oo, my face!" He hopped in wrath and
+pain. "Send those damned women away!"
+
+Mrs. Chater rushed to the door. Passing, she for the first time caught
+full sight of her son's face now that the hot water had exposed its
+wreck. "Oh, your eyes! Your poor eyes! They're closing up!"
+
+Bob staggered to the mirror; discovered the full horror of his marred
+beauty. "Curse it!" he groaned and gave an order.
+
+Mrs. Chater flew to the telephone.
+
+In the office of Mr. Samuel Hock, purveyor of meat, by appointment, to
+the Prince of Wales, the telephone bell sharply rang. Mr. Hock stepped
+to the receiver, listened, then bellowed an order into the shop:
+
+"One of beefsteak to 14 Palace Gardens, sharp!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+With tremendous strides, with emotion roaring in and out his nostrils in
+gusty blasts of fury, my passionate George encompassed the Park this way
+and that until he came at length upon his trembling Mary.
+
+Save for that first blow where Bob's ring had marked his cheek he had
+suffered but little in the fight--sufficiently, notwithstanding, coupled
+with his colossal demeanour, for Mary's eyes to discover that something
+was amiss.
+
+She came to him; cried at a little distance: "Oh, dearest, I--I could
+not meet you at the seat."
+
+Then she saw more clearly. She asked: "What has happened?" and stood
+with quivering lip recording the flutters of her heart.
+
+George took one hand; patted it between both his. For the moment his
+boiling anger cooled beneath grim relish of his news. "I've pretty well
+killed that Chater swine," he said.
+
+"Mr. Chater?--you've met Mr. Chater?"
+
+Now emotion boiled again in her turbulent George. He said: "I saw you
+run from him. I saw--what had he been doing?"
+
+"Oh, Georgie!"
+
+"Well, never mind. I'd rather not hear. I've paid him for it, whatever
+it was."
+
+"You fought? Oh, and your face--and your hand bleeding too!"
+
+Tears stood in this ridiculous Mary's eyes. Women so often cry at the
+wrong moment. They should more closely study their men in the tremendous
+mannish crises that come to some of us. This was no moment for tears; it
+was an hour to be Amazon. To be hard-eyed. To count the scalps brought
+home by the brave--in delight to squeal over them; in pride to clap the
+hands and jump for joy at such big behaviour.
+
+My Mary erred in every way. Her moistening eyes annoyed George.
+
+"Oh, don't make a fuss about that, Mary," he cried irritably. "It's
+nothing. Master Bob won't be able to see for a month."
+
+"Oh, George, why did you do it?"
+
+Then the tremendous young man flamed. "Why did I do it? 'Pon my soul,
+Mary, I simply don't understand you sometimes. You've made me stand by
+and see you insulted for a month, and then I see him catch hold of you,
+and you run, and I go and thrash him, and you say, 'Why did you do
+it?' _Do_ it? _Do_ it? Why, good Lord, what would you have had me
+do--apologise for you?"
+
+She turned away, dropped his hand.
+
+My unfortunate George groaned aloud: sprang to her. "Mary, darling,
+dearest, you know I didn't mean that."
+
+She kept her face from him; her pretty shoulders heaved.
+
+He cried in misery, striving to see her face: "What a brute I am! What a
+brute! Mary, Mary, you know I didn't mean that."
+
+She gasped: "You ge-get angry so quick."
+
+"I know, I know. I'm not fit--I couldn't help--Mary, do look up."
+
+She swallowed a sob; gave him her little hand.
+
+He squeezed it, squeezed it as it were between his love for her and the
+tremendous passion that was consuming him. Contrition at his sharp words
+to her hammered the upper plate, wrath at the manner of her reception of
+his news was anvil beneath. The poor fingers horribly suffered.
+
+There are conditions of the male mind--and this George was in the very
+heart of one--when softness in a woman positively goads to fury.
+The mind is in an itching fever, and--like a bull against a
+gate-post--requires hard, sharp corners against which to rub and ease
+the irritation. Comes the lord and master home sulky or in fury, the
+wise wife will meet him with a demeanour so spiked that he may scratch
+his itching at every turn. To be soft and yielding is the most fatal
+conduct; it is to send the lumbering bull crashing through the gate-post
+into the lane to seek solace away from the home paddock.
+
+Unversed in these homely recipes, this simple Mary had at least the wit
+not to cry "Oh!" in pain and move her hand. They found a seat, and for
+good five minutes this turbulent George sat and threshed in his wrath
+like a hooked shark--this little hand the rope that held him. Soon its
+influence was felt. His tuggings and boundings grew weaker. The venom
+oozed out of him.
+
+He uncovered the crushed fingers; raising, pressed them to his lips.
+
+He groaned. "Now you know me at last."
+
+She patted those brown hands; did not speak.
+
+"You know the awful temper I've got," he went on. "Uncontrollable--angry
+even with you--foul brute--"
+
+"But I annoyed you, Georgie."
+
+He flung out an accusatory hand against himself. "How? By being sweet
+and loving! Why, what a brute I must be!"
+
+She told him: "You shan't call yourself names. In fact, you mustn't.
+Because that is calling me names too. We belong, Georgie."
+
+The pretty sentiment tickled him. Gloom flew from his brow before
+sunshine that took its place. He laughed. "You're a dear, dear old
+thing."
+
+She gave a whimsical look at him. "I ought to have said at once what I
+am going to say now: Did you hurt him much?"
+
+"I bashed him!" George said, revelling in it. "I fairly bashed him!"
+
+She snuggled against this tremendous fellow.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+It was a park-keeper who, from that opium drug of sweet silence with
+which lovers love to dull their senses, recalled them to the urgency for
+action.
+
+The park-keeper led David by one hand, Angela by the other, whence
+he had found them wandering. Disappointment that their owner was
+a protected lady instead of a nicely-shaped nursemaid whom by this
+introduction he might add to his recreations, delivered him of stern
+reproof at the carelessness which had let these children go astray.
+
+"I would very much like to know," he concluded, "what their ma would
+say."
+
+"My plump gentleman," said George pleasantly, "meet me at this
+trysting-place at noon to-morrow, and your desire shall be gratified."
+
+The park-keeper eyed him; thought better of the bitter words he had
+contemplated; contented himself with: "Funny, ain't yer?"
+
+"Screaming," said George. "One long roar of mirth. Hundreds turned away
+nightly. Early doors threepence extra. Bring the wife."
+
+The park-keeper withdrew with a morose air.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+And now my George and his Mary turned upon the immediate future. Conning
+the map of ways and means and roads of action, a desolate and almost
+horrifying country presented itself. No path that might be followed
+offered pleasant prospects. All led past that ogre's castle at 14 Palace
+Gardens; at the head of each stood the ogress shape of Mrs. Chater,
+gnashing for blood and bones over the disaster to her first-born. She
+must be faced.
+
+George flared a torch to light the gloom: "But why should you go near
+her, dearest? Let me do it. I'll take the children back. I'll see her.
+I'll get your boxes."
+
+Even the sweetest women trudge through life handicapped by the
+preposterous burden of wishing to do what their sad little minds
+hold right. It is a load which, too firmly strapped, makes them dull
+companions on the highway.
+
+Mary said: "It wouldn't be _right_, dear. The children are in my charge;
+how could I send them back to their mother in the care of a strange
+man? And it wouldn't be right to myself, either. It would look as if I
+admitted myself in the wrong. No; I must, must face her."
+
+George's torch guttered; gave gloom again. He tried a second: "Well,
+I'll come with you. That's a great idea. She won't dare say much while
+I'm there."
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't be _right_, Georgie. You oughtn't to come to the
+house--to see her--after what you've done to the detestable Bob. No,
+I'll go alone and I'll go now. You shall come as far as the top of the
+road and there wait."
+
+"And then?" George asked.
+
+This was to research the map for rest-houses and for fortunes that might
+be won after the ogre castle had been passed.
+
+Mary conned and peered until the strain squeezed a little moisture in
+her eyes. "I don't know," she said faintly.
+
+Her bold George had to know. "It won't be for very long, dear old girl.
+You must find another situation. Till then a lodging. I know a place
+where a man I know used to have digs. A jolly old landlady. I'll raise
+some money--I'll borrow it."
+
+Mary tried to brighten. "Yes, and I'll go to that agency again. I must,
+because I shall have no character, you see. I'll tell her everything
+quite truthfully, and I think she'll be nice."
+
+"It's no good waiting," George said. His voice had the sound of a
+funeral bell.
+
+Mary arose slowly, white. She said: "Come along."
+
+With a tumbril rumble in their ears, the children dancing ahead, they
+started for Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The groans and curses of her adored Bob, his bulgy mouth and shutting
+eyes, his tender nose and the encrimsoned water where he had layed his
+wounds--these had so acted upon Mrs. Chater's nerves, plunged her into
+such vortex of hysteria, that the manner of her reception of Mary was
+true reflection of her fears, nothing dissembled.
+
+Withdrawing her agitated face from the dining-room window as Mary and
+the children approached, she bounded heavily to the door; flung it ajar;
+collapsed to her knees upon the mat; clasped David and Angela to that
+heaving bosom.
+
+"Safe!" she wailed. "Safe! Thank God, my little lambs are safe!"
+
+Distraught she swayed and hugged; kissed and moaned again.
+
+David pressed away. "You smell like whisky, mummie," he said.
+
+It was a dash of icy water on a fainting fit; wonderfully it strung the
+demented woman's senses. She pushed her little lambs from her; fixed
+Mary with awful eye.
+
+"So you've come back--_Miss?_"
+
+Mary quivered.
+
+"I wonder you dared. I wonder you had the boldness to face me after
+your wicked behaviour. You've got nothing to say for yourself. I'm not
+surprised--"
+
+Mary began: "Mrs. Chater, I--"
+
+"Oh, how can you? How can you dare defend yourself? Never, never in
+all my born days have I met with such ingratitude; never have I been
+deceived like this. I took you in. I felt sorry for you. I fed you,
+clothed you, cared for you, treated you as one of my own family; and
+this is my reward. There you stand, unable to say a word--"
+
+"If you think, Mrs. Chater--"
+
+"Don't _speak_! I won't hear you. Here have I day after day been
+entrusting my beloved lambs to your care, and heaven alone knows what
+risks they have run. My boy--my Bob, who would die rather than get a
+living soul into trouble--sees you with this man you have been going
+about with. He does his duty to me, his mother, and to my precious
+lambs, his brother and sister, by reproving you, and you set this
+man--this low hired bully--upon him to murder him. I'll have the law
+on the coward. I'll punish him and I'll punish you, miss. No wonder you
+were frightened when my Bob caught you. No wonder."
+
+"That is untrue, Mrs. Chater."
+
+"Don't _speak!_"
+
+"I will speak. I shall speak. It is untrue."
+
+"You dare--"
+
+"It is a lie. Yes, I don't mind what I say when you speak to me like
+that. It is a wicked lie."
+
+"Girl--!"
+
+"If your son told you he caught me with the man who thrashed him as he
+deserved, he told you a lie. He never saw me with him. He followed me
+into the Park this morning and tried to repeat what he did on Friday
+night. He is a coward and a cad. The man to whom I am engaged caught him
+at it and thrashed him as he deserved. There! Now you know the truth!"
+
+Very white, my ridiculous Mary pressed her hand to her panting breast;
+stopped, choked by the wild words that came tumbling up into her mouth.
+
+Very red, swelling and panting in turkey-cock fury, Mrs. Chater,
+towering, swallowed and gasped, breathless before this vixenish attack.
+
+But she was the first to find speech; and incoherently she stormed as
+at a scratching do those persons whose true selves lie beneath a tissue
+film of polish.
+
+She bubbled and panted: "Oh, you wicked girl!--oh, you wicked girl!--oh,
+you wicked girl!--bold as brass-calling me a liar--_me_--and my
+battered boy--engaged indeed!--I'll have the law and the police and
+the judges--my solicitors--libel and assault, and slander and attempted
+murder--boxes searched--my precious lambs to hear their mother spoken
+to like this--get out of the hat-rack, David, and go upstairs this
+instant--Angela, don't stand there--if I wasn't a lady I'd box your
+ears, miss--only a week ago didn't I give you a black silk skirt of
+mine?--and fed you like a princess, with a soft feather pillow too,
+because you said the bolster made your head ache--servants to wait on
+you hand and foot--and this is my reward--how I keep my hands off you
+heaven only knows--but you shall suffer, miss--oh, yes you shall--I'll
+give you in charge--I'll call a policeman."
+
+She turned towards the kitchen stairs; screamed "Susan! Kate! Jane!
+Susan!"
+
+Small need to bellow. Around the staircase corner three white-capped
+heads--Kate holding back Susan, Susan restraining Jane, Jane holding
+Kate--had been with delighted eyes and straining ears bathing in this
+rare scene. With glad unanimity they broke their restraint one upon the
+other; crushed pell-mell, hustling up the narrow stairs.
+
+Mrs. Chater plumped back into a chair; with huge hands fanned her heated
+face. "Fetch a policeman!"
+
+They plunged for the door.
+
+Bob's swollen countenance came over the banisters. He roared "Stop!"
+
+Kate, Jane and Susan swung between the conflicting authorities.
+
+"Call a policeman! Summon a constable! Fetch an officer!" In
+gusty breaths from behind Mrs. Chater's hands, working like a red
+paddle-wheel, came the commands.
+
+"Stop!" roared Bob; and to enforce pushed forward the battered face till
+it stuck out flat over the hall.
+
+His alarmed mother screamed: "Bob, you'll fall over the banisters!"
+
+The two kept up a battledore and shuttlecock of agitated conversation.
+
+"Well, stop those women!" Bob cried; "for God's sake, stop them, mother!
+What on earth are you thinking of?"
+
+"I'll give her in charge!"
+
+"You can't, you can't. Oh, my God, what a house this is!"
+
+"She called me a liar!"
+
+"You can't charge her for that."
+
+"She half murdered you!"
+
+"She never touched me. Why don't you do as I told you? Why don't you
+send her away?"
+
+"Mercy, Bob! you'll fall and kill yourself!"
+
+"Do as I say, then! Do as I say!"
+
+"Well, put back your head! Put back your head."
+
+"Do as I say, then!"
+
+Mrs. Chater stopped the paddle-wheel; rose to her feet. Bob's ghastly
+face drew in to safer limits. She addressed Mary: "Again my boy has
+interceded for you. Oh, how you must feel!" She addressed the maids: "Is
+her box packed?"
+
+They chorused "Yes"; pointed, and Mary saw her tin box, corded, set
+against the wall.
+
+"Call a cab," Mrs. Chater commanded; and as the whistle blew she turned
+again upon Mary.
+
+"Now, miss, you may go. I pack you off as you deserve. But before you
+go--"
+
+The battered face shot out again above the banisters: "Pay her her wages
+and send her away, mother. Do, for goodness' sake, send her away!"
+
+"Wages! Certainly not! Mercy! Your head again! Go back, Bob!"
+
+The maddened, pain-racked Bob bellowed: "Oh, stop it! stop it! I shall
+go mad in a minute. She is entitled to her wages. Pay her."
+
+"I won't!"
+
+"Well, I will. Susan! Susan, come up here and take this money. How much
+is it?"
+
+"She is not to be paid," Mrs. Chater trumpeted.
+
+"She is to be paid," bawled her son. "Do you want an action brought
+against you? Oh, my God, what a house this is!"
+
+"My boy! You will fall! Very well, I'll pay her." Mrs. Chater turned to
+Mary. "Again and yet again my son intercedes for you, miss. Oh, how you
+must feel!" She grabbed around her dress for her pocket; found a purse;
+produced coins; banged them upon the table. "There!"
+
+And now my Mary, who had stood upright breasting these successive
+surges, spoke her little fury.
+
+With a hand she swept the table, sending the coins flying this way and
+that--with them a card salver, a vase, a pile of prayer-books. With her
+little foot she banged the floor.
+
+"I would not touch your money--your beastly money. You are contemptible
+and vulgar, and I despise you. Mr. Chater, if you are a man you
+will tell your mother why you were thrashed. Do you dare to say you
+interfered because you found me with someone? Do you dare?"
+
+With masterly strategy Bob drove home a flank attack. To have affirmed
+he did dare might lead to appalling outburst from this little vixen. He
+said very quietly, as though moved by pity: "Please do not make matters
+worse by blustering, Miss Humfray." He sighed: "I bear you no ill-will."
+
+My poor Mary allowed herself to be denuded of self-possession. His words
+put her control to flight; left her exposed. Tears started in her eyes.
+She made a little rush for the stairs. "Oh, you coward!" she cried. "You
+coward! I will make you say the truth."
+
+Would she have clutched the skirts of his dressing-gown, forgetting the
+proper modesty of a nice maiden, and dragged him down the stairs?
+Would she indelicately have pursued him to his very bedroom, and there,
+regardless of his scanty dress, have assaulted him?
+
+Bob believed she would. It is so easy for the world's heroines to remain
+calm against attack. My Mary was made of commoner stuff--the wretched,
+baser clay of which not I, but my neighbours, not you, but your
+acquaintances, are made.
+
+Bob believed she would. He cried, "Send her away! Why the devil don't
+you send her away?"; gathered his skirts; fled for the safety of a
+locked door.
+
+Mrs. Chater believed she would. Mrs. Chater plunged across the hall;
+stood, an impassable and panting guardian, upon the lowermost step. Her
+outstretched arm stayed Mary; a voice announced, "The cab'm."
+
+My Mary stood a moment; little fists clenched, flashing eyes; blinked
+against the premonition of a rush of tears; then, as they came, turned
+for the door.
+
+"Go!" trumpeted Mrs. Chater. "Go!"
+
+Mary was upon the mat when Angela and David made a little rush; caught
+her skirts. The alarming scenes had hurtled in sequence too rapid and
+too violent to be by the children understood. But a scrap here and a
+scrap there they had caught, retained, correctly interpreted; and the
+whole, though it supplied no reason, told clearly that their adored Mary
+was going from them.
+
+"You're coming back soon, aren't you?" David cried.
+
+"You're not going away, are you, Miss Humf'ay?" implored Angela.
+
+Mrs. Chater shrilled: "Children, come away. Come here at once."
+
+Mary dropped one knee upon the mat; caught her arms about the
+children. She pressed a cool face against each side her wet and burning
+countenance, gave kisses, and upon the added stress of this new emotion
+choked: "Good-bye, little ducklings!"
+
+"Oh, darling, _darling_ Miss Humf'ay, we _will_ be good if you'll stay!"
+They felt this was the desperate threat that so often followed their
+misdemeanours put into action.
+
+She held them, hugging them. "It isn't that. You have been good."
+
+"Then you said you would stay for ever and ever if we were good."
+
+"Not ever and ever; I said--I said perhaps a fairy prince would come to
+take me. Didn't I?"
+
+This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He
+regarded the hansom at the door: "That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy
+princes don't come in cabs."
+
+"The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle,
+kiss me."
+
+She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon the
+small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about which
+they clung.
+
+They screamed, "Let me go!"
+
+David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and howl: "Take away
+your _hand_, mother!"
+
+Angela gasped: "Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!"
+
+With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater's stormy eyes, my Mary stooped
+over David.
+
+"David!" The calm ring of the tones he had learned to obey checked his
+clamour, his plunging kicks. She stooped; kissed him. "Be good as gold,"
+she commanded. "Promise."
+
+"Good as gold--yes--p'omise," David choked.
+
+Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula. Mary stepped back. Susan
+slammed the door.
+
+With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.
+
+"Drive down the street," she choked; lay back against the cushions; gave
+herself to shaking sobs.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Her George met her a very few yards down the street. He gave an order to
+the cabman and sat beside her.
+
+It was not long before her grief was hushed. She dried her eyes; nestled
+against this wonderful fellow who, as love had now constituted her
+world, was the solace against every trouble that could come to her, the
+shield against any power that might arise to do her hurt.
+
+They debated the position and found it desperate; discussed the
+immediate future to discover it threatening. Yet the gloom was
+irradiated by the glowing light of the prospective future; the rumbling
+of present fears was lost in the tinkling music of their voices,
+striking notes from love.
+
+The cab twisted this way and that; clattered over Battersea Bridge, down
+the Park, to the right past the Free Library, and so into Meath Street
+and to the clean little house of the landlady whom George knew.
+
+To her, in the tiny sitting-room, the story was told.
+
+It appeared that she had never yet taken a lady lodger. In her street
+ladies were regarded with suspicion; that no petticoats were ever to be
+fetched across the threshold was a rule to which each medical student
+who engaged her rooms must first subscribe.
+
+None the less she was here acquiescent. She knew George well; had for
+him an affection above that which commonly she entertained for the noisy
+young men who were her means of livelihood. Mary should pay for the
+little back bedroom that Mr. Thornton had; and, free of charge, should
+have use of the sitting-room rented by Mr. Grainger. There would be no
+lodgers until the medical schools reopened in October.
+
+So it was settled--and together in the sitting-room where Mrs. Pinking
+made them a little lunch again they debated the immediate future. It
+was three weeks before George's examination was due. Again he declared
+himself confident that, when actually he had passed, his uncle would
+not refuse the 400 pounds which meant the world to them--which meant
+the tight little practice at Runnygate. But the intervening weeks were
+meanwhile to be faced. Mary must have home. At the Agency she must pour
+forth her tale and seek new situation till they could be married. If the
+Agency failed them--They shuddered.
+
+Revolving desperate schemes for the betterment of this position into
+which with such alarming suddenness they had been thrust, George took
+his leave. He would have tarried, but his Mary was insistent that his
+work must not be interfered with. Upon its successful exploitation
+everything now depended.
+
+Brightly she kissed her George good-bye. He was not to worry about her.
+She was to be shut from his mind. To-morrow she would go to the Agency.
+He might lunch with her, and, depend upon it, she would greet him with
+great news.
+
+So they parted.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+In which this History begins to rattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will Lose
+Nothing By Not Accompanying Him.
+
+
+In pursuit of our opinion that the novel should hark back to its origin
+and be as a story that is told by mouth to group of listeners, here we
+momentarily break the thread.
+
+It is an occasion for advertisement.
+
+As when the personal narrator, upon resumption of his history, will at a
+point declare, "Now we come to the exciting part," so now do I.
+
+Heretofore we have somewhat dragged. We have been as host and visitor at
+tea in the drawing-room. Guests have arrived; to you I have introduced
+them, and after the shortest spell they have taken their leave.
+
+My Mary and my George--favoured guests--have sat with us through our
+meal; but how fleeting our converse with those others--with Mr. William
+Wyvern, with Margaret, with Mrs. Major and with Mr. Marrapit! I grant
+you cause to grumble at their introduction, so purposeless has been
+their part. I grant you they have been as the guests at whose arrival,
+disturbing the intimate chatter, impatient glances are exchanged; at
+whose departure there is shuffle of relief.
+
+Well, I promise you we shall now link our personages and set our history
+bounding to its conclusion. We have collected them; now to switch on the
+connection and set them acting one against the other until the sparks do
+fly; watching those sparks shall be your entertainment.
+
+The switch which thus sets active the play of forces I shall call
+circumstance. If it has been long delayed, I have the precedent of
+all the story of human life as my excuse. For we are the children
+of circumstance. We move each in our little circle by a stout hedge
+encompassed. Circumstance suddenly will break the wall: some fellow man
+or woman is flung against us, and immediately the quiet ambulation of
+our little circle is for some conflict sharp exchanged. To-day we are at
+peace with the world, to-morrow warring with all mankind.
+
+I say with all mankind, because so narrow and so selfish is our outlook
+upon life that one single man or woman--a dullard neighbour or a
+silly girl--who may interfere with us, throws into turmoil our whole
+existence. Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out all life save only
+this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world--engaging
+our complete faculties.
+
+Deeper misfortune cannot be conceived. It is through allowing such
+occurrences to crush us that brows are wrinkled before their time;
+nerves broken-edged while yet they should be firmly strung; death
+reached ere yet the proper span of life is lived.
+
+For these unduly wrinkled brows, too early broken nerves, too soon
+encountered graves, civilised man has agreed upon an excuse. He names it
+the strain of life in modern conditions. There is no body in this plea.
+It is not the conditions that matter; it is our manner of receiving
+those conditions. Bend to them and they will crush; face them and they
+become of no avail; allow them to be the Whole of life, and immediately
+they are given so great a weight that to withstand them is impossible;
+regard them in their proper proportion to the scheme of things, and they
+become of airy nothingness.
+
+For if we regulate each to its right importance all that surrounds us,
+not forgetting that since life is transient time is the only ultimate
+standard of value, how unutterably insignificant must small human
+troubles appear in their relation to the whole scheme of things, to the
+enduring hills, the immense seas, vast space.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Compare vexations encompassed by the
+artifice of man with the tremendous life that is mothered by nature.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Set troubles against the enduring hills,
+misfortunes against the immense seas, perplexities against vast space,
+torments against the stout trees. Learn to take tribute of strength from
+every object that is built of strength--the strength of solidity that
+a stout beam may give, the strength of beauty that from a picture or a
+statuary irradiates.
+
+Gain strength from strength. It is a first principle of warfare to band
+undisciplined troops with tried regiments, to shoulder recruits with
+veterans. The horse-breaker will set the timid colt in harness with the
+steady mare. Thus is stiffening and a sense of security imparted to
+the weaker spirit; timidity oozes and is burned by the steady flame
+of courage that from the stronger emanates. In the heat of that flame
+latent strength warms and kindles in the weaker.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Seek intercourse with the minds that are
+above you; if not to be encountered, they are to be purchased in books.
+Avoid communion with the small minds below you and of your level.
+
+No man, nor book, nor thing can be touched without virtue passing thence
+into you. See to it that who or what you touch gives you strength, not
+weakness; uplifts, not debases. The aspiring athlete does not seek to
+match his strength against inferiors. These give him--easy victory.
+Contact with them is for him effortless; they tend to draw him to their
+plane. Rather, being wise, he shuns them to pit his prowess against such
+as can give him best, from whom he may learn, out of whom he will take
+virtue, by whom he will be raised to all that is best in him. Gain
+strength from strength. The attributes strength and weakness are
+as infectious as the plague. Make your bed so that you may lie with
+strength and catch his affection.
+
+I do not pretend that these are thoughts which influenced the persons of
+my history. My unthinking George and my simple Mary would care nothing
+for such things. Sight of the enduring hills would evoke in my George
+the uttered belief that they would be an infernal sweat to climb; sound
+of the immense seas if in anger would move my Mary to prayer for all
+those in peril on the wave, if in lapping tranquillity to sentimental
+thoughts of her George. But they had laughter and they had love.
+Adversity can make little fight against those lusty weapons.
+
+And now we have an exquisite balcony scene and rare midnight alarms for
+your delectation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+On that day when George left his Mary at the little lodgings in Meath
+Street, Battersea, Bill Wyvern returned to Paitley Hill after absence
+from home for a week upon a visit.
+
+His Margaret was his first thought upon his arrival. Letters between
+the pair were, by the sharpness of Mr. Marrapit's eye, compelled to be
+exchanged not through the post but by medium of a lovers' postal box
+situate in the hole of a tree in that shrubbery of Herons' Holt where
+they were wont by stealth to meet. Thus when Bill, upon this day of his
+return, scaled the tremendous wall and groped among the bushes, he
+saw the trysting bower innocent of his love--then searched and found a
+letter.
+
+A sad little note for lover's heart. Mr. Marrapit, it said, abed of a
+chill, prevented Margaret meeting her Bill that afternoon. Her father
+must be constantly ministered; impossible to say when she would be
+released. She heard him calling, she must fly to him. With fondest love.
+No time for more.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The lines chilled Bill's heart. His was a fidgety and nervous love
+that took fright at shadow of doubt. The week that had divided him
+from Margaret was the longest period they had not embraced since their
+discovery one of another. Was it not possible, he tortured himself,
+that loss of his presence had blurred his image in her heart? Countless
+heroes of his own stories who thus had suffered rose to assure him that
+possible indeed it was. The more he brooded upon it the more probable
+did it become.
+
+Bedtime found him desolated. In apprehension he paced his room. The
+thought of sleep with this devil of doubt to thump his pillow was
+impossible. Leaning from his window he gazed upon the stars and groaned;
+dropped eyes to the lawn, silvered in moonlight, and started beneath the
+prick of a sudden thought. It was a night conceived for lovers' tryst.
+He would seek his Margaret's open window, whistle her from her bed, and
+bring this damned doubt of her to reality or knock the ghostly villain
+dead.
+
+It was an inspiriting thought, and Bill started to whistle upon it until
+he remembered the demeanour in which he would have sent forth one of
+his own heroes upon such a mission. "Dark eyes gleaming strangely from a
+pale, set face," he would have written. Bill's eyes were of a clearest,
+childlike blue which interfered a little with the proper conception of
+the role he was to play; but blanketing his spirits in melancholy he
+stepped from his room and passed down the stairs.
+
+That favoured bull-terrier Abiram, sleeping in the hall, drummed a
+tattoo of welcome upon the floor.
+
+"Chuck it," said Bill morosely.
+
+The "faithful hound" that gives solace to the wounded heart is a pretty
+enough thing in stories; Abiram had had no training for the part. This
+dog associated his master not with melancholy that needed caressing but
+with wild "rags" that gave and demanded tremendous spirits.
+
+Intelligence, however, showed the wise creature that the tone of that
+command meant he was to be excluded from whatever wild rag might be
+now afoot. It was not to be borne. Therefore, to lull suspicion,
+Abiram ceased his drumming; rose when Bill had passed; behind him crept
+stealthily; and upon the door being opened bounded around his master's
+legs and into the moonlight with a joyous yelp.
+
+Fearful of arousing Korah and Dathan in their kennels to tremendous din
+if he bellowed orders, Bill hissed commands advising Abiram to return
+indoors under threat of awful penalties.
+
+Abiram frisked and skipped upon the lawn like a young lamb.
+
+Bill changed commands for missiles.
+
+Abiram, entering into the thing with rare spirit, caught, worried, and
+killed each clod of earth hurled at him, then bounded expectant forward
+for the next sacrifice that would be thrown for his delight in this
+entrancing game.
+
+"Very well," spoke Bill between his teeth. "Very well. You jolly well
+come, my boy. Wait till you get near enough for me to catch you, that's
+all."
+
+Beneath this understanding they moved forward across the lawn and down
+the road; Abiram sufficiently in the rear to harass rats that might be
+going about their business, without himself being in the zone of his
+master's strength.
+
+Heaving a sigh burthened with fond memory as he passed the wall
+of Herons' Holt where it gave upon the secret meeting-place in the
+shrubbery, Bill skirted the grounds; for the second time in his life
+passed through the gate and up the drive.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Well he knew his adored's window. From the shrubbery she had pointed it
+him. Now with a bang of the heart he observed that the bottom sash stood
+open so that night breezes, mingling freely with the perfumes of her
+apartment, unhindered could bear in to her his tremulous love-signals.
+
+He set a low whistle upon the air. It was not louder, he felt, than the
+agitated banging of his heart that succeeded it.
+
+Again he whistled, and once again. There was a rustling from within.
+
+"Margaret!" he softly called. "Margaret!"
+
+She appeared. The blessed damosel leaned out. About her yearning face
+the long dark hair abundantly fell; her pretty bed-gown, unbuttoned low,
+gave him glimpse of snowy bosom, beautifully rounded.
+
+"Oh, Bill!" she cried, stretching her arms.
+
+Then, glancing downwards at her person, she stepped back swiftly.
+Reappearing, the soft round of her twin breasts was not to view.
+
+She had buttoned up her night-dress.
+
+"Oh, Bill!"
+
+"Oh, Margaret!"
+
+"_Wow!_" spoke Abiram in nerve-shattering welcome. "_Wow!_"
+
+The blessed damosel fled. Bill plunged a kick. Abiram took the skirt of
+it; waddled away across the lawn, his waving stern expressing pleasure
+at having at once shown his politeness by bidding a lady good evening,
+and at being, like true gentleman, well able to take a hint.
+
+Bill put upon the breeze:
+
+"It's all right. He's gone."
+
+No answer. Shuddering with terror lest that hideous _wow!_ had disturbed
+the house the blessed damosel lay trembling abed, the coverings pressed
+about her straining ears.
+
+"He's gone," Bill strained again, his larynx torn with the rasp of
+whispers that must penetrate like shouts and yet speed soft-shod. "He's
+gone!"
+
+Margaret put a white leg to the ground--listened; drew forth its
+companion--listened; glimpsed her white legs; shuddered at such
+immodesty with a man so close; veiled them to their toes with her
+bed-gown; listened; stepped again to the window.
+
+"Oh, Bill!"
+
+"Oh, Margaret!"
+
+"Has anyone heard, do you think?"
+
+"My darling, not a soul. It sounded loud to us. Oh, Margaret--"
+
+"Hush! Yes?"
+
+"Do you know why I am come?"
+
+"Hush!--no."
+
+"I thought--from your note--that you didn't care to see me again. I
+thought-being away like that--that you found you didn't-love me after
+all. Oh, I was tortured, Margaret. Oh--!"
+
+"Hush! Listen!"
+
+"Damn!" said Bill.
+
+The blessed damosel poked her beautiful head again into the night. "It's
+all right. I thought I heard a sound. We must be careful."
+
+"Oh, Margaret, I was tortured--racked. I had to come to you. Tell me I
+was wrong in thinking--"
+
+"Oh, Bill, Bill, I--"
+
+This girl was well-nigh in a swoon of delicious excitement. Emotion took
+her and must be gulped ere she found voice. She stretched her arms down
+towards him.
+
+"Oh, Bill, I thought so, too."
+
+A steely pang struck at his heart. "You thought you didn't love me after
+all?"
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+Emotion dragged her from the window to her waist. Her long hair cascaded
+down to him so that the delicious tips, kissing his face, might by his
+lips be kissed.
+
+"No, no," she breathed; "I thought the same of you. I thought you might
+have found--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"Damn!" said Bill.
+
+She reappeared; again her tresses trickled to him. "It's all right. I
+thought you might have found you didn't love me after all. Dearest, not
+hearing from you--"
+
+In sympathy of spirit Bill groaned: "What could I do?"
+
+She clasped her hands in a delicious ecstasy. "I know, I know. But you
+know how foolish I am. I felt--oh, Bill, forgive me!--I felt that, if
+you had really cared, a way of sending me a message might have been
+found. Of course, it was impossible. And there was more than that. When
+we parted last week, I thought you seemed not to care very much--"
+
+"Oh, Margaret!"
+
+"I know, I know. I know now how foolish I was, but that is what I
+thought--and, Bill, it tortured me. I've not been able to sleep at
+nights. That is how I was awake just now."
+
+"Margaret, I believe you're crying."
+
+"I'm so--so happy now."
+
+"Oh, so am I! Aren't you glad I came, Margaret?"
+
+She murmured, "Oh, Bill!"; gave him a smile that pictured her answer.
+
+Mutually they gazed for a space, drinking delight.
+
+Her thirst quenched, Margaret said:
+
+"Bill, those nights, those terrible nights when I have been doubtful of
+you, filled me with thoughts that shaped into a poem last night."
+
+"A poem to me?"
+
+"About us. Shall I read it?--now that the doubt is all over."
+
+He begged her read.
+
+She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand
+paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful
+moon:
+
+  "Our meeting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature knew we met?
+  Twilight soft with a gentle breeze
+  Bearing scent of the slumbering seas;
+  Music sweet--'twas a nightingale,
+  Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail--
+  Golden sky that was flecked with red
+  (Ribands of rose on a golden bed).
+  Ah, love! when first we met!"
+
+She paused. "It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest," she
+whispered, "and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That is
+the imagery of it--as it seemed to me."
+
+Bill said: "And to me; a beautiful imagery."
+
+She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: "Oh, it's nothing, really.
+You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in song. One has
+to set them down."
+
+"One is merely the instrument," Bill said.
+
+"Yes, the instrument." She hugged the phrase. "The _instrument_. How
+cleverly you put things!"
+
+Bill disavowed the gift. Margaret breathed, "Oh, you do; I have so often
+noticed it." Bill again denied.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Conventionality demanded this little exchange of them, and to-day the
+empress sway of conventionality is rarely rebelled. Even, as here, when
+treading the path of love, the journey must constantly be stopped while
+handfuls of the sweet-smelling stuff are tossed about our persons.
+Neglect the duty and you must walk alone. For to neglect conventionality
+is like going abroad without clothes; the naked man appears. Now,
+nothing can be more utterly horrid to our senses than a stark woman or
+stark man walking down the street. We should certainly pull aside the
+blind to have a peep, and the more we could see of the nakedness the
+further would we crane our heads (provided no one was by to watch); but
+to go out and chat, to be seen in company with the naked creature,
+is another matter. We would sooner chop off our legs. So with the
+conventions. The fewer of them you wear, the more naked (that is to say,
+real) do you become. Eyes will poke at you round the blinds, but you
+must walk quickly past the gate, please. If you will not go through
+the machine and come out a nice smooth sausage, well, you must remain
+original flesh and gristle; but you will smell horrid in nice noses.
+
+Is it not warming, as you read this, to know perfectly well that you are
+not one of the sausages?
+
+
+
+V.
+
+When they had sufficiently daubed themselves, Margaret asked:
+
+"Shall I read the next verse? That was the imagery of our meeting; this
+of our parting."
+
+Bill gulped. This man was fondling the scented tresses that trickled
+about his face; speech was a little difficult.
+
+She put her page beneath the moon; gave her voice to its rapture:
+
+  "Our parting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature our folly knew?
+  Mournful swish of the sobbing rain;
+  Distant surge of the Deep in pain;
+  Whispering wail of the wandering wind,
+  Seeking, sobbing, a rest to find;
+  Fitful gleam from a troubled sky
+  (Nature weeping to see love die).
+  Ah, love, when last we met!
+
+"It was a perfect day, really," she said. "Very hot, and just before
+lunch, do you remember? But there, again, it is the _imagery_ of it
+as it seemed to our inner selves. It comes to one, and one is the
+_instrument_."
+
+Bill's voice was hoarse. "Margaret, come down to me," he said.
+
+"I dare not."
+
+"You must. I must touch you--kiss you. You must come down!"
+
+"Bill, I dare not; I should be heard."
+
+He bitted his next words as they came galloping up. Dare he give them
+rein? And then again he bathed in the ecstasy of the scene. The black
+square of the open window; the scented roses that framed it; the silver
+night that lit its picture--her dusky face between her streaming hair,
+her white arms, bare to where the pushed-back sleeves gave them to the
+soft breeze to kiss, the soft outline of her breast where the press of
+her weight drew close her gown.
+
+It was not to be borne. The bitted words lashed from his hold. He
+gasped:
+
+"Then I am coming up!"
+
+Was she aghast at him? he asked himself. He stood half-checked while her
+steady eyes left his face, roamed from him--contrasting, as ashamed he
+felt, the purity of the still night with the clamour of his turbulent
+passions--and settled on an adjacent flowerbed.
+
+At last she spoke, very calmly.
+
+"There is a potting-box just there," she said. "If you turned it on end
+you could reach the window, and then--"
+
+The box gave him two feet of reach. He jumped for the ledge--caught it;
+pulled; fetched the curve of an arm over the sill.
+
+Then between earth and paradise he hung limp; for a sudden horror was in
+his Margaret's eyes.
+
+She put upon his brow a hand that pressed him back; gave words to her
+pictured alarm: "A step upon the gravel!"
+
+'Twixt earth and window, with dangling legs and clutching arms, in
+muscle-racking pain he hung.
+
+Truly a step, and then another step.
+
+And then a very tornado of sound beat furiously upon the trembling
+night; with it a flash; from it the pattering of a hundred bullets.
+
+Someone had discharged a gun.
+
+As Satan was hurled, so, plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill fell.
+And now the still air was lashed into a fury of sound-waves, tearing
+this way and that in twenty keys; now the sleeping garden was torn by
+rushing figures, helter-skelter for life and honour.
+
+Sounds!--the melancholy bellow of that gardener, Mr. Fletcher, as the
+recoil of the bell-mouthed blunderbuss he had fired hurled him prone
+upon the gravel; the dreadful imprecations of Bill striving to clear
+his leg of the potting-box through whose side it had plunged; piercing
+screams of Mrs. Major from a ground-floor room; shrills of alarm from
+Mr. Marrapit; _gurr-r-ing_ yelps from Abiram in ecstasy of man-hunt.
+
+Rushing figures!--Bill, freed from his box, at top speed towards the
+shrubbery; Mr. Fletcher, up from his fall, with tremendous springs
+bounding across the lawn; Abiram in hurtling pursuit.
+
+More sounds!--panic screams from Mr. Fletcher, heavily labouring; the
+protest of a window roughly raised; from George's head, thrust into the
+night: "Yi! Yi! Yi! Hup, then! Good dog! Sock him! Sock him! Yi! Yi!
+Yi!"
+
+We must seek the fuse that touched off this hideous turbulence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Alarums And Excursions By Night.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+We are going into a lady's bedroom, but I promise you the thing shall be
+nicely done: there shall not be a blush.
+
+It was midnight when Bill Wyvern projected the scheme whose execution
+we have followed through sweetness to disaster. Two hours earlier the
+Marrapit household had sought its beds.
+
+It was Mr. Marrapit's wise rule that each member of his establishment
+should pass before him as he or she sought their chambers. Night is the
+hour when the thoughts take on unbridled licence; and he would send
+his household to sleep each with some last admonition to curb fantastic
+wanderings of the mind.
+
+Upon this night Mr. Marrapit was himself abed of the chill that Margaret
+had mentioned in her note to Bill. But the review was not therefore
+foregone. Upon his back, night-capped head on pillow propped, he lay as
+the minute-hand of his clock ticked towards ten.
+
+His brow ruffled against a sound without his door. He called:
+
+"Mrs. Armitage!"
+
+"Sir?" spoke Mrs. Armitage through the oak.
+
+"Breathe less stertorously."
+
+Mrs. Armitage, his cook, waiting outside upon the mat, gulped wrath;
+respirated through open mouth.
+
+The clock at Mr. Marrapit's elbow gave the first chime of ten. Instantly
+Mrs. Armitage tapped.
+
+"Enter," said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+She waddled her stout figure to him. Behind her Clara and Ada, those
+trim maids, took place.
+
+Mr. Marrapit addressed her. "To-morrow, Mrs. Armitage, arouse your girls
+at six. Speed them at their toilet; set them to clean your flues."
+He glanced at a tablet taken from beneath his pillow. "At 4.6 this
+afternoon I smelt soot."
+
+"The flues were cleaned this morning, sir."
+
+"Untrue. Your girls were late. Prone in suffering upon my couch, my ears
+tell me all that is accomplished in every part of the house. Ten minutes
+after your girls descended I heard the kitchen fire roar. I suspect
+paraffin."
+
+Mrs. Armitage wriggled to displace the blame. "I rose them at six, sir.
+They sleep that heavy and they take that long to dressing, it's a wonder
+to me they ever do get down."
+
+Mr. Marrapit addressed the sluggards. "Shun the enervating couch. Spring
+to the call. Cleanliness satisfied, adorn not the figure; pursue the
+duties. Ponder this. Seek help to effect it. Contrive a special prayer.
+To your beds."
+
+They left him; upon the mat encountered Frederick, and him, in abandon
+of relief, dug vitally with vulgar thumbs.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Squirming, Frederick, the gardener's boy, advanced to the bedside.
+
+Mr. Marrapit sternly regarded him: "Recite your misdeeds."
+
+"I've done me jobs, sir."
+
+"Prostrated, I cannot check your testimony. One awful eye above alone
+can tell. Upon your knees this night search stringently your heart.
+Bend."
+
+Frederick inclined his neck until his forehead was upon the coverlet.
+Mr. Marrapit scanned the neck.
+
+"Behind the ears are stale traces. Cleanse abundantly. To your bed."
+
+Without the door Frederick encountered Mr. Fletcher. "You let me catch
+you reading abed to-night," Mr. Fletcher warned him.
+
+"Cleanse yer blarsted ear-'oles," breathed Frederick, pushing past.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Mr. Fletcher moved in to the presence.
+
+"Is all securely barred, bolted and shuttered?" Mr. Marrapit asked.
+
+"It's all right."
+
+"I am apprehensive. This is the first night I have not accompanied you
+upon your round. Colossal responsibility lies upon you. Should thieves
+break through and steal, upon your head devolves the crime."
+
+Wearily Mr. Fletcher repeated: "It's all right."
+
+Mr. Marrapit frowned: "You do not inspire confidence. Sleep films your
+eye. I shudder for you. Women and children are in your care this night.
+The maids, Mrs. Armitage, Mrs. Major, my daughter, the young life of
+Frederick, are in your hands. What if rapine and murder, concealed in
+the garden, are loosed beneath my roof this night?"
+
+Mr. Fletcher passed a fist across his brow; spoke wearily: "It's all
+right, Mr. Marrapit. I can't say more; I can't do more. I tell you again
+it's all right."
+
+"Substantiate. Adduce evidence."
+
+Mr. Fletcher raised an appealing hand: "How can I prove it? My word's a
+good word, ain't it? I tell you the doors are locked. I can't bring 'em
+up to show you, can I? I'm a gardener, I am."
+
+"By zeal give proof. Set your alarum-clock so that twice in the night
+you may be roused. Gird then yourself and patrol. But lightly slumber.
+Should my bell sound in your room spring instantly to my bedside. To
+your couch."
+
+Battling speech, Mr. Fletcher moved to the door. At the threshold
+protest overcame him. He gave it vent: "I should like to ast if I was
+engaged to work by night as well as day? Can't I even have me rest?
+'Ow many nights am I to patrol the house? It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a watchdog."
+
+"Away, insolence."
+
+Insolence, upon the stairs, morosely descending, drew aside to give room
+to Margaret and George.
+
+Margaret parted her lips at him in her appealing smile. "Oh, Mr.
+Fletcher," in her pretty way she said, "you locked me out. Indeed you
+did." She smiled again; tripped towards Mr. Marrapit's door.
+
+Mr. Fletcher stayed George, following. "Mr. George, did you shut up
+secure behind Miss Margaret?"
+
+George reassured him; questioned his earnestness.
+
+Mr. Fletcher pointed through a window that gave upon the garden. "I've
+the 'orrors on me to-night," he said. "According to Master there's
+rapine lurking in them bushes. Mr. George, what'll I do if there's
+rapine beneath this roof to-night?"
+
+"Catch it firmly by the back of the neck and hold its head in a bucket
+of water," George told him.
+
+Mr. Fletcher passed, pondering the suggestion. "Only something to do
+with rats after all," he cogitated with wan smile of relief.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Margaret, at her father's bedside, luxuriously mouthed the fine phrases
+of the Book of Job which nightly she read him. Her chapter finished, she
+inquired: "Shall I read on?"
+
+"Does Job continue?"
+
+"No, father. The next begins, 'Then answered Bildad, the Shuite.'"
+
+George coughed upon the threshold.
+
+"Terminate," said Mr. Marrapit. "Bildad is without."
+
+"Oh, father, George is not!"
+
+"He torments me. He is Bildad. Terminate. To your bed."
+
+She pressed a warm kiss upon Job's brow; took on her soft cheek the
+salute of his thin lips. "You have everything, dear father?"
+
+"Prone on my couch I lack much. I am content. You are a good girl,
+Margaret."
+
+"Oh, father!" She tripped from the room in a warmth of satisfaction.
+
+The rough head of Bildad the Shuite came round the door; spoke "Good
+night."
+
+"Approach," said Job. Bildad's legs came over the mat. "You seek your
+room? But not your couch?"
+
+"I'm going to bed, if that's what you mean," George told him.
+
+Mr. Marrapit groaned. "Spurn it. Shun sloth. In the midnight oil set the
+wick of knowledge. Burn it, trim it, tend it."
+
+George withdrew to his room; set the midnight pipe in his mouth; leaning
+from his window sped his thoughts to Battersea.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+One member of the house remained to be sent to sleep. Mrs. Major put a
+soft knuckle to the door; came at the call; whispered "I thought I might
+disturb you."
+
+"You never disturb me, Mrs. Major."
+
+A little squeak sprung from the nutter in the masterly woman's heart.
+
+"You sigh, Mrs. Major?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I can't bear to see you lying there. The"--she paused
+against an effort, then took the aspirate in a masterly rush--"the house
+is not the same without you."
+
+"Your sympathy is very consoling to me, Mrs. Major."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Marrapit!" She plunged a shaft that should try him: "I wish I
+had the right to give you more."
+
+"Your position in this house gives you free access to me, Mrs. Major.
+Regard your place as one of my own circle. Do not let deference stifle
+intercourse."
+
+The masterly woman hove a superb sigh. "If you knew how I feel your
+kindness, Mr. Marrapit. Truly, as I say to myself every night, fair is
+my lot and goodly is my--" Icy dismay took her. Was the missing word
+"hermitage" or "heritage"? With masterly decision she filled the blank
+with a telling choke; keyed her voice to a brilliant suggestion of
+brightness struggling with tears: "The sweetling cats are safely
+sleeping. I have come straight from them. Ah, how they miss you! How
+well they know you suffer!"
+
+"They do?" A tremble of pleasure was in Mr. Marrapit's voice.
+
+"They does--do." Mrs. Major recited their day, gave their menu. "I must
+not tarry," she concluded; "you need rest. Good night, Mr. Marrapit.
+Good night."
+
+"Good night, Mrs. Major."
+
+Mr. Marrapit put out his candle.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+And now in every room, save one, Sleep drew her velvet fingers down
+recumbent forms; pressed eyelids with her languorous kiss; upon her warm
+breast pillowed willing heads; about her bedfellows drew her Circe arms.
+
+Mrs. Major's room was that single exception, and it is that masterly
+woman's apartment we now shall penetrate.
+
+Hurrying to semi-toilet; again assuring herself that the key was turned;
+peering a last time for lurking ravishers beneath the bed, Mrs. Major
+then fumbled with keys before her box--threw up the lid.
+
+Down through a pile of garments plunged her arm. Her searching fingers
+closed about her quest and a very beautiful smile softened her face--a
+smile of quiet confidence and of trust.
+
+In greater degree than men, women have this power of taking strength
+from the mere contact of an inanimate object. A girl will smile all
+through her sleep because, hand beneath pillow, her fingers are about
+a photograph or letter; no need, as with Mrs. Major there was no need,
+even to see the thing that thus inspires. The pretty hand will delve to
+recesses of a drawer, and the thrill that brings the smile will run
+up from, it may be, a Bible, a diary, or a packet of letters touched.
+Dependent since Eden, woman is more emotionally responsive to aught that
+gives aid than is man; for man is accustomed to battle for his prizes,
+not to receive them.
+
+Mrs. Major drew up, that smile still upon her face, and the moon through
+uncurtained window gave light upon the little joy she fetched from the
+depths of her trunk.
+
+"Old Tom Gin."
+
+The neck of Old Tom's bottle clinked against a glass; Old Tom gurgled
+generously; passed away through the steady smile he had inspired.
+
+       *       *        *       *        *
+
+Mrs. Major set a carafe of water upon a little table; partnered it with
+Old Tom; reclined beside the pair on a comfortable seat; closed her
+eyes.
+
+At intervals, as the hand crept between eleven and twelve of the clock,
+she would open them; when she did so diluted Old Tom in the glass fell
+lower, full-bodied Old Tom in the bottle marched steadily behind.
+
+The further Old Tom crept downwards from the neck of his captivity, with
+the greater circumspection did Mrs. Major open her eyes. Considerable
+practice had told this masterly woman that Old Tom must be commanded
+with a steady will: else he took liberties. Eyes suddenly opened annoyed
+Old Tom, and he would set the furniture ambulating round the room in a
+manner at once indecorous in stable objects and calculated to bewilder
+the observer. Therefore, upon setting down her glass, this purposeful
+woman would squarely fix the bureau that stood opposite her, would for
+a moment keep her gaze upon it with a sternness that forbade movement,
+then gently would close her eyes. When Old Tom must be again interviewed
+she would lift the merest corner of an eyelid; catch through it the
+merest fraction of the bureau; determine from the behaviour of this
+portion the stability of the whole.
+
+Thus if the corner she sighted showed indecorous propensities--as,
+swelling and receding, fluttering in some ghostly breeze, or altogether
+disappearing from view,--she would drop her lid and wait till she might
+catch it more seemly. This effected, she would work from that fixed
+point, inch by inch, until the whole bureau was revealed--swaying a
+little, perhaps, but presently quiescent.
+
+When, and not until, it was firmly anchored she would slowly start
+her eye in review around the other objects of her apartment. If
+the wash-stand had tendency to polka with the bed, or the wardrobe
+unnaturally to stretch up its head through the ceiling, Mrs. Major would
+march her gaze steadily back to the bureau, there to take fresh strength
+and start again. When all was orderly--then Old Tom.
+
+Masterly in all things, this woman was most masterly in her cups.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Into Mr. Marrapit's dreams there came a whistle.
+
+He pushed at Sleep; she crooned to him and he snuggled against her.
+
+Upon his brain there rapped a harsh _Wow_!
+
+He wriggled from his bedfellow; she put an arm about him, drew him to
+her.
+
+Now there succeeded a steady wash of sound--rising, falling, murmuring
+persistent against his senses.
+
+He turned his back upon Sleep. She crooned; he wriggled from her.
+Seductively she followed; he kicked a leg and jarred her, threw an arm
+and hurt her. Disgusted, she slipped from bed and left him, leaving a
+chilly space where she had warmly lain.
+
+Mr. Marrapit shivered; felt for Sleep; found her gone; with a start sat
+upright.
+
+The breakwater gone, that wash of sound which had lapped around his
+senses rushed in upon them. Lingering traces of the touch of Sleep still
+offered resistance--a droning hum. The wash surged over, poured about
+him--_VOICES_!
+
+Mr. Marrapit violently cleared his throat. The voices continued.
+Violently again. They still continued. Tremendously a third time. They
+yet continued. From this he argued that they could not be very close to
+his door. Intently he listened, then located them--they came from the
+garden. He felt for the bell-push that carried to Mr. Fletcher's room;
+put his thumb upon it; steadily pressed.
+
+Sleep toyed no tricks in Mr. Fletcher's bed. Like some wanton mistress
+discovered in the very act of betrayal, she at the first tearing clamour
+of the electric bell bounded from the sheets, scuttled from the room.
+
+"Rapine!" cried Mr. Fletcher; plunged his head beneath the bedclothes
+and wrestled in prayer.
+
+The strident gong faltered not nor failed. Steady and penetrating it
+dinned its hideous call. Mr. Fletcher waited for screams. None came. He
+pushed the sheet between his chattering teeth, listened for cudgelling
+and heavy falls. None came. That bell had single possession of the
+night. The possibility that only patrolling was required of him nerved
+him to draw from his concealment. He lit a candle; into trousers pushed
+his quivering legs; upon tottering limbs passed up the stairs to Mr.
+Marrapit's room.
+
+"Judas!" Mr. Marrapit greeted him.
+
+Mr. Fletcher sighed relief: "I thought it was rapine."
+
+"You have betrayed your trust. You are Iscariot."
+
+"I come when you rung."
+
+"Silence. I have heard voices."
+
+"God help us," Mr. Fletcher piously groaned; the candle in his shaking
+hand showered wax.
+
+"Blasphemer! He will not help the craven. Gird yourself."
+
+"I'll call Mr. George."
+
+"Refrain. I will attend to that. Gird yourself. Take the musket from the
+hall. It is loaded. Patrol!"
+
+"I don't want the musket."
+
+"Be not overbold. Outside you may be at their mercy."
+
+"_Outside!_"
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"Me patrol outside!"
+
+"That is your task. Forward!"
+
+By now Mr. Marrapit had risen; swathed himself in a dressing-gown.
+Sternly he addressed Mr. Fletcher: "As you this night quit yourself so
+will I consider the question of your dismissal. If blood is spilt this
+night it will be upon your head."
+
+Mr. Fletcher trembled. "That's just it. It's 'ard--damn 'ard--"
+
+"Forward, Iscariot." Mr. Marrapit drove Judas before him; in the hall
+took down the gun and pressed it into the shaking hands. He drew the
+bolts, impelled Iscariot outward, and essayed to close the door.
+
+Mr. Fletcher clutched the handle. Mr. Marrapit pushed; hissed through
+the crack: "Away! Search every nook. Penetrate each fastness. Use
+stealth. Track, trace, follow!"
+
+Discarding entreaty, Mr. Fletcher put hoarse protest through the slit of
+aperture that remained: "I should like to ast if I was engaged for this,
+Mr. Marrapit," he panted. "I'm a gardener, I am--"
+
+"I recognise that. To your department. With your life forefend it."
+
+Mr. Marrapit fetched the door against the lintel; in the brief moment he
+could hold it close slid the lock.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+No tremor of fear or of excitement ruffled this remarkable man. Calm in
+the breezes of life he was calm also in its tempests. This is a natural
+corollary. As a man faces the smaller matters of his life so he will
+face its crises. Each smallest act accomplished imprints its stamp upon
+the pliable mass we call character; our manner of handling each tiniest
+common-place of our routine helps mould its form; each fleeting thought
+helps shape the mould.
+
+The process is involuntary and we are not aware of its working.
+Character is not made by tremendous thumps, but by the constant
+patterings of minutest touches. The athlete does not build his strength
+by enormous exertions, but by consistent and gentle training. Huge
+strains at spasmodic intervals, separated by periods in which he lies
+fallow in sloth, add nothing to his capacity for endurance; it is by the
+tally of each minute of his preparation that you may read how he
+will acquit himself against the test. Thus also with the shaping of
+character, and thus was Mr. Marrapit, collected in minor affairs, mighty
+in this crisis.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Turning from the door he marched steadily across the hall towards the
+stairs to arouse George.
+
+At the lowermost step a movement on the landing above made him pause. He
+was to be spared the trouble. Placing the candle upon a table he looked
+up. He spoke. "George!"
+
+"Wash it?" said a voice. "Wash it?"
+
+"Wash nothing," Mr. Marrapit commanded. "Who is this?"
+
+The answer, starting low, ascended a shrill scale: "Wash it? Wash it?
+Wash it?"
+
+"Silence!" Mr. Marrapit answered. "Descend!"
+
+He craned upwards. The curl-papered head of Mrs. Major poked at him over
+the banisters.
+
+"Darling," breathed Mrs. Major. "Darling--_um!_"
+
+"Mrs. Major! What is this?"
+
+"Thash what _I_ want to know," said Mrs. Major coquettishly. "Wash it?
+Wash _ish_ it?"
+
+"You are distraught, Mrs. Major. Have no fear. To your room."
+
+The curl-papered head waggled. Mrs. Major beamed. "Darling.
+Darling--um!"
+
+"Exercise control," Mr. Marrapit told her. "Banish apprehension. There
+are thieves; but we are alert."
+
+The head withdrew. Mrs. Major gave a tiny scream: "Thieves!" She took a
+brisk little run down the short flight which gave from where she stood;
+flattened against the wall that checked her impulse; pressed carefully
+away from it; stood at the head of the stairs facing Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He gazed up. "I fear you have been walking in your sleep, Mrs. Major."
+
+Mrs. Major did not reply. She pointed a slippered toe at the stair below
+her; swayed on one leg; dropped to the toe; steadied; beamed at Mr.
+Marrapit; and in a high treble coquettishly announced, "_One_!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit frowned: "Retire, Mrs. Major."
+
+Mrs. Major plumped another step, beamed again: "_Two_!"
+
+"You dream. Retire."
+
+Mrs. Major daintily lifted her skirt; poised again. The projected
+slipper swayed a dangerous circle. Mrs. Major alarmingly rocked. That
+infamous Old Tom presented three sets of banisters for her support; she
+clutched at one; it failed her; "Three four five six seven eight nine
+ten--_darling_!" she cried; at breakneck speed plunged downwards, and
+with the "_Darling_!" flung her arms about Mr. Marrapit's neck.
+
+Back before the shock, staggering beneath the weight, Mr. Marrapit went
+with digging heels. They could not match the pace of that swift blow
+upon his chest. Its backward speed outstripped them. With shattering
+thud he plumped heavily to his full length upon the floor; Mrs. Major
+pressed him to earth.
+
+But that shock was a whack on the head for Old Tom that temporarily
+quieted him. "What has happened?" Mrs. Major asked, clinging tightly.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gasped: "Release my neck. Remove your arms."
+
+"Where are we?"
+
+"You are upon my chest. I am prone beneath you. Release!"
+
+"It's all dark," Mrs. Major cried; gripped firmer.
+
+"It is not dark. I implore movement. Our juxtaposition unnaturally
+compromises us. It is abhorrent."
+
+Mrs. Major opened the eyes she had tightly closed during that staggering
+journey and that shattering fall. She loosed her clutch; got to her
+knees; thence tottered to a chair. That infamous Old Tom raised his head
+again; tickled her brain with misty fingers.
+
+Mr. Marrapit painfully rose. He put a sympathetic hand upon the seat of
+his injury; with the other took up the candle. He regarded Mrs. Major;
+suspiciously sniffed the air, pregnant with strange fumes; again
+regarded his late burden.
+
+Upon her face that infamous Old Tom set a beaming smile,
+
+"Follow me, Mrs. Major," Mr. Marrapit commanded; turned for the
+dining-room; from its interior faced about upon her.
+
+With rare dignity the masterly woman slowly arose; martially she poised
+against the hat-rack; with stately mien marched steadily towards him.
+
+Temporarily she had the grip of Old Tom--was well aware, at least, of
+his designs upon her purity, and superbly she combated him.
+
+With proud and queenly air she drew on--Mr. Marrapit felt that the swift
+suspicion which had taken him had misjudged her.
+
+Mrs. Major reached the mat. Old Tom gave a playful little twitch of her
+legs, and she jostled the doorpost.
+
+With old-world courtesy she bowed apology to the post. "Beg pardon," she
+graciously murmured; stood swaying.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+Step by step with her as she had crossed the hall, Mr. Fletcher,
+recovering from the coward fear in which he shivered outside the door,
+had crept forward along the path around the house. As Mrs. Major stood
+swaying upon the threshold of the dining-room he reached the angle;
+peered round it; in horror sighted Bill's figure pendant from Margaret's
+window.
+
+Thrice the bell-mouth of his gun described a shivering circle; tightly
+he squeezed his eyelids--pressed the trigger.
+
+BANG!
+
+Mr. Marrapit bounded six inches--hardly reached the earth again when,
+with a startled scream, Mrs. Major was upon him, again her arms about
+his neck.
+
+And now shriek pursued shriek, tearing upwards through her throat. Old
+Tom had loosed the ends of all her nerves. Like bolting rabbit in young
+corn the tearing discharge of that gun went madly through them, and
+lacerated she gave tongue.
+
+Stifled by the bony shoulder that pressed against his face, Mr. Marrapit
+went black. He jerked his head free, put up his face, and giving cry for
+cry, shrilled, "George! George! George!"
+
+The din reached George where from his window he leaned, crying on Abiram
+in the man-hunt across the garden. He drew in his head, bounded down the
+stairs. Over Mrs. Major's back, bent inwards from the toes to the rock
+about which she clung, Mr. Marrapit's empurpled face stared at him.
+
+Upon George's countenance the sight struck a great grin; his legs it
+struck to dead halt.
+
+Mrs. Major's shrieks died to moans.
+
+"Action!" Mr. Marrapit gasped. "Remove this creature!"
+
+George put a hand upon her back. It shot a fresh shriek from her; she
+clung closer.
+
+"Pantaloon!" Mr. Marrapit strained. "Crush that grin! Action! Remove
+this woman! She throttles me! The pressure is insupportable. I am
+Sinbad."
+
+George again laid hands. Again Mrs. Major shrieked; tighter clung.
+
+Mr. Marrapit, blacker, cried, "Zany!"
+
+"Well, what the devil can I do?" George asked, hopping about the pair;
+Mrs. Major's back as responsive to his touch as the keys of a piano to
+idle fingers.
+
+"You run to and fro and grin like a dog," Mr. Marrapit told him. "Each
+time you touch her she screams, grips me closer. I shall be throttled.
+Use discretion. Add to mine your assurance of her safety. She is not
+herself."
+
+George chuckled. "She's not. She's tight as a drum."
+
+"Liar!" moaned Mrs. Major.
+
+"Intoxicated?" Mr. Marrapit asked.
+
+"Blind."
+
+Sharp words will move where entreaty cannot stir.
+
+Mrs. Major relaxed her hold; spun round. "Monster" and "Perjurer" rushed
+headlong to her lips. "Ponsger!" she cried; tottered back against the
+sofa; was struck by it at the bend of her knees; collapsed upon it. Her
+head sunk sideways; she closed her eyes.
+
+"You can see for yourself," George said.
+
+Mr. Marrapit sniffed: "My nose corroborates."
+
+"Ponsger!" the prone figure wailed.
+
+Mr. Marrapit started: "Mrs. Major!"
+
+She opened her eyes: "Call me Lucy. Darling-_um!_" She began to snore.
+
+"Abhorrent!" Mr. Marrapit pronounced.
+
+Whisperings without made him step to the door. White figures were upon
+the stairs. "To your beds!" he cried.
+
+"Oh, whatever is it, sir?" Mrs. Armitage panted.
+
+"Away! You outrage decency." Mr. Marrapit set a foot upon the stairs.
+The affrighted figures fled before him.
+
+George, when his uncle returned, was peering through the blind. "Who
+the devil loosed off that gun? It is immaterial. All events are buried
+beneath this abhorrent incident. The roof of my peace has crashed about
+me." Mr. Marrapit regarded the prone figure. "Her inspirations grate
+upon me; her exhalations poison the air. Rouse her. Thrust her to her
+room."
+
+"You'll never wake her now till she's slept it off."
+
+"Let us then essay to carry her. She cannot remain here. My shame shall
+not be revealed, nor hers uncovered."
+
+George began: "To-morrow--"
+
+"To-morrow I speed her from my gates. My beloved cats have been in the
+care of this swinish form. They have been in jeopardy. I tremble at
+their escape. To-morrow she departs."
+
+A sudden tremendous idea swept over George, engulfing speech.
+
+With no word he moved to the sofa; grasped the prone figure; put it upon
+its weak legs. They gave beneath it. "You must take her feet," he said.
+
+Averting his gaze, Mr. Marrapit took the legs that Old Tom had
+devitalised. The procession moved out; staggered up the stairs.
+
+Heavy was the burden; bursting with vulgar laughter was George; but that
+huge idea that suddenly had come to him swelled his muscles, lent him
+strength.
+
+He heaved the form upon the bed.
+
+On the dressing-table a candle burned. By its light Mr. Marrapit
+discovered Old Tom's bottle, two fingers of the villain yet remaining.
+
+He beat his breast. "Extinguish that light. I to my room. Seek Fletcher.
+He patrols the garden for malefactors. In the morning I will see you.
+Before this disaster my chill is sped. You are of my flesh. Cleave unto
+me. In our bosoms let this abhorrent sore be buried. Seek Fletcher."
+
+The distraught man tottered to his room.
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+George went slowly down the stairs, bathing in the delicious thrills of
+unfolding the wrappings from about his great idea. He had yet had time
+but to feel its shape and hug it as a child will feel and hug a doll
+packed in paper. Now he stripped the coverings, and his pulses thumped
+as he saw how fine was it. Almost unconscious to his actions he unbarred
+the door; stepped into the thin light; was not aroused until, treading
+upon Mr. Fletcher's musket, his idea was suddenly jolted from him.
+
+Here the gun that gave the echoes; where the hand that started it?
+
+A hoarse cry came to him: "Mr. George! Mr. George!"
+
+He looked along the sound. Above a hedge below the lawn an apple-tree
+raised its branches. Within them he could espy a dark mass that as he
+approached took form. Mr. Fletcher.
+
+The grass hushed George's footsteps. Rounding the hedge he came upon the
+little drama that gave that note of dread to Mr. Fletcher's calls.
+
+Beneath the gardener's armpits one branch of the apple-tree passed;
+behind his knees another. Between them hung his heavy seat. Whitely a
+square of it peered downwards; melancholy upon the sward lay the lid of
+corduroy that should have warmed the space. For ten paces outwards from
+the tree-trunk there stretched a pitted path. Abiram, as George came,
+turned at this path's extremity; set his sloe eye upon the dull white
+patch in Mr. Fletcher's stern; hurled forward up the track; sprang and
+snapped jaws an inch below the mark as Mr. Fletcher mightily heaved.
+
+A lesser dog would have yapped bafflement, fruitlessly scratched upwards
+from hind legs. Abiram was perfect dog of the one breed of dog that
+is in all things perfect. Silently he plodded back; turned; ran; leapt
+again. Again Mr. Fletcher heaved, and again the fine jaws snapped an
+inch beneath the pallid square of flesh.
+
+As once more uncomplaining he turned, Abiram sighted George; ruffled.
+George spoke his name. Abiram wagged that short tail that marked his
+Champion Victor Wild blood, shook the skull that spoke to the same
+mighty strain.
+
+This dog expected in his human friends that same devotion to duty which
+is the governing trait of his breed. His shake implied, "No time for
+social niceties, sir. I have a job in hand."
+
+"Call 'im off, Mr. George," Mr. Fletcher implored. "Call 'im--_ur!_"--he
+heaved upward as Abiram again sprang--"off," he concluded, sinking once
+more as the bull-terrier trotted up the little path.
+
+It was a fascinating scene. "You're quite safe," George told him.
+
+"Safe! I'm _tired!_ I can't keep on risin' and fallin' all night. It's
+'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a--_ur!_" He heaved again.
+
+George told him: "You do it awfully well, though; so neat."
+
+"Call 'im off," Mr. Fletcher moaned. "He'll have me in a minute. He's
+'ad a bit off of me calf; he's 'ad a piece out of me trousers. He'll go
+on. He's a methodical dog--_ur!_"
+
+George took a step; caught Abiram's collar. "How on earth did you get up
+there?"
+
+"Jumped."
+
+"Jumped! You couldn't jump up there!"
+
+Mr. Fletcher took a look to see that Abiram was securely held; then
+started to wriggle to a pose of greater comfort. "I'd jump a house with
+that 'orror after me," he said bitterly. By intricate squirmings he laid
+a hand upon the cold patch of flesh that gazed starkly downwards from
+his stern. "If I ain't got hydrophobia I've got frost-bite," he moaned.
+"Cruel draught I've had through this 'ole. Take 'im off, Mr. George."
+
+George was scarcely listening. His thoughts had returned to the
+delicious task of fingering his great idea.
+
+"Take 'im off, Mr. George," Mr. Fletcher implored.
+
+George passed a handkerchief under Abiram's collar; tugged for the gate;
+there dispatched the dog down the road.
+
+Abiram shook his head; trotted with dejected stern. A job had been left
+unfinished.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Hallooing safety to the apple-tree, too preoccupied to inquire further
+into the reason for the gun and the presence of Bill's dog, George
+turned for the house.
+
+Awakening birds carolled his presence. They hymned the adventures of
+the day that Dawn, her handmaiden, came speeding, silver-footed,
+perfume-bearing, fresh from her dewy bath, to herald.
+
+George put up an answering pipe. For him also the day was
+adventure-packed and must lustily be hymned. Entering Mr. Marrapit's
+study he drew the blinds; upon a telegraph form set Mary's name and her
+address; pondered; then to these words compressed his great idea:
+
+"_Go agency this morning. Get name on books. Meet you there. Think can
+get you situation here. George._"
+
+"Immediately the office opens," said George; trod up to his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+As Mr. Marrapit had said, the disaster of the night had sped his
+complaint.
+
+He appeared at breakfast. No word was spoken. He ate nothing.
+
+Once only gave he sign of interest. Midway through the meal muffled
+sounds came to the breakfast party. Scufflings in the hall struck an
+attentive light in Mr. Marrapit's eyes; slam of the front door jerked
+him in his seat; wheels, hoofs along the drive drew his gaze to the
+window. A cab rolled past--a melancholy horse; a stout driver, legs set
+over a corded box; a black figure, bolt upright, handkerchief to eyes.
+
+The vision passed. Mr. Marrapit gazed upwards; his thin lips moved.
+
+Vulgar curiosity shall not tempt us to pry into the demeanour with
+which, an hour earlier, this man had borne himself in the study with
+Mrs. Major. Of that unhappy woman's moans, of her explanations, of the
+tears that poured from her eyes--bloodshot in a head most devilishly
+racked by Old Tom--we shall not speak.
+
+Margaret stretched her hand for more bread. Despite the moving scenes in
+which during the night she had travelled with her Bill, her appetite
+was nothing affected. With her meals her sentimentality was upon the
+friendliest terms. This girl was most gnawed by hunger when by emotion
+she was most torn.
+
+She stretched for a third slice.
+
+Mr. Marrapit cleared his throat. The sound shot her. She caught his
+eye and the glance pierced her. Her outstretched hand dropped upon the
+cloth, toyed with crumbs.
+
+Mr. Marrapit said: "I perceive you are finished?"
+
+Margaret murmured: "Yes." Her voice had a tremulous note. It is a bitter
+thing to lose a slice of bread-and-butter for which the whole system
+imperatively calls.
+
+"Withdraw," Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+She put a lingering glance upon the loaf; wanly glided from the room.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+As she closed the door George prepared for his great idea. He drank
+deeply of a cup of tea; drew down his cuffs; pondered them. They were
+covered in pencilled notes, evolved by desperate work all that morning,
+to aid him when the hour was at hand.
+
+He absorbed Note I; spoke: "I am afraid last night's events very much
+distressed you, sir--"
+
+"They are interred. Do not resurrect them."
+
+George hurried to Note 2. "My sympathies with you--"
+
+"Let the dead bury the dead. Mourn not the past."
+
+George skipped to Note 3. "What I am concerned about is the cats."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Oh, sir, indeed I am. I am not demonstrative. Perhaps you have not
+guessed my fondness for the cats?"
+
+"I have not."
+
+"Believe me, it is a deep affection. When I saw that unhappy woman
+tigh--under the influence of spirits, what was my first thought?"
+
+"Supply the answer."
+
+George took another glimpse at Note 3. "What was my first thought?"
+he repeated. "Was it distress at sight of a woman so forgetful of her
+modesty? No. Was it sympathy for the cruel deception that had been
+practised upon you? Forgive me, sir, it was not." (He glanced at his
+notes.) "What, then?"
+
+He paused brightly.
+
+"It is your conundrum," said Mr. Marrapit. "Solve it."
+
+George raised an impressive hand. "What, then? It was the thought of the
+risks that the cats I so loved had run whilst beneath the care of this
+woman."
+
+Mr. Marrapit's groan inspirited George. He was on the right track. He
+took Note 4. "I asked myself, Who is responsible for the jeopardy in
+which these creatures have been placed? Heaven knows, I said, what they
+may not have suffered. This woman may have neglected their food, she may
+have neglected their comforts. In a drunken fit she might have poisoned
+them, beat them, set furious dogs upon them."
+
+Mr. Marrapit writhed in anguish.
+
+George acted as Note 4 bade him. He dropped his voice. "Let us trust,
+sir," he said, "that none of these things has taken place."
+
+"Amen," Mr. Marrapit murmured. "Amen."
+
+George's voice took a sterner note. "But, I asked myself, Who is
+responsible for those horrors that might have been, that may have been?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit dropped his head upon his hands. He murmured: "I am.
+Peccavi."
+
+George rose in noble calm. He read Note 5; gave it with masterly effect:
+"No, sir. I am."
+
+"You!"
+
+"I! I have not slept since I leftyou, sir. I have paced my room and" (he
+read a masterly note) "remorse has paced with me, step by step, hour by
+hour. Did I help my uncle, I asked myself, when he was selecting this
+Mrs. Major? No. Was I by his right hand to counsel and advise him?
+No. Has not my training at hospital, my intercourse with ten thousand
+patients, taught me to read faces like an open book? It has. Should not
+I then have been by his side to help him when he selected a woman for
+the post of caring for our-forgive me, sir, I said 'our'--caring for our
+cats? I should. I asked myself how I could make amends. Only by begging
+my uncle's forgiveness for my indifference and by imploring him to let
+me help him in the choice of the next woman he selects."
+
+A masterly pause he followed with an appeal sent forth in tones of rare
+beauty: "Oh, sir, I do beg your forgiveness; I do implore you let me
+make amends by helping you in your next choice."
+
+Mr. Marrapit wiped moist eyes. "I had not suspected in you this
+profundity of feeling."
+
+George said brokenly: "I have given you no reason."
+
+Mr. Marrapit replied on a grim tone: "Assuredly you have not."
+
+George glanced at Note 6; fled from the danger zone.
+
+"Where I fear the mistake was made in Mrs. Major," he hurried, "was that
+she was not a perfect lady. Our--forgive me for saying 'our'--our cats
+are refined cats, cats of gentle birth, of inherent delicacy. Their
+attendant should be of like breeding. She should be refined, her birth
+should be gentle, her feelings delicate. She should be a lady."
+
+"You are right," Mr. Marrapit said. "As sea calleth to sea, as like
+calleth to like, so would an ebb and flow of sympathy be set in motion
+between my cats and an attendant delicately born. Is that your meaning?"
+
+George murmured in admiration: "In beautiful words that is my meaning."
+He paused. Now the bolt was to be shot, and he nerved himself against
+the strain. He fired: "I have a suggestion."
+
+"Propound."
+
+No further need for notes. George pushed back his cuffs; gulped the
+agitation that swelled dry and suffocating in his mouth. "This is my
+suggestion. Because I have had experience in the reading of faces;
+because I wish to make recompense for my share in the catastrophe of
+Mrs. Major's presence; because--"
+
+"You are drowning beneath reasons. Cease bubbling. Strike to the
+surface."
+
+George had not been drowning. He had been creeping gingerly from
+stepping-stone to stepping-stone. The endeavour had been to come as
+close as possible to the big rock upon which he intended to spring. The
+less the distance of the leap the more remote the chance of slipping
+down the rock and being whirled off in swift water. It is a method of
+progression by which, in the race of existence, many lives are lost.
+The timid will hobble from stone to stone, landing at each forward point
+more and yet more shaky in the knees. The torrent roars about them. Sick
+they grow and giddy; stepping-stones are green and slimy; the effort of
+balancing cannot be unduly prolonged.
+
+Ere ever they feel themselves ready for the leap they slip, go whirling
+and drowning downstream past the stepping-stones that are called
+Infirmity of Purpose. Or they may creep close enough the rock, only to
+find they have delayed over their hobbling progression until the rock is
+already so crowded by others who have been bolder over the stones as to
+show no foothold remaining. They leap and fall back.
+
+We are all gifted with strength sufficient for that spring; but disaster
+awaits him who scatters his energies in a hundred hesitating little
+scrambles.
+
+Now George sprang; poised upon that last "because."
+
+"And because--I wish--" He sprang--"Therefore I suggest that I should go
+to town to-day and search every agency until I find you a lady I think
+suitable."
+
+The thud of his landing knocked the breath out of him. In terror he lay
+lest Mr. Marrapit's answering words should have the form of desperate
+fellows who would hurl him from his hold, throw him back.
+
+"I agree," Mr. Marrapit said.
+
+George was drawn to his feet. He could have whooped for joy.
+
+"I agree. I have misjudged you. In this matter I lay my trust in you.
+Take it, tend it, nurse it; cherish it so that it may not be returned to
+me cold and dead. Speed forth."
+
+"Have I a free hand?" George asked.
+
+"Emphatically no. Every effort must be made to keep down expenses. Here
+are two shillings. Render account. As to salary--"
+
+George burst out: "Oh, she'll come for anything."
+
+Mr. Marrapit started. "She? Whom?"
+
+George threw a blanket to hide the hideous blunder. "Told of such a home
+as this is," he explained, "a true lady would come for anything."
+
+The blunder sank, covered. "I earnestly pray that may be so," Mr.
+Marrapit said. "I doubt. Rapacity and greed stalk the land. Mrs. Major
+had five-and-twenty pounds per annum. I will not go above that figure."
+
+George told him: "Rely upon me. But, by a free hand I meant a free hand
+as to engaging what I may think a suitable person."
+
+"Emphatically no. You are the lower court. Sift sheep from goats. Send
+sheep here to me. I am the tribunal. I will finally select."
+
+The refusal placed a last obstacle in the path of George's scheme, but
+he did not demur. Primarily he dared not. To demur might raise again
+that blunder he had let escape when he had said, "She'll come for
+anything"; this time it might rage around and not be captured. All might
+be wrecked. Secondly he felt there to be no great need for protest. The
+confidence of having won thus far gave him courage against this final
+difficulty.
+
+"Trust me, sir," he said.
+
+Very soberly he paced from the room; gently closed the door; with the
+tread of one bearing a full heart heavily moved up the stairs.
+
+He reached his room; ripped off sobriety. "Oh, Mary!" he exultantly
+cried, "if I can get you down here, old girl!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit, meanwhile, stepped to the room where his cats lived;
+lovingly toyed with his pets; took the Rose of Sharon a walk in the
+garden. He was in pleasant mood. Great had been the distress of the
+night, but this man had enjoyed a luxurious warm bath--in crocodile's
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mary in the little Battersea lodgings was at breakfast when her George's
+telegram arrived. She puckered over its mystery; shaped events this way
+and that, but could make of them no keyhole that the message would fit
+and unlock.
+
+She flew among the higher improbabilities: George, she conjectured, had
+misrepresented this stony-hearted uncle; last night had told all to Mr.
+Marrapit, and Mr. Marrapit had warmed to her and bade him fetch her to
+Herons' Holt. She ripped George's description of his uncle from about
+the old man; dressed Mr. Marrapit in snowy locks and a benign smile;
+pictured him coming down the steps with outstretched hand to greet her.
+She heard him say, "My daughter"; she saw him draw George to her, lock
+their hands; she heard him murmur, "Bless you, my children."
+
+This was a romantic young woman. A poached egg was allowed to grow cold
+as she trembled over her delectable fancies.
+
+But a glance at the telegram pulled her from these delicious flights;
+bumped her to earth. "_Think can get you situation here._" "Situation"
+drove the fatherly air from Mr. Marrapit; once more rehabilitated him as
+her George presented him--grim and masterly.
+
+Further conjecture altogether drove Mr. Marrapit from the picture. What
+situation could be offered her in the Marrapit household? Why should
+"here" mean Herons' Holt? It must mean at a house in the district.
+
+Upon the magic carpet of this new thought my Mary was whirled again in
+an imaged paradise. She would be near her George.
+
+High in these clouds she ran to her bedroom for her hat; but with it
+there descended upon her head a new thought that again sent her toppling
+earthwards. Characterless, and worse than characterless, how was she
+to get any such delightful post? My Mary started up the street for the
+Agency, blinking tears.
+
+At Battersea Bridge a new thought came sweeping. She clutched on to it;
+held it fast. Into her tread it put a spring; to her chin gave a brave
+tilt. If everything failed, if of the telegram nothing came, why, at
+least she had the telegram!--was making for the Agency under a direct
+command from her George. The thought swelled her with confidence and
+comfort. How warm a thing it was to feel that she did not face the world
+alone! Her George's arm was striking for her, her George's hand was
+pointing a terse command. "Go to Agency." She was obeying him; she
+belonged to him.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Mary had intended to wait outside the Agency until her George should
+arrive and explain his mysterious message. But she was scarcely at the
+building when Miss Ram, also arriving, accosted her--took her upstairs.
+Miss Ram quite naturally regarded the meeting as evidence that Mary had
+come for help. Mary, in a flutter as to George's intentions, could but
+meekly follow.
+
+In the room marked "Private," settled at her table, Miss Ram icily
+opened the interview. "I have heard from Mrs. Chater. I did not expect
+to see you again."
+
+Mary began: "I don't know what you have heard--"
+
+Miss Ram stretched for a letter.
+
+"Oh, I don't wish to," Mary cried; put out a hand that stayed the
+action. "To hear all she says would again begin it all. It would be like
+her voice. It would be like being with her again. Please, please, Miss
+Ram, don't tell me."
+
+"You have your own version?"
+
+"I have the truth." Mary pointed at the letter-file. "The truth isn't
+there. Mrs. Chater isn't capable of the truth. She cannot even recognise
+the truth when she hears it."
+
+In yet more freezing tones Miss Ram replied: "She is an old and valued
+client."
+
+"You only know her in this office," Mary told her. "You don't know her
+in her home."
+
+"I have suited her with other young ladies. I have heard of her from
+them."
+
+"And they have spoken well of her?"
+
+"Discounting the prejudice of a late employee, they have spoken well."
+
+"Was her son there with them?"
+
+"They have not told me so."
+
+"Ah!" said Mary; sat back in her chair.
+
+"Then your version is about the son?"
+
+Mary nodded. Recollection put a silly lump in her throat.
+
+Miss Ram said: "Miss Humfray, when I received that letter from Mrs.
+Chater, I said I would have no more to do with you. I told Miss Porter
+I would not see you. Why, out of all my ladies, do you come back to me
+characterless from your situations? I will listen to your story. Make
+it very brief. Don't exaggerate. I have sat in this chair for seventeen
+years. I can distinguish in a minute between facts and spleen. You
+desire to tell your version?"
+
+"I must," Mary said. "What I'd like to do would be to get up and say,
+'If you doubt me, I'll not trouble to convince you.' I'd like to walk
+out and leave you and face anything rather than 'explain.' Why should
+I 'explain' to anybody? But I'm not going to walk out. I haven't the
+pluck. I know what it is like to be alone out there." She gave a little
+choke. "I've learnt that much, anyway." She went on. "I'll just tell
+you, that's all. I don't want your sympathy; I only want your sense of
+justice."
+
+"I like your spirit," Miss Ram said. It was a quality she rarely found
+in her applicants. "Go on."
+
+Then Mary told. She phrased bluntly. Her recital was after the manner of
+the fireworks called "Roman candles." These, when lit, pour out fire and
+smoke in a rather weak-kneed dribble. They must be held tightly. When
+tensely enough constricted, of fire and smoke there is little, but at
+intervals out there pops an exceedingly luminous ball of flame.
+
+My Mary kept the pressure of pride upon her throat. There was no dribble
+of emotion. Only the facts popped out--hard and dry, and to Miss
+Ram intensely illuminative. Mary did not mention George's name. She
+concluded her narrative with jerky facts relative to the scene in the
+Park. "Then I ran away," she said, "and a friend of mine came up. He had
+seen. And he thrashed him. When I got back to Mrs. Chater's her son had
+arrived--battered. He told his mother that he had seen me with a man and
+had interfered. That the man assaulted him. That's all."
+
+"The miserable hound!" pronounced Miss Ram with extraordinary ferocity.
+
+From a drawer in her desk she took a manuscript book, bound in limp
+leather, tied with blue ribbon. Herein were contained the remarkable
+thoughts which from time to time had come to this woman during her
+seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the
+flyleaf was inscribed "Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram." It was her intent
+to publish this darling work when beneath each letter of the alphabet
+twelve aphorisms were written.
+
+"The miserable hound!" cried she, when the full tale of Mr. Bob Chater's
+vileness was told; drew "Aphorisms" towards her and wrote in hot blood.
+
+Then looked at Mary. "_L,_" she read, "_L. Lust. Lust is the sound meat
+of natural instinct gone to carrion. Men eat meat, wolves eat carrion.
+Some men are wolf-men_--Hand me the dictionary, Miss Humfray. Two r's in
+carrion. I _thought_ so. Thank you."
+
+She replaced "Aphorisms." "My dear, I will do what I can for you," she
+told Mary. "I _do_ believe you. Go into the interview room. I hear a
+step."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+That step was George's. Abashed in this home of women he shuffled
+uneasily in the passage, then put a hesitating knuckle upon "Enquiries."
+
+From within a violent movement was followed by a strange guttural sound.
+George entered.
+
+With scarlet face and watery eyes, Miss Porter--the stout young woman
+who presided over this department, and whose habit it was to suck sweets
+the better to beguile the tedium of her duties--gazed at him; made
+guttural sounds. The start of George's knock had caused this girl
+to swallow a particularly large sweet, and its downward passage was
+inflicting upon her considerable pain.
+
+Her face was an alarming sight. "I'm afraid--" George began.
+
+"Pardon!" gasped Miss Porter, driving the sweet with a tremendous
+swallow. "Pardon!"
+
+"Not at all," George pleasantly said. "Not at all. I called with
+reference to a lady-help."
+
+The grinding sweet forbade the pleasant dalliance
+
+Miss Porter could have wished with this handsome young man. In a brave
+spasm (this girl was in great suffering), "I will tell the Principal,"
+she said; trod heavily to Miss Ram's door.
+
+Fate is an abominable trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand
+it gave Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her
+enjoying him. Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of a fine sweet.
+
+Reappearing and holding the door ajar: "Miss Ram will see you," she
+murmured. Tears were in this girl's eyes; the bolted sweet was still
+paining her very much indeed.
+
+IV.
+
+In two clever bows Miss Ram without a word greeted George; indicated a
+chair.
+
+George sat down. "I want," he began--"that is, my uncle wants, a
+lady-help--"
+
+"Name, please," rapped Miss Ram, opening the ledger.
+
+George gave it; stretched a leg to indicate a confidence he did not
+feel; pitched his voice to aid the presentment. "When I say lady-help--"
+
+"Address, please," said Miss Ram with a pistol-snap.
+
+George withdrew the signs of confidence with a jerk. He gave the
+information. Then waited Miss Ram to give him a lead. He had twice been
+shot; was in no desire again to expose his person.
+
+Miss Ram fixed her small black eyes upon him. She said nothing. The
+intrusion of a young man into matters essentially domestic she strongly
+disapproved. Under "D" in "Aphorisms" this woman had a trenchant note
+touching this matter. "_D. Domesticity. Domesticity_," said this note,
+"_is the offspring of all the womanly virtues. The virtues impregnate
+the woman, and domesticity is the resultant child. Absence of a single
+womanly trait aborts or debilitates the offspring. Men have nothing
+whatever to do with it, and nothing is more abominable than a man who
+meddles with domestic matters._"
+
+The rays of Miss Ram's disconcerting eye pushed George steadily
+backwards from the rock of such small confidence as remained to him.
+Assailed by the inquiring bows with which she now interrogated his
+further purpose, he slipped from it, plunged wildly into the sea of what
+he required, and for five minutes beat this way and that, hurling the
+splash of broken sentences at Miss Ram's unbending countenance.
+
+Beginning a description of Mr. Marrapit's household, he floundered
+thence to a description of the required lady's duties; abandoning that
+unfinished, splashed to a description of the manner of person for whom
+he sought.
+
+It was his object to paint a character and appearance as near to his
+Mary's as he could master; to induce Miss Ram to suggest her as likely
+candidate for the post. He could not introduce his Mary to his uncle
+unless she came under the auspices of some recognised institution.
+
+So he floundered on.
+
+Miss Ram did not move. His struggles grew less; he caught at haphazard
+words; flung them desperately; at last relapsed; sat sweating.
+
+Miss Ram poked him with a questioning bow. He did not stir.
+
+With a further bow she accepted his defeat; handed him a pink paper.
+"Now, kindly fill up this form. State precisely what you require. Write
+clearly, please."
+
+George obeyed. Miss Ram studied the answers to her printed
+interrogations; opened her ledger. "I have several suitable ladies."
+She started to read a list. "Miss Minna Gregor; aged 25; daughter of
+the late Humphrey Gregor, stockbroker; three years' character from Mrs.
+Mountsaffron of Charles Street, to whom she was lady-help and from whom
+an excellent reference may be obtained."
+
+"Too old," said George.
+
+Miss Ram frowned; returned to the ledger. "Miss Ellen Hay; aged
+20; daughter of Lieutenant Hay, late R.N. For two years with Mrs.
+Hoyle-Hoyle of Knightsbridge."
+
+George squeaked, "Too young." He had not anticipated this ordeal.
+
+Miss Ram read on. At the fifteenth name George was in desperate
+agitation. His list of objections was exhausted. Each protest had
+narrowed his field.
+
+"This is the last upon my books," Miss Ram severely told him. "She
+fills all your requirements. None of your objections applies. You will
+certainly engage her."
+
+"I feel sure I shall," George brightly said. If this was the last name
+it must be Mary.
+
+"I am glad to hear that," Miss Ram announced. "You are hard to please.
+This is a most admirable young woman."
+
+George leaned forward with an expectant smile. Miss Ram read: "Miss Rosa
+Brump--"
+
+George's smile died. An "Eh?" was startled out of him.
+
+"Brump," said Miss Ram testily. "Brump. B-r-u-m-p, _Brump_."
+
+George said "Oh!"; ran a finger around the inside of his collar.
+
+Miss Ram read on, emphasising the Brumps with the suggestion of a ball
+bouncing from rock to rock:
+
+"Miss Rosa _Brump_; aged 21; daughter of the late Selwyn Agburn _Brump_,
+barrister-at-law. Companion to Miss Victoria Shuttle of Shuttle Hall,
+Shuttle, Lines, until that lady's death. The late Miss Shuttle dying
+suddenly, Miss _Brump_ has no reference from her. What that reference
+would have been, however, is clearly evidenced by the fact that in her
+will Miss Shuttle bequeathed 'to my faithful companion Rosa _Brump_,'
+her terra-cotta bust of the late Loomis Shuttle, Esq., J.P., inventor of
+the Shuttle liquid manure."
+
+Miss Ram wagged a finger at George. "That speaks for itself," she said.
+
+George did not answer. He was in a confusion of fear. This terrible
+woman would force Miss Brump upon him. He was powerless in her hands. He
+was in chains.
+
+"Does it not?" poked Miss Ram.
+
+"Rather," said George. "Oh, rather."
+
+"Very good. I congratulate your uncle upon obtaining this estimable
+young woman. She should call here in a few minutes. You can then make
+final arrangements. Meanwhile, this form--"
+
+George hurled himself free from this hypnotic panic. Anything must be
+done to shake off this intolerable Brump.
+
+"One moment," he said. "I had forgotten--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What colour is Miss Brump's hair?"
+
+"Her _what?_"
+
+"Hair. Her hair."
+
+"How extraordinary! Brown."
+
+George effected an admirable start. He echoed: "_Brown?_ Oh, not brown?"
+
+"Certainly. Brown."
+
+George mournfully shook his head. "Oh, dear! How unfortunate! I'm afraid
+Miss Brump will not suit, Miss Ram. My uncle--extraordinary foible--has
+a violent objection to brown hair. He will not have it in the house."
+
+"Unheard of!" Miss Ram snapped. "Unheard of!"
+
+George rubbed together his sweating palms; blundered on. "None the less
+a fact," he said impressively. He dropped his voice. "It is a very sad
+story. He had fifteen brothers--"
+
+"Fifteen!"
+
+"I assure you, yes. All were black-haired except one, who was brown--the
+first brown-haired child in the history of the house. 'Bantam' they used
+to call him when they were girls and boys together--'Bantam.'"
+
+"_Girls_! You said brothers!"
+
+"Ah, yes. Girls as well. Twelve, twelve girls."
+
+"Twelve girls and fifteen boys!"
+
+"I assure you, yes. A record. As I was saying, the brown-haired child,
+he took to drink. It is most painful. Died in a madhouse. My uncle, head
+of the family, reeled beneath the stigma--reeled. Vowed from that day
+that he would never let a brown-haired person cross his threshold."
+
+George wiped his streaming face; sat back with a sigh. Miss Brump was
+buried.
+
+Miss Ram's next words caused him to start in his seat.
+
+"But your hair is brown."
+
+My contemptible George, all his lies now rushing furious upon him, put
+his hand to his head; withdrawing it, gazed at the palm with the air of
+one looking for a stain.
+
+"How about _that_?" rapped Miss Ram.
+
+George gave a wan smile. "It is my misfortune," he said simply--"my
+little cross. We all have our burdens in this life, Miss Ram. Pardon me
+if I do not care to dwell upon mine."
+
+With a bow Miss Ram indicated sympathy; decorously closed the subject.
+
+George gave a little sigh. With a simulation of brightness he proceeded:
+"You are sure you have no other lady?"
+
+"I have one," said Miss Ram. "She would not suit."
+
+"May I be allowed to judge?"
+
+Miss Ram turned to the ledger. "'Miss Mary Humfray.'"
+
+George started. "It is nothing," he explained. "One of those shivers;
+that is all."
+
+Miss Ram bowed. "'Miss Mary Humfray; aged 21; only child of the late
+Colonel Humfray, Indian Army; references from former employer not good,
+but with extenuating circumstances.'"
+
+"I think she might suit," George said. "She--she--" he groped
+wildly--"she is the daughter of a colonel."
+
+"So were four others."
+
+George wiped his brow. "The--the _only_ daughter."
+
+"You consider that a merit?"
+
+"My uncle would. He has curious ideas. He is himself an only child."
+
+Miss Ram stared. George had the prescience of trouble, but could not
+find it. "Oh, yes," he said, "oh, yes."
+
+"Fifteen brothers and twelve sis--"
+
+George saw the gaping pit; sprang from it. "_Has_ an only child," he
+corrected. "_Has_, not _is_."
+
+Miss Ram glared, continued: "What of the absence of character?"
+
+"I imagine the fact of being an only child would override that. You said
+there were extenuating circumstances?"
+
+"There are. I personally would speak for the young lady."
+
+Excitement put George upon his feet. "I thank you very much, Miss Ram. I
+feel that this lady will suit."
+
+"You have asked nothing about her. With the others you were unusually
+particular."
+
+"I act greatly by instinct. It is a family trait. Something seems to
+assure me in this case."
+
+Miss Ram gazed searchingly at George; answered him upon an interested
+note. "Indeed!" she spoke. "Remarkable. Pray pardon me." She drew
+"Aphorisms" from its drawer; hesitated a moment; with flowing pen wrote
+beneath "I."
+
+She turned towards George. "Pray pardon me," she repeated. "What you
+tell me of acting by instinct greatly interests me as a student of
+character. In this little volume here I--allow me." She emphasised with
+a quill-pen. "_I. Instinct. Instinct is the Almighty's rudder with which
+He steers our frail barques upon the tempestuous sea of life at moments
+when otherwise we should be quite at a loss. Some of us answer quickly
+to this mysterious helm and for example something seems to tell them in
+the middle of the night that the house is on fire, and they get up and
+find it is. Let those who don't answer quickly beware!_"
+
+"That's awfully well put," said George. "Awfully well."
+
+For the first time Miss Ram smiled. "You would wish to interview the
+young lady?" she asked. "Fortunately she is present. Kindly step to the
+Interview Room."
+
+She led the way. With thundering pulses George followed. His Mary rose.
+Miss Ram introduced them.
+
+George rolled his tongue in a dry mouth; passed it over dry lips. He had
+no words.
+
+"Have you no questions?" Miss Ram asked severely.
+
+For a third time since he had entered this building, panic broke damply
+upon George's brow. He blew his nose; in a very faint voice asked: "Your
+age is twenty-one?"
+
+Upon an agitated squeak his Mary told him: "Yes."
+
+"Ah!" In desperation he paused: caught Miss Ram's awful eye; was goaded
+to fresh plunge. "Ah, one-and-twenty?"
+
+In a tiny squeak Mary replied: "Yes."
+
+He shuffled in desperation. "When will you be twenty-two?"
+
+"In February."
+
+"Ah! February." This was awful. "February."
+
+Miss Ram's eye stabbed him again.
+
+"February. Then you must be twenty-one now?"
+
+"_Tch-tch!_" sounded Miss Ram.
+
+"Twenty-one," George stammered. "Twenty-one--"
+
+From the other room at that moment Miss Porter called.
+
+"I am required," said Miss Ram, "elsewhere. I will return in a moment."
+She passed out; closed the door.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+"My darling!" cried George.
+
+"Georgie!"
+
+They embraced.
+
+He held her to him; kissed the soft gold hair.
+
+On a movement in the next room his Mary wriggled free. "Tell me."
+
+"By Gad, it's been awful! Did you hear me in that room?"
+
+She nodded, laughing at him. He kissed the smiles.
+
+"Oh, do be careful! Let _go_, George; let _go_. I couldn't hear what you
+said. But you were hours--_hours_."
+
+"Years," said George. "Years. Aeons of time. I have aged considerably. I
+thought it would never end. It was appalling."
+
+She clasped her pretty hands. "But tell me, George. Do tell me. I don't
+understand _anything_. What has _happened?_"
+
+"Give me time," George told her. "I am not the same George. The
+light-hearted George of yore is dead under Miss Ram's chair. I am old
+and seamed with care."
+
+"George, _do, do_ tell me! Don't fool."
+
+"I'm not fooling. I can't fool. You don't realise what I have been
+through. You have no heart. I can't fool. When I was a child I thought
+as a child; I did childish things. But now that I have been through
+Miss Ram's hands my bright boyhood is sapped. I am old and stricken in
+years."
+
+"Oh, Georgie, _do, do_ tell me!"
+
+This ridiculous George gave a boyish laugh; clasped his Mary again;
+squeezed her to him till she gasped. "I've got you, Mary!" he said. He
+kissed the gold hair. "I've got you. I'm going to see you every day.
+You're coming down to live at Herons' Holt."
+
+Then he told her.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Miss Ram returned; directed at George a bow that Was one huge note of
+interrogation.
+
+"Quite satisfactory," George replied. "I am sure my uncle will agree."
+
+"There is, of course," objected Miss Ram, "the unfortunate matter of
+references."
+
+George took a frank air. "Miss Ram, I am quite willing to take your
+personal assurances on that matter. On behalf of my uncle I accept
+them."
+
+"I will send a written statement of the matter," said Miss Ram. Her air
+was dogged.
+
+"I most solemnly assure you that is unnecessary."
+
+Miss Ram killed him with a bow. "It is my custom. I have the reputation
+of seventeen years to sustain."
+
+George quailed.
+
+"Your uncle," Miss Ram exclaimed, "will also wish to see Miss Humfray.
+She shall go this afternoon."
+
+"Not this afternoon," George told her. "No. To-morrow. He could not see
+her to-day."
+
+"Very well. To-morrow. To-night I will write the references to him.
+Kindly pay the fee to Miss Porter in the office. Good morning!"
+
+She pushed him off with a stabbing bow. He fled.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+In that delectable interview during Miss Ram's absence George had
+arranged with his Mary that this was a day to be celebrated. She should
+not proceed instantly to be weighed by Mr. Marrapit; let that ordeal be
+given to the morrow. This splendid day should splendidly end; tremendous
+gaiety should with a golden clasp fasten the golden hours of the
+morning. In the afternoon he had a lecture and clinical demonstrations.
+Like a horse he would work till half-past six. At seven he would meet
+his Mary in Sloane Square.
+
+So it was. At that hour George from the top of his 'bus spied his Mary
+upon the little island in the Square. He sprang down and his first
+action was to show a fat and heavy sovereign, pregnant with delights,
+lying in his palm.
+
+"Borrowed," said George. "One pound sterling. Twenty shillings net. And
+every penny of it is going to fly."
+
+He called a hansom, and they smoothly rolled to Earl's Court.
+
+When sovereigns are rare possessions, how commanding an air the feel of
+one imparts! Mary watched her George with pride. How masterful was he!
+How deferential the head waiter at the restaurant in the Exhibition
+became! The man was putting them off with an inner table. Her George by
+a look and a word had him in a minute to right-abouts, and one of the
+coveted tables upon the verandah was theirs. Waiters flocked about. With
+such an air did George command the cheapest wine upon the list that
+the waiter, whose lip ordinarily would have curled at such an order,
+hastened to its execution with dignity of task, deference of service.
+
+They ate robustly through the menu: faltered not nor checked at a single
+dish. They passed remarks upon their neighbours. At intervals George
+would say, "Isn't this fine, Mary?"; or his Mary would say, "Oh,
+Georgie, isn't this splendid?" And the other would answer, "Rather!"
+
+A meal and a conversation to make your proper lovers shudder! There was
+no nibbling at and toying with food; there was no drinking and feasting
+from the light of one another's eyes. When George felt thirsty he
+would put his nose in the cheap claret and keep it there till mightily
+refreshed; such hungry yearnings as his Mary felt she satisfied with
+knife and fork. These were very simple children and exceedingly healthy.
+
+But while his Mary's tongue ached with a cold, cold ice, George was
+in the pangs of mental arithmetic. As the bill stood, that pregnant
+sovereign had given birth to all the delights of which it was capable;
+was shattered and utterly wrecked in child-bed.
+
+A waiter came bustling. There was just time. George leant across. "Mary,
+when I ask you if you'll have coffee, say you prefer it outside--it's
+cheaper there."
+
+"Coffee, sir?"
+
+"Special coffee," George ordered nonchalantly. "Yes, two. One moment.
+Would you rather have your coffee outside near the band, Mary?"
+
+His Mary was splendid. She looked around the room, she looked into the
+cool night--and there her eye longer lingered. "It's cooler outside,"
+she said. "I think it would be nicer outside, if you don't mind."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Sure you don't mind?"
+
+"Oh, no; no, not a bit. Bill, waiter."
+
+The waiter bowed low over his munificent tip; dropped it into a jingling
+pocket. George gathered his miserable change; slid it silently to where
+it lay companionless; with his Mary passed into the warm night.
+
+In the Empress Gardens they found a hidden table; here sipped coffee,
+and here were most dreadfully common. Mary's hand crept into her
+George's; they spoke little. The warm night breeze gently kissed their
+faces; the band stirred deepest depths; they set their eyes upon the
+velvety darkness that lay beyond the lights, and there pictured one
+another in a delectable future. Mary saw a very wonderful George; now
+and then glimpsed a very happy little Mary in a wonderful home. George
+also saw a happy little Mary in a wonderful home, but he more clearly
+followed a very wonderful George, magnificently accomplishing the mighty
+things that made the little Mary happy.
+
+       *       *        *       *        *
+
+George kissed his Mary upon the doorstep of the Battersea lodgings;
+caught the last train to Paltley Hill; and as he walked home from the
+station the scented hedges murmured to him with his Mary's voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Girl Comes Near The Lugger.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+At breakfast upon the following day George set forth the result of
+his labours; with urgent eloquence extolled the virtues of this Miss
+Humfray.
+
+Before Mr. Marrapit's plate lay an open envelope; upon the back George
+could read the inscription "Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed
+Gentlewomen."
+
+What had Miss Ram said of his Mary? The thought that she had written
+a reference which at the last moment would dash into dust this mighty
+scheme, was as a twisting knife in George's vitals. Every time that Mr.
+Marrapit stretched his hand for the letter the agitated young man upon
+a fresh impulse would dash into defiant eulogy of his darling; and so
+impetuous was the rush of his desperate words that at the beat of every
+new wave Mr. Marrapit would withdraw his startled hand from the letter;
+frown at George across the coffee-pot.
+
+At last: "Sufficient," he announced. "Curb zeal. Mount discretion.
+Satisfy the demands of appetite. You have not touched food. Tasks he
+before you. Do not starve the brain. I am tired of your eulogies of this
+person. For twenty-one minutes you have been hurling advertisements at
+me. I am a hoarding."
+
+The bill-sticker pushed a piece of bacon into a dry mouth; sat with
+goggling eyes.
+
+The hoarding continued: "I have here this person's reference. It is
+good."
+
+"Down shot the piece of bacon; convulsively bolted like Miss Porter's
+sweet.
+
+"Good!" cried George.
+
+"I said good. For faulty articulation I apologise."
+
+"I know, I heard. I meant that I am pleased."
+
+"Strive to express the meaning. The person arrives for inspection
+at mid-day. For your assistance I tender thanks. The incident is now
+closed. Do you labour at hospital to-day?"
+
+George had determined to be at the fount of news. In town, uncertain, he
+could have applied himself to nothing. He said:
+
+"No, here; I work here to-day."
+
+"To your tasks," commanded Mr. Marrapit.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George went to his room, but his tasks through that morning lay
+neglected.
+
+Impossible to work. He was in a position at which at one time or another
+most of us are placed. He was upon one end of a balanced see-saw, and he
+was blindfolded so that it was impossible to see what might happen upon
+the other extremity. Suddenly he might be swung up to highest delight;
+suddenly he might be dashed earthwards to hit ground with a jarring
+thud. The one eventuality or the other was certain; but he must sit
+blindfold and helpless--unable to affect the balance by an ounce. Here
+is the position in which all of us are made cowards. Bring the soldier
+into action, and his blood will run hot enough to make him intoxicated
+and insensible to fear; hold him in reserve, and courage will begin to
+ooze. Give us daylight in which we may see aught that threatens us, and
+likely enough we shall have desperate courage sufficient to rush in and
+grapple; it is in the darkness that uncertainty sets teeth chattering.
+More prayers are said, and with more devotion, at night than in the
+morning. We creep and crawl and squirm to heaven when the uncertainty of
+the night has to be faced; but we can get along well enough, thank you,
+when we spring out of bed with the courage of morning.
+
+George could not work until he knew whether he was to be swung high
+or thrown low. He paced his room; glimpsed his watch; tremendously
+smoked--and groaned aloud as, at every turn, he would receive the
+buffets of recollection of some important point upon which he had
+omitted to school his Mary.
+
+In those desperate moments he decided finally that Margaret should not
+be told that Mary and he were so much more than strangers. Supposing all
+went well, and his Mary came to Herons' Holt, her safety and his would
+certainly be imperilled by giving the key of their secret to his
+cousin. It was a hard resolve. About the beautiful romance of the thing
+Margaret's nature would have crooned as a mother over her suckling. She
+would have mothered it, cherished it, given them a hundred opportunities
+of exchanging for clasps and whispers the chilly demeanour they must
+bear one to another. But the pleasure must be foregone. My George had
+the astonishing sense to know that the animal instinct in Margaret's
+nature would outride the romance. Twice the countless years that
+separate us from the gathering of our first instincts may pass, and this
+the strongest of them--the abhorrence of secrecy-will never be uprooted.
+When all life was a ferocious struggle for life, secrecy--and it would
+have been the secret of a store of food--was inimical to the existence
+of the pack: it was opposed to the first of the slowly forming laws of
+nature. There must be equality of opportunity that all might equally
+be tested. Thus it was that a secret hoard of food, when come upon,
+instantly was noised abroad by the discoverer, and its possessor torn
+to death; and thus it is to-day that a secret once beyond the persons
+immediately concerned is carried from mouth to mouth till the world has
+it, and its first possessors take the violence of discovery.
+
+For a reason that was almost similar George negatived the impulse which
+bade him meet his Mary at the station, walk with her to the house, and
+leave her before the gates. For, supposing again that she were accepted
+and came to Herons' Holt, this suspicious meeting would come flying to
+Mr. Marrapit upon the breezes that whirl in and out of every cranny
+and nook in small communities. Towns are blind and deaf; villages have
+peeping eyes, straining ears, loose mouths, that pry and listen and
+whisper.
+
+Almost upon the hour of twelve there came to the agitated young man's
+ears a ring that could be none other than hers.
+
+He tip-toed to the banisters; peered below. His Mary was ushered in.
+
+While she stood behind the maid who tapped on Mr. Marrapit's door, she
+glanced up. George had a glimpse of her face; waved encouragement from
+the stairhead.
+
+The maid stood aside. His Mary passed in to the ogre's den.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Clad in a dressing-gown, Mr. Marrapit was standing against the
+fireplace. My trembling Mary settled just clear of the closing door;
+took his gaze. He put his eye upon her face; slowly travelled it down
+her person; rested it upon her little shoes; again brought it up; again
+carried it down; this time left it at her feet.
+
+The gaze seemed to burn her stockings. She shuffled; little squirms of
+fright nudged her. She glanced at her feet, fearful of some hideous hole
+in her shoes.
+
+"I am--" she jerked.
+
+Then Mr. Marrapit spoke: "I see you are. Discontinue."
+
+The command was shot at her. Trembling against the shock she could only
+murmur: "Discontinue?"
+
+"Assuredly. Discontinue. Refrain. Adjust."
+
+"Discontinue...?" With difficulty she articulated the word, then put
+after it on a little squeak: "... What?"
+
+"It," rapped Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"I am afraid--"
+
+"I quake in terror."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Pah!" Mr. Marrapit exclaimed. "You said 'I am.' Were you not about to
+say 'I am standing on the polished boards'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I believed that was in your mind. Let it now enter your mind. You are
+on the polished boards. You have high heels. I quake in terror lest they
+have left scratch or blemish. Adjust your position."
+
+Mary stepped to the carpet. She was dumb before this man.
+
+Mr. Marrapit bent above the polished flooring where she had stood.
+"There is no scratch," he announced, "neither is there any blemish." He
+resumed his post against the fireplace and again regarded her: "You are
+young."
+
+"I am older really."
+
+"Elucidate that."
+
+"I mean--I am not inexperienced."
+
+"Why say one thing and mean another? Beware the habit. It is perilous."
+
+"Indeed it is not my habit."
+
+"It is your recreation, then. Do not indulge it. Continue."
+
+"I am young, but I have had experience. I think if you were to engage me
+I would give you satisfaction."
+
+"Adduce grounds."
+
+"I would try in every way to do as you required. I understand I am to
+look after cats."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Here."
+
+"Abandon that impression. I have not said so."
+
+"No, I mean if you engage me."
+
+"Again you say one thing and mean another. I am suspicious. It is a
+habit."
+
+"Oh, _indeed_ it is not."
+
+"Then if a recreation, a recreation to which you are devoted. You romp
+in it. Twice within a minute you have gambolled."
+
+My Mary blinked tears. Since rising that morning, her nerves had been
+upon the stretch against this interview. She had schooled herself
+against all possibilities so as to win into the house of her dear
+George, yet at every moment she seemed to fall further from success.
+
+"You ca-catch me up so," she trembled.
+
+Mr. Marrapit expanded upwards. "Catch you up! A horrible accusation. The
+table is between us."
+
+"You mis-misunderstand me." She silenced a little sniff with a dab of
+her handkerchief. She looked very pretty. Mr. Marrapit placed beside her
+the mental image of Mrs. Major; and at every point she had the prize. He
+liked the soft gold hair; he liked the forlorn little face it enframed;
+he liked the slim little form. His cats, he suspected, would appreciate
+those nice little hands; he judged her to have nice firm legs against
+which his cats could rub. Mrs. Major's, he apprehended, would have been
+bony; not legs, but shanks.
+
+Mary made another dab at her now red little nose. The silence increased
+her silly fright. "You mis-misunderstand me," she repeated.
+
+With less asperity Mr. Marrapit told her: "I cannot accept the blame.
+You wrap your meanings. I plunge and grope after them. Eluding me, I am
+compelled to believe them wilfully thrown. Strive to let your yea be yea
+and your nay nay. With circumspection proceed."
+
+Mary gathered her emotion with a final little sniff. "I like ca-cats."
+
+"I implore you not to accuse me of misunderstanding you. A question is
+essential. You do not always pronounce 'cats' in two syllables?"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Satisfactory. You said 'ca-cats.' Doubtless under stress of emotion.
+Proceed."
+
+Mary sniffed; proceeded. "I like ca-cats--cats. If you were to engage me
+I am sure your cats would take to me."
+
+"I admit the possibility. I like your appearance. I like your voice.
+Had you knowledge of the acute supersensitiveness of my cats you would
+understand that they will appreciate those points. I do not require in
+you veterinary knowledge; I require sympathetic traits. I do not engage
+you to nurse my cats--though, should mischance befall, that would come
+within your duties,--but to be their companion, their friend. You are a
+lady; themselves ancestral they will appreciate that. I understand
+you are an orphan; there also a bond links you with them. All cats are
+orphans. It is the sole unfortunate trait of their characters that they
+are prone to forget their offspring. In so far as it is possible to
+correct this failing amongst my own cats, I have done my best. Amongst
+them the sanctity of the marriage tie is strictly observed. The word
+stud is peculiarly abhorrent to me. Polygamy is odious. There is a final
+point. Pray seat yourself."
+
+Mary took a chair. Mr. Marrapit, standing before her, gazed down upon
+her. From her left he gazed, then from her right. He returned to the
+fireplace.
+
+"It is satisfactory," he said. "You have a nice lap. That is of first
+importance. The question of wages has been settled. Arrive to-morrow.
+You are engaged."
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: of George in Torment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped.
+
+
+If we write that Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful, we
+use the term as a figure of speech that must be taken in its accepted
+sense; not read literally. For it is impossible that life, in whatever
+conditions, can be eventless. The dullest life is often with events the
+most crowded. In dulness we are thrown back upon our inner selves, and
+that inner self is of a construction so sensitive that each lightest
+thought is an event that leaves an impression.
+
+In action, in gaiety, in intercourse we put out an unnatural self to
+brunt the beat of events. We are upon our guard. There are eyes watching
+us, and from their gaze we by instinct fend our inner self just as by
+instinct we fend our nakedness.
+
+Overmuch crowded with such events, the inner self is prone to shrivel,
+to fade beneath lack of nutriment; and it may happen that in time the
+unnatural self will take its place, will become our very self.
+
+That is gravely to our disadvantage. Overmuch in action, the man of
+affairs may win the admiration of a surface-seeing world; may capture
+the benefits of strong purpose, of wealth, and of position. But he is
+in danger of utterly losing the fruits that only by the inner, the
+original, and true self can be garnered.
+
+Life presents for our pursuit two sets of treasures. The one may be had
+by the labours of the hands; the other by exercise of the intellect--the
+true self. And at once this may be said: that the treasures heaped by
+the hands soil the hands, and the stain sinks deep. The stain enters the
+blood and, thence oozing, pigments every part of the being--the face,
+the voice, the mind, the thoughts. For we cannot labour overlong in the
+fields without besweating the brow; and certainly we cannot ceaselessly
+toil after the material treasures of life without gathering the traces
+of that labour upon our souls. It stains, and the stain is ugly.
+
+Coming to treasures stored by exercise of the intellect, the true
+self, these also put their mark upon the possessor; but the action is
+different and the results are different. Here the pigment that colours
+the life does not come from without but distils from within. Man does
+not stoop to rend these treasures from the earth; he rises to them. They
+do not bow; they uplift. They are not wrenched in trampling struggle
+from the sties where men battle for the troughs; they are absorbed from
+the truths of life that are as breezes upon the little hills. They are
+in the face of Nature and in Nature's heart; they are in the written
+thoughts of men whose thoughts rushed upward like flames, not
+dropped like plummet-stones--soared after truth and struck it to our
+understanding, not made soundings for earthy possessions showing how
+these might be gained.
+
+Yet it is not to be urged that the quest of material treasures is to
+be despised, or that life properly lived is life solely dreaming among
+truths. The writer who made the story of the Israelites sickening of
+manna, wrapped in legend the precept that man to live must work for
+life. We are not living if we are not working. We cannot have strength
+but we win meat to make strength.
+
+No; my protest is against the heaping of material treasure to the
+neglect of treasure stored by the true self. Material treasure is not
+ours. We but have the enjoyment of it while we can defend it from the
+forces that constantly threaten it. Misfortune, sorrow, sickness--these
+are ever in leash against us; may at any moment be slipped. Misfortune
+may whirl our material treasures from us; sorrow or sickness may canker
+them, turn them to ashes in the mouth. They are not ours; we hold them
+upon sufferance. But the treasures of the intellect, the gift of
+being upon nodding terms with truth, these are treasures that are our
+impregnable own. Nothing can filch them, nothing canker them: they are
+our own--imperishable, inexhaustible; never wanting when called upon;
+balm to heal the blows of adversity, specific against all things malign.
+Cultivate the perception of beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to
+distinguish between the realities of life and the dross of life; and you
+have a great shield of fortitude of which certainly man cannot rob you,
+and against which sickness, sorrow, or misfortune may strike tremendous
+blows without so much as bruising the real you.
+
+And it is in the life that is called uneventful that there is the most
+opportunity for storing these treasures of the intellect. Perhaps there
+is also the greater necessity. In the dull round of things we are thrown
+in upon ourselves, and by every lightest thought and deed either are
+strengthening that inner self or are sapping it. Either we are reading
+the thoughts of men whose thoughts heap a priceless store within us,
+or we are reading that which--though we are unaware--vitiates and puts
+further and further beyond our grasp the truths of life; either we are
+watching our lives and schooling them to feed upon thoughts and deeds
+that will uplift them, or we are neglecting them, and allowing them
+to browse where they will upon the rank weeds of petty spites, petty
+jealousies, petty gossipings and petty deeds. In action we may have no
+time to waste over this poisonous herbage; but in dulness most certainly
+we do have the temptation--and as we resist or succumb so shall we
+conduct ourselves when the larger events of life call us into the lists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful: need not be recorded.
+We are following the passage of the love 'twixt her and George; and
+within the radius of Mr. Marrapit's eye love durst not creep. She saw
+little of her George. They were most carefully circumspect in their
+attitude one to another, and conscience made their circumspection trebly
+stiff. There are politenesses to be observed between the inmates of a
+house, but my Mary and my George, in terror lest even these should be
+misconstrued, studiously neglected them.
+
+The aloofness troubled Margaret. This girl wrapped her sentiment about
+Mary; delighting in one who, so pretty, so young, so gentle-voiced, must
+face life in an alien home. The girls came naturally together, and it
+was not long before Margaret bubbled out her vocation.
+
+The talk was upon books. Margaret turned away her head; said in the
+voice of one hurrying over a commonplace: "I write, you know."
+
+She tingled for the "Do you?" from her companion, but it did not come,
+and this was very disappointing.
+
+She stole a glance at Mary, sitting with a far-away expression in her
+eyes (the ridiculous girl had heard an engine whistle; knew it to be the
+train that was taking her George to London). Margaret stole a glance at
+Mary; repeated louder: "I write, you know."
+
+It fetched the delicious response. Mary started: "Do you?"
+
+Margaret said hurriedly: "Oh, nothing worth speaking of."
+
+Mary said: "Oh!"; gave her thoughts again to the train.
+
+It was wretched of her. "Poems," said Margaret, and stressed the word
+"_Poems_."
+
+Mary came flying back from the train. "Oh, how interesting that is!"
+
+At once Margaret drew away. "Oh, it is nothing," she said, "nothing."
+She put her eyes upon the far clouds; breathed "Nothing" in a long sigh.
+
+From this it was not a far step to reading, with terrible reluctance,
+her poems to Mary; nor from this again was it other than an obvious step
+to telling of Bill. Her pretty verses were so clearly written at some
+heart which throbbed responsive, that Mary must needs put the question.
+It came after a full hour's reading--the poet sitting upon her bed in a
+litter of manuscripts, Mary in a low chair before her.
+
+In a tremulous voice the poet concluded the refrain of an exquisite
+verse:
+
+  "Beat for beat, your heart, my darling,
+          Beats with mine.
+  Skylarks carol, quick responsive,
+          Love divine."
+
+The poet gave a little gulp; laid down her paper.
+
+Mary also gulped. From both their pretty persons emotion welled in a
+great flood that filled the room.
+
+"I'm sure that is written _to_ somebody," Mary breathed.
+
+Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing
+to be capable of words.
+
+Mary implored: "Oh, do tell me!"
+
+Then Margaret told the story of Bill--with intimate details and in the
+beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding emotion
+piled upwards to the very roof.
+
+Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will
+examine a baby--if they must--with a bashful diffidence that pulls down
+the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its
+chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love--if they
+must--with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
+
+It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must
+not be discovered.
+
+When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her confidence:
+"And have you--are you--I know practically nothing about you, Mary,
+dear. _Do_ tell me, are _you_ in love?"
+
+Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She
+laughed. "Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?"
+
+Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
+
+Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another
+by knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer
+sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the arrow
+that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions so that
+she should not flinch at the wound.
+
+Margaret twanged the bow-string. "No time to fall in love?" she
+murmured. She fitted the shaft; let fly. "Do you like George, dear?"
+
+Mary stooped to her shoe-laces. Despite her preparations the arrow had
+pierced, and she hid her face to hide the blood.
+
+"George?" said she, head to floor.
+
+"Yes, George. Do you like George?"
+
+My Mary sat up, brazen. "George? Oh, you mean your cousin? I daresay
+he's very nice. Practically I've never even spoken to him since I've
+been here."
+
+"I know. Of course he's very busy just now. Do you think you would like
+him if you did know him?"
+
+It was murderous work. Mary was beginning to quiver beneath the arrows;
+was in terror lest she should betray the secret. A desperate kick was
+necessary. She wildly searched for a foothold; found it; kicked:
+
+"I'm sure I shouldn't like him."
+
+The poet softly protested: "Oh why, Mary?"
+
+"He's clean-shaven."
+
+"And you don't like a--"
+
+"I can't stand a--"
+
+"But if he had a--"
+
+"Oh, if he had a--Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly."
+She fled.
+
+Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope
+paper towards her; wrote:
+
+  "Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?"
+
+A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued
+the idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his
+return. After a few paces, "George," she asked, "do you like Mary?"
+
+George was never taken aback. "Mary? Mary who?"
+
+"Miss Humfray."
+
+"Oh, is her name Mary?"
+
+"Of course it is." Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up
+at him. "Do you like her, George?"
+
+"Like whom?"
+
+"Why, Mary--Miss Humfray."
+
+"Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major--in some ways. If
+that's what you mean."
+
+Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this
+girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.
+
+"George, dear, I wish you would do something for me."
+
+"Anything."
+
+"How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?"
+
+She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from his
+pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.
+
+She asked him: "What is the matter?"
+
+He said brokenly: "You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a moustache.
+It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one way. It is
+by pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a tooth-brush
+and tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have to do it every
+morning, and I somehow can never remember it."
+
+Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.
+
+She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic
+temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept
+waiting for its meals.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the
+hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate,
+and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of
+an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to
+approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated air
+advertised long neglect.
+
+It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by
+chance, George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into
+the copse, had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick
+undergrowth had plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had taken
+him within, shown him an outer and an inner room, and, in the second, a
+sight that had given him laughter; for he discovered there sundry empty
+bottles labelled "Old Tom," a glass, an envelope addressed to Mrs.
+Major. It was clear that in this deserted place--somehow chanced
+upon--the masterly woman had been wont, safe from disturbance, to meet
+the rascal who, taken to Herons' Holt on that famous night, had so
+villainously laid her by the heels.
+
+Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this
+day when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief whispered
+moment to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking pale, had
+told her to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately George gave her
+directions for the hut; there he would meet her at five o'clock; there
+not the most prying eye could reach them.
+
+Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him,
+just within the threshold of the open door. It was their first secluded
+meeting since she had come to Herons' Holt.
+
+Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed "I have thee, girl";
+sprang on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.
+
+"The first moment together in Paltley Hill!" he cried. "The first holy
+kiss!"
+
+His Mary wriggled. "George! You frightened me nearly out of my life.
+It's not holy. You're hurting me awfully."
+
+"My child, it is holy. Trust in me."
+
+"George, you _are_ hurting."
+
+"Scorn that. It is delicious!"
+
+He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a space,
+looking at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild
+spirits, despite her roguishness, for a space they did not speak. His
+hands were below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was
+the junction whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being
+received and pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without
+hitch or delay the delectable thrill came pouring; above, between their
+eyes, on wires invisible they signalled its safe arrival.
+
+They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the
+intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with thirst
+will with a little sigh put down the glass that has touched him back to
+vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made them dumb
+before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they had been
+whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the
+medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we
+are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs
+about us, we have no words to express the elevation. Debase love and we
+can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must be
+dumb.
+
+With a little laugh they broke.
+
+"Going on all right, old girl?" George asked.
+
+"Splendidly."
+
+"Happy?"
+
+She laughed and said: "I will give the proper answer to that. How can I
+be other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?"
+
+"I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way--very, very lucky.
+Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure. Cherish it,
+tend it, love it."
+
+"Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you waste
+them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me--about your exam."
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+She was at once serious. "To-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow
+my angel voice trills in the examiners' ears."
+
+"I thought you had a paper first, before the viva?"
+
+"Do not snap me up, girl. I speak in metaphors. To-morrow my angel hand
+glides my pen over the paper. On Thursday my angel tongue gives forth my
+wisdom with the sound of a tinkling cymbal."
+
+"The paper to-morrow, the viva on Thursday?"
+
+He bowed his angel head.
+
+"George, don't, _don't_ fool. Are you nervous? Will you pass?"
+
+"I shall rush, I shall bound. I shall hurtle through like a great
+boulder."
+
+"_Georgie!_ Will you?"
+
+He dropped his banter. "I believe I shall, old girl. I really think I
+shall. I've simply sweated my life out these weeks--all for you."
+
+She patted his hand. "Dear old George! How I shall think of you! And
+then?"
+
+"Then--why, then, we'll marry! Mary, I shall hear the result immediately
+after the viva. Then I shall rush back here and tackle old Marrapit at
+once. If he won't give me the money I think perhaps he'll lend it, and
+then we'll shoot off to Runnygate and take up that practice and live
+happily ever after."
+
+With the brave ardour of youth they discussed the delectable picture;
+arranged the rooms they had never seen; planned the daily life of which
+they had not the smallest experience.
+
+Twice in our lives we can play at Make-Believe--once when we are
+children, once when we are lovers. And these are the happiest times
+of our lives. We are not commoners then; we are emperors. We touch the
+sceptre and it is a magic wand. We rule the world, shaping it as we
+will, dropping from between our fingers all the stony obstacles that
+would interfere with its plasticity. Between childhood and love, and
+between love and death, the world rules us and bruises us. But in
+childhood, and again in love, we rule the world.
+
+So they ruled their world.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+That night Mary prayed her George might pass his examination--a prayer
+to make us wise folk laugh. The idea of our conception of the Divinity
+deliberately thrusting into George's mind knowledge that he otherwise
+had not, the idea of the Divinity deliberately prompting the examiners
+to questions that George could answer--these are ludicrous to us in
+our wisdom. We have the superiority of my simple Mary in point of
+intelligence; well, let us hug that treasure and make the most of it.
+Because we miss the sense of confidence with which Mary got from her
+knees; passed into her dreams. With our fine intellects we should lie
+awake fretting such troubles. These simple, stupid Marys just hand the
+tangle on and sleep comforted. They call it Faith.
+
+Yes, but isn't it grand to be of that fine, brave, intellectual,
+hard-headed, business-like stamp that trusts nothing it cannot see and
+prove? Rather!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Up the drive George came bounding with huge strides. The fires of
+tremendous joy that roared within him impelled him to enormous energy.
+
+Upon the journey from Waterloo to Paltley Hill he could with difficulty
+restrain himself from leaping upon the seat; bawling "I've passed! I've
+passed! I'm qualified!" He could not sit still. He fidgeted, wriggled;
+thrust his head first from one window, then from the other. Every foot
+of the line was well known to him. To each familiar landmark his spirit
+bellowed: "Greeting! When last you saw me I was coming up in a blue
+funk. Now! Oh, good God, now--" and he would draw in, stride the
+carriage, and thrust his head from the other window.
+
+His four fellow-passengers regarded him with some apprehension. They
+detected signs of lunacy in the young man; kept a nervous eye cocked
+upon the alarm cord; at the first stopping place with one accord arose
+and fled. One, signing herself "Lady Shareholder," had her alarming
+experience in her daily-paper upon the following morning.
+
+At his station George leapt for the platform a full minute before the
+train had stopped. Up the lanes he sent his bursting spirits flying
+in shrill whistlings and gay hummings; slashed stones with his
+stick; struck across the fields and took gates and stiles in great
+spread-eagled vaults.
+
+So up the drive, stones still flying, whistlings still piping.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon the lawn he espied Mr. Marrapit and his Mary. She, on a garden
+seat, was reading aloud from the _Times_; Mr. Marrapit, on a deep chair
+stretched to make lap for the Rose of Sharon, sat a little in advance of
+her.
+
+George approached from Mr. Marrapit's flank; soft turf muffled his
+strides. The warm glow of kindliness towards all the world, which his
+success had stoked burning within him, put a foreign word upon his
+tongue. He sped it on a boisterous note:
+
+"Uncle!" he cried. "Uncle, I've passed!"
+
+Mary crushed the _Times_ between her hands; bounded to her feet. "Oh!"
+she cried. "Hip! hur--!"
+
+She bit the final exclamation; dropped to her seat. Mr. Marrapit had
+twisted his eye upon her.
+
+"You are in pain?" he asked.
+
+"No--oh, no."
+
+"You have a pang in the hip?"
+
+"Oh no--no."
+
+"But you bounded. You cried 'hip'! Whose hip?"
+
+"I was startled."
+
+"Unsatisfactory. The brain, not the hip, is the seat of the emotion.
+Elucidate."
+
+"I don't know why I said 'hip.' I was startled. Mr. George startled me."
+
+"Me also he startled. I did not shout hip, thigh, leg nor knee. Control
+the tongue."
+
+He turned to George. "Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has projected
+this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you repeat it."
+
+Sprayed upon between mortification and laughter at the manner of his
+greeting, George's enthusiasm was a little damped. But its flame was too
+fierce to be hurt by a shower. Now it roared again. "I've passed!" he
+cried. "I'm qualified!"
+
+"I tender my felicitations. Accept them. Leave us, Miss Humfray. This is
+a mighty hour. Take the Rose. Give her cream. Let her with us rejoice."
+
+Mary raised the cat. She faced about so that she directly shut Mr.
+Marrapit from his nephew; with her dancing eyes spoke her happiness to
+her George; passed down the lawn.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright. "Again,
+accept my felicitations," he said. "They are yours. Take them."
+
+With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: "It is a
+mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to
+port, through hurts to harbour."
+
+He paused.
+
+"You mean--" George said, groping.
+
+"Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our
+minds and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand.
+Westward the setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows.
+Between us the horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer
+stands. It is banished by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is
+ended. The vow which I swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept. I
+would nourish you, I declared, until you were a qualified physician.
+You are a qualified physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the
+future, upon a written invitation, I trust you will visit this home in
+which your youth has been spent. When do you leave?"
+
+The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm
+came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He
+had not anticipated it. He jerked: "When do I--leave?"
+
+"Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness and
+waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When does
+it fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope, spend
+beneath my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?"
+
+George flamed. "You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me."
+
+Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:
+
+"Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood." He
+became stern. "Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to
+stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest
+money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you Godspeed."
+
+George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became humble.
+"I am sorry," he said. "I see what you mean. I appreciate your kindness.
+You ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them before
+you."
+
+Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one
+waiting a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some
+kind would be necessary. "Proceed," he said.
+
+George said: "My plans--" He swallowed. "My plans--" Again he swallowed.
+His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought despairingly for one
+that would not at the very outset turn Mr. Marrapit into screams. "My
+plans--" he stammered.
+
+"My God!" Mr. Marrapit groaned. "My God! What is coming?"
+
+George said on a rush: "These are my plans. I intend to marry--"
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.
+
+"Then--then--" said George, floundering. "After that--then--I intend to
+marry--I--"
+
+"Bigamy," Mr. Marrapit murmured. "Bigamy."
+
+"Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little
+seaside practice that is for sale."
+
+Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes
+half closed, face working upon some inward stress.
+
+"Those are my plans," George summarised: "to marry and buy this
+practice."
+
+A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face
+ceased; he opened his eyes, sat up. "When?" he asked.
+
+"At once."
+
+"This practice--"
+
+"I have it in my eye."
+
+"Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?"
+
+"You mean the price?"
+
+"I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes."
+
+"Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you."
+
+"To _me?_"
+
+"Yes. I wanted to ask--"
+
+"You intend to ask me for money?"
+
+"I want to suggest--"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Four--five hundred pounds."
+
+"Great heaven!" Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the
+end of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: "Margaret!"
+
+She tripped to him. "Father! What is it?"
+
+"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit throated. "Barley water!"
+
+While she was upon her errand no--words passed between the two. Mr.
+Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. "Leave us," he said.
+He drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench beside
+him; gave George a wan smile. "I am stricken in years," he said. "I
+have passed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had
+experience of such affections of the brain. I thought"--the hideous
+memory shook him--"I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds."
+
+George said defiantly: "I did."
+
+Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly
+gulped. "I shall have a stroke," he cried. "My hour is at hand."
+
+My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. "Oh, I say, uncle,
+don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me."
+
+"I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to
+myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns."
+
+George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. "Oh,
+for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it
+impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask,
+you have only to say no."
+
+"You promise that?"
+
+"Of course; of course."
+
+"I say it now, then. No."
+
+"But you haven't heard me."
+
+"Unnecessary."
+
+The tortured young man raised his voice.
+
+"It is necessary! You shall! You must!"
+
+"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit gasped. "Barley water! I am going to be
+murdered."
+
+"Oh, this is insupportable!" George cried.
+
+"I endorse that. A double death threatens me. I shudder between a stroke
+and a blow. I shall be battered to death on my own lawn."
+
+"If you would only listen to me," George implored. "Why can we never be
+natural when we meet?"
+
+"Search your heart for the answer," Mr. Marrapit told him. "It is
+because your demands are unnatural."
+
+"You haven't heard them. Listen. I am on the threshold of my career.
+I am sure you will not ruin it. The real price of this practice is
+650 pounds--the value of a year and a half's income; that is the usual
+custom. I am offered it for four hundred. Then I want to marry and to
+have a little balance with which to start--say 100 pounds for that. That
+makes 500 pounds altogether. I implore you to lend--lend, not give--that
+sum. I will pay you back 50 pounds at the end of the first year and a
+hundred a year afterwards. Interest too. I don't know much about these
+things. Any interest you like. We would get a solicitor to draw up an
+agreement. Say you will lend the money. I feel sure you will."
+
+"You delude yourself by that assurance."
+
+"Oh, wait before you refuse. My prospects are so bright if only you
+will help me. I have no one else to whom I can turn. It is only a loan I
+ask."
+
+"It is refused."
+
+George stamped away, hands to head. The poor boy was in agony. Then
+returned:
+
+"I won't believe you. You will not be so heartless. Think over what I
+have said. Tell me to-night--to-morrow."
+
+"My answer would be the same."
+
+"You absolutely refuse to lend me the money?"
+
+"I refuse. It is against my principles."
+
+My frantic George clutched at a shimmering hope. "Against your
+principles to lend? Do you mean that you will give--give me 500 pounds?"
+
+"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit gasped. He drank; gasped: "Give 500 pounds!
+You are light-headed!"
+
+"Then lend it!" George supplicated on a last appeal. "Make any
+conditions you please, and I will accept them. Uncle, think of when you
+were a young man. Remember the time when you were on the threshold of
+your career. Think of when you were engaged as I am now engaged. Imagine
+your feelings if you had been prevented marrying. You won't stand in
+my way? The happiest life is before me if you will only give your aid.
+Otherwise--otherwise--oh, I say, you won't refuse?"
+
+"I implore you to close this distressing scene."
+
+"Will you lend me the money?"
+
+"My principles prevent me."
+
+"Then damn your principles!" George shouted. "Damn your principles!"
+
+While he had been battering his head against this brick wall he had been
+saved pain by the hope that a last chance would carry him through. Now
+that he realised the futility of the endeavour, the stability of the
+wall, he had time to feel the bruising he had suffered--the bitterness
+of failure and of all that failure meant. The hurts combined to make him
+roar with pain, and he shouted furiously again: "Damn your principles!"
+
+"Barley water!" throated Mr. Marrapit on a note of terror. He reached
+for the glass. It was empty.
+
+He struggled to his feet; got the chair between George and himself;
+cried across it: "Beware how you touch me."
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to touch you. You needn't be afraid."
+
+"I have every need. I am afraid. Keep your distance. You are not
+responsible for your actions."
+
+"You needn't be afraid, I tell you. It is too ridiculous."
+
+"I repeat I have need. Keep your distance. My limbs tremble as one in a
+palsy." Mr. Marrapit gripped the chair-back; his shudders advertised his
+distress.
+
+"I only want to say this," George declaimed, "that if you refuse what
+I ask, you are refusing what is lawfully mine. My mother left you 4000
+pounds for my education. At the outside you have spent three. The 500
+pounds is mine. I have a right to it."
+
+"Keep your distance, sir."
+
+My furious George took three steps forward.
+
+"Can you answer what I say?" he shouted.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave a thin cry: turned, and with surprising bounds made
+across the lawn. A slipper shot from his foot. He alighted upon a
+stone; bounded heavenwards with a shrill scream; and hopping, leaping,
+shuffling, made the corner of the house.
+
+George swung on his heel. It occurred to him to visit Bill Wyvern.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Rape Of The Rose.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Bill was away from home, the maid who answered the door told George;
+Mrs. Wyvern was out; the Professor was in his study.
+
+George found the great biologist warming his chilly old bones in a vast
+armchair before a fire.
+
+With a twinkling of his sky-blue eyes that spoke to pleasant temper, the
+Professor greeted George; nodded him into an opposite seat.
+
+"I am reading a letter," he announced. This man spoke very slowly, never
+abbreviated; had now an air of child-like happiness. "It is a letter
+from Bill."
+
+George said: "Ah, what is Bill doing? I've not seen him for days."
+
+Professor Wyvern chuckled away and fumbled with clumsy old fingers among
+the closely-written sheets on his lap. One he selected and inclined
+towards George. Its upper half was thickly lettered in heavy red type,
+prominent among which there bawled forth in wavy capitals, thickly
+underscored:
+
+  "THE DAILY." EVERYBODY'S PAPER. PRICE 1/2d.
+
+"Hot stuff!" George cried. "Is old Bill on the staff of the _Daily_?"
+
+"Old Bill is on the staff of the _Daily_," the Professor returned with
+more chuckling. "You have heard of it?"
+
+"Well, it's advertised everywhere. You can't get away from it. First
+number out to-morrow, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it is. I think it will be a very terrible production--a very
+horrible production indeed. But I am an annual subscriber because
+of Bill, and I have written a short article for the first issue also
+because of Bill. Bill says" (the Professor fumbled again; ran his nose
+twice up and down each sheet; finally struck the passage) "Bill says,
+'You were a brick, dear old governor, to send that article. It is a most
+thundering scoop for the _Daily_, and made the Boss most awfully bucked
+up with me. You are a brick, dear old Governor."
+
+A little tear rolled out of Professor Wyvern's silly old eye, and he
+blew his nose in a series of terrific thunder-claps.
+
+"There!" he said. "You see how pleased Bill is with himself. I am afraid
+he uses the most terrible expressions in his letters, but he does not
+use them when he is writing his stories. He is a clever boy, and I am
+very proud of him. Now let me tell you." He fell to nosing the sheets
+again. "All this first part is about his dogs. '... if Abiram and Dathan
+start scrapping, just hoof Abiram--it's his fault.'"
+
+The Professor looked up at George. "I would more readily kick a police
+constable than I would kick Abiram," he said. "I must tell Hocken all
+this."
+
+He continued, "'... see that Korah is kept short of meat for a bit ...
+when they are exercising, for goodness' sake don't let them be taken
+down Windmill Lane. There is a collie there that they have got a grudge
+against and will tear to bits if they catch.'"
+
+The Professor paused. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! I must give all this part to
+Hocken to keep. Ah! Now here is about his work. They have engaged him
+at four pounds a week. He does not know exactly what he is. Not a
+sub-editor. Not a reporter. He thinks they will put him on to what he
+calls 'special jobs,' or he may have to do what he calls 'ferret round'
+and find jobs for himself. The understanding is that he is only on
+probation. If he does anything very good they will put him on the
+permanent staff; if not, he is liable to go at a week's notice. Then he
+says, 'Tell all this to George, and give him my love. He was up for his
+exam--'"
+
+Professor Wyvern broke off. "Dear me!" he cried; "oh, dear me, I have
+forgotten! You have been up for your examination?"
+
+George nodded.
+
+Kindly old Professor Wyvern misinterpreted the lack of enthusiasm. "When
+I was a medical student," he said, "I failed dozens of times in my final
+examination--dozens. It's no criterion of knowledge, you know: it
+is just luck. Never let examination failure dishearten you. Go along
+happily, George, and take your chance when it comes."
+
+"It's come," George said, beaming; recollection of his splendid success
+temporarily overshadowed recollection of his tragic failure.
+
+"You have qualified?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Professor's sky-blue eyes danced with glee. He struggled on to his
+tottery old legs; before George could save him the exertion, had hobbled
+over the hearth-rug and was wringing his hand in tremendous pleasure.
+
+"Well done, George!" he bubbled. "Well done! Well done! It is the
+most splendid news. I have not had such a happy day for a long time.
+Qualified! Well, that is splendid! Splendid!"
+
+He fell back into his chair, panting with his excitement. "Ring that
+bell, George. We must celebrate this."
+
+A maid appeared. "Susan," said the Professor, "bring up a small bottle
+of champagne and two glasses. Mr. George has passed his examination. Be
+very quick, Susan."
+
+Susan was very quick. The cork popped; the glasses foamed and fizzed.
+"Now we will have one glass each," the Professor said. "I think, it will
+kill me at this hour, and if my wife catches me she will send me to bed;
+so we must be very quick. Now, this is your health, George. God bless
+you and good luck!"
+
+He drained his glass like the brave old boy that he was; and when his
+eyes had done streaming, and he had finished gasping and choking, bade
+Susan hurry away the signs of the dreadful deed before her mistress
+should catch her.
+
+"And now tell me your plans, George. Which road to Harley Street, eh?"
+
+Then George poured into those kindly old ears all the tragic story--the
+girl he was going to marry; the practice he was going to buy; the
+wrecker who had wrecked his fair ships ere ever he had put to sea.
+
+There were in the Professor's nature no sympathies that enabled him even
+to comprehend miserliness in any degree. Made aware of the taint in Mr.
+Marrapit, he became red and furious in his abhorrence of it. With snorts
+and fumes he punctuated the recital; when it closed, burst out: "Why,
+but it is yours! the money is yours. It is misappropriation."
+
+"That's just what I say."
+
+"Well, he must be made to give it you." George laughed grimly. "I say
+that, too. But how?"
+
+"Are you certain of your facts, George?"
+
+"I've been to Somerset house and seen my mother's will."
+
+"Legally, then--we'll get it out of him by law."
+
+"I've thought of that," George said. "I don't think it is possible.
+Look, the passage runs like this. I have it word for word. 'To my
+brother Christopher Marrapit 4000 pounds, and I desire him to educate in
+the medical profession my son George.' Not even 'with which I desire
+him,' you see. I don't think there's any legal way of getting the money
+I want--the five hundred."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+For full ten minutes Professor Wyvern made no answer. He stared in the
+fire, and every now and again one of his little chuckles set his bent
+old shoulders bobbing. Upon a longer chuckle they waggled for a
+space; then he turned to George. "Not legally; well, then, what about
+illegally, George?"
+
+George did not comprehend.
+
+"A very bad notion has come into my head," the Professor continued. "I
+ought to be ashamed of it, but I am not. I think it would be very funny.
+I think your uncle would deserve it. I am sure it would be very funny,
+and I think it would be proper and justifiable."
+
+"Go on," George said. "Tell me."
+
+The Professor's old shoulders bobbed about again. "No, I will not tell
+you," he said. "I will not be a party to it; because if my wife found
+out she would send me to bed and keep me there. But I will tell you a
+little story, George. If it sets up a train of action that you like to
+follow--well, I think it will be very funny. Only, don't tell me."
+
+"I say, this is mysterious. Tell me the story."
+
+"Yes, I will. This is the story. When I was a student in Germany we had
+a professor called Meyer. He wore a wig because he was quite bald. He
+was very sensitive about his baldness and would have no one know--but we
+knew. Upon one afternoon there was a great violinist who was coming to
+play at our town. All the professors announced that for this occasion
+they would postpone the lectures they should then have given, so that
+their classes might attend the concert. But this Professor Meyer said
+that he would not postpone his lecture. It was a link in a series, you
+understand--not to be missed,--so his class, of which I was one; were
+very furious. We told him that we were entitled to a holiday this day
+since all had it, but he would not hear us. We were very angry, for
+this holiday was our right. Now, also, one week before the concert the
+burgomaster of our town was to give a great banquet to the celebration
+of the centenary of a famous citizen. Here our Professor Meyer was to
+make a speech. Well, when he remained adamant, determined to give us
+no holiday, we had a great meeting, and thus we arranged to procure
+the holiday that was ours by right. Our plot was justified by his
+mulishness. He should lose the thing he most cherished--he should lose
+his wig two days before his banquet with the burgomaster. One of us
+would take his wig, seizing him as by night he walked to his rooms.
+Before his distress we should be most sympathetic, offering every aid.
+Perchance he would encourage our efforts by offer of the prize we most
+desired. The plot worked, with no misadventure, to a brilliant triumph.
+We took the wig. We enveloped him in our sympathy. 'Search out and
+restore my wig,' said he, 'and you shall have your holiday.' Then we
+found his wig and we enjoyed the holiday that was our right. That is the
+story," Professor Wyvern ended.
+
+Mystification clouded George's face. He pushed out a leg, stared at the
+toe. He stared at the fire; at the Professor, chuckling and rubbing
+his hands, he stared. His brain twisted the story this way and that,
+striving to dovetail it into his own circumstances.
+
+In such a process the eyes are the mouth of the machine whence the
+completed manufacture sends forth its sparkling. But while the mechanism
+twists and turns the fabrics there is no sparkle--the eyes are clouded
+in thought, as we say.
+
+The eyes that George turned upon toe, upon fire, and upon Professor
+Wyvern, were dull and lack-lustre. The machine worked unproductive;
+there was a cog that required adjustment, a lever that wanted a pull.
+
+George sought the foreman machinist; said slowly: "But I don't see how
+the story helps me?"
+
+"Well, you must think over it," Professor Wyvern told him. "I dare
+not tell you any more. I must be no party to the inference that can be
+drawn. But do you not see that the thing our Professor cherished most
+was his wig? Now, Bill has told me that the thing your uncle cherishes
+above all price is--"
+
+Click went the machine; round buzzed the wheels; out from George's eyes
+shot the sparkles. He jumped to his feet, his face red. "Is his cat!" he
+cried. "His Rose of Sharon! I see it! I see it! By Gad, I'll do it! Look
+here now--"
+
+"No, I will not," the Professor said. "I do not wish to know anything
+about it. I hear my wife's step."
+
+"I understand. All right. But don't tell a soul--not even Bill."
+
+"I cannot tell, because I do not know. But I suspect it is something
+very funny," and the Professor burst into a very deep "Ho! ho! ho!"
+
+"My dearest," said Mrs. Wyvern at the door, "whatever can you be
+laughing at so loudly?"
+
+"Ho! ho! ho! ho!" boomed the Professor, belling like a bloodhound. "It
+is something very funny."
+
+Mrs. Wyvern kissed the thin hairs on the top of his mighty head. "Dear
+William, I do trust it was not one of those painful stories of your
+young days."
+
+George stayed to dinner. By nine he left the house. He did not make for
+home. Striking through lanes he climbed an ascending field, mounted a
+stile, and here, with an unseeing eye upon Herons' Holt twinkling its
+bedroom lights in the valley below, he smoked many pipes, brooding upon
+his scheme.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+It was not a melancholy process. Every now and again a crack of laughter
+jerked him; once he took his pipe from his mouth and put up a ringing
+peal of mirth that sent a brace of bunnies, flirting near his feet,
+wildly scampering for safety. Long he brooded....
+
+A church clock gave him eleven. At ten he had been too deeply buried.
+Now his head was pushed clear from the burrow in which he had been
+working, and the sound caught his attention. No light now pricked
+Herons' Holt upon the dusky chart stretched beneath him. Its occupants
+were abed.
+
+"I'll do it to-night!" cried George. "I'll do it at once!"
+
+He drew on his pipe. A full cloud of smoke came. The pipe was well
+alight, and caution bidding him that it were well to bide a while
+so that sleep might more cosily warm the beds of the household, he
+determined that he would have out his last smoke as plotter: his next
+would be smoked as doer of the deed.
+
+He rehearsed his plan. A knife would slip back the catch of the window
+behind which the Rose of Sharon lay. Possessing himself of her person
+he would speed to that tumbled hut in the copse. There she might lie in
+safety for the night: neither hut nor copse was in any man's road. Upon
+the morrow, when the hideous circumstance had been discovered, he would
+bear himself as events seemed to demand. He would be boundless in his
+sympathy, a leader in the search. If the idea of reward did not occur to
+Mr. Marrapit, he must suggest it. Unlikely that in the first moment
+of loss, when the Rose would still seem to be near, the reward would
+approach the figure at which he aimed. That was for his cunning to
+contrive. But obviously it would be impossible permanently to keep the
+Rose in the hut. To-morrow, when pretending to search for her he could
+guard the place where she lay; but he could not always be sentinel.
+The countryside would be scoured; no stone left unturned, no spinney
+unbeaten.
+
+As he saw the matter, the plan would be to get somewhere down the
+railway line on pretext of a clue, taking the Rose of Sharon with him;
+for the success of the whole scheme depended upon his concealing the cat
+until Mr. Marrapit should be upon his bended knees in his distress,
+in deepest despair as to the Rose's recovery, and hence would be
+transported to deepest gratitude when it was restored to his arms.
+George told himself he must be prepared against the eventuality of his
+uncle failing to offer in public reward so large a sum as 500 pounds.
+That did not greatly distress. Best indeed if that sum were offered,
+but, failing it, it was upon Mr. Marrapit's gratitude that George
+ultimately reckoned. Surely when he "found" the cat it would be Mr.
+Marrapit's natural reply to give in exchange the sum he had that
+afternoon so violently refused. At the least, he could not refuse to
+lend it.
+
+Early in his brooding George had decided he must not tell his Mary.
+First, it would be cruel to set her upon the rack of acting a part
+before Mr. Marrapit, before the household, before every questioner she
+must encounter; second--second, my ignoble George had doubts as to in
+what spirit his Mary would regard this plot did he make her partner in
+it. That it was wholly justifiable he personally would have contended
+before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that
+was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother
+had given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have
+protested-without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of
+righteousness, with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his
+cause before his Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion
+to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye with him in the matter. She
+might; but it was an eventuality he did not care to try against a test.
+His Mary was a girl--and girls are in their conduct narrowed by scruples
+that do not beset men. His Mary--and this it was that would make a test
+so violent--his Mary was his Mary, and well he knew, and loved, the
+little heart so delicately white as instantly to discover the finest
+specks of sootiness--if specks there were--in any breeze that might
+cross its surface.
+
+No, he would not tell his Mary. When the thing was done--when he, the
+black-hearted rogue, had the little saint safe in the toils she would
+find so delicious, then--then he would tell her, would silence her
+frightened squeals--if she squealed--by his intention to pay back the
+money, whether won as reward (which was improbable) or earned as token
+of gratitude (which was highly likely). He had only asked to borrow, and
+it should only be a loan.
+
+Across the dark fields in spirit he kissed his little saint. ... Of
+course--of course--one must admit these brutal things--of course the
+scheme might fail. Anything might happen to crash it about his ears.
+That was a deadly, dismal thought, but he flattened it from sight with
+that lusty hammer that gay youth uses--"I shan't be any worse off if it
+does fail."
+
+The smoke came through his pipe in burning whiffs. He shook it bowl
+downwards. Ashes and sparks fell in a shower. The pipe was done.
+
+_Whoop! forrard!_ The game was afoot.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A moon as clear as that which shone when Bill stole to Herons' Holt
+to woo his blessed damosel, gave a clear light to George as now he
+approached the house. He took his way across the fields, and his
+progression was that of no stealthy-footed conspirator. Two miles of
+downward-sloping land lay between the stile whereon he had brooded and
+the home that his plottings were to disturb. In buoyant spirits--for
+this was action, and action makes lusty appeal to youth--he trotted or
+galloped as the descent was easy or sharply inclined; the low hedges he
+took in great sprawling jumps, the ditches in vast giant strides--arms
+working as balance-pole, humming as he ran.
+
+Upon the lawn he became more cautious. But the moon showed Herons' Holt
+sleepy-eyed-blinds drawn.
+
+The cats' parlour, back of the house, gave upon a little strip of turf
+that kept away the kitchen garden. George drew his knife; approached the
+window. Now he was a criminal indeed.
+
+To slip the catch was easy work; between upper and lower sash there was
+clear space. George inserted his pen-knife. Tip of blade grated against
+catch; a little pressure--an answering movement; a little more--and,
+_click_, the trick was done!
+
+Now he raised the sash, and now he is in the room. Glimmer of a match
+shows him the sleeping-baskets; its steadier flame discloses the Rose,
+snugly curled, a little free of her silken coverlet.
+
+Wake, now, Rose--as an older school of novelists would have addressed
+you. Wake, Rose! Wake, pretty Rose! Queenly Rose, awake! Wake precious,
+virgin Rose! Squeal! scratch! bite! Claw those wicked hands descending
+into your pure bed! Spring like spotless maiden aroused to find ravisher
+at her couch! Spring, Rose, spring! Squawking news of outrage to all the
+house, bound wildly, Rose, about this room that else you shall not see
+until through searing perils you have passed! Spring! Rose, spring!
+
+Not Rose!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The ravisher's hands descended upon her person--she only purred. They
+passed about her warm and exquisite form--she purred the more. They
+tickled her as they laid hold--she stretched a leg; purred with fuller
+note. Perchance this virgin cat dreamed of some gallant young Tom wooing
+her bed; perchance these ticklings had their deliciously transfigured
+place in her visions; perchance--she only purred.
+
+Now George tucked her beneath his arm. Legs dangled wretchedly; gallant
+young Tom leapt from her dreams and she awoke. She stirred. George had a
+foot upon the window-sill, and the night air ruffled her downy coat.
+She was pressed against bony ribs; a rough arm squeezed her wretchedly;
+long, poky fingers tortured her flank; her legs draggled dismally. She
+voiced protest in a plaintive, piercing, long-drawn _"Mi-aow!"_
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Ah, Rose! Pretty, foolish Rose--as our older school again would have
+written--why did you entertain sensuous dreams when you should have been
+stirring?
+
+_"Mi-aow!"_
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Too late, Rose! Too late! That beauteous head--that prize-winning head
+which from kittenhood upwards has known none other than caress, is now
+a mark for battering bumps if you do but open those perfect jaws--those
+prize-winning jaws. Too late, Rose! Too late! Do not cry now, Rose! The
+ravisher has you. His blood congeals in terror at your plaintive cry.
+In his brutish panic he will answer it with thuds. Too late, Rose! Too
+late!
+
+"_Mi-aow!_"
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Ah, Rose, Rose!
+
+He is outside now. "Shut up, you fat idiot!" he hisses. Squeezing her
+yet more villainously with one arm, with the other he draws down the
+sash. Through the gate, into the lane, over the stream, down the ride,
+into the copse--up to the hut.
+
+The outer door hangs grinningly upon its hinges. The door going to
+the inner room has a working latch; George kicks it open; elbows it to
+behind him; drops the Rose with jarring plump; strikes a match. There is
+the dusty pile of Old Tom bottles, there the little heap of bracken upon
+which Mrs. Major doubtless had reclined while with Old Tom she talked.
+Excellent!
+
+The match goes out. He lights another. The Rose is standing forlornly at
+his feet. While the match lasts he lifts her to the bracken bed; presses
+her down; backs out; closes the door.
+
+His watch, put beneath the moon, tells him it is upon one o'clock. He
+pulls to the outer door; wedges beneath it a stump of wood that keeps it
+firmly shut; makes for home.
+
+In an hour he is sleeping the dreamless, childlike slumber that comes
+to those who, setting their hand to the plough, have manfully laboured a
+full day's work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Horror At Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Sleep does not necessarily shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton
+mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice
+or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, seductive
+when least desired.
+
+George, steeped in crime, snuggled warmly to her until aroused by a rude
+shaking.
+
+Night-capped and dressing-gowned, white-faced and trembling, awful in
+grief Mr. Marrapit stood near him.
+
+"Get up! The Rose of Sharon is lost."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"I tell you it is so. Up!"
+
+George pushed a shaking leg out of bed. He was had unawares. As a
+sleeper pitched sleeping into the sea, so from unconsciousness he was
+hurled plump into the whirlpool of events. And as the sleeper thus
+immersed would gulp and sink and kick, so now he blinked, shivered, and
+gasped.
+
+He repeated: "Impossible!"
+
+"I tell you it is so. I have eyes; I have been to her room." Mr.
+Marrapit's voice rose in a wailing cry. "I have been to her room. Gone!
+Gone!"
+
+George put out the other leg--crime-steeped legs that quivered. He had
+looked for a space between awaking and meeting his uncle in which to
+prepare his plans, rehearse his words. This abrupt rousing stampeded his
+senses. He quavered "Wher--where can she be?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit flung up his arms. "Oh, my God! If I knew that would I be
+here? Up! Up! Join the searchers in the garden."
+
+George pushed a criminal leg into his trousers. Conscience made thumbs
+of his fingers, trembled his joints. He hopped frantically, thrusting
+with the other foot.
+
+"Dance!" Mr. Marrapit moaned bitterly. "Dance! That is right! Why do you
+not sing also? This is nothing to you! Dance on! Dance on!"
+
+George cannoned the wash-stand. "It _is_ something to me. I can hardly
+believe it!"
+
+"Is sorrow expressed in a gavotte? Grief in a hornpipe?"
+
+"I'm not dancing. My damned bags are stuck!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit wrung his hands. "Discard them! Discard them! Must decency
+imperil the Rose?"
+
+With a tremendous kick George thrust in past the obstruction.
+
+"They're on now--my slippers--coat--what shall I do?"
+
+"Join the searchers. Scour the grounds. Search every shrub. Climb every
+tree."
+
+The agonised man led downstairs. "I found the window open," he moaned.
+"Night by night, year in year out, I have shut it. Impossible that I
+forgot. If I forgot, the Rose is in the garden or in the vicinity. If I
+did not forget, the window was forced--the Rose was stolen. A detective
+shall decide."
+
+George grew quite cold. Employment of a detective had not occurred to
+him. They were at the front door. He put a hand on Mr. Marrapit's arm.
+"Oh, not a detective. Don't get a detective."
+
+"If need be I will get forty detectives. I will blacken the countryside
+with detectives."
+
+George grew quite hot. "Uncle, let us keep this private. Leave it with
+me. Rely on me. I will find your cat."
+
+"Into the garden," cried Mr. Marrapit. "Join the searchers. They have
+failed once. Lead, animate, encourage."
+
+"And you won't get a detective?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not reply. He had opened the hall door; Mr. Fletcher in
+the middle distance approached moodily.
+
+Mr. Marrapit thrust out a hand. "Back! Back!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+Wearily Mr. Fletcher gave answer. "It's no use, Mr. Marrapit. It's no
+good saying 'back.' I've been back. I've been back and I've been front
+and I've been both sides. I've looked here, I've looked there; I've
+looked up, I've looked down. I'm giddy with looking." He approached;
+stood before them. Woe heavily draped herself about this man.
+
+"Oh, easily discouraged!" Mr. Marrapit cried.
+
+"Oh, infirm of purpose! Back, faint-heart! Do not say die."
+
+Faint-heart mopped a streaming brow. "But I do say die. I do say die,
+Mr. Marrapit, and I damn well shall die if I go creepin' and crawlin'
+and hissin' much longer. It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not
+a cobra."
+
+Mr. Marrapit slammed the door. George hurried out of sight; in the
+kitchen garden sat down to think. He was frightened. Thus far the plot
+had not worked well. Detectives!
+
+He gave an hour to the search he was ostensibly conducting; when he
+again entered the house was more easy-minded. Employed in meditation
+that hour gave him back his coolness of the night. Rudely awakened,
+given no time in which firmly to plant his feet, securely to get a
+purchase with his hands before the storm burst, he had been whirled
+along helpless and bewildered before Mr. Marrapit's gusty agony. Instead
+of resisting the torrent, directing its course, he had been caught where
+it surged fiercest, hurled down-stream. In the vulgar simile of his
+reflections he was rotting the whole show.
+
+But now he had steadied himself. He girded his loins against the part he
+had to play; with new determination and confidence entered the house.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+There was no breakfast at Herons' Holt that morning. When George,
+dressed, bathed and shaved, sought out his uncle, it was to find Mr.
+Marrapit in the study.
+
+The distracted man was pacing the floor, a closely written sheet of
+paper in his hands. He turned upon George.
+
+"In the hour of my travail I am also beneath the burden of earlier
+griefs. Yesterday a disastrous scene took place between us. Oaths rasped
+from your lips."
+
+"Forget that, sir. Forget it."
+
+"That is my desire. Misery wails through the corridors. In her presence
+let us bury private differences. In this appalling catastrophe every
+help is required. You have youth, manhood; you should be invaluable."
+
+George declared: "I mean to be. I will not rest until the Rose is
+restored."
+
+This was perfectly true, as he was to discover.
+
+"Commendable," Mr. Marrapit pronounced. Now that this volunteer was
+enlisted, Mr. Marrapit discarded supplication, resumed mastery. "While
+you have searched," he said, "I have schemed." He indicated the paper he
+carried. "These are my plans. Peruse them."
+
+George read; returned the paper. "If these arrangements do not restore
+the Rose," he declared, "nothing will. I see you do not mention my name.
+I fear you doubted my assistance. I think I will join the--the----"--he
+glanced at the paper--"the _extra-mural_ searchers. I know the
+countryside well. I can go far and fast."
+
+Mr. Marrapit agreed. "Summon the household," he commanded.
+
+George called Margaret; the two carried out the order.
+
+In a semicircle the household grouped about their master; from Mrs.
+Armitage at the one horn to George at the other they took their
+places--Mrs. Armitage, Clara, Ada, Mr. Fletcher, Frederick, Mary,
+Margaret, George.
+
+Paper in hand Mr. Marrapit regarded them. He pointed at Frederick.
+
+"That boy is sucking a disgusting peppermint. Disgorge."
+
+Glad of relief, all eyes went upon the infamous youth. He purpled,
+struggled, gulped, swallowed--from his eyes tears streamed.
+
+"Stiffneck!" Mr. Marrapit thundered. "Disgorge, I said. You are
+controlled by appetite; your belly is your god."
+
+"Well, I ain't 'ad no breakfast," Stiffneck answered fiercely. Like Miss
+Porter upon a similar occasion this boy was in great pain.
+
+"And no breakfast shall you have until the Rose is restored. Heartless!
+How can you eat while she, perhaps, does starve?" The angry man
+addressed the group. "These are the plans for her recovery. Give ear.
+You, vile boy, will rush to the dairy and order to be sent at once as
+much milk as Mrs. Armitage will command you. Mrs. Armitage, you with
+your maids--Fletcher, you with that boy, are the _intramural_
+workers, the workers within the walls. George, Margaret, Miss
+Humfray--_extra-mural_. Mrs. Armitage, with milk let every bowl and
+saucer be filled. Fletcher, at intervals of thirty feet along the wall
+let these be placed. If our wanderer is near she will be attracted.
+Margaret, with Miss Humfray to the village. Collect an army of village
+boys. Describe our Rose. Set them to scour the countryside for her.
+Yourselves join that search. Let the call of 'Rose! Rose!' echo through
+every lane. George, you also will scour far and wide. Upon your way
+despatch to me a cab from the station. I drive to the post-office to
+telephone for a detective. I have not yet decided which detective. It is
+a momentous matter." He flung out both hands. "To your tasks! Let zeal,
+let love for our lost one spur each to outvie the efforts of another.
+Fletcher, raise the window. That pungent boy has poisoned the air."
+
+They trooped from him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A Detective At Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Bolt Buildings, Westminster, is a colossal red structure reared upon
+the site of frightened-looking little houses which fell beneath the
+breaker's hammer coincident with the falling in of their lease. Here you
+may have a complete floor of rooms at from three to five hundred a
+year; or, high under the roof, you may rent a single room for forty-five
+pounds.
+
+Mr. David Brunger, Private Detective and Confidential Inquiry Agent,
+appeared on the books of the Bolt Buildings management as lessee of one
+of these single rooms. The appearance of his quarters as presented to
+the visitor had, however, a more pretentious aspect.
+
+Shot to the topmost floor in the electric lift, passing to the left
+and up five stairs in accordance with the lift boy's instructions,
+the intending client would be faced by three doors. Upon the first was
+inscribed:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks).
+
+Upon the middle door:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Private).
+
+And upon the third:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Office).
+
+These signs of large staff and flourishing business were in keeping with
+the telling advertisements which Mr. David Brunger from time to time
+caused to appear in the Press.
+
+"Watch your wife," said these advertisements, adding in smaller type
+that had the appearance of a whisper: "David Brunger will watch her."
+"What keeps your husband late at office?" they continued. "David Brunger
+will find out. Confidential inquiry of every description promptly and
+cheaply carried out by David Brunger's large staff of skilled detectives
+(male and female). David Brunger has never failed. David Brunger has
+restored thousands of pounds' worth of stolen property, countless
+missing relatives. David Brunger, 7 Bolt Buildings, Strange Street, S.W.
+Tel. 0000 West."
+
+In London, with its myriad little eddies of crime and matrimonial
+infelicity, there is a neat sum to be made out of detective work.
+Scotland Yard wolfs the greater part of these opportunities; there are
+established names that absorb much of the remainder. In the surplus,
+however, there is still a livelihood for the David Brungers. For if the
+Brungers do not go nosing after silken petticoats covering aristocratic
+but wanton legs; if the Brungers do not go flying across the Continent,
+nose to ground, notebook in hand, after the fine linen worn by my lord
+who is making holiday with something fair and frail under the quiet
+name of Mr. and Mrs. Brown; if the Brungers are not employed to draggle
+silken petticoats and fine linen through the Divorce Court, there is
+work for them among humbler washing baskets. Jealous little shop-keepers
+have erring little wives, and common little wives have naughty little
+husbands: these come to your Brungers. And if, again, the Brungers
+do not dog the footsteps of your fifty-thousand-pound men, your
+embezzlement-over-a-period-of-ten-years men, your cheque-forging
+men--if the Brungers are invited to do no dogging after these, there are
+pickings for them in less flashy crimes. Hiding in cupboard work while
+the sweated little shop-assistant slips a marked shilling from the till,
+hiding in basement work while a trembling little figure creeps down and
+pilfers the stock--these are the pranks that come to your Brungers.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+While Mr. Marrapit at Herons' Holt was addressing to his household
+grouped about him his orders relative to the search for the Rose of
+Sharon, Mr. David Brunger at Bolt Buildings was entering the door marked
+"DAVID BRUNGER (Private)."
+
+A telephone, a gas stove, a roll-top desk, an office chair, an armchair,
+a tiny deal table and a wooden-seated chair comprised the furniture of
+the apartment.
+
+"For myself, I like severity and simplicity of surroundings," Mr. David
+Brunger in the office chair would tell a client in the armchair. "For
+_myself_--" and he would waggle his head towards the side walls with an
+air that seemed to imply prodigal luxury in the fittings of "(Clerks)"
+and "(Office)."
+
+Entering the room Mr. Brunger unlocked the roll-top desk; discovered the
+stump of a half-smoked cigarette; lit it and began to compare the day's
+racing selections of "Head Lad," who imparted stable secrets to one
+tipster's organ, with those of "Trainer," who from the knowledge of his
+position very kindly gave one horse snips to another.
+
+At ten o'clock the large staff of trained detectives (male and female),
+mentioned in Mr. Brunger's advertisements, came pouring up the stairs,
+knocked at the door and filed into the room. Its name was Issy Jago, a
+Jewish young gentleman aged seventeen, whose appearance testified in the
+highest manner to the considerable thrift he exercised in the matter of
+hair-dressers and toilet soap.
+
+Mr. Issy Jago sat himself on the wooden-seated chair before the small
+deal table; got to work upon his finger-nails with the corner of an
+omnibus ticket; proceeded to study the police court reports in the
+_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+It was his duty, whenever he noted plaintiffs or defendants to whom Mr.
+David Brunger's services might be of benefit, to post to them Mr.
+David Brunger's card together with a selection of entirely unsolicited
+testimonials composed and dictated by Mr. Brunger for the occasion.
+
+Also his duty to receive clients.
+
+When a knock was heard at "DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks)" Mr. Issy Jago
+would slip through from "DAVID BRUNGER (Private)" to the tiny closet
+containing the cistern into which the door marked "DAVID BRUNGER
+(Clerks)" opened. Sliding through this door in such a manner as to give
+the client no glimpse of the interior, he would inform the visitor,
+with a confidential wink, "Fact is we have a client in there--a very
+well-known personage who does not wish it to be known that he is
+consulting us." The impressed caller would then be conducted into "DAVID
+BEUNGER (Private)."
+
+Between "DAVID BRUNGER (Private)" and "DAVID BRUNGER (Office)," on the
+other hand, there was no communication. Indeed there was no room behind
+"(Office)": the door gave on to the roof. When, therefore, a hesitating
+client chose to knock at "(Office)" Mr. Issy Jago, emerging from
+"(Private)," would give the whispered information: "Fact is there's a
+very important private consultation going on in there--Scotland Yard
+consulting us." And the impressed client would forthwith be led into
+"DAVID BRUNGER (Private)."
+
+In either event, the client trapped, Mr. Issy Jago would skip into
+"(Clerks)" and sit on the cistern till Mr. Brunger's bell summoned him.
+
+For the privilege of adding to the dignity of his single apartment
+by having his name inscribed upon the cistern cupboard and upon the
+emergency exit to the roof, Mr. Brunger paid thirty shillings extra per
+annum.
+
+III.
+
+By half-past ten Mr. Brunger was occupied in composing an unsolicited
+testimonial to be sent to the wife of a green-grocer in the Borough who,
+on the previous day, had summoned her husband for assault at Lambeth
+Police-Court.
+
+"I had suspicions but no proof of my 'usband's infidelity," dictated
+Mr. Brunger, pacing the floor, "until I enlisted your services. I must
+say--"
+
+At that moment the telephone bell rang. Mr. Brunger ceased dictation;
+took up the receiver.
+
+"Are you David Brunger, the private detective?" a voice asked.
+
+"We are," replied Mr. Brunger in the thin treble he used on first
+answering a call. "Who are you, please?"
+
+"I am Mr. Christopher Marrapit of Herons' Holt, Paltley Hill, Surrey.
+I--"
+
+"One moment," piped Mr. Brunger. "Is it confidential business?"
+
+"It is most urgent business. I--"
+
+"One moment, please. In that case the private secretary must take your
+message."
+
+Mr. Brunger laid down the receiver; took a turn across the room;
+approached the telephone; in a very deep bass asked, "Are you there?"
+
+The frantic narrative that was poured into his ears he punctuated with
+heavy, guttural "Certainly's," "Yes's," "We comprehend's," "We follow
+you's." Then: "Mr. David Brunger himself? I'm afraid that is impossible,
+sir. Mr. Brunger has his hands very full just now. He is closeted
+with Scotland Yard. At this moment, sir, the Yard is consulting him
+...'m...'m. Well, I'll see, sir, I'll see. I doubt it. I very much doubt
+it. But hold the line a minute, sir."
+
+In his capacity of Mr. David Brunger's private secretary, Mr. David
+Brunger drank from the carafe of water on the mantelpiece to clear his
+tortured throat.
+
+In his capacity of the great detective and confidential inquiry agent
+himself, he then stepped to the telephone and, after exhibiting a power
+of invention relative to startling crimes in hand that won even the
+admiration of Mr. Issy Jago, announced that he would be with Mr.
+Marrapit at three o'clock.
+
+"It may be a big job, Issy," he remarked, relighting the stump of
+cigarette, "or it may be a little job. But what I say and what I do is,
+_impress your client. Impress your client,_ Issy. Let that be your maxim
+through life. And if I catch you again takin' a draw at my cigarette
+when my back's turned, as I see you just now, I'll damn well turn you
+inside out and chuck you through that door. So you watch it. You've made
+this smoke taste 'orrid-'orrid. No sauce, now; no sauce."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+By two o'clock the results of Mr. Marrapit's colossal scheme began to
+pour in.
+
+The bowls of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every
+stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a
+clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the immediate
+generalship of Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Throughout the morning cats bounded, flickered and disappeared upon the
+wall. Fat cats, thin cats; tom cats, tabby cats; white cats, black cats,
+yellow cats, and grey cats; young cats and old cats. As each appeared,
+Mr. Marrapit, first expectant then moaning, would wave his assistants to
+the assault. Up would go the clothes-prop of Mr. Fletcher or Frederick;
+down would go the stranger cat. It was exhausting work.
+
+At two-thirty the village boys who had been searching were mustered at
+the gate. Each bore a cat. Some carried two. Leaving his clothes-prop
+lancers, Mr. Marrapit hurried down the drive to hold review.
+
+"Pass," he commanded, "in single file before me."
+
+They passed. "Dolt! Dolt!" groaned Mr. Marrapit, writhing in the
+bitterness of crushed hope as each cat was held towards him. "Dolt and
+pumpkin-head! How could that wretched creature be my Rose?"
+
+How, indeed, when at that moment the Rose of Sharon in the ruined hut
+was lapping milk taken her by George in a lemonade bottle, her infamous
+captor smoking on the threshold?
+
+Precisely at three o'clock Mr. David Brunger arrived. Conducted to the
+room whence the Rose had disappeared, the astute inquiry agent was there
+closeted with Mr. Marrapit for half an hour. At the end of that time Mr.
+Marrapit appeared on the lawn. His face was white, his voice, when he
+spoke, hollow and trembling. He called to the clothes-prop lancers:
+
+"Cease. Cease. Withdraw the milk. The Rose of Sharon is not strayed. She
+is stolen!"
+
+"Thenk Gord!" said Frederick. "Thenk Gord! I've pretty well busted
+myself over this game."
+
+Mr. Fletcher said nothing; drew his snail from his pocket; plunged head
+downwards in a bush. Woe sat heavy upon him; beneath the indignity and
+labour of thrusting at stranger cats with a clothes-prop this man had
+grievously suffered.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The Rose was stolen. That was Mr. Brunger's discovery after examination
+of the window-latch where George's knife had marked it, the sill where
+George's boots had scratched it. Outside the great detective searched
+for footmarks--they had been obliterated by heavy rainfall between
+the doing of the hideous deed and its discovery. Upon the principle of
+impressing his client, however, Mr. Brunger grovelled on the path with
+tape measure and note-book; measured every pair of boots in the house;
+measured the window; measured the room; in neat little packets tied up
+specimens of the gravel, specimens of the turf, specimens of hair from
+the Rose of Sharon's coat, picked from her bed.
+
+It was six o'clock when he had concluded. By then George had returned;
+the three held council in the study. Addressing Mr. Marrapit, Mr.
+Brunger tapped his note-book and his little packages. "We shall track
+the culprit, never fear, Mr. Marrapit," he said. "My impression is that
+this is the work of a gang--a _gang_."
+
+"Precisely my impression," George agreed.
+
+Mr. Brunger took the interruption with the gracious bow of one who
+condescends to accept a pat on the back from an inferior. Mr. Marrapit
+twisted his fingers in his thin hair; groaned aloud.
+
+"A _gang,_" repeated Mr. Brunger, immensely relishing the word. "We
+detectives do not like to speak with certainty until we have clapped our
+hands upon our men; we leave that for the amateurs, the bunglers--the
+_quacks_ of our profession." The famous confidential inquiry agent
+tapped the table with his forefinger and proceeded impressively. "But I
+will say this much. Not only a gang, but a desperate gang, a dangerous,
+stick-at-nothing gang."
+
+Mr. Marrapit writhed. The detective continued: "What are our grounds for
+this belief?" he asked. "What are our _data_?"
+
+He looked at George. George shook his head. Easy enough, and useful,
+to acquiesce in the idea of a gang, but uncommonly hard to support the
+belief. He shook his head.
+
+Mr. Brunger was disappointed; a little at sea, he would have clutched
+eagerly at any aid. However, "impress your client." He continued: "These
+are our data. We have a valuable cat--a cat, sir, upon which the eyes of
+cat-breeders are enviously fixed. Take America--you have had surprising
+offers from America for this cat, sir, so you told me?"
+
+"Eight hundred pounds," Mr. Marrapit groaned.
+
+"Precisely. Observe how our data accumulate. We have dissatisfaction
+among breeders at home because you will not employ this cat as, in their
+opinion, for the good of the breed, she should be employed."
+
+Mr. Marrapit moaned: "Polygamy is abhorrent to me."
+
+"Precisely. Our data positively pile about us. We have a thousand
+enthusiasts yearning for this cat. We have your refusal to sell or
+to--to--" Mr. Brunger allowed a hiatus delicately to express his
+meaning. "Then depend upon it, sir, we have a determination to secure
+this cat by foul means since fair will not avail. We have a conspiracy
+among unscrupulous breeders to obtain this valuable cat, and hence, sir,
+we have a gang--a _gang_."
+
+Mr. Marrapit put his anguish of mind into two very deep groans.
+
+"Keep calm, my dear sir," Mr. Brunger soothed. "We shall return your
+cat. We have our data." He continued: "Now, sir, there are two ways of
+dealing with a _gang_. We can capture the _gang_ or we can seduce the
+_gang_--by offering a reward."
+
+George jumped in his chair. "Anything wrong?" Mr. Brunger inquired.
+
+"Your--your extraordinary grasp of the case astonishes me," George
+exclaimed.
+
+"Experience, sir, experience," said Mr. Brunger airily. Addressing Mr.
+Marrapit, "We must put both methods to work," he continued. "I shall
+now go to town, look up the chief breeders and set members of my trained
+staff to track them. Also I must advertise this reward. With a cat of
+such value we cannot use half measures. Shall we say one hundred pounds
+to start with?"
+
+"Barley water!" gasped Mr. Marrapit. "Barley water!"
+
+George sprang to the sideboard where always stood a jug of Mr.
+Marrapit's favourite refreshment. Mr. Marrapit drank, agitation rattling
+the glass against his teeth.
+
+"Think what it means to you, sir," persuaded Mr. Brunger, a little
+alarmed at the effects of his proposal.
+
+The detective's tone had a very earnest note, for he was thinking
+with considerable gratification what the hundred pounds would mean to
+himself. On previous occasions he had urged rewards from his clients,
+put Mr. Issy Jago in the way of securing them, and paid that gentleman a
+percentage.
+
+"Think what it means to you," he repeated. "What is a hundred pounds or
+thrice that sum against the restoration of your cat? Come, what is it,
+sir?"
+
+"Ruin," answered Mr. Marrapit, gulping barley water. "Ruin."
+
+Mr. Brunger urged gravely: "Oh, don't say that, sir. Think what our dumb
+pets are to us. I've got a blood-'ound at home myself that I'd give
+my life for if I lost--gladly. Surely they're more to us, our faithful
+friends, than mere--mere--"
+
+"Pelf," supplied George, on a thin squeak that was shot out by the
+excitement of seeing events so lustily playing his hand.
+
+"Mere pelf," adopted Mr. Brunger.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gulped heavily at the barley water; set his gaze upon
+a life-size portrait in oils of his darling Rose; with fine calm
+announced: "If it must be, it must be."
+
+With masterly celerity Mr. Brunger drew forward pen and paper;
+scribbled; in three minutes had Mr. Marrapit's signed authority to offer
+one hundred pounds reward.
+
+He put the document in his pocket; took up his hat. "To-morrow," he
+said after farewells, "I or one of my staff will return to scour the
+immediate neighbourhood. It has been done, you tell me, but only by
+amateurs. The skilled detective, sir, will see a needle where the
+amateur cannot discern a haystack."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+He was gone. His last words had considerably alarmed George. No time was
+to be lost. All was working with a magic expediency, but the Rose
+must not be risked in the vicinity of one of these needle-observing
+detectives. She must be hurried away.
+
+"Uncle," George said, "I did not say it while the detective was here--I
+do not wish to raise your hopes; but I believe I have a clue. Do not
+question me," he added, raising a hand in terror lest Mr. Marrapit
+should begin examination. "I promise nothing. My ideas may be wholly
+imaginary. But I believe--I believe--oh, I believe I have a clue."
+
+Mr. Marrapit rushed for the bell. "Recall the detective! You should have
+spoken. I will send Fletcher in pursuit."
+
+George seized his uncle's arm. "On no account. That is why I did not
+speak before. I am convinced I can do better alone."
+
+"You do not convince me. You are an amateur. We must have the skilled
+mind. Let me ring."
+
+George was in terror. "No, no; do you not see it may be waste of time?
+Let me at least make sure, then I will tell the detective. Meanwhile
+let him pursue other clues. Why send the trained mind on what may be a
+goose-chase?"
+
+The argument had effect. Mr. Marrapit dropped into a chair.
+
+George explained. To follow the clue necessitated, he said, instant
+departure--by train. He would write fullest details; would wire from
+time to time if necessary. His uncle must trust him implicitly. The
+detective must not be told until he gave the word.
+
+Eager to clutch at any hope, Mr. Marrapit clutched at this. George was
+given money for expenses; at eight o'clock left the house. There had
+been no opportunity for words with his Mary. She did not even know
+that Mr. Marrapit had refused the money that was to mean marriage and
+Runnygate; she had not even danced with her George upon his success in
+his examination. Leaving the household upon his desperate clue, George
+could do no more than before them all bid her formal farewell. At
+half-past eight he is cramming the peerless Rose of Sharon into a basket
+taken from Mr. Fletcher's outhouses; at nine the villain is tramping
+the railway platform, in agony lest his burden shall mi-aow; at ten the
+monster is at Dippleford Admiral; at eleven the traitor is asleep in the
+bedroom of an inn, the agitated Rose uneasily slumbering upon his bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Terror At Dippleford Admiral.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"Impress your client," was the maxim of Mr. David Brunger. "Make a
+splash and keep splashing," was that of Mr. Henry T. Bitt, editor of
+Fleet Street's new organ, the _Daily_.
+
+Muddy pools were Mr. Bitt's speciality. His idea of the greatest
+possible splash was some stream, pure and beautiful to the casual eye,
+into which he could force his young men and set them trampling the
+bottom till the thick, unpleasant mud came clouding up whence it had
+long lain unsuspected. There was his splash, and then he would start to
+keep splashing. By every art and device the pool would be flogged till
+the muddy water went flying broadcast, staining this, that, and the
+other fair name to the nasty delight of Mr. Bitt's readers. Scandal was
+Mr. Bitt's chief quest. Army scandal, navy scandal, political scandal,
+social scandal--these were the courses that Mr. Bitt continuously strove
+to serve up to his readers. Failing them--if disappointingly in evidence
+on every side was the integrity and the honour for which Mr. Bitt raved
+and bawled when in the thick of splashing a muddy pool,--then, argued
+Mr. Bitt, catch hold of something trivial and splash it, flog it,
+placard it, into a sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set
+the halfpennies rising like trout in an evening stream.
+
+Bringing these principles-indeed they won him his appointment--to the
+editorship of the _Daily_, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by the
+fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue of
+the paper.
+
+But while preparing for press upon the second night the chance came.
+There was no scandal, no effective news; but there was matter for a
+sensational, semi-mysterious "leading story" in a tiny little scrap of
+news dictated by Mr. David Brunger, laboriously copied out a dozen times
+by Mr. Issy Jago and left by that gentleman at the offices of as many
+newspapers.
+
+Seven sub-editors "spiked" it, three made of it a "fill-par.," one gave
+it a headline and sent it up as an eight-line "news-par."; one, in the
+offices of the _Daily_, read it, laughed; spoke to the news-editor;
+finally carried it up to Mr. Bitt.
+
+Mr. Bitt's journalistic nose gave one sniff. The thing was done. Some
+old idiot was actually offering the ridiculously large sum of one
+hundred pounds for the recovery of a cat. Here, out of the barren,
+un-newsy world, suddenly had sprung a seed that should grow to a forest.
+The very thing. The _Daily_ was saved.
+
+Away sped a reporter; and upon the following morning, bawling from the
+leading position of the principal page of the _Daily_, introducing a
+column and a quarter of leaded type, these headlines appeared:
+
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  VALUABLE CAT STOLEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+  HUGE REWARD.
+
+  CHANCE FOR AMATEUR DETECTIVES.
+
+All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+
+_Daily_ readers revelled in it. It appeared that a gang of between five
+and a dozen men had surrounded the lonely but picturesque and beautiful
+country residence of Mr. Christopher Marrapit at Herons' Holt, Paltley
+Hill, Surrey. Mr. Marrapit was an immensely wealthy retired merchant
+now leading a secluded life in the evening of his days. First among
+the costly art and other treasures of his house he placed a magnificent
+orange cat, "The Rose of Sharon," a winner whenever exhibited. The gang,
+bursting their way into the house, had stolen this cat, despite Mr.
+Marrapit's heroic defence, leaving the unfortunate gentleman senseless
+and bleeding on the hearth-rug. Mr. Marrapit had offered 100 pounds
+reward for the recovery of his pet; and the _Daily_, under the heading
+"Catchy Clues," proceeded to tell its readers all over the country how
+best they might win this sum.
+
+All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_Daily_ readers revelled in it. Upon three of their number it had a
+particular effect.
+
+Bill Wyvern had not been at the _Daily_ office that night. Employed
+during the day, he had finished his work at six; after a gloomy meal had
+gone gloomily to bed. This man was on probation. His appointment to a
+permanent post depended upon his in some way distinguishing himself; and
+thus far, as, miserable, he reflected, he utterly had failed. The "copy"
+he had done for the first issue of the _Daily_ had not been used; on
+this day he had been sent upon an interview and had obtained from his
+subject a wretched dozen words. These he had taken to the news-editor;
+and the news-editor had treated them and him with contempt.
+
+"But that's all he would say," poor Bill had expostulated.
+
+"All he would say!" the news-editor sneered. "Here, Mathers, take this
+stuff and make a quarter-col. interview out of it."
+
+Thus it was in depressed mood that Bill on the following morning opened
+his _Daily._
+
+The flaring "Country House Outrage" hit his eye; he read; in two minutes
+his mood was changed. A sensation at Paltley Hill! At Mr. Marrapit's!
+Here was his chance! Who better fitted than he to work up this story?
+Fortunately he knew Mr. Henry T. Bitt's private address; had the good
+sense to go straight to his chief.
+
+A cab took him to the editor's flat in Victoria Street. Mr. Bitt was
+equally enthusiastic.
+
+"Hot stuff," said Mr. Bitt. "You've got your chance; make a splash. Go
+to the office and tell Lang I've put you on to it. Cut away down to the
+scene of the outrage and stay there as our Special Commissioner till I
+wire you back. Serve it up hot. Make clues if you can't find 'em. Hot,
+mind. H-O-T."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Professor Wyvern was the second reader upon whom the sensational story
+had particular effect.
+
+Through breakfast the Professor eyed with loving eagerness the copy of
+the _Daily_ that lay folded beside his plate.
+
+At intervals, "I have made a very good breakfast, now," he would say.
+"Now I will try to find what Bill has written in this terrible paper."
+
+But thrice Mrs. Wyvern lovingly checked him. "Dear William, no. You have
+hardly touched your sole. You must finish it, dear, every scrap, before
+you look at the paper. You have been eating such good breakfasts lately.
+Now, please, William, finish it first."
+
+"It is as big as a shark," the Professor grumbles, making shots with his
+trembling fork.
+
+"Dear William, it is a very small sole."
+
+At last he has finished. A line catches his eye as he unfolds the
+_Daily_, and he chuckles: "Oh, dear! This is a very horrible paper.
+'Actress and Stockbroker--Piccadilly by night.'"
+
+"Dear William, we only want to read what Bill has written. An interview,
+he tells us, with--"
+
+Dear William waggles his naughty old head over the actress and the
+stockbroker; shaky fingers unfold the centre pages; nose runs up one
+column and down another, then suddenly starts back burnt by the flaring
+"Country House Outrage."
+
+"Dearest! Dearest! Whatever is the matter?"
+
+But dearest is speechless. Dearest can only cough and choke and splutter
+in convulsions of mirth over some terrific joke of which he will tell
+Mrs. Wyvern no more than: "He has done it. Oh, dear! oh, dear! He has
+done it. Oh, dear! This will be very funny indeed!"
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It will be seen that two out of the three readers particularly
+interested in Mr. Bitt's splash were agreeably interested. Upon the
+third the effect was different.
+
+It was George's first morning in the little inn at Dippleford Admiral.
+An unaccustomed weight upon his legs, at which thrice he sleepily kicked
+without ridding himself of it, at length awoke him.
+
+He found the morning well advanced; the disturbing weight that had
+oppressed him he saw to be a hairy object, orange of hue. Immediately
+his drowsy senses awoke; took grip of events; sleep fled. This object
+was the Rose of Sharon, and at once George became actively astir to the
+surgings of yesterday, the mysteries of the future.
+
+Pondering upon them, he was disturbed by a knock that heralded a voice:
+"The paper you ordered, mister; and when'll you be ready for breakfast?"
+
+"Twenty minutes," George replied; remembered the landlady had overnight
+told him she was a little deaf; on a louder note bawled: "Twenty
+minutes, Mrs. Pinner!"
+
+Mrs. Pinner, after hesitation, remarked: "Ready now? Very well, mister";
+pushed a newspaper beneath the door; shuffled down the stairs.
+
+In the course of his brief negotiations with Mrs. Pinner upon the
+previous evening, George, in response to the proud information that the
+paper-boy arrived at nine o'clock every morning on a motor bicycle,
+had bellowed that he would have the _Daily_. For old Bill's sake he had
+ordered it; with friendly curiosity to see Bill's new associations he
+now withdrew his legs from beneath the Rose of Sharon; hopped out of
+bed; opened the paper.
+
+Upon "Country House Outrage" George alighted plump; with goggle eyes,
+scalp creeping, blood freezing, read through to the last "Catchy Clue";
+aghast sank upon his bed.
+
+It had got into the papers! Among all difficult eventualities against
+which he had made plans this had never found place. It had got into the
+papers! The cat's abduction was, or soon would be, in the knowledge of
+everyone. This infernal reward which with huge joy he had heard offered,
+was now become the goad that would prick into active search for the
+Rose every man, woman, or child who read the story. It had got into the
+papers! He was a felon now; fleeing justice; every hand against him.
+Discovery looked certain, and what did discovery mean? Discovery meant
+not only loss of the enormous stake for which he was playing--his
+darling Mary,--but it meant--"Good God!" groaned my miserable George,
+"it means ruin; it means imprisonment."
+
+Melancholy pictures went galloping like wild nightmares through this
+young man's mind. He saw himself in the dock, addressed in awful words
+by the judge who points out the despicable character of his crime;
+he saw himself in hideous garb labouring in a convict prison; he
+saw himself struck off the roll at the College of Surgeons; he saw
+himself--"Oh, Lord!" he groaned, "I'm fairly in the cart!"
+
+Very slowly, very abject, he peeled off his pyjamas; slid a white and
+trembling leg into his bath.
+
+But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed
+away the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from
+George's brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a
+tingling glow braced also his mind against the pummellings of his
+position. Drying, he caught himself whistling; catching himself in such
+an act he laughed ruefully to think how little ground he had for good
+spirits.
+
+But the whistling prevailed. This ridiculous buoyancy of youth! What
+luckless pigs are we who moon and fret and grow besodden with the waters
+of our misfortunes! This cheeky corkiness of youth! Shove it under the
+fretted sea of trouble, and free it will twist, up it will bob. Weight
+it and drop it into the deepest pool; just when it should be drowned,
+pop! and it is again merrily bobbing upon the surface.
+
+It is a sight to make us solemn-souled folk disgustingly irritated. We
+are the Marthas--trudging our daily rounds, oppressed with sense of the
+duties that must be done, with the righteous feeling of the hardness of
+our lot; and these light-hearts, these trouble-shirkers, this corkiness
+of youth, exasperate us enormously. But the grin is on their side.
+
+The whistling prevailed. By the time George was dressed he had put his
+position into these words--these feather-brained, corky, preposterous
+words: "By gum!" said George, brushing his hair, "by gum! I'm in a devil
+of a hole!"
+
+The decision summed up a cogitation that showed him to be in a hole
+indeed, but not in so fearsome a pit as he had at first imagined. He had
+at first supposed that within a few minutes the earth would be shovelled
+in on him and be buried. Review of events showed the danger not to be
+so acute. On arrival the previous night, after brief parley with Mrs.
+Pinner he had gone straight to his room, bearing the Rose tight hid in
+her basket. No reason, then, for suspicion yet to have fallen upon him.
+He must continue to keep the Rose hid. It would be difficult, infernally
+difficult; but so long as he could effect it he might remain here
+secure. The beastly cat must of course be let out for a run. That was a
+chief difficulty. Well, he must think out some fearful story that would
+give him escape with the basket every morning.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Breakfast was laid in a little sitting-room over the porch, adjoining
+his bedroom. George pressed the poor Rose into her basket; carried it
+in.
+
+Mrs. Pinner was setting flowers on the table. George carried the basket
+to the window; placed it on a chair; sat upon it. With his right hand
+he drummed upon the lid. It was his purpose to inspire the Rose with a
+timid wonder at this drubbing that should prevent her voicing a protest
+against cramped limbs.
+
+"Some nice tea and a bit of fish I'm going to bring you up, mister,"
+Mrs. Pinner told him.
+
+Recollecting her deafness, and in fear lest she should approach the
+basket, George from the window bellowed: "Thank you, Mrs. Pinner. But I
+won't have tea, if you please. Won't have tea. I drink milk--_milk_. A
+lot of milk. I'm a great milk-drinker."
+
+The Rose wriggled. George thumped the basket. "As soon as you like, Mrs.
+Pinner. As quick as you like!"
+
+Mrs. Pinner closed the door; the Rose advertised her feelings in a long,
+penetrating mi-aow. In an agony of strained listening George held his
+breath. But Mrs. Pinner heard nothing; moved steadily downstairs. He
+wiped his brow. This was the beginning of it.
+
+When Mrs. Pinner reappeared, jug of milk and covered dish on a tray,
+George's plan, after desperate searchings, had come to him.
+
+He gave it speech. "I want to arrange, Mrs. Pinner--"
+
+"If you wait till I've settled the tray, mister, I'll come close to you.
+I'm that hard of hearing you wouldn't believe."
+
+George sprang from the basket; approached the table. His life depended
+upon keeping a distance between basket and Pinner.
+
+"I want to arrange to have this room as a private sitting-room."
+
+It had never been so used before, but it could be arranged, Mrs. Pinner
+told him. She would speak to her 'usband about terms.
+
+"And I want to keep it very private indeed, I don't want anyone to enter
+it unless I am here." George mounted his lie and galloped it, blushing
+for shame of his steed. "The fact is, Mrs. Pinner, I'm an inventor. Yes,
+an inventor. Oh, yes, an inventor." The wretched steed was stumbling,
+but he clung on; spurred afresh. "An inventor. And I have to leave
+things lying about--delicate instruments that mustn't be disturbed.
+Awfully delicate. I shall be out all day. I shall be taking my invention
+into the open air to experiment with it. My invention--" He waved his
+hand at the basket.
+
+Mrs. Pinner quite understood; was impressed. "Oh, dear, yes, mister. To
+be sure. An inventor; fancy that, now!" She gazed at the basket. "And
+the invention is in there?"
+
+"Right in there," George assured her.
+
+"You'll parding my asking, mister; but your saying you have to take it
+in the open hair--is it one of them hairships, mister?"
+
+"Well, it _is,_" George said frankly. This was a useful idea and he
+approved it. "It _is._ It's an airship."
+
+"Well, I never did!" Mrs. Pinner admired, gazing at the basket. "A
+hairship in there!"
+
+"_Mi-aow!_" spoke the Rose--penetrating, piercing.
+
+Mrs. Pinner cocked her head on one side; looked under the table. "I
+declare I thought I heard a cat," she puzzled. "In this very room."
+
+George felt perfectly certain that his hair was standing bolt upright on
+the top of his head, thrusting at right angles to the sides. He forced
+his alarmed face to smile: "A cock crowing in the yard, I think, Mrs.
+Pinner."
+
+Mrs. Pinner took the explanation with an apologetic laugh. "I'm that
+hard o' hearing you never would believe. But I could ha' sworn. Ill not
+keep you chattering, sir." She raised the dish cover.
+
+A haddock was revealed. A fine, large, solid haddock from which a cloud
+of strongly savoured vapour arose.
+
+George foresaw disaster. That smell! that hungry cat! Almost he pushed
+Mrs. Pinner to the door. "That you, thank you. I have everything now. I
+will ring if--"
+
+"_Mi-aow!_"
+
+"Bless my soul!" Mrs. Pinner exclaimed. "There is a cat"; dropped on
+hands and knees; pushed her head beneath the sofa.
+
+George rushed for the basket. Wreaking his craven alarm upon the hapless
+prisoner, he shook it; with a horrible bump slammed it upon the floor;
+placed his foot upon it.
+
+Mrs. Pinner drew up, panting laboriously. "Didn't you hear a cat,
+mister?"
+
+George grappled the crisis. "I did not hear a cat. If there were a cat
+I should have heard it. I should have felt it. I abominate cats. I can
+always tell when a cat is near me. There is no cat. Kindly leave me to
+my breakfast."
+
+Poor Mrs. Pinner was ashamed. "I'm sure I do beg you parding, mister.
+The fact is we've all got cats fair on the brain this morning. In this
+here new paper, mister, as perhaps you've seen, and they're giving us
+a free copy every day for a week, there's a cat been stole, mister. A
+hundred pounds reward, and as the paper says, the cat may be under your
+very nose. We're all a 'unting for it, mister."
+
+She withdrew. George crossed the room; pressed his head, against the
+cold marble of the mantelpiece. His brows were burning; in the pit of
+his stomach a sinking sensation gave him pain. "All a 'unting for it!
+all a 'unting for it!"
+
+When the Rose had bulged her flanks with the complete haddock, when,
+responsive to a "Stuff your head in that, you brute," the patient
+creature had lapped a slop-bowl full of milk, George again imprisoned
+her; rushed, basket under arm, for open country.
+
+Mr. Pinner in the bar-parlour, as George fled through, was reading from
+a paper to a stable hand, a servant girl, and a small red-headed Pinner
+boy: "It may be in John o' Groats," he read, "or it may be in Land's
+End." He thumped the bar. "'Ear that! Well, it may be in Dippleford
+Admiral."
+
+It was precisely because it was in Dippleford Admiral that his young
+inventor lodger fled through the bar without so much as a civil "good
+morning."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the post-office, keeping a drumming foot on the terrified Rose,
+George sent a telegram to Mr. Marrapit.
+
+_"Think on track. Must be cautious. Don't tell Brunger."_
+
+He flung down eightpence halfpenny; fled in the direction of a wood that
+plumed a distant hill. Fear had this man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Panic At Dippleford Admiral.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George left Dippleford Admiral that night.
+
+He left at great speed. There was no sadness of farewell. There was no
+farewell.
+
+Returning at seven o'clock to his sitting-room at the inn, melancholy
+beneath a hungry and brooding day in the woods with the Rose tethered
+to a tree by the length of two handkerchiefs, he ordered supper--milk,
+fish, and chops.
+
+Mrs. Pinner asked him if that would be all. She and 'usband were going
+to a chapel meeting; the servant girl was out; there would only be a
+young man in the bar.
+
+George took the news gratefully. His nerves had been upon the stretch
+all day. It was comforting to think that for a few hours he and this
+vile cat would have the house to themselves.
+
+Immediately Mrs. Pinner left the room he greedily fell to upon the
+chops. All day he had eaten nothing: the Rose must wait. Three parts of
+a tankard of ale was sliding at a long and delectable draught down upon
+his meal when the slam of a door, footsteps and a bawling voice in
+the yard told him that Mrs. Pinner and 'usband had started, chatting
+pleasantly, for their chapel meeting.
+
+The dish cleared, George arranged his prisoner's supper; stepped to the
+basket to fetch her to it. As he lifted her splendid form there came
+from behind him an exclamation, an agitated scuffling.
+
+In heart-stopping panic George dropped the cat, jumped around. The
+red-headed Pinner boy, whom that morning he had seen in the bar-parlour,
+was scrambling from beneath the sofa, arms and legs thrusting his
+flaming pate at full-speed for the door.
+
+"Stop!" George cried, rooted in alarm.
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy got to Ms feet, hurled himself at the door
+handle.
+
+"Stop!" roared George, struggling with the stupefaction that gripped
+him. "Stop, you young devil!"
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy twisted the handle; was half through the door
+as George bounded for him.
+
+"Par-par!" screamed the flaming head, travelling at immense speed down
+the passage. "Par-par! It ain't a hairship. It's a cat!"
+
+George dashed.
+
+"Par-par! Par-par! It's a cat!" The redheaded Pinner boy took the first
+short flight of stairs in a jump; rounded for the second.
+
+George lunged over the banisters; gripped close in the flaming hair;
+held fast.
+
+For a full minute in silence they poised--red-headed Pinner boy, on
+tip-toe as much as possible to ease the pain, in acute agony and great
+fear; George wildly seeking the plan that must be followed when he
+should release this fateful head.
+
+Presently, with a backward pull that most horribly twisted the
+red-headed face: "If you speak a word I'll pull your head off," George
+said. "Come up here."
+
+The pitiful procession reached the sitting-room. "Sit down there,"
+George commanded. "If you make a sound I shall probably cut your head
+clean off. What do you mean by hiding in my room?"
+
+Between gusty pain and terror: "I thought it was a hairship."
+
+"Oh!" George paced the room. What did the vile boy think now? "Oh, well,
+what do you think it is now?"
+
+"I believe it's the cat wot's in the piper."
+
+"Oh, you do, do you?" Yes, this was a very horrible position indeed.
+"Oh, you do, do you? Now, you listen to me, my lad: unless you want your
+head cut right off you sit still without a sound."
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy sat quite still; wept softly. Life, at the
+moment, was a bitter affair for this boy.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George paced. The hideous nightmares of the morning had returned
+now--snorting, neighing, trampling iron-shod; stampeding in hideous
+irresistible rushes. This was the beginning of the end. He was
+discovered--his' secret out.
+
+Flight--immediate flight--that was the essential course. Par-par, thanks
+to sweet heaven, was at a chapel meeting. The thing could be done.
+A timetable upon the mantelpiece told him that a down-train left the
+station at 8.35. It was now eight. Better a down-train than an up. The
+further from London the less chance of this infernal _Daily_ with its
+Country House Outrage. Examining the time-table he determined upon
+Temple Colney--an hour's run. He had been there once with Bill.
+
+But what of this infernal red-headed Pinner boy? In agony wrestling with
+the question, George every way ran into the brick wall fact that there
+was no method of stopping the vile boy's mouth. The red head must be
+left behind to shriek its discovery to par-par. All that could be done
+was to delay that shriek as long as possible.
+
+George packed his small hand-bag; placed upon the table money to pay his
+bill; lifted the crime-stained basket; addressed the red-headed Pinner
+boy:
+
+"Stop that sniffling. Take that bag. You are to come with me. If you
+make a sound or try to run away you know what will happen to you. What
+did I tell you would happen?"
+
+"Cut me 'ead off."
+
+"Right off. Right off--_slish_! Give me your hand; come on."
+
+Through a side door, avoiding the bar, they passed into the street.
+Kind night gave them cloaks of invisibility; no one was about. In a few
+minutes they had left the bold village street, were in timid lanes that
+turned and twisted hurrying through the high hedges.
+
+Half a mile upon the further side of the station George that morning had
+passed a line of haystacks. Now he made for it, skirting the railway by
+a considerable distance.
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy, exhausted by the pace of their walk, not
+unnaturally nervous, spoke for the first time: "Ain't you going to the
+station, mister?"
+
+"Station? Certainly not. Do you think I am running away?"
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy did not answer. This boy was recalling in
+every detail the gruesome story, read in a paper, of a bright young lad
+who had been foully done to death in a wood.
+
+George continued: "I shall be back with you at the inn this evening, and
+I shall ask your father to give you a good thrashing for hiding in my
+room."
+
+In an earnest prayer the red-headed Pinner boy besought God that he
+might indeed be spared to receive that thrashing.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They reached the haystack. George struck a match; looked at his watch.
+In seven minutes the train was due.
+
+The ladder George had noticed that morning was lying along the foot of
+a stack. Uprearing it against one partially demolished, "Put down that
+bag," he commanded. "Up with you!"
+
+Gustily sniffing in the huge sighs that advertised his terror, the
+red-headed Pinner boy obeyed. George drew down the ladder. "Stop up
+there; I shall be back in five minutes. If you move before then--"
+
+He left the trembling boy out of his own agitated fear to fill the
+unspoken doom. He walked slowly away in the direction opposite from the
+station until the haystack was merged and lost in the blackness that
+surrounded it. Then, doubling back, he made for the road; pounded along
+it at desperate speed.
+
+Most satisfactorily did that bounding, lurching, stumbling run along the
+dark, uneven lane punish this crime-steeped George. Well he realised,
+before he had sped a hundred yards, that guilt lashes with a double
+thong. She had scourged him mentally; now with scorpions she physically
+lashed him. As it had been racked throbbed that left arm encircling
+the basket wherein in wild fear the Rose clung to ease the dreadful
+bruisings that each oscillation gave her; as it were a ton-weight did
+that hand-bag drag his right arm, thud his thigh; as he were breathing
+fire did his tearing respirations sear his throat; as a great piston
+were driving in his skull did the blood hammer his temples.
+
+Topping a low rise he sighted the station lights below. Simultaneously,
+from behind a distant whistle there sprang to his ears the low rumble of
+the coming train.
+
+This history is not to be soiled with what George said at the sound.
+With the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination
+leapt from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red-headed
+Pinner boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack--from the roughness of
+the lane that laboured his passage to the speed of the oncoming train
+that hammered at his fate.
+
+He hurled himself down the rise; with his last breath gasped for a
+ticket; upon a final effort projected himself into the train; went prone
+upon a seat. He was away!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was when George was some fifteen minutes from Temple Colney that the
+red-headed Pinner boy, bolstered up with prayer, commended his soul to
+God; slipped with painful thud from the haystack; pelted for Par-par.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Disaster At Temple Colney.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Three days have passed.
+
+That somewhat pale and haggard-looking young man striding, a basket
+beneath his arm, up the main street of Temple Colney is George. The
+villagers stop to stare after him; grin, and nudge into one another
+responsive grins, at his curious mannerisms. He walks in the exact
+centre of the roadway, as far as he can keep from passers-by on either
+side. Approached by anyone, he takes a wide circle to avoid that person.
+Sometimes a spasm as of fear will cross his face and he will violently
+shake the basket he carries. Always he walks with giant strides. Every
+morning he shoots out of the inn where he is staying as though sped on
+the blast of some ghostly current of air; every evening, returning, he
+gives the impression of gathering himself together on the threshold,
+then goes bolting in at whirlwind speed. He is a somewhat pale and
+haggard young man.
+
+The villagers know him well. He is the young hairship inventor who has
+a private sitting-room at the Colney Arms. Certain of them, agog to pry
+his secret, followed him as he set out one day. They discovered nothing.
+For hours they followed; but he, glancing ever over his shoulder,
+pounded steadily on, mile upon mile--field, lane, high road, hill and
+dale. He never shook them off though he ran; they never brought him
+to standstill though indomitably they pursued. Towards evening the
+exhausted procession came thundering up the village street.
+
+It was a very pale and haggard young man that bolted into the Colney
+Arms that night.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Three days had passed.
+
+If George had the _Daily_ to curse for the miserable life of secrecy
+and constant agony of discovery that he was compelled to lead, he had
+it also to bless that his discovery by the red-headed Pinner boy had
+not long ago led to his being run to earth. In its anxiety to cap the
+satisfactory splash it was making over this Country House Outrage,
+the _Daily_ had overstepped itself and militated against itself. Those
+"Catchy Clues" were responsible. So cunningly did they inspire the taste
+for amateur detective work, so easy did they make such work appear, that
+Mr. Pinner, having thrashed silence into his red-headed son, kept that
+son's discovery to himself. As he argued it--laboriously pencilling down
+"data" in accordance with the "Catchy Clue" directions,--as he argued
+it--if he communicated his knowledge to the _Daily_ or to the local
+police, if he put them--(the word does not print nicely) on the scent,
+ten to one they would capture the thief and secure the reward. No, Mr.
+Pinner intended to have the reward himself. Therefore he hoarded his
+secret; brooded upon it; dashed off hither and thither as the day's news
+brought him a Catchy Clue that seemed to fit his data.
+
+But of this George knew nothing. Steeped in crime this miserable young
+man dragged out his awful life at Temple Colney: nightmares by night,
+horrors by day.
+
+Every morning with trembling fingers he opened his _Daily_; every
+morning was shot dead by these lines or their equivalent:
+
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  FRESH CLUE.
+
+  CAT SEEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+After much groaning and agony George would force himself to know the
+worst; after swearing furiously through the paragraphs of stuffing with
+which Mr. Bitt's cunning young man skilfully evaded the point, would
+come at last upon the "fresh clue" and read with a groan of relief that,
+so far as the truth were concerned, it was no clue at all.
+
+But the strain was horrible. All Temple Colney read the _Daily_; eagerly
+debated its "Catchy Clues."
+
+Yet George could not see, he told himself, that he would better his
+plight by seeking fresh retreat. If the _Daily_ were to be believed, all
+the United Kingdom read it and discussed its Catchy Clues. He decided it
+were wiser to remain racked at Temple Colney rather than try his luck,
+and perhaps be torn to death, elsewhere.
+
+Twice he had been moved to abandon his awful enterprise--in the train
+fleeing from the red-headed Pinner boy; pounding across country pursued
+by curious inhabitants of Temple Colney. On these occasions this
+miserable George had been minded to cry defeated to the circumstances
+that struck at him, to return to Herons' Holt with the cat whilst yet he
+might do so without gyves on his wrists.
+
+But thought of his dear Mary hunted thought of this craven ending. "I'll
+hang on!" he had cried, thumping the carriage seat: "I'll hang on! I'll
+hang on! I'll hang on!" he had thumped into the table upon his weary
+return to the inn on the day he had been followed.
+
+He had cause for hope. When, on his second morning at Temple Colney, the
+_Daily_ had struck him to white agony by its newest headlines; cooling,
+he was able to find comfort in the news it gave to the world. "On the
+advice of the eminent detective, Mr. David Brunger, who has the case in
+hand, the reward has been raised to 125 pounds."
+
+"Whoop!" cried George, spirits returning.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Three days had passed.
+
+Rain began to fall heavily on this afternoon. Usually--even had there
+been floods--George did not return to the inn until seven o'clock. The
+less he was near the abode of man the safer was his vile secret. But
+to-day, when the clouds told him a steady downpour had set in, he put
+out for his lodging before three. He was in high spirits. Success was
+making him very bold. At Temple Colney, thus far, no breath of suspicion
+had paled his cheek; at Herons' Holt events were galloping to the end he
+would have them go. That morning the _Daily_ had announced the raising
+of the reward to 150 pounds. True, the _Daily_ added that Mr. Marrapit
+had declared, absolutely and finally, that he would not go one penny
+beyond this figure. George laughed as he read. In four days his uncle
+had raised the offer by fifty pounds; at this rate--and the rate would
+increase as Mr. Marrapit's anguish augmented--the 500 pounds would soon
+be reached. And then! And then!
+
+Through the pouring rain George whistled up the village street, whistled
+up the stairs, whistled into the sitting--room. Then stopped his
+tune. The buoyant notes of triumph dwindled to a tuneless squeak, to a
+noiseless breathing--Bill Wyvern, seated at a table, sprung to meet him.
+
+"What ho!" cried Bill. "They told me you wouldn't be in before seven!
+What ho! Isn't this splendid?"
+
+George said in very hollow voice: "Splendid!" He put the basket on a
+chair; sat on it; gave Bill an answering, "What ho!" that was cheerful
+as rap upon a coffin lid.
+
+"Well, how goes it?" Bill asked eagerly.
+
+George put out a hand. "Don't come over here, dear old fellow. I'm
+streaming wet. Sit down there. How goes what?"
+
+"Why, the clue--your clue to this cat?"
+
+"Oh, the clue--the clue. Yes, I'll tell you all about that. Just wait
+here a moment." He rose with the basket; moved to the door.
+
+"What on earth have you got in that basket?" Bill asked.
+
+"Eggs," George told him impressively. "Eggs for my uncle."
+
+"You must have a thundering lot in a basket that size."
+
+"Three or four hundred," George said. "Three or four hundred eggs."
+
+He spoke in the passionless voice of one in a dream. Indeed he was in a
+dream. This horrible contingency had so set him whirling that of clear
+thought he was incapable. Moving to his bedroom he thrust the basket
+beneath the bed; came out; locked the door; took the key; returned to
+Bill.
+
+Bill came over and slapped him on the back. "Expect you're surprised to
+see me?" he cried. "Isn't this ripping, old man?"
+
+"Stunning!" said George. "Absolutely stunning." He sank on a chair.
+
+Bill was perplexed. "You don't look best pleased, old man. What's up?"
+
+This was precisely what George wished to know. Terror of hearing some
+hideous calamity stayed him from putting the question. He gave a pained
+smile. "Oh, I'm all right. I'm a bit fagged, that's all. The strain of
+this search, you know, the--"
+
+"I know!" cried Bill enthusiastically. "I _know_. You've been splendid,
+old man. Finding out a clue like this and pluckily carrying it through
+all by yourself. By Jove, it's splendid of you!--especially when you've
+no reason to do much for your uncle after the way in which he's treated
+you. I admire you, George. By Gad, I _do_ admire you!"
+
+"Not at all!" George advised him. "By no means, old fellow." He wiped
+his brow; his mental suffering was considerable.
+
+"I say, I can see you're pretty bad, old man," Bill continued. "Never
+mind, I'm here to help you now. That's what I've come for."
+
+George felt that something very dreadful indeed was at hand. "How did
+you find out where I was?" he asked.
+
+"From old Marrapit."
+
+"Marrapit? Why, but my uncle won't let you come within a mile of him."
+
+"Ah! that's all over now." A very beautiful look came into Bill's eyes;
+tenderness shaded his voice: "George, old man, if I can track down the
+hound who has stolen this cat your uncle has practically said that he
+will agree to my engagement with Margaret."
+
+George tottered across the room; pressed his head against the cold
+window-pane. Here was the calamity. He had thought of taking Bill into
+his confidence--how do so now?
+
+"I say, you do look bad, old man," Bill told him.
+
+"I'm all right. Tell me all about it."
+
+"Well, it's too good--too wonderful to be true. Everything is going
+simply splendidly with me. I'm running this cat business for the
+_Daily_--my paper, you know. It's made a most frightful splash and the
+editor is awfully bucked up with me. I'm on the permanent staff, six
+quid a week--eight quid a week if I find this cat. I'm working it from
+Herons' Holt, you know. I'm--"
+
+George turned upon him. "Are you 'Our Special Commissioner at Paltley
+Hill'?"
+
+"Rather! Have you been reading it? Pretty hot stuff, isn't it? I say,
+George, wasn't it lucky I chucked medicine! I told you I was cut out
+for this kind of thing if only I could get my chance. Well, I've got my
+chance; and by Gad, old man, if I don't track down this swine who's got
+the cat, or help to get him tracked down, I'll--I'll--" The enthusiastic
+young man broke off--"Isn't it great, George?"
+
+My miserable George paced the room. "Great!" he forced out. "Great!"
+This was the infernal Special Commissioner whom daily he had yearned to
+strangle. "Great! By Gad, there are no words for it!"
+
+"I knew you'd be pleased. Thanks awfully--_awfully_. Well, I was telling
+you. Being down there for the paper I simply had to interview Marrapit.
+I plucked up courage and bearded him. He's half crazy about this
+wretched cat. I found him as meek as a lamb. Bit snarly at first, but
+when he found how keen I was, quite affectingly pleasant. I've seen
+him every day for the last four days, and yesterday he said what I told
+you--I came out with all about Margaret and about my splendid prospects,
+and, as I say, he practically said that if I could find the cat he'd be
+willing to think of our engagement."
+
+"But about finding out where I was? How did you discover that?"
+
+"Well, he told me. Told me this morning." Bill shuffled his legs
+uncomfortably for a moment, then plunged ahead. "Fact is, old man,
+he's a bit sick with you. Said he'd only had one telegram from you
+from Dippleford Admiral and one letter from here. Said it was
+unsatisfactory--that it was clear you were incapable of following up
+this clue of yours by yourself. You don't mind my telling you this, do
+you, old man? You know what he is."
+
+George gave the bitter laugh of one who is misunderstood, unappreciated.
+"Go on," he said, "go on." He was trembling to see the precipice over
+which the end of Bill's story would hurl him.
+
+"Well, as I said--that it was clear you could not carry through your
+clue by yourself. So I was to come down and help you. That was about ten
+o'clock, and I caught the mid-day train--I've been here since two. Well,
+Brunger--the detective chap, you know--Marrapit was going to send him on
+here at once--"
+
+This was the precipice. George went hurtling over the edge with whirling
+brain: "Brunger coming down here?" he cried.
+
+"Rather! Now, we three together, old man--"
+
+"When's he coming?" George asked. He could not hear his own voice--the
+old nightmares danced before his eyes, roared their horrors in his ears.
+
+Bill looked at the clock. "He ought to be here by now. He ought to have
+arrived--"
+
+The roaring confusion in George's brain went to a tingling silence;
+through it there came footsteps and a man's voice upon the stairs.
+
+As the tracked criminal who hears his pursuer upon the threshold, as
+the fugitive from justice who feels upon his shoulder the sudden hand
+of arrest, as the poor wretch in the condemned cell when the hangman
+enters--as the feelings of these, so, at this sound, the emotions of my
+miserable George.
+
+A dash must be made to flatten this hideous doom. Upon a sudden impulse
+he started forward. "Bill! Bill, old man, I want to tell you something.
+You don't know what the finding of this cat means to me. It--"
+
+"I do know, old man," Bill earnestly assured him. "You're splendid, old
+man, splendid. I never dreamt you were so fond of your uncle. Old man,
+it means even more to me--it means Margaret and success. Here's Brunger.
+We three together, George. Nothing shall stop us."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The sagacious detective entered. George gave him a limp, damp hand.
+
+"You don't look well," Mr. Brunger told him, after greetings.
+
+"Just what I was saying," Bill joined.
+
+Indeed, George looked far from well. Round-shouldered he sat upon the
+sofa, head in hands--a pallid face beneath a beaded brow staring out
+between them.
+
+"It's the strain of this clue, Mr. Brunger," Bill continued. "He's on
+the track!"
+
+"You are?" cried the detective.
+
+"Right on," George said dully. "Right on the track."
+
+"Is it a gang?"
+
+"Two," George answered in the same voice. "Two gangs."
+
+The sagacious detective thumped the table. "I said so. I knew it. I told
+you so, Mr. Wyvern. But _two_, eh? _Two_ gangs. That's tough. One got
+the cat and the other after it, I presume?"
+
+"No," said George. He was wildly thinking; to the conversation paying no
+attention.
+
+"No? But, my dear sir, one of 'em _must_ have the cat?"
+
+George started to the necessities of the immediate situation; wondered
+what he had said; caught at Mr. Brunger's last word. "The cat? Another
+gang has got the cat."
+
+"What, three gangs!" the detective cried.
+
+"Three gangs," George affirmed.
+
+"Two gangs you said at first," Mr. Brunger sharply reminded him.
+
+My miserable George dug his fingers into his hair. "I meant three--I'd
+forgotten the other."
+
+"Don't see how a man can forget a whole _gang_," objected the detective.
+He stared at George; frowned; produced his note-book. "Let us have the
+facts, sir."
+
+As if drawn by the glare fixed upon him, George moved from the sofa to
+the table.
+
+"Now, the facts," Mr. Brunger repeated. "Let's get these gangs settled
+first."
+
+George took a chair. He had no plan. He plunged wildly. "Gang A, gang B,
+gang C, gang D--"
+
+Mr. Brunger stopped short in the midst of his note.
+
+"Why, that's _four_ gangs!"
+
+The twisting of George's legs beneath the table was sympathetic with
+the struggles of his bewildered mind. He said desperately, "Well, there
+_are_ four gangs."
+
+The detective threw down his pencil. "You're making a fool of me!" he
+cried. "First you said two gangs, then three gangs--"
+
+"You're making a fool of yourself," George answered hotly. "If you knew
+anything about gangs you'd know they're always breaking up--quarrelling,
+and then rejoining, and then splitting again. If you can't follow, don't
+follow. Find the damned gangs yourself. You're a detective--I'm not. At
+least you say you are. You're a precious poor one, seems to me. You've
+not done much."
+
+In his bewilderment and fear my unfortunate George had unwittingly
+hit upon an admirable policy. Since first Mr. Marrapit had called Mr.
+Brunger it had sunk in upon the Confidential Inquiry Agent that indeed
+he was a precious poor detective. In the five days that had passed he
+had not struck upon the glimmer of a notion regarding the whereabouts
+of the missing cat. This was no hiding in cupboard work, no marked coin
+work, no following the skittish wife of a greengrocer work. It was
+the real thing--real detective work, and it had found Mr. Brunger
+most lamentably wanting. Till now, however, none had suspected
+his perplexity. He had impressed his client--had bounced,
+noted, cross-examined, measured; and during every bounce, note,
+cross-examination and measurement fervently had prayed that luck--or the
+reward--would help him stumble upon something he could claim as outcome
+of his skill. George's violent attack alarmed him; he drew in his horns.
+
+"Ah! don't be 'ot," he protested. "Don't be 'ot. Little
+misunderstanding, that's all. I follow you completely. Four gangs--_I_
+see. _Four_ gangs. Now, sir."
+
+It was George's turn for fear. "Four gangs--quite so. Well, what do you
+want me to tell you?"
+
+"Start from the beginning, sir."
+
+George started--plunged head-first. For five minutes he desperately
+gabbled while Mr. Brunger's pencil bounded along behind his splashing;
+words. Every time the pencil seemed to slacken, away again George would
+fly and away in pursuit the pencil would laboriously toil.
+
+"Four gangs," George plunged along. "Gang A, gang B, gang C, gang D.
+Gang A breaks into the house and steals the cat. Gang B finds it gone
+and tracks down gang C."
+
+"Tracks gang A, surely," panted Mr. Brunger. "Gang A had the cat."
+
+"Gang B didn't know that. I tell you this is a devil of a complicated
+affair. Gang B tracks down gang C and finds gang D. They join. Call 'em
+gang B-D. Gang A loses the cat and gang C finds it. Gang C sells it to
+gang B-D, which is run by an American, as I said."
+
+"Did you?" gasped Mr. Brunger without looking up.
+
+"Certainly. Gang B-D hands it over to gang A by mistake, and gang A
+makes off with it. Gang C, very furious because it is gang A's great
+rival, starts in pursuit and gets it back again. Then gang B-D demands
+it, but gang A refuses to give it up."
+
+"Gang C!" Mr. Brunger panted. "Gang C had got it from gang A."
+
+"Yes, but gang A got it back again. Gang B-D--Look here," George broke
+off, "that's perfectly clear about the gangs, isn't it?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Mr. Brunger, feeling that his reputation was
+gone unless he said so. "Wants a little studying, that's all. Most
+extraordinary story I ever heard of."
+
+"I'm dashed if I understand a word of it," Bill put in. "Who _are_ these
+gangs?"
+
+George rose: "Bill, old man, I'll explain that another time. The fact
+is, we're wasting time by sitting here. I was very near the end when you
+two arrived. The cat is here--quite near here."
+
+The detective and Bill sprang to their feet. George continued: "It's
+going to change hands either tonight or to-morrow. If you two will
+do just as I tell you and leave the rest to me, we shall bring off a
+capture. To-morrow evening I will explain everything."
+
+The detective asked eagerly; "Is it a certainty?"
+
+"Almost. It will be touch and go; but if we miss it this time it is a
+certainty for the immediate future. I swear this, that if you keep
+in touch with me you will be nearer the cat than you will ever get by
+yourselves."
+
+Sincerity shone in his eyes from these words. The detective and Bill
+were fired with zeal.
+
+"Take command, sir!" said Mr. Brunger.
+
+"All right. Come with me. I will post you for the night. We have some
+distance to go. Don't question me. I must think."
+
+"Not a question," said the detective: he was, indeed, too utterly
+bewildered.
+
+George murmured "Thank heaven!"; took his hat; led the way into the
+street. In dogged silence the three tramped through the rain.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+George led for the Clifford Arms, some two miles distant. For the
+present he had but one object in view. He must get rid of Bill and this
+infernal detective; then he must speed the cat from Temple Colney.
+
+As he walked he pushed out beyond the primary object of ridding himself
+of his companions; sought the future. In the first half-mile he decided
+that the game was up. He must deliver the Rose to his uncle immediately
+without waiting for the reward to be further raised. To hang on for
+the shadow would be, he felt, to lose the substance that would stand
+represented by Mr. Marrapit's gratitude.
+
+But this preposterous buoyancy of youth! The rain that beat upon his
+face cooled his brow; seemed to cool his brain. Before the first mile
+was crossed he had vacillated from his purpose. When he said to his
+followers "Only another half-mile," his purpose was changed.
+
+This preposterous corkiness of youth! It had lifted him up from the sea
+of misfortune in which he had nigh been drowned, and now he was assuring
+himself that, given he could hide the Rose where a sudden glimmering
+idea suggested, he would be safer than ever before. The two men who
+were most dangerous to him--the detective and the _Daily's_ Special
+Commissioner at Paltley Hill, now slushing through the mud behind--were
+beneath his thumb. If he could keep them goose-chasing for a few days or
+so--!
+
+The turn of a corner brought them in view of the Clifford Arms. George
+pointed: "I want you to spend the night there and to stay there till I
+come to-morrow. A man is there whom you must watch--the landlord."
+
+"One of the gangs?" Mr. Brunger asked, hoarse excitement in his voice.
+
+"Gang B--leader. Don't let him suspect you. Just watch him."
+
+"Has he got the cat?"
+
+With great impressiveness George looked at the detective, looked at
+Bill. Volumes of meaning in his tone: "_Not yet!_" he said.
+
+Bill cried: "By Gad!" The detective rubbed his hands in keen
+anticipation.
+
+They entered the inn. Bill gave a story of belated tourists. A room
+was engaged. In a quarter of an hour George was speeding back to Temple
+Colney.
+
+At the post-office he stopped; purchased a letter-card; held his pen a
+while as he polished the glimmering idea that now had taken form; then
+wrote to his Mary:--
+
+"My dearest girl in all the world,--You've never had a line from me
+all this time, but you can guess what a time I've been having. Dearest
+darling, listen and attend. This is most important. Our future depends
+upon it. Meet me to-morrow at 12.0 at that tumbled-down hut in the copse
+on the Shipley Road where we went that day just before my exam. Make any
+excuse to get away. You must be there. And don't tell a soul.
+
+"Till to-morrow, my darling little Mary.--G."
+
+He posted the card.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+Of Paradise Lost and Found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples from the lightest
+action that we may toss into the sea of life.
+
+Life is a game of consequences. A throws a stone, and the widening
+ripples wreck the little boats of X and Y and Z who never have even
+heard of A. Every day and every night, every hour of every day and
+night, ripples from unknown splashes are setting towards us--perhaps
+to swamp us, perhaps to bear us into some pleasant stream. One calls it
+luck, another fate. "This is my just punishment," cries one. "By my
+good works I have merited this," exclaims another; but it is merely the
+ripple from some distant splash--merely consequences. Consequences.
+
+A sleepy maid in Mr. City Merchant's suburban mansion leaves the
+dust-pan on the stairs after sweeping. That is the little action she has
+tossed into the sea of life, and the ripples will wreck a boat or two
+now snug and safe in a cheap and happy home many miles away. Mr. City
+Merchant trips over the dustpan, starts for office fuming with rage,
+vents his spleen upon Mr. City Clerk--dismisses him.
+
+Mr. City Clerk seeks work in vain; the cheap but happy home he shares
+with pretty little Mrs. City Clerk and plump young Master City Clerk is
+abandoned for a dingy lodging. Grade by grade the lodging they must seek
+grows dingier. Now there is no food. Now they are getting desperate.
+Now pneumonia lays erstwhile plump Master City Clerk by the heels and
+carries him off--consequences, consequences; that is one boat wrecked.
+Now Mr. City Clerk is growing mad with despair; Mrs. City Clerk is
+well upon the road that Master City Clerk has followed. Mr. City Clerk
+steals, is caught, is imprisoned--consequences, consequences; another
+boat wrecked. Mrs. City Clerk does not hold out long, follows Master
+City Clerk--consequences, consequences. Three innocent craft smashed up
+because the housemaid left the dustpan on the stairs.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will speed the ripples from the lightest
+action that we may toss into the sea of life. Solely and wholly because
+George abducted the Rose of Sharon, Miss Pridham, who keeps the general
+drapery in Angel Street, Marylebone Road, sold a pair of green knitted
+slippers, each decorated with a red knitted blob, that had gazed
+melancholy from her shop window for close upon two years.
+
+It was Mrs. Major who purchased them.
+
+Since that terrible morning on which, throat and mouth parched, head
+painfully throbbing through the overnight entertainment of Old Tom, Mrs.
+Major had been driven from Mr. Marrapit's door, this doubly distressed
+gentlewoman had lived in retirement in a bed-sitting-room in Angel
+Street. She did not purpose immediately taking another situation. This
+woman had sipped the delights of Herons' Holt; her heart was there, and
+for a month or two, as, sighing over her lot, she determined, she would
+brood in solitude upon the paradise she had lost before challenging new
+fortunes.
+
+The ripples of the abduction of the Rose reached her. This was a
+masterly woman, and instanter she took the tide upon the flood.
+
+Mrs. Major was not a newspaper reader. The most important sheet of the
+_Daily_, however, she one day carried into her bed-sitting-room wrapped
+about a quartern of Old Tom. It was the day when first "Country House
+Outrage" shouted from the _Daily's_ columns.
+
+Idly scanning the report her eye chanced upon familiar names. A common
+mind would have been struck astonished and for some hours been left
+fluttering. Your masterly mind grasps at once and together a solution
+and its possibilities. Without pause for thought, without even sniff of
+the new quartern of Old Tom, Mrs. Major sought pen and paper; wrote with
+inspired pen to Mr. Marrapit:
+
+"I do not even dare begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the
+right even to address you; but in the moment of your great tribulation
+something stronger than myself makes me take up my pen--"
+
+Here Mrs. Major paused; read what she had written; without so much as
+a sigh tore the sheet and started afresh. That "something stronger than
+myself makes me" she felt to be a mistake. Something decidedly stronger
+than herself sat in the quartern bottle a few inches from her nose, and
+it occurred to her that a cruel mind might thus interpret her meaning.
+She tore the sheet. This was a masterly woman.
+
+"I dare not even begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the right
+even to address you; but in the moment of your tribulation I feel that I
+must come forward with my sympathy. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, may I say with my
+aid? I feel I could help you if only I might come to dear, dear Herons'
+Holt. When I think of my angel darling Rose of Sharon straying far from
+the fold my heart bleeds. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I cannot rest, I cannot
+live, while my darling is wandering on the hillside, or is stolen, and
+I am unable to search for her. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, think of me, I implore
+you, not as Mrs. Major, but as one whom your sweet darling Rose loved.
+If the Rose is anywhere near Herons' Holt, she would come to me if I
+called her, I feel sure, more readily than she would come to anyone
+else except yourself, and you are not strong enough to search as I would
+search. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt in this terrible
+hour. Do not speak to me, do not look at me, Mr. Marrapit. I do not ask
+that. I only beg on my bended knees that you will let me lay myself at
+night even in the gardener's shed, so that I may be there to tend my
+lamb when she is found, and by day will be able to search for her. That
+is all I ask.
+
+"Of myself I will say nothing. I will not force upon you the
+explanations of that dreadful night which you would not take from my
+trembling lips. I will not tell you that, maddened by the toothache,
+I was advised to hold a little drop of spirit in the tooth, and that,
+never having touched anything but water since I and my dear little
+brother promised my dying mother we would not, the spirit went to my
+head and made me as you saw me. I will not write any of those things,
+Mr. Marrapit; only, oh, Mr. Marrapit, I implore you to let me come and
+look for my Rose. Nor will I tell you how fondly, since I left you, I
+have thought of all your nobility of character and of your goodness to
+me, Mr. Marrapit. Wronged, I bear no resentment. I have received too
+much kindness at your hands. Ever since I left you I have thought of
+none but the Rose and you. Shall I prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit--"
+
+Here again Mrs. Major paused; thoughtfully scratched her head with her
+penholder. Like authors more experienced, her emotions had driven her
+pen to a point demanding a special solution which was not immediately
+forthcoming. She had galloped into a wood. How to get out of it?
+
+Mrs. Major scratched thoughtfully; gazed at Old Tom; gazed round the
+room; on a happy inspiration gazed from the window. Miss Pridham's
+general drapery was immediately opposite. A bright patch of green in
+the window caught Mrs. Major's eye. She recognised it as the knitted
+slippers she had once or twice noticed in passing.
+
+The very thing! Laying down her pen the masterly woman popped across
+to Miss Pridham's; in two minutes, leaving that lady delighted and
+one-and-eleven-three the richer, was back with the green knitted
+slippers with the red knitted blobs.
+
+She took up her pen and continued:
+
+"Ever since I left I have thought of none but the Rose and you. Shall I
+prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I make so bold as
+to send you in a little parcel a pair of woollen slippers that I have
+knitted for you."
+
+Mrs. Major examined them. Such sun as creeps into Angel Street,
+Marylebone Road, jealous of rival brightness had filched their first
+delicate tint of green, had stolen the first passionate scarlet of the
+red blobs. She continued:
+
+"They are a little faded because on every stitch a bitter tear has
+fallen. Yes, Mr. Marrapit, my tears of sorrow have rained upon these
+slippers as I worked. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, they are not damp, however.
+Every evening since they were finished I have had my little fire lighted
+and have stood the slippers up against the fender; and then, sitting on
+the opposite side of the hearth, just as I used to sit for a few minutes
+with you after we had brought in the darling cats, I have imagined that
+your feet were in the slippers and have imagined that I am back where I
+have left my bleeding heart. I never meant to dare send them to you, Mr.
+Marrapit, but in this moment of your tribulation I make bold to do so.
+Do not open the parcel, Mr. Marrapit, if you would rather not. Hurl it
+on the fire and let the burning fiery furnace consume them, tears and
+all. But I feel I must send them, whatever their fate.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt to find my darling
+Rose!--then without a word I will creep away and die.--LUCY MAJOR."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Upon the following morning there sped to Mrs. Major from Herons' Holt a
+telegram bearing the message "Come."
+
+Frantic to clutch at any straw that might bring to him this Rose, Mr.
+Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major. He felt there to be much truth,
+in her contention that his Rose, if secreted near by, would come quicker
+at her call than at the call of another. His Rose had known and loved
+her for a full year. His Rose, refined cat, did not take quickly
+to strangers, and had not--he had noticed it--given herself to Miss
+Humfray. Therefore Mr. Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major.
+
+As to the remainder of her letter--it considerably perturbed him. Had
+he misjudged this woman, whom once he had held estimable? All the
+delectable peace of his household during her reign, as contrasted with
+the turmoil that now had taken its place, came back to him and smote his
+heart. He opened the slippers, noted the tear-stains. Had he misjudged
+her? What more likely than her story of the racking tooth that must
+be lulled with a little drop of spirit? Had he misjudged her? But as
+against that little drop of spirit, how account for the vast and empty
+bottle of Old Tom found in her room? Had he misjudged her?
+
+In much conflict of mind this man paced the breakfast room, a green
+knitted slipper with red knitted blob in either hand.
+
+It was thus that Margaret, entering, found him.
+
+With a soft little laugh, "Oh, father!" she cried, "what have you got
+there?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit raised the green knitted slippers with the red knitted
+blobs. "A contrite heart," he answered. "A stricken and a contrite
+heart."
+
+He resumed his pacing. Margaret squeezed round the door which happily
+she had left ajar; fled breakfastless. Quick at poetic image though she
+was, the symbol of a contrite heart in a pair of green knitted slippers
+with red knitted blobs was not clear to this girl. In her father it
+alarmed her. This great sorrow was perchance turning his brain.
+
+Mr. Marrapit laid the slippers upon his dressing-table; that afternoon
+greeted Mrs. Major with a circumspect reserve. Combining the vast and
+empty bottle of Old Tom with the fact that never had his judgment of man
+or matter failed him, he determined that Mrs. Major was guilty. But
+not wilfully guilty. Tempted to drown pain, she had succumbed; but the
+slippers were the sign of a contrite heart.
+
+The masterly possessor of the contrite heart betrayed no signs of its
+flutterings and its exultant boundings at being once more in paradise.
+This was a masterly woman, and, masterly, she grasped at once her
+position--without hesitation started to play her part.
+
+In Mr. Marrapit's study she stood humbly before him with bowed head;
+did not speak. Her only sounds were those of repressed emotion as Mr.
+Marrapit recited the history of the abduction. The white handkerchief
+she kept pressed against her chin punctuated the story with sudden
+little dabs first to one eye then the other. Little sniffs escaped her;
+little catches of the breath; tiny little moans.
+
+She choked when he had finished: "Let me see--my darling's--bed."
+
+Mr Marrapit led the way. Above the silk-lined box whence George had
+snatched the Rose, the masterly woman knelt. She fondled the silken
+coverlet; her lips moved. Suddenly she dashed her handkerchief to her
+eyes; with beautiful moans fled hurriedly to the bedroom that had been
+allotted her.
+
+It was an exquisitely touching sight. Mr. Marrapit, greatly moved, went
+to his room; took out the green knitted slippers with the red knitted
+blobs. Had he misjudged this woman?
+
+Ten minutes later he again encountered Mrs. Major. Now she was girt
+against the weather and against exercise. Beneath her chin were firmly
+knotted the strings of her sober bonnet; a short skirt hid nothing
+of the stout boots she had donned; her hand grasped the knob of a
+bludgeon-like umbrella.
+
+The masterly woman had removed all traces of her emotion. In a voice
+humble yet strong, "I start to search, Mr. Marrapit," she said. "I will
+find the Rose if she is to be found."
+
+So deep sincerity was in her speech, so strong she seemed, so restful
+in this crisis, that Mr. Marrapit, watching her stride the drive,
+again fell to pacing and cogitation--had he misjudged her? Almost
+unconsciously he moved upstairs to his room; drew those green slippers
+with red blobs from their drawer.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Had Mr. Marrapit doubted the sincerity of Mrs. Major's search, assuredly
+he would have misjudged her. In her diary that night the masterly woman
+inscribed:
+
+"_Am here; must stick_."
+
+Her best chance of sticking, as well she knew, lay in finding the Rose.
+Could she but place that creature's exquisite form in Mr. Marrapit's
+arms, she felt that her reward would be to win back to the paradise from
+which Old Tom had driven her.
+
+Therefore most strenuously she scoured the countryside; pried into
+houses; popped her head into stable doors. This woman nothing spared
+herself; in the result, at the end of two days, was considerably
+dejected. For it was clear to her that the Rose had not strayed, but had
+been stolen; was not concealed in the vicinity of Herons' Holt, but had
+been spirited to the safety of many miles. She was driven to accept
+Mr. Brunger's opinion--the Rose had been stolen by some eager and
+unscrupulous breeder to be used for gross purposes.
+
+It was upon the evening of the second day in paradise that this woman
+settled upon this gloomy conclusion. Gloomy it was, and desperately,
+sitting in her bedroom that night, the masterly woman battled for some
+way to circumvent it. To that entry made in her diary on the night of
+her arrival she had added two further sentences:
+
+_"Hate that baby-faced Humfray chit."
+
+"Certain cannot stick unless find cat."_
+
+Opening her diary now she gazed upon these entries; chewed them. They
+were bitter to the taste. To agony at what she had lost was added
+mortification at seeing another in her place; and rankling in this
+huge wound was the poison of the knowledge that she could not win
+back. Circumstances were too strong. The cat was not to be found,
+and--stabbing thought--"certain cannot stick unless find cat."
+
+This way and that the masterly woman twisted in search of a means to
+circumvent her position. It might be done by accomplishing the overthrow
+of this baby-faced chit. If the baby-faced chit could be made to
+displease Mr. Marrapit and be turned out, it would surely be possible,
+being ready at hand, to take her place. But how could the baby-faced
+chit be made to err?
+
+This way and that Mrs. Major twisted and could find no means. Always she
+was forced back to the brick-wall fact--salvation lay only in finding
+the cat. That would accomplish everything. She would have succeeded
+where the baby-faced chit had failed; she would have proved her
+devotion; she, would have earned, not a doubt of it, the reward of
+re-entry into paradise that Mr. Marrapit in his gratitude would more
+than offer--would press upon her.
+
+But the cat was not to be found.
+
+Beating up against the desperate barrier of that thought, Mrs. Major
+groaned aloud as she paced the room, threw up her arms in her despair.
+The action caused her to swerve; with hideous violence she crashed her
+stockinged foot against the leg of the wash-stand.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples of the lightest
+action we may toss upon the sea of life. The stunning agony in this
+woman's toes, as, hopping to the bed, she sat and nursed them, with the
+swiftness of thought presented to her a solution of her difficulty that
+struck her staring with excitement.
+
+Her first thought in her throbbing pain was of remedy for the bruise.
+"Bruise" brought involuntarily to her mind the picture of a chemist's
+shop in the Edgware Road, not far from Angel Street, whose window she
+had seen filled with little boxes of "Bruisine," the newest specific for
+abrasions. Thence her thoughts, by direct passage, jumped to the time
+when last she had noticed the shop--she had been returning from a stroll
+by way of Sussex Gardens. And it was while mentally retracing that walk
+down Sussex Gardens that Mrs. Major lit plump upon the solution of her
+difficulty. She had noticed, let out for a run from No. 506, an orange
+cat that was so precisely the image of the Rose of Sharon that she had
+stopped to stroke it for dear memory's sake. Often since then she had
+spoken to it; every time had been the more struck by its extraordinary
+resemblance to the Rose. She had reflected that, seen together, she
+could not have told them apart.
+
+Mrs. Major forgot the throbbing of her abrased toes. Her brows knitted
+by concentration of thought, very slowly the masterly woman concluded
+her disrobing. Each private garment that she stripped and laid aside
+marked a forward step in the indomitable purpose she had conceived. As
+her fingers drew the most private from her person, leaving it naked, so
+from her plan did her masterly mind draw the last veil that filmed it,
+leaving it clear. When the Jaeger nightdress fell comfortably about her,
+her purpose too was presentable and warm.
+
+Every day and every night, every hour of every day and night, ripples
+from unknown splashes are setting towards us. From this masterly
+woman, in process of toilet, ripples were setting towards a modest and
+unsuspecting cat lying in sweet slumber at 506 Sussex Gardens, off the
+Edgware Road.
+
+For the masterly woman had thus determined--she would have that cat that
+was the Rose's second self. The Rose was in the hands of some villain
+breeder and would never be returned; small fear of discovery under that
+head. This cat was the Rose's second self; differences that Mr. Marrapit
+might discover, lack of affection that he might notice, could be
+attributed to the adventures through which the Rose had passed since her
+abduction. Under this head, indeed, Mrs. Major did not anticipate great
+difficulty. Similar cats are more similar than similar dogs. They
+have not, as dogs have, the distinguishing marks of character and
+demonstrativeness. In any event, as the masterly woman assured herself,
+she ran no peril even if her plot failed. She would say she had found
+the cat, and if Mr. Marrapit were convinced it was not his Rose--well,
+she had made a mistake, that was all.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Upon the morrow, playing her hand with masterly skill, Mrs. Major
+sought interview with Mr. Marrapit. With telling dabs of her pocket
+handkerchief at her eyes, with telling sniffs of her masterly nose, she
+expressed the fear that she had outstayed his kindness in receiving her.
+He had granted her request--he had let her come to Herons' Holt; but two
+days had passed and she had not found his Rose. True, if she had longer
+she could more thoroughly search; but as an honest woman she must admit
+that she had been given her chance, had failed.
+
+Upon a wailing note she ended: "I must go."
+
+"Cancel that intention," Mr. Marrapit told her. Her honesty smote this
+man. Had he misjudged her?
+
+She smothered a sniff in her handkerchief: "I must go. I must go. I have
+seen that you regard me with suspicion. Oh, you have reason, I know; but
+I cannot bear it."
+
+"Remove that impression," spoke Mr. Marrapit. He _had_ misjudged this
+woman; he was convinced of it.
+
+Mrs. Major gave her answer in the form of two smothered sniffs and a
+third that, eluding her handkerchief, escaped free and loud--a telling
+sniff that advertised her distress; wrung Mr. Marrapit's emotions.
+
+He continued: "Mrs. Major, at a future time we will discuss the painful
+affair to which you make reference. At present I am too preoccupied
+by the calamity that has desolated my hearth. Meanwhile, I suspend
+judgment. I place suspicion behind me. I regard you only as she whom my
+Rose loved."
+
+"Do you wish me to stay a little longer?" asked Mrs. Major, trembling.
+
+"That is my wish. Continue to prosecute your search."
+
+Trembling yet more violently Mrs. Major said: "I will stay. I had not
+dared to suppose I might stop more than two days. I brought nothing with
+me. May I go to London to get clothes? I will return to-morrow morning."
+
+"Why not to-night?"
+
+"Early to-morrow would be more convenient. I have other things to do in
+London."
+
+"To-morrow, then," Mr. Marrapit agreed.
+
+At the door Mrs. Major turned. Her great success at this interview
+emboldened her to a second stroke. "There is one other thing I would
+like to say, if I dared."
+
+"Be fearless."
+
+She plunged. "If Heaven should grant that I may find the Rose, I implore
+you not to distress me by offering me the reward you are holding out. I
+could not take it. I know you can ill afford it. Further than that, to
+have the joy of giving you back your Rose would be reward enough for me.
+And to know that she was safe with you, though I--I should never see her
+again, that would make me happy till the end of my days."
+
+Her nobility smote Mr. Marrapit. Cruelly, shamefully, he _had_ misjudged
+her. Her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, very gently Mrs. Major closed
+the door; very soberly mounted the stairs.
+
+Out of earshot, she walked briskly to her room; drew forth her diary; in
+a bold hand inscribed:
+
+"_Absolutely certain shall stick._"
+
+The masterly woman lunched in town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Mrs. Major Finds The Lock.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+By six o'clock Mrs. Major had all ready for her adventure. In the little
+room at Angel Street she deposited a newly purchased basket; at eight
+o'clock started for Sussex Gardens.
+
+Twice, while passing down the terrace at about nine, she had seen the
+cat she now pursued let out for what was doubtless its nightly run.
+
+On each occasion she had observed the same order of events, and she
+judged them to be of regular occurrence. Out from No. 506 had stepped a
+tall man, long-haired, soft-hatted, poetically bearded. Behind him had
+followed the cat. The cat had trotted across the road to the gardens;
+the tall man had walked slowly round the enclosure. Returning, he had
+called. The cat had walked soberly forth from the railings and the pair
+had re-entered the house.
+
+II.
+
+Matters fell this night precisely as the sapient woman had conjectured.
+Shortly before nine she took up position against the railings in a dark
+patch that marked the middle point between two lamps, some doors
+above 506. No tremor agitated her form; in action this woman was most
+masterly.
+
+A church clock struck a full clear note, another and another. The
+after-humming of the ninth had scarcely died when the blackness that
+lay beneath the fanlight of 506 was split by a thin rod of yellow light.
+Instantly this widened, served for a moment to silhouette a tall figure,
+then vanished as the door slammed. The tall figure stepped on to the
+pavement; a cat at its feet trod sedately across the road. The tall
+figure turned; in a moment was meditatively pacing the pavement opposite
+where Mrs. Major stood.
+
+Mrs. Major gave him twenty yards. Then she hurried along the railings to
+where the cat had tripped. Six feet inwards, delicately scratching the
+soil beneath a bush, she espied it.
+
+The masterly woman pressed her face between the rails; stretched a
+snapping finger and thumb; in an intense voice murmured, "Tweetikins
+puss!"
+
+Tweetikins puss continued thoughtfully to turn the soil. This was a
+nicely mannered cat.
+
+"Tweety little puss!" cooed Mrs. Major. "Tweety pussikins! puss, puss!"
+
+Tweety pussikins turned to regard her. Mrs. Major moistened her finger
+and thumb; snapped frantically. "Puss, puss--tweety pussy!"
+
+Tweety pussy advanced till the snapping fingers were within an inch of
+its nose.
+
+"Pussikins, pussikins!" implored Mrs. Major.
+
+Pussikins very deliberately seated itself; coiled its fine tail about
+its feet; regarded Mrs. Major with a sphinx-like air.
+
+Mrs. Major pressed till the iron railings cut her shoulders. She
+stretched the forefinger of her extended arm; at great peril of slipping
+forward and rasping her nose along the rails effected to scratch the top
+of the sphinx's head.
+
+"Puss, puss! Tweety, _tweety_ puss!"
+
+By not so much as a blink did tweety puss stir a muscle.
+
+Mrs. Major was in considerable pain. Her bent legs were cramped; the
+railings bit her shoulder; her neck ached: "Tweety little puss! Tweety
+puss! Puss! _Drat_ the beast!"
+
+In great physical agony and in heightening mental distress--since
+time was fleeting and the cat as statuesque as ever,--Mrs. Major again
+dratted it twice with marked sincerity and a third time as a sharp sound
+advertised the splitting of a secret portion of her wear against the
+tremendous strain her unnatural position placed upon it. Unable longer
+to endure the pain of her outstretched arm, she dropped her hand to
+earth; with a masterly effort resumed her smiling face and silky tone.
+Repeating her endearing cooings, she scratched the soil, enticing to
+some hidden mystery.
+
+The demon of curiosity impelled this cat's doom. For a moment it
+eyed the scratching fingers; then stretched forward its head to
+investigation.
+
+The time for gentle methods was gone. Mrs. Major gripped the downy
+scruff of the doomed creature's neck; dragged the surprised animal
+forward; rudely urged it through the railings; tucked it beneath her
+cloak; sped down the road in the same direction that the tall figure had
+taken.
+
+But where the tall figure had turned round the gardens Mrs. Major kept
+straight. Along a main street, into a by-street, round a turning,
+across a square, up a terrace, over the Edgware Road--so into the
+bed-sitting-room at Angel Street.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Speeding by train to Herons' Holt upon the following morning, beside
+her the basket wherein lay the key that was to open paradise, Mrs. Major
+slightly altered her plans. It had been her intention at once to burst
+upon Mr. Marrapit with her prize--at once to put to desperate test
+whether or no he would accept it as the Rose. But before Paltley Hill
+was reached the masterly woman had modified this order. The cat she had
+abducted was so much the facsimile of the Rose that for the first time
+it occurred to her that, like the Rose, it might be valuable, and that a
+noisy hue and cry might be raised upon its loss.
+
+If this so happened, and especially if Mr. Marrapit were doubtful that
+the cat was his Rose, it would be dangerous to let him know that she
+had made her discovery in London. Supposing he heard that a London cat,
+similar to the Rose in appearance, were missing, and remembered that
+this cat--of which from the first he had had doubts--was filched from
+London? That might turn success into failure. The chances of such events
+were remote, but the masterly woman determined to run no risks. She
+decided that on arrival at
+
+Paltley Hill she would conceal her cat; on the morrow, starting out
+from Herons' Hill to renew her search, would find it and with it come
+bounding to the house.
+
+As to where she should hide it she had no difficulty in determining. She
+knew of but one place, and she was convinced she could not have known a
+better. The ruined hut in the copse off the Shipley Road, whither in the
+dear, dead days beyond recall she had stolen for Old Tommish purposes,
+was in every way safe and suitable. None visited there at ordinary
+times; now that the country-side was no longer being searched for the
+Rose save by herself, it was as safe as ever. She would leave her cat
+there this day and night.
+
+Upon this determination the remarkable woman acted; before proceeding to
+Herons' Holt secured her cat in that inner room of the hut where, but a
+few days previously, the Rose herself had lain.
+
+When she reached the house a maid told her that Mr. Marrapit was
+closeted with young Mr. Wyvern.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+During the afternoon Mrs. Major visited her cat, taking it milk. That
+evening, Mary and Margaret being elsewhere together, she was able to
+enjoy a quiet hour with Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He was heavily depressed: "A week has passed, Mrs. Major. Something
+tells me I never again will see my Rose. This day I have sent young Mr.
+Wyvern and Mr. Brunger after my nephew George. The clue he claims to
+know is my last chance. I have no faith in it. Put not your trust--" Mr.
+Marrapit allowed a melancholy sigh to conclude his sentence. This man
+had suffered much.
+
+Mrs. Major clasped her hands. "Oh, do not give up hope, Mr. Marrapit.
+Something tells me you _will_ see her--soon, very soon."
+
+Mr. Marrapit sighed. "You are always encouraging, Mrs. Major."
+
+"Something tells me that I have reason to be, Mr. Marrapit. Last night I
+dreamed that the Rose was found." The encouraging woman leaned forward;
+said impressively, "I dreamed that I found her."
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not respond to her tone. Melancholy had this man in
+leaden grip. "I lose hope," he said. "Man is born unto trouble as the
+sparks fly upward. Do not trust in dreams."
+
+"Oh, but I _do_!" Mrs. Major said with girlish impulsiveness. "I _do_.
+I always have. My dreams so often come true. Do not lose hope, Mr.
+Marrapit." She continued with a beautiful air of timidity: "Oh, Mr.
+Marrapit, I know I am only here on sufferance, but your careworn air
+emboldens me to suggest--it might keep your poor mind from thinking--a
+game of backgammon such as we used to play before--" She sighed.
+
+"I should like it," Mr. Marrapit answered.
+
+Mrs. Major arranged the board; drew Mr. Marrapit's favourite chair to
+the table; rattled the dice. After a few moves, "Oh, you're not beating
+me as you used to," she said archly.
+
+"I am out of practice," Mr. Marrapit confessed.
+
+Mrs. Major paused in the act of throwing her dice. "Out of practice! But
+surely Miss Humfray plays with you?"
+
+"She does not."
+
+Mrs. Major gave a sigh that suggested more than she dared say.
+
+She sighed again when the game was concluded. Mr. Marrapit sat on.
+"Quite like old times," Mrs. Major murmured. "Good night, Mr. Marrapit;
+and don't lose hope. Remember my dream."
+
+"Quite like old times," Mr. Marrapit murmured.
+
+The masterly woman ascended the stairs rubbing her hands.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Mrs. Major ate an excellent breakfast upon the following morning. She
+was upon the very threshold of winning into paradise, but not a tremor
+of nervousness did she betray or feel. This was a superb woman.
+
+At eleven she left the house and took a walk--rehearsing the manner
+in which she had arranged to burst in upon Mr. Marrapit with the cat,
+checking again the arguments with which she would counter and lull any
+doubts he might raise.
+
+At twelve she entered the hut.
+
+Mrs. Major was in the very act of leaving the building, the cat
+beneath her arm, when a sound of voices and footsteps held her upon the
+threshold. She listened; the sounds drew near. She closed the door; the
+sounds, now loud, approached the hut. She ran to the inner room; a hand
+was laid upon the outer latch. She closed the door; applied her eye to a
+crack; George and Mary entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Mrs. Major Gets The Key.
+
+
+George carried a basket. He laid it upon the floor. Then he turned and
+kissed his Mary. He put his arms about her; held her to him for a moment
+in a tremendous hug; pressed his lips to hers; held her away, drinking
+love from her pretty eyes; again kissed her and again hugged.
+
+She gasped: "I shall crack in half in a minute if you will be so
+ridiculous."
+
+He laughed; let her free. He led to the tottering bench that stood
+across the room, sat her there, and taking her little gloved hand patted
+it between his.
+
+"Fine, Mary," he said, "to see you again! Fine! It seems months!"
+
+"Years," Mary whispered, giving one of the patting hands a little
+squeeze. "Years. And you never sent me a line. I've not had a word with
+you since you came up on the lawn that day and said you had passed your
+exam. You simply _bolted_ off, you know."
+
+"You got my letter, though, this morning?" George said. He dropped
+her hand; fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. He was becoming a little
+nervous at the matter before him.
+
+Mary told him: "Well, that was _nothing_. It was such a _frantic_
+letter! What is all the mystery about?"
+
+"I'll tell you the whole story." George got from the bench and began to
+pace, filling his pipe.
+
+With a tender little smile Mary watched her George's dear face. Then, as
+he still paced, lit his pipe, gustily puffed, but did not speak, a tiny
+troubled pucker came between her eyes. There was a suspicion of a silly
+little tremor in her voice when at last she asked: "Anything wrong, old
+man?"
+
+George inhaled a vast breath of smoke; let it go in a misty cloud. With
+a quick action he laid his pipe upon the table; sprang to her side.
+His right arm he put about her, in his left hand he clasped both hers.
+"Nothing wrong," he cried brightly; "not a bit wrong. Mary, it's a game,
+a plot, a dickens of a game."
+
+"Well, tell me," she said, beaming.
+
+"It wants your help."
+
+"Well, tell me, tell me, stupid."
+
+"You will help?"
+
+"Of course, if I can. Oh, do tell me, Georgie!"
+
+"I'll show you, that's quicker."
+
+He sprang to the basket; unstrapped the lid; threw it back. A most
+exquisite orange head upreared. A queenly back arched. A beautiful
+figure stepped forth.
+
+"_George!_" Mary cried. "George! _The Rose!_ You've found her!"
+
+George gave a nervous little crack of laughter. "I never lost her."
+
+"Never lost her! No, but she's been--"
+
+"I've had her all the time!"
+
+"_All the_--"
+
+"I took her!"
+
+"You _took_ her! _You_--took her! Oh, George, speak sense! Whatever
+can you mean?" Mary had jumped to her feet when first the Rose stepped
+forth; now was close to her George--face a little white, perplexed;
+hands clasped.
+
+He cried: "Sweetest dove of a Mary, don't talk like that. Sit down and
+I'll tell you."
+
+"But what have you done?--what have you _done?_"
+
+The true woman was in that question. How they jostle us, these women,
+with their timid little flutterings when we are trying to put a case
+before them in our manlike way!--first spoiling their palate with all
+the sugar, so that they may not taste the powder.
+
+"I'll tell you what I've done if you'll only sit down."
+
+She went to the seat.
+
+"Now laugh, Mary. You simply must laugh. I can't tell you while you look
+like that. Laugh, or I shall tickle you."
+
+She laughed merrily--over her first bewilderment. "But, Georgie, it's
+something fearful that you've done, isn't it?"
+
+He sat beside her; took her hands. "It's terrific. Look here. From the
+beginning. When I told old Marrapit I'd passed my exam. I asked for that
+500 pounds--you know--to start us."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"He refused. He got in an awful state at the bare idea. I asked him
+to lend it--he got worse. Mary, he simply would not give or advance a
+penny: you know what that meant?"
+
+The dejected droop of her mouth gave answer.
+
+"Well, then, I concocted a plot. Old Wyvern helped me--Professor Wyvern,
+you know. I thought that if I took his cat, his beloved Rose, and lay
+low with her for a bit, he would--"
+
+"Oh, _George!_"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Nothing--finish."
+
+"--He would be certain to offer a reward. And I guessed he wouldn't mind
+what he paid. So I thought I'd take the cat and hang on till he offered
+L500, or till I thought he'd be so glad to get the Rose back that he'd
+do what I want out of pure gratitude. Then I'd bring it back and get
+the money--say I'd found it, you see, and--and--wait a bit--for heaven's
+sake don't speak yet." George saw his Mary was bursting with words; as
+he judged the look in her eyes they were words he had reason to fear.
+Shirking their hurt, he hurried along. "Don't speak yet. Get the money,
+and then we'd save up and pay him back and then tell him. There!"
+
+She burst out: "But, George--how _could_ you? Oh, it's wrong--it's
+_awful!_ Why, do you know what people would call you? They'd say you're
+a--yes, they'd say you're a--"
+
+He snatched the terrible word from her lips with a kiss.
+
+"They'd say I was a fool if I let Marrapit do me out of what is my own.
+That's the point, Mary. It's my money. I'm only trying to get what is my
+own. I felt all along you would see that; otherwise--" He hesitated.
+He was in difficulties. Manlike, he suddenly essayed to shoot the
+responsibility upon the woman. "--Otherwise I wouldn't have done it," he
+ended.
+
+His Mary had the wit to slip from the net, to dig him a vital thrust
+with the trident: "If you thought that, why didn't you tell me?"
+
+The thrust staggered him; set him blustering: "Tell you! Tell you! How
+could I tell you? I did it on the spur of the moment."
+
+"You could have written. Oh, Georgie, it's wrong. It _is_ wrong."
+
+He took up the famous sex attack. "Wrong! Wrong! That's just like a
+woman to say that! You won't listen to reason. You jump at a thing and
+shut your eyes and your ears."
+
+"I _will_ listen to reason. But you haven't _got_ any reason. If you
+had, why didn't you tell me before you did it?"
+
+He continued the sex assault; flung out a declamatory hand. "There you
+go! Why didn't I tell you? I've told you why. I tell you I did it on the
+spur of the moment--"
+
+But she still struggled. "Yes, that's just it. You didn't think. Now
+that you are thinking you must see it in its proper light. You _must_
+see it's wrong."
+
+"I don't. I don't in the least."
+
+"Well, why are you getting in such a state about it?"
+
+"I'm not getting in a state!"
+
+"You are." His Mary fumbled at her waist-belt. "You
+are. You're--saying--all sorts--of--things.
+You--said--I--was--just--like--a--woman." Out came this preposterous
+Mary's pocket handkerchief; into it went Mary's little nose.
+
+George sprang to her. "Oh, Mary! Oh, I say, don't cry, old girl!"
+
+The nose came out for a minute, a very shiny little nose. "I can't
+help crying. This is an--an _awful_ business." The shiny little nose
+disappeared again.
+
+George tried to pull away the handkerchief, tried to put his face
+against hers. A bony little shoulder poked obstinately up and prevented
+him. He burst out desperately. "Oh, damn! Oh, what a beast I am! I'm
+always making you cry. Oh, damn! Oh, Mary! I can't do anything right.
+I've had an awful time these days--and I was longing to see you,--and
+now I've called you names and been a brute."
+
+His Mary gulped the tears that were making the shiny little nose every
+minute more shiny. Never could she bear to hear her George accuse
+himself. Upon a tremendous sniff, "You haven't been a brute," she said,
+"--a bit. It's my--my fault for annoying you when I don't properly
+understand. Perhaps I don't understand."
+
+He put an arm about her. "You don't, Mary. Really and truly you don't.
+Let me tell you. Don't say a word till I've done. I'll tell you first
+why I've brought the Rose here. You see, I can't keep her anywhere
+else. I'm being chased about all over England. Bill and that infernal
+detective are after me now, and I simply must hide the beastly cat where
+it will be safe. Well, it's safest here--here, right under their noses,
+where nobody will ever look because everyone thinks it miles away by
+now. I can't stop near it, because I must be away on this clue they
+think I've got--especially now I've got mixed up with the detectives:
+see? So I want you just to come up from the house every day and feed the
+cat. You'll be perfectly safe, and it can't be for very long. You would
+do that, wouldn't you? Oh, Mary, think what it means to us!"
+
+She polished the shiny little nose: "I'd do anything that would help
+you. But, Georgie, it's not _right_; it's _wrong_. Oh, it is wrong! I
+don't care _what_ you say."
+
+"But you haven't heard what I've got to say."
+
+"I have. I've been listening for hours."
+
+"No, no, Mary. No, I haven't explained yet. You're too serious about
+it. It isn't a bit serious. It's only a frightful rag. And nobody will
+suffer, because he'll get his money back. And, think--think what it
+means. Now, do listen!"
+
+She listened, and her George poured forth a flood of arguments that were
+all mixed and tangled with love. She could not separate the two. This
+argument that he was right was delectably sugared with the knowledge
+that the thing was done for her; that delicious picture of the future,
+when it was swallowed, proved to be an argument in favour of his
+purpose. Love and argument, argument and love--she could not separate
+them, and they combined into a most exquisite sweetmeat. The arm her
+George had about her was a base advantage over her. How doubt her George
+was right when against her she could feel his heart! How be wiser than
+he when both her hands were in that dear brown fist?
+
+She was almost won when with a "So there you are!" he concluded. She had
+been won if she had much longer remained beneath the drug of his dear,
+gay, earnest words.
+
+But when he ceased she came to. The little awakening sigh she gave was
+the little fluttering sigh of a patient when the anesthetic leaves the
+senses clear.
+
+She looked at her George. Horrible to dim the sparkling in those
+dear eyes, radiant with excitement, with love. Yet she did it. The
+goody-goody little soul of her put its hands about the little weakness
+of her and held it tight.
+
+She said: "I do, _do_ see what you mean, Georgie. But I do, _do_ think
+it's wrong."
+
+And then the little hands and the brown fist changed places. For she
+put one hand below the fist, and with the other patted as she gave
+her little homily--goody-goody little arguments, Sunday-school little
+arguments, mother-and-child little arguments. And very timidly she
+concluded: "You are not angry, Georgie, are you?"
+
+This splendid George of hers gave her a tremendous kiss. "You're a
+little saint; you're a little idiot; you're a little angel; you're
+a little goose," he told her. "But I love you all the more for it,
+although I'd like to shake you. I _would_ like to shake you, Mary.
+You're ruining the finest joke that ever was tried; and you're ruining
+our only chance of marrying; and goodness only knows what's going to
+happen now."
+
+She laughed ever so happily. It was intoxicating to bend this dear
+George; intoxicating to have the love that came of bending him.
+
+"But I _am_ right, am I not?" she asked.
+
+George said: "Look here, saint and goose. I'm simply not going to chuck
+the thing and all our happiness like this. I'll make a bargain. Saint
+and goose, we'll say you are right, but you shall have one night to
+think over it. One night. And this afternoon you will go to Professor
+Wyvern and tell him everything and hear what he thinks about it--what an
+outsider thinks: see? Yes, that's it. Don't even spend a night over it.
+Have a talk with Professor Wyvern, and if you still think I ought to
+chuck it, write to me at once, and to-morrow I'll come down and creep
+in unto my uncle with the cat, and say: 'Uncle, I have sinned.' There,
+Mary, that's agreed, isn't it?"
+
+"That's agreed," she joined. "Yes, that's fair."
+
+He looked at his watch. "I must cut. I must catch the one-thirty train.
+I must calm Bill and the 'tec. in case you--Mary, _do_ weigh whatever
+Wyvern says, won't you?"
+
+She promised; gave her George her hope that the Professor would make her
+see differently.
+
+"That's splendid of you!" George cried. "Saint and goose, that's sweet
+of you. Mary, I'm sure he will. Look here, I must fly; come half-way
+to the station. The cat's all right here. Pop up and feed her this
+afternoon."
+
+They pressed the door behind them; hurried down the path.
+
+It was precisely as they turned from the lane into the high-road, that
+Mrs. Major, a cat beneath her arm, went bounding wildly through the
+copse towards Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+George Has A Shot At Paradise.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two hours after George, leaving his Mary near Paltley Hill railway
+station, had got back to his inn at Temple Colney, a very agitated
+young man booked from Temple Colney to Paltley Hill and was now speeding
+between them in the train.
+
+He had the carriage to himself. Sometimes he sat, hands deep in pockets,
+legs thrust before him, staring with wide and frightened eyes at the
+opposite seat. Sometimes he paced wildly from door to door, chin sunk on
+breast, in his eyes still that look of frantic apprehension. Sometimes
+he would snatch from his pocket a telegram; glare at it; pucker his
+brows over it; groan over it.
+
+George was this feverish young man.
+
+On his table in his room at the inn he had found this telegram awaiting
+him. He had broken the envelope, had read, and immediately a tickling
+feeling over his scalp had sent a dreadful shiver through his frame:
+
+"_Return at once. Cat found.--Marrapit._"
+
+He had plumped into a chair.
+
+For a space the capacity for thought was gone. In his brain was only
+a heavy drumming that numbed. Beneath the window a laden cart went
+thumping by--thump, thump; thump, thump--cat found; cat found. The cart
+drubbed away and was lost. Then the heavy ticking of the clock edged
+into his senses--tick, tock; tick, tock--cat found; cat found.
+
+Then thought came.
+
+Cat found!--then all was lost. Cat found!--then some damned prowling
+idiot had chanced upon the hut.
+
+This miserable George had felt certain that Professor Wyvern's arguments
+would overcome his Mary's scruples. That little meeting with his Mary
+had made him the more desperately anxious for success so that he might
+win her and have her. And now--cat found!--all over. Cat found! His
+pains for nothing!
+
+Then came the support of a hope, and to this, hurrying back to the
+station, speeding now in the train, most desperately he clung. The
+Rose, he struggled to assure himself, had not been found at all. It was
+impossible that anyone had been to the hut. Some idiot had found a
+cat that answered to the Rose's description, and had telegraphed the
+discovery to his uncle; or someone had brought a cat to his uncle and
+his uncle was himself temporarily deluded.
+
+Wildly praying that this might be so, George leaped from the train at
+Paltley Hill; went rushing to the hut. Outside, for full ten minutes he
+dared not push the door. What if he saw no Rose? What if all were indeed
+lost?
+
+He braced himself; pushed; entered.
+
+At once he gave a whoop, and another whoop, and a third. He snapped his
+fingers; cavorted through the steps of a wild dance that considerably
+alarmed the noble cat that watched him.
+
+For there was the Rose!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When George had indulged his transports till he was calmer, he took a
+moment's swift thought to decide his action.
+
+Since someone was bouncing a spurious Rose on his uncle, he must delay,
+he decided, no longer--must dash in with the true Rose at once. Surely
+his uncle's delight would be sufficient to arouse in him the gratitude
+that would produce the sum necessary for Runnygate!
+
+Previously, when he had reflected upon the plan he should follow on
+restoring the cat, he had been a little alarmed at the difficulties
+he foresaw. Chief among them was the fact that his uncle, and the
+detective, and heaven knew who else besides, would require a plausible
+and circumstantial story of how the Rose had been found--might wish to
+prosecute the thief. How to invent this story had caused George enormous
+anxiety. He shuddered whenever he thought upon it; had steadily put it
+behind him till the matter must be faced.
+
+But this and all other difficulties he now sent flying. The relief of
+freedom from the badgering he had endured since he abducted the Rose;
+the enormous relief of finding that the Rose was not, after all, gone
+from the hut; the tearing excitement of the thought that he had his very
+fingers upon success--these combined to make him reckless of truth and
+blind to doubts. He relied upon his uncle's transports of delight on
+recovering the Rose--he felt that in the delirious excitement of that
+joy everything must go well and unquestioned with him who had brought it
+about. As to his Mary's scruples--time enough for them when the matter
+was done.
+
+This was George's feeling at the end of his rapid cogitation. A
+heartless chuckle he gave as he thought of Bill and Mr. Brunger at
+the inn, closely dogging the landlord; then he seized the cat and in a
+second was bounding through the copse to Herons' Holt as Mrs. Major, a
+short space ago, had bounded before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The maid who opened the door told George that the master awaited him in
+the study.
+
+Nothing of George's excitement had left him during the rush down to the
+house. His right arm tucked about the cat he carried, with his left hand
+impulsively he pushed open the door; with a spring eagerly entered.
+
+Even as he stepped over the threshold the bubbling words that filled his
+mouth melted; did not shape. In the atmosphere of the apartment there
+was that sinister element of some unseen force which we detect by medium
+of the almost atrophied sense that in dogs we call instinct. As dogs
+will check and grow suspicious in the presence of death that they cannot
+see, but feel, so my George checked and was struck apprehensive by the
+sudden sensation of an invisible calamity.
+
+The quick glance he gave increased the sudden chill of his spirits.
+He saw Mr. Marrapit standing against the mantelshelf--dressing-gowned,
+hands behind back, face most intensely grim; his glance shifted and he
+froze, for it rested upon Mrs. Major--hidden by a table from the waist
+downwards, prim, bolt upright in a chair, face most intensely grim; his
+eyes passed her and now goggled in new bewilderment, for they took in
+his Mary--seated upon the extreme edge of the sofa, a white tooth upon
+lower lip, face most intensely woebegone.
+
+George stood perfectly still.
+
+Like the full, deep note of a huge bell, Mr. Marrapit's voice came
+booming through the fearful atmosphere.
+
+"Well?" boomed Mr. Marrapit.
+
+The cat beneath George's arm wriggled.
+
+Boom and wriggle touched George back to action from the fear into which
+the invisible something and the fearful panorama of faces had struck
+him.
+
+After all--let have happened what might have happened--he had the cat!
+
+He swung the creature round into his hands; outstretched it. He took a
+step forward. "Uncle!" he cried, "uncle, I have found the Rose!"
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major on a short jerk.
+
+From Mary there came a violent double sniff.
+
+George stood perfectly still; the unseen horror he felt to be rushing
+upon him, but it remained invisible. With considerably less confidence
+he repeated:
+
+"The Rose, uncle."
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major on a yet shorter jerk; from Mary a double sniff
+yet more violent.
+
+Mr. Marrapit raised a white hand.
+
+"Hark!" said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Alarmed, his nerves unstrung, with straining ears George listened. The
+tense atmosphere made him ajump for outward sounds.
+
+"Hark!" boomed Mr. Marrapit; lowered the warning hand; at George
+directed a long finger. "Are you not afraid that you will hear upon the
+threshold the footsteps of the young men who will come in, wind you up,
+and carry you out?"
+
+"What on earth--?" George asked.
+
+Mr. Marrapit poked the extended finger towards him. "Ananias!" he
+boomed. He poked at my quivering Mary. "Sapphira!"
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major. "Hem!"
+
+George recovered. "Is this a joke?" he asked. "I tell you--look for
+yourself--I have found the Rose."
+
+Mr. Marrapit stooped to Mrs. Major's lap, hidden by the table. With a
+most queenly creature in his arms he stood upright. "Here is the Rose,"
+said he.
+
+Instantly George forgot all that had immediately passed. Instantly
+he remembered that a bogus Rose was what he fully expected to see.
+Instantly fear fled. Instantly assurance returned.
+
+In a full and confident note, "Uncle," he said, "you have been
+deceived!"
+
+His words let loose a torrent upon him.
+
+Mr. Marrapit with one arm clasped to his breast the cat he had raised
+from Mrs. Major's lap. Alternately raising and lowering the other hand,
+his white hair seeming to stream, his eyes flashing, he took on, to
+George's eyes, the appearance of an enraged prophet bellowing over the
+cities of the Plain.
+
+"I _have_ been deceived!" he cried. "You are right. Though you have the
+forked tongue of an adder, yet you speak truly. I have been deceived.
+Woe is me for I have been most wickedly deceived by those who eat of my
+bread, who lie beneath my roof. I have cherished vipers in my bosom, and
+they have stung me. Bitterly have I been deceived."
+
+He paused. A low moan from Mrs. Major, handkerchief to eyes, voiced the
+effect of his speech upon her; in racking sniffs Mary's emotion found
+vent. But upon George the outburst had a cooling result--he was certain
+of his ground.
+
+He said solidly: "That's all rot."
+
+"Rot!" cried Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"Yes, rot. You work yourself up into such a state when you get like
+this, that you don't know what you're talking about--vipers and all that
+kind of thing. When you've calmed down and understand things, perhaps
+you'll be sorry. I tell you you've been deceived. That's not the Rose
+you've got hold of. This is the Rose. Someone has made a fool of you.
+Someone--"
+
+Between two violent sniffs, "Oh, George, don't, don't!" came from his
+Mary.
+
+Startled, George checked.
+
+"Monster, be careful," said Mr. Marrapit. "Beware how much deeper you
+enmire yourself in the morass of your evil. Put down that miserable
+creature you hold. I place Mrs. Major's Rose beside it. Look upon them."
+
+George looked. With staring eyes he gazed upon the two cats. With arched
+tails they advanced to exchange compliments, and the nearer they stood
+together the less Rose-like became the cat he had brought into the room.
+For the cat that Mr. Marrapit had produced--Mrs. Major's cat, as he
+called it--was the Rose herself; could be none other, and none other
+(when thus placed alongside) could be she.
+
+Struck unconscious to his surroundings by this appalling spectacle,
+George slowly stooped towards the cats as though hypnotised by the
+orange coats. His eyes goggled further from his head; the blood went
+thumping in his temples. He was aghast and horror-struck with the
+stupefaction that comes of effort to disbelieve the eyes. But he did
+disbelieve his eyes. How possibly trust them when from the Rose's very
+bed he had taken the Rose herself and held her till now when he produced
+her? He did disbelieve his eyes.
+
+He gave Mrs. Major's cat a careless pat. By an effort throwing a
+careless tone into his voice, "A very good imitation," he said. "Not at
+all unlike the Rose!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit became an alarming sight. He intook an enormous breath that
+swelled him dangerously. He opened his lips and the air rushed out with
+roaring sound. Again he inspired, raised his clenched hands above his
+head, stood like some great tottering image upon the brink of internal
+explosion.
+
+As upon a sudden thought, he checked the bursting words that threatened
+from his lips; allowed his pent-up breath to escape inarticulate; to his
+normal size and appearance shrank back when it was gone.
+
+With an air of ebbing doubt, "Not at all unlike?" he questioned.
+
+George replied briskly. He forced himself to take confidence, though
+every moment made yet more difficult the struggle to disbelieve what his
+eyes told him. "Not at all unlike," he affirmed. "Very similar, in fact.
+Yes, I should say very similar indeed."
+
+Still in the same tone of one who is being reluctantly convinced, Mr.
+Marrapit again played Echo's part: "Very similar indeed? You grant
+that?"
+
+"Certainly," George admitted frankly. "Certainly. I do not wonder you
+were mistaken."
+
+"Nor I," Mr. Marrapit smoothly replied. "Indeed, in Mrs. Major's cat I
+detect certain signs which my Rose has long borne but which she has no
+longer, if the cat you bring is she?"
+
+"Eh?" said George.
+
+"Certain signs," Mr. Marrapit repeated, with the smoothness of flowing
+oil, "which I recollect in my Rose. The mark, for example, where her
+left ear was abrased by Mr. Wyvern's blood-thirsty bull-terrier."
+
+George stooped to the cats. Pointing, he cried triumphantly: "Yes, and
+there is the mark!"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Marrapit pronounced mildly. "Yes, but you are now looking at
+Mrs. Major's cat."
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major. "Hem!"
+
+Like one who has stepped upon hot iron George started back, stared
+aghast. A further "hem," with which a chuckle was mixed, came from Mrs.
+Major; from my collapsed Mary upon the edge of the sofa a sniff that was
+mingled groan and sob.
+
+George put a hand to his head. This young man's senses were ajostle and
+awhirl. Well he remembered that mark which by disastrous blunder he had
+indicated on Mrs. Major's cat; vainly he sought it on his own. Yet his
+was the Rose. Was this a nightmare, then, and no true thing? He put his
+hand to his head.
+
+"Looking at Mrs. Major's cat," repeated Mr. Marrapit, his tone smooth as
+the trickle of oil.
+
+George fought on. "Quite so. Quite so. I know that. That is what makes
+it so extraordinary--that this cat which you call Mrs. Major's and think
+is the Rose should have the very mark that our Rose had."
+
+"But our Rose has not--if that is she."
+
+"Ah! not now," George said impressively. "Not now. It healed. Healed
+months ago. Don't you remember my saying one morning, 'The Rose's ear is
+quite healed now'?"
+
+"I do not, sir," snapped Mr. Marrapit, with alarming sharpness.
+
+"Oh!" said George. "Oh!"
+
+"Hem!" fired Mrs. Major. "Hem! Hem!"
+
+"That tail," spoke Mr. Marrapit, a sinister hardness now behind the
+oiliness. "Mark those tails."
+
+George marked. To this young man's disordered mind the room took on the
+appearance of a forest of waving tails.
+
+"Well?" rapped Mr. Marrapit. "You note those tails? Mrs. Major's cat has
+a verdant tail, a bush-like tail. Yours has a rat tail. Do you recollect
+my pride in the luxuriousness of the Rose's tail?"
+
+George blundered along the path he had chosen. "Formerly," he said, "not
+latterly. Latterly, if you remember, there was a remarkable falling off
+in the Rose's tail. Her tail moulted. It shed hairs. I remember worrying
+over it. I remember--"
+
+A voice from the sofa froze him. "Oh, George, don't, don't!" moaned his
+Mary.
+
+Recovering his horror, he turned stiffly upon her. "If you mean me, Miss
+Humfray, you forget yourself. I do not understand you. Kindly recollect
+that I have another name."
+
+The hideous frown he bent upon his Mary might well have advertised
+the sincerity of his rebuke. He faced Mr. Marrapit, blundered on. "I
+remember noticing how thin the Rose's tail was getting." He gathered
+confidence, pushed ahead. "You have forgotten those little points, sir.
+Upset by your loss you have jumped at the first cat like the Rose that
+you have seen." He took new courage, became impressive. "You are making
+a fearful mistake, sir--an awful mistake. A mistake at which you will
+shudder when you look back--"
+
+"Incredible!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit, swelling as a few moments earlier he had swollen, this
+time burst to speech. He raised his clenched fists; in immense volume of
+sound exploded. "Incredible!"
+
+George misinterpreted; was shaken, but hurried on. "It is. I admit it.
+It is an incredible likeness. But look again, sir."
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave instead a confused scream.
+
+Alarmed, George made as if to plunge on with further protests. "George!
+George!" from his Mary checked him. Furious, he turned upon her; and in
+that moment Mr. Marrapit, recovering words, turned to Mrs. Major.
+
+"As you have restored my treasure to my house, Mrs. Major, so now
+silence this iniquitous man by telling him what you have told me. I
+implore speed. Silence him. Utterly confound him. Stop him from further
+perjury before an outraged Creator rains thunderbolts upon this roof."
+
+With a telling "Hem!" the masterly woman cleared for action. "I will,
+Mr. Marrapit," she bowed. She murmured "Rosie, Rosie, ickle Rosie!" The
+cat Mr. Marrapit had lifted from her lap sprang back to that enticing
+cushion.
+
+Gently stroking its queenly back, to the soft accompaniment of its
+majestic purr, in acid-tipped accents she began to speak.
+
+She pointed at the cat that now sat at George's crime-steeped boots.
+"When I was out this morning I found that cat in a little copse on the
+Shipley Road. At first I thought it was our darling Rose. Suddenly I
+heard voices. I did not wish to be seen, because, dear Mr. Marrapit, if
+it was the Rose I had found, I wanted to bring it to you alone--to be
+the first to make you happy. So I slipped into a disused hut that stands
+there. Footsteps approached the door and I went into an inner room."
+
+Mrs. Major paused; shot a stabbing smile at George.
+
+And now my miserable George realised. Now, visible at last, there rushed
+upon him, grappled him, strangled him, the sinister something whose
+presence he had scented on entering the apartment. No sound came from
+this stricken man. He could not speak, nor move, nor think. Rooted he
+remained; dully gazed at the thin lips whence poured the flood that
+engulfed and that was utterly to wreck him.
+
+The masterly woman continued. She indicated the rooted figure in the
+middle of the room, the collapsed heap upon the sofa's edge. "Those two
+entered. He had a basket. Oh, what were my feelings when out of it he
+took our darling Rose!"
+
+For the space of two minutes the masterly woman advertised the emotions
+she had suffered by burying her face in the Rose's coat; rocking gently.
+
+Emerging, she gulped her agitation; proceeded. "I need not repeat again
+all the dreadful story I heard, Mr. Marrapit? Surely I need not?"
+
+"You need not," Mr. Marrapit told her. "You need not."
+
+With a masterly half-smile, expressive of gratitude through great
+suffering, Mrs. Major thanked him. "Indeed," she went on, "I did not
+hear the whole of it. It was so dreadful, I was so horrified, that I
+think I fainted. Yes, I fainted. But I heard them discuss how he had
+stolen the Rose so they might marry on the reward when it was big
+enough. He had kept the darling till then; now it was her turn to take
+charge of it--"
+
+Mrs. Major ceased with a jerk, drew in her legs preparatory to flight.
+
+For the rooted figure had sprung alarmingly to life. George would not
+have his darling Mary blackened. He took a stride to Mrs. Major; his
+pose threatened her. "That's untrue!" he thundered.
+
+"Ho!" exclaimed Mrs. Major. "Ho! A liar to my face! Ho!"
+
+"And you are a liar," George stormed, "when you say--"
+
+"Silence!" commanded Mr. Marrapit. "Do not anger heaven yet further. Can
+you still deny--?"
+
+"No!" George said very loudly. "No! No! I deny nothing. But that woman's
+a liar when she says Miss Humfray discussed the business with me, or
+that it was Miss Humfray's turn to take the damned cat. Miss Humfray
+knew nothing about it till I told her. When she heard she said it was
+wrong and tried to make me take the cat back to you."
+
+In his wrath George had advanced close to Mrs. Major. He stretched a
+violent finger to an inch from her nose. "That's true, isn't it? Have
+the grace to admit that."
+
+Indomitable of purpose, the masterly woman pressed back her head as far
+as the chair would allow, tightened her lips.
+
+The violent finger followed. "Say it's true!" George boiled.
+
+His Mary implored: "Oh, George, don't, don't!"
+
+The furious young man flamed on to her. "Be quiet!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit began a sound. The furious young man flamed to him: "You be
+quiet, too!" He thrust the dreadful finger at Mrs. Major. "Now speak the
+truth. Had Miss Humfray anything to do with it?"
+
+This tremendous George had temporary command of the room. The masterly
+woman for once quailed. "I didn't hear that part," she said.
+
+George drew in the fearful finger. "That's as good as the truth--from
+you." He rounded upon Mr. Marrapit. "You understand that. This has been
+my show."
+
+"A blackguard show," pronounced Mr. Marrapit. "A monstrous and an
+impious show. A--"
+
+"I don't want to hear that. Whatever it is you are the cause of it. If
+you had done your duty with my mother's money--"
+
+A figure passed the open French windows along the path. Mr. Marrapit
+shouted "Fletcher!" The gardener entered.
+
+"But you've betrayed your trust," George shouted. He liked the fine
+phrase and repeated it. "You've betrayed your trust!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit assumed his most collected air. "Silence. Silence, man of
+sin. Leave the house. Return thanks where thanks are due if I do not
+hound the law upon you. Take that girl. That miserable cat take. Hence!"
+
+Mary got to her feet, put a hand on her George's arm. "Do come, dear."
+
+The wild young man shook her off. "I'll go when it pleases me!" he
+shouted at Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"You shall be arrested," Mr. Marrapit returned. He addressed Mary.
+"Place that cat in that basket Carry it away."
+
+George stood, heaving, panting, boiling for effective words, while
+his Mary did as bade. Awful visions of her George, fettered between
+policemen, trembled her pretty fingers. At last she had the basket
+strapped, raised it.
+
+"Come, George," she said; and to Mr. Marrapit, "I'm so sorry, Mr.
+Marrapit. I--"
+
+It gave her furious George a vent. "Sorry! What are you sorry about?
+What have you done?" He roared over to Mrs. Major: "What other lies have
+you been telling?" He lashed himself at Mr. Marrapit. "Set the law on
+me? I jolly well hope you will. It will all come out then how you've
+behaved--how you've treated me. How you've betrayed--"
+
+"Fletcher," Mr. Marrapit interrupted, "remove that man. Take him out.
+Thrust him from the house."
+
+"Me?" said Mr. Fletcher. "Me thrust him? I'm a gardener, I am; not a--"
+
+"Duty or dismissal," pronounced Mr. Marrapit. "Take choice." He turned
+to the window. "Come, Mrs. Major."
+
+George dashed for him. "You're not going till I've done with you!"
+
+Violence was in his tone, passion in his face.
+
+Alarmed, "Beware how you touch me!" called Mr. Marrapit; caught Mr.
+Fletcher, thrust him forward. "Grapple him!" cried Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Mr. Fletcher was violently impelled against George; to save a fall
+clutched him. "Don't make a scene, Mr. George," he implored.
+
+George pushed him away. Mr. Fletcher trod back heavily upon Mr.
+Marrapit's foot. Mr. Marrapit screamed shrilly, plunged backwards into a
+cabinet, overturned it, sat heavily upon its debris.
+
+A laugh overcame George's fury. He swung on his heel; called "Come" to
+his Mary; stalked from the house.
+
+As they passed through the gate, "Oh, Georgie!" his Mary breathed. "Oh,
+Georgie!"
+
+He raged on to her: "What on earth made you say you were sorry? You've
+no spirit, Mary! No spirit!"
+
+The tremendous young man stalked ahead with huge strides.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In deep melancholy, sore beneath the correction Mr. Marrapit had heaped
+upon him, Mr. Fletcher wandered from the study; turned as he reached the
+path. "Me grapple him!" said Mr. Fletcher. "Me a craven! Me thrust
+him from the house! It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a
+Ju-jitsu."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Agony In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Silent, gloom-ridden, my sniffing Mary, my black-browed George laboured
+to the station. Silent they sat upon a bench waiting the London train.
+
+George bought his Mary a piece of chocolate from the automatic machine;
+she was a forlorn picture as with tiny nibbles she ate it, tears in her
+pretty eyes. In the restaurant George bought himself a huge cigar. This
+man was a desperate spectacle as with huge puffs he smoked, hands deep
+in pockets, legs thrust straight, brows horribly knitted.
+
+They had no words.
+
+The train came in. George found an empty compartment; helped his poor
+Mary to a corner; roughly dumped the cat-basket upon the rack; moodily
+plumped opposite his Mary.
+
+They had no words.
+
+It was as the train moved from the third stop that Mary, putting a giant
+sniff upon her emotions, asked her George: "Wher--where are we going,
+dear?"
+
+It was not until the fifth stop that George made answer. "Those
+Battersea digs," he told her.
+
+They had no words.
+
+At Queen's Road station gloomily they alighted; silently laboured to the
+house of Mrs. Pinking.
+
+George answered her surprise. "Miss Humfray will have these rooms again,
+Mrs. Pinking, if you will be so kind; and I--" He checked. "Could you
+let us have some tea, Mrs. Pinking? Afterwards I'll have a talk with
+you. We've got into a--We're very tired. If you could just let us have
+some tea, then I'll explain."
+
+In silence they ate and drank. George was half turned from the table,
+gloomily gazing from the window. Tiny sniffs came from his Mary; he had
+no words for her; looked away.
+
+But presently there was a most dreadful choking sound. He sprang
+around. Most painfully his Mary was spluttering over a cup of tea. With
+trembling hands she put down the cup; her face was red, convulsively
+working.
+
+George half rose to her. "Don't cry, darling Mary-kins. Don't cry."
+
+She set down the cup; swallowed; gasped, "I'm not crying--I'm
+la-laughing," and into a pipe of gayest mirth she went.
+
+Gloom gathered its sackcloth skirts; scuttled from the room.
+
+George roared with laughter; rocked and roared again. When he could
+get a catch upon his mirth there was the clear pipe of his Mary's glee,
+clear, compelling, setting him off again. When she would gasp for breath
+there was her dear George, head in those brown hands, shaking with
+tremendous laughter--and she must start again.
+
+She gasped: "George! If you could have seen yourself standing there
+telling those awful stories--!"
+
+He gasped: "When I mistook the cats--!"
+
+She gasped: "Mr. Marrapit's face--!"
+
+He gasped: "Mrs. Major's--!"
+
+The exhaustion of their mirth gave them pause at last. George wiped his
+running eyes; Mary tremendously blew her little nose, patted her gold
+hair where it eagerly straggled.
+
+"I feel better after that," George said.
+
+She told him, "So do I--heaps. It's no good being miserable over what is
+past, is it, dear?"
+
+"Not a bit; not the slightest. Come and sit on the sofa and let's see
+where we are." She put that golden head upon his manly shoulder; he
+fetched his right arm about her; she nursed her hands upon the brown
+fist that came into her lap; that other brown hand he set upon the
+three.
+
+Together they viewed their prospects--gloomy pictures.
+
+"But we're fairly in the cart," George summed up. "We are, you know."
+
+His ridiculous Mary gave him that lovers' ridiculous specific. "We've
+got each other," she told him, snuggling to him.
+
+George kissed her. He fumbled in his pockets. "I've got just about three
+pounds--over from what Marrapit gave me for the clue-hunting. I say,
+Mary, it's pretty awful."
+
+She snuggled the closer.
+
+Early evening, tip-toeing through the window, was drawing her dusky
+hangings about the room when at length George withdrew the brown hands;
+stirred.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon a little sigh Mary let go the string that held the dreams she had
+been dreaming. Like a great gay bundle of many-coloured toy balloons
+suddenly released, they soared away. She came to the desperate present;
+noted her George filling his pipe.
+
+He got upon his legs; paced the floor, puffing.
+
+It was his characteristic pose when he was most tremendous. She watched
+this tremendous fellow adoringly.
+
+He told her: "I've settled it all, Marykins. I've fixed it all up. We'll
+pull through right as rain." He caught the admiring glance in his Mary's
+eye; inhaled and gusted forth a huge breath of smoke; repeated the fine
+sentence. "We'll pull through right as rain."
+
+"Dear George!" she softly applauded.
+
+He pushed ahead. "There's this locum tenens I was going to take up in
+the North. I haven't offed that yet--haven't refused it, I mean. Well,
+I shall take it. The screw's pretty rotten, but up in the North--in the
+North, you know--well, it's not like London. It's cheap--frightfully
+cheap. You can live on next to nothing--"
+
+She pushed out the irritating, practical, womanish side of her. "_Can_
+you? How do you _know_, Georgie?"
+
+We men hate these pokes at our knowledge; women will not understand
+generalisations. George jerked back: "How do I _know_? Oh, don't
+interrupt like that, Mary. Everybody knows that living is cheap in the
+North--in the _North_."
+
+"Of course," she excused herself. "Of course, dear, I see."
+
+"Well, where was I? Frightfully cheap, so the screw won't matter. I'll
+take the job, dearest. I'll take it for next month. And--listen--we'll
+marry and go up there together and live in some ripping little rooms.
+There!"
+
+She was flaming pink; could only breathe: "Georgie, _dear!_"
+
+He stopped his pacing to give her a squeezing hug, a kiss upon the
+top of the gold hair. Then he went through the steps of a wild dance.
+"Marry!" he cried. "Marry, old girl, and let everybody go hang! We'll
+have to work it through a registrar. I'm not quite sure how it's done,
+but I'll find out tomorrow. I know you both have to have been resident
+in the place for a week or so--I'll fix all that. Then we'll peg along
+up in the North; and we'll look out for whatever turns up, and we'll
+save, and in time we'll buy a practice just like Runnygate."
+
+Now he sat beside his Mary again; with a tremendous brush painted in
+more details of this entrancing picture. Every doubt, every difficulty
+he threw to tomorrow--that glad sea in which youth casts its every
+trouble. Was he sure he still had the refusal of this locum?--rather!
+but he would make certain, tomorrow. Was he sure they both could live
+upon the salary?-rather! he would prove it to-morrow. Could they really
+get married at a registrar's within a few days?-rather! he'd fix that up
+to-morrow. As to the money necessary for the marriage, necessary to tide
+over the days till the locum was taken up, why, he knew he could borrow
+that--from the Dean or from Professor Wyvern--to-morrow.
+
+They were upon the very crest and flood of their delight when George
+noted the gathering dusk.
+
+"I say, it's getting late!" he exclaimed. "I must fix it up with Mrs.
+Pinking. We've made no arrangement with her yet."
+
+Mary agreed: "Yes, dear." She went on, pretty eyes shining, face aglow:
+"Oh, Georgie, think of the last time you brought me here! I had nothing
+to expect but going out to work again; and you weren't qualified. And
+now--now, although we've lost our little Runnygate home" (she could not
+stop a tiny sigh), "we're actually going to be married in a few days!
+Georgie, I shan't sleep for hoping everything will turn out all right
+to-morrow."
+
+"It will," George told her. "It will. Right as rain, old girl."
+
+Her great sigh of contentment advertised the drink she took of that
+sparkling future. "Think of us being together always in a week or
+so--belonging! Where will you stay till then? Quite close. Get a room
+quite close, Georgie?"
+
+He stared at her. "Why, you old goose, I'm not going."
+
+She echoed him: "Not going?"
+
+"Of course not. I'm going to get a bedroom here, and we'll have all our
+meals and everything in here. We're not going to part again, Marykins.
+Not much!"
+
+That maddening handicap beneath which the sweetest women trudge shackled
+Mary, deluged this joy.
+
+"Oh, Georgie!" she said; and again trembled, "Oh, Georgie!"
+
+My impulsive George scented the damp. "Well?" he asked. "Well?
+Whatever's--?"
+
+"Oh, Georgie, you can't have a room here. We can't have all our meals
+together here?"
+
+He realised the trouble. He broke out: "Why ever not? Why ever--?"
+
+"It wouldn't be _right_! Georgie, it _wouldn't_ be right!"
+
+Her impulsive George choked for words. "Not right! 'Pon my soul, Mary, I
+simply don't understand you sometimes. Not _right! Why_ isn't it right?"
+
+It was so difficult to tell. "You don't understand, dear--"
+
+"No, I'm damned if I do. I'm sorry, Mary, but you are so funny, you
+women. It's so exasperating after the--the devil of a day I've had. Just
+when I've fixed up everything you turn round and"--he threw out an angry
+hand--"_Why_ isn't it right?"
+
+This poor little Mary clung to her little principles. "Don't you see?
+we're engaged, dear; and being engaged, we oughtn't to live alone like
+this. People would--"
+
+He began to rave. Certainly he had had a devil of a day; and this was a
+maddening buffet.
+
+"People!" he cried. "People! People! You're always thinking of people,
+you women! Who's to know? Who on earth's to know?"
+
+The instinct of generations of training gave her the instinctive reply
+in the instinctive sweet little tone: "We should know, Georgie," she
+said.
+
+He flung up his arms: "Oh, good God!"
+
+He swallowed his boiling irritation; laughed 'spite himself; went to
+his Mary. "Mary, don't be such an utter, utter goose. It's too, too
+ridiculous."
+
+She took his kiss; but she held her stupid little ground.
+
+"It wouldn't be right, Georgie, _really_!"
+
+Her George clanged the bell with a furious stroke that brought Mrs.
+Pinking in panic up the stairs. Holding himself very straight, speaking
+in sentences short and hard, paying to his Mary no smallest attention,
+he made the arrangements. Miss Humfray would take on her bedroom again.
+By the week. If Mrs. Pinking would be so kind as to allow them the same
+terms. He thanked her. That was settled, then. He would look in in the
+morning. He would say good night, Mrs. Pinking.
+
+Mrs. Pinking gave him good night; busied herself with the tea-things.
+
+Her presence enabled this brutal George to preserve his stony bearing;
+denied his pretty Mary opportunity to melt him with her tears.
+
+Hard as flint, "Well, good night," he said to her. "I'll look in
+to-morrow morning."
+
+Upon a little sniff, "Good night," she whispered; strangled an "Oh,
+George! George!"
+
+She followed him to the door. He was down the stairs before she could
+command her voice for: "Where shall you go, George?"
+
+With the reckless fury of one who sets forth to plunge into the river,
+he called back, "I? I? Oh, _anywhere--anywhere_. Who cares where _I_
+go?"
+
+The hall door slammed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late into that night while a young woman sobbed her pretty eyes out upon
+a pillow in a back room of Meath Street, Battersea, a young man, who
+furiously had been pacing London, paced and repaced the street from end
+to end, gazing the windows of the house where she lay. This young man
+muttered, gesticulated, groaned. "Oh, damn!" was his song. "Oh, Mary!
+Oh, what a cursed brute I am!"
+
+It was a bitter ending to a fearful day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George spent the night--such of it as remained after his bitter moanings
+outside his Mary's lodging--with the Mr. Franklyn who had accompanied
+him on that little "stroll up west" that had terminated in the cab
+adventure nearly three months before. Of all his student friends who
+would give him a bed, Mr. Franklyn, because in a way associated with
+his Mary, had come most prominently into his mind. That same association
+gave him a lead from which to pour out his reply to Mr. Franklyn's
+rallying, as they sat at supper, upon his gloom.
+
+"You remember that day after the July exam, when we went up west
+together?" he began.
+
+Mr. Franklyn remembered; in some gloom shook his head over the
+recollection. "That waitress you left me with in the shop," said Mr.
+Franklyn sadly, "she--"
+
+"Oh, hang the waitress! Listen, Franklyn, After I left you I turned
+up past the Marble Arch--" He proceeded with some account of the love
+between him and his Mary; skipped all details relating to the cat; came
+to the impending marriage; sought advice upon the prospects of a man
+marrying on a locum's earnings.
+
+Mr. Franklyn listened with great sympathy. "It's a rum thing you should
+be placed like that, George," he said. "I'm in just the same position."
+
+George exclaimed eagerly--in love, youth warms to a companion--"You
+are!"
+
+"Well, not exactly," Mr. Franklyn admitted. "Very nearly. I've got
+myself into a brute of a fix over a girl in the lager-beer garden at
+Earl's Court. She--"
+
+George bounced from the table, seized his hat. "Who cares a damn about
+your lager-beer girls?" he shouted; slammed from the house.
+
+It was then, while Mr. Franklyn laboriously indited a letter in reply to
+one received from the lager-beer girl's mother, that George paced Meath
+Street.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+At breakfast with Mr. Franklyn upon the following morning, he was in
+brighter trim--apologised for his over-night abruptness; apologised for
+the hasty meal he was making; announced that he was off to see his Mary.
+
+As he lit his pipe, "I'll see you at hospital this morning some time,
+old chap," he said. "I shall dash in to fix up with the Dean about
+taking Bingham's place in that practice up in Yorkshire."
+
+Mr. Franklyn prodded for another slice of bacon. "You can't, old chap,"
+he remarked. "That's filled."
+
+George shouted: "Filled! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, taken--gone. Simpson's got it--ten days ago."
+
+An icy chill smote my poor George. After the dreadful loss of
+Runnygate everything had depended upon this appointment with its salary
+considerably above the average.
+
+"Simpson! Simmy got it!" he shouted. "What the blazes does Simmy mean by
+taking it? He knew I was after it."
+
+"My good lad, you never came near the place after you'd qualified. If
+Simmy hadn't taken it someone else would. Bingham was in a hurry."
+
+Blankly George stared before him. At length, "I suppose there are
+several other jobs going?" he asked.
+
+"None on the Dean's list," said Mr. Franklyn. "I was looking at it last
+night."
+
+Beneath this new distress George postponed the burning desire to clasp
+his Mary in his arms and beg forgiveness. He hurried to hospital; made
+for the Dean's office. Here disaster was confirmed. Simpson had already
+taken the Yorkshire place; the Dean had no other posts on his lists.
+"Only this Runnygate practice," he said. "I haven't seen you since you
+qualified. Can you raise the price?"
+
+George, rising and making for the door, could only shake his head. There
+was something at his throat that forbade speech. Runnygate and all that
+Runnygate meant--the dear little home, the tight little practice, the
+tremendous future--was a bitter picture now that it was so utterly lost;
+now that even this place in Yorkshire was also gone.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Great pity!" the Dean told him. "I've kept it for you. Lawrence, the
+man who's leaving it, is coming to see me at five this evening. I shall
+have to help him find another purchaser."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The infernal something in George's throat gripped the harder as he took
+his way to his Mary. He cursed himself for that hideous cat enterprise.
+Had he never undertaken it, had he continued instead to entreat and
+implore, there was always the chance that his uncle would have relented
+and advanced the money sufficient for Runnygate.
+
+As things were, he stood for ever damned in his uncle's eyes; further,
+by his folly he had encompassed his darling Mary's ejection from a home
+where she might comfortably have stayed till he was in position to marry
+her; further, he had just missed the assistantship which, to his present
+frame of mind, seemed the sole post in the world that would give him
+sufficient upon which to call his Mary wife.
+
+The desperate thoughts augmented his fearful remorse at his treatment
+of her overnight. Arrived at Meath Street, admitted by Mrs. Pinking, he
+bounded up the stairs, tremendous in his agony of love.
+
+His Mary had her pretty nose pressed flat against the window. With dim
+eyes she had been gazing for her George in the opposite direction from
+that he had approached.
+
+He closed the door behind him.
+
+"Mary!" he called, arms outstretched.
+
+Into them she flung herself.
+
+They locked in a hug so desperate as only love itself could have borne.
+
+He poured out his remorse; beside him on the sofa she patted those brown
+hands. He told his gloomy tale; she patted the more lovingly--assured
+him that, if the Yorkshire place had failed, something equally good
+would turn up.
+
+But he was in desperate despondency. "It's all that infernal cat, Mary,"
+he groaned; she kissed that knotted forehead.
+
+He asked her: "By the way, where's that other brute?--the beast we
+brought here with us?"
+
+She peered low. "I've just fed the poor thing."
+
+Attracted by her movement, that orange cat which had wrought the fearful
+disaster came forth from beneath the table.
+
+"G-r-r-r!" George growled; stamped his foot.
+
+The orange cat again took shelter.
+
+"Ah, don't frighten it, dear," Mary told him. "It's done no harm."
+
+George rose. He was too tremendously moved to contain himself while
+seated. "Done no harm!" he cried. He took a step to the window. "Done
+no--" He stopped short. "Oh, Lord! I say, Mary! Oh, Lord! here's Bill!"
+
+Mary fluttered to his side; saw Bill Wyvern disappear beneath the porch
+of the door.
+
+A knock; shuffling in the passage; footsteps up the stairs.
+
+"By Gad! I'd forgotten all about old Bill," George said.
+
+Then Bill entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The most tremendous crises between man and man commonly begin with
+exchange of the customary banalities. Charlotte Corday gave Marat
+_"Bonsoir, citoyen,"_ ere she drove her knife. This was no cloak to hide
+her purpose. We are so much creatures of convention that the man who
+sets out, hell in breast, to avenge himself upon another, cannot forbear
+to give him greeting before ever he comes upon the matter between them.
+
+George, involuntarily straightening his back as he remembered how
+desperately he had hoodwinked this Bill, had upon a fool's errand packed
+him to that inn, as involuntarily passed him the customary words.
+
+"Hullo, Bill!" he said. "How on earth did you know I was here?"
+
+He awaited the burst of reproach; the torrent of fury.
+
+These did not come. About Bill's mouth, as from George to Mary he
+glanced, there were the lines of amusement; no menace lay in his clear
+blue eyes.
+
+"Went to look for you at the hospital," Bill replied. "Met that man
+Franklyn, and he told me you very probably were here."
+
+George pushed ahead with the banalities. "Surprised to see Miss
+Humfray here?" he asked. "You met her, of course, at my uncle's
+while--while"--this was dangerous ground, and he hurried over it--"while
+I was away," he said quickly; blew his nose.
+
+Bill told him: "Yes. Not a bit surprised." The creases of amusement
+became more evident. He shook Mary's hand.
+
+"Ah!" George said. "Um! Quite so. Sit down, Bill."
+
+They took seats. Constraint was upon these people; each sat upon the
+extreme edge of the chair selected.
+
+After a pause, "You've been to Herons' Holt, then?" George remarked.
+
+"Yesterday. Yesterday night."
+
+"Ah! Yesterday. Thursday, so to speak. Um! Margaret quite well?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+The deadly pause came on again. Mary looked appealing to her George.
+George, his right boot in a patch of sunlight, earnestly was watching it
+as, twisting it this way and that, the polish caught the rays.
+
+It lay with herself to make a thrust through this fearful silence. Upon
+a timid little squeak she shot out: "Mr. Marrapit quite well?"
+
+"Quite," Bill told her. "Quite. A little bit--" He checked; again the
+silence fell.
+
+Mary no longer could endure it. Impulsively leaning forward, arms
+outstretched, hands clasped, "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!" she cried. "You're _not_
+angry with George, _are_ you? He _couldn't_ help sending you to that
+inn, _could_ he?"
+
+Constraint fled. "Of course I'm not," Bill declared. "Not a bit. I've
+come here to congratulate you both. I--"
+
+George sprang forward; grasped Bill's hand. "Good old buck!" he cried.
+"Good old Bill! I'm awfully sorry, Bill. You're a stunner, Bill. Isn't
+he a stunner, Mary?"
+
+"He _is_ a stunner," Mary agreed.
+
+The stunner, red beneath this praise, warmly returned George's grip.
+When they released, "I say, George, you _are_ an ass, you know," he
+said. "Why on earth didn't you tell me what you were up to?"
+
+"You weren't there, old man, when it began. You were in London. How on
+earth was I to know your paper would come plunging into the business?"
+The memory of the pains that paper had caused him swept all else from
+George's mind. Indignation seized him. "It was a scandalous bit of work,
+Bill. 'Pon my soul it's simply shameful that a newspaper can go and
+interfere in a purely private matter like that. Yes, it is, Mary. Don't
+you interrupt. Bill understands. I don't blame you, Bill; you were doing
+your duty. I blame the editor. What did he want to push into it for? I
+tell you that paper drove me up and down the country till I was pretty
+well dead. It's all very well for you to grin, Bill."
+
+"I'm not grinning."
+
+"You are grinning." George threw a bitter note into his declamations.
+"Of course, you can afford to grin. What was agony to me was hot
+stuff for you. I expect you've made your reputation over this show.
+Everything's turned out all right for you--"
+
+Bill took that bitter note. "Rather!" he broke in. "Rather! I pulled it
+off, didn't I? I found the rotten cat, didn't I? I wasn't made a fool of
+for two days in a country inn, was I? I've not got the sack all through
+you, have I?"
+
+George instantly forgot his personal sorrows. "Oh, I say, Bill, you
+haven't, have you?"
+
+Bill, not expecting the interruption, confessed a little lamely: "No,
+I haven't. I _haven't_--as it turns out. But I might have--if it wasn't
+for--" He paused a moment; sadly said, "Anyway, just as I thought I'd
+got her, I've lost Margaret again."
+
+In those fierce days when her Bill was the Daily Special Commissioner,
+Margaret had confided in Mary the promise Mr. Marrapit had made should
+Bill find the cat. Now Mary was filled with sympathy. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!"
+she cried, "I _am_ sorry! What has happened? How do you know? Do tell us
+everything of when you went to Herons' Holt last night."
+
+Bill took a chair. He said gloomily: "There's not much to tell. I felt
+I couldn't wait at that infernal inn any longer, so I left the detective
+in charge, went to the inn where we'd found George, didn't see him, and
+came back to Herons' Holt. I saw old Marrapit for about two minutes in
+the hall. He foamed at me all about George, foamed out that I was one of
+George's friends, and foamed me out of the door before I could get in a
+word. Said I never was to come near the place again. I asked him about
+Margaret, and he had a kind of fit--a kind of fit."
+
+George said softly: "I know what you mean, old man."
+
+"A kind of fit," Bill gloomily repeated. Then he struck one clenched
+fist into the palm of the other hand. "And hang it!" he cried, "I've won
+her! According to the bargain old Marrapit made with me, I've won her.
+If it had not been for me you wouldn't have taken the cat to that hut
+in the wood, and if you hadn't taken it there Marrapit wouldn't have it
+_now_. It's through me he got it, isn't it?"
+
+"Bill," George told him, "it is. You rotted my show all right. No
+mistake about that."
+
+It was a fearful situation as between these two young men. In silence,
+in gloom, they gazed each upon the ground.
+
+Bill took a glance at George's face; turned hurriedly from the despair
+there stamped; set his eyes upon my pretty Mary. He gave a sigh.
+
+"But, George, old man, you've come out of it the better," he said.
+"You've lost the money you wanted, but you've got your--you've got Miss
+Humfray. I've lost my--I've lost Margaret."
+
+In great melancholy George rose; crossed to his Mary; sat upon the arm
+of her chair; caressed her pretty shoulders.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about, Bill. Bill, we're in a most
+fearful hole. We haven't got a sou, and I've got no work. You're doing
+well. You're making money. You're bound to get Margaret in time. As for
+us--"
+
+Bill was deeply stirred. "I say, I am sorry," he told them. He sat up
+very straight. "Look here, don't get down on your luck. Come out and
+have lunch with me and tell me just how you're fixed. If a small loan
+will do you any good I'm certain my guv'nor will stand it. He likes
+you awfully, George. Come on. I shan't see you again otherwise for some
+time. I'm off on another Special Commissioner job for the _Daily_, you
+know."
+
+George gave a slight shudder. "Oh? Thank goodness, I'm not the object of
+it this time. What is it?"
+
+"What is it? Why, you've seen the _Daily_ this morning, haven't you?"
+
+"I'll never open the infernal thing again."
+
+Bill did not heed the aspersion. "It's really rather funny, you know,"
+he went on. "Look here." He tugged at his pocket; produced a _Daily_.
+
+A pencil dislodged by the paper fell to the ground; rolled beneath the
+table.
+
+Bill stooped after it. The cat that lay there, disturbed, walked
+forth--arching its proud orange back.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+With eyes that goggled tremendously Bill stared at it; with a finger
+that shook he pointed at it; turned his head to George. "George," he
+asked, "whose cat is that?"
+
+George looked at Mary; gave a bitter little laugh. "I suppose it's
+ours," he replied. "Eh, Mary?"
+
+A sad little smile his Mary gave, "I suppose it is," she agreed.
+
+From one to the other Bill looked, suspicion in those goggling eyes.
+
+"You _suppose_ it is?" he emphasised. Again he swiftly looked from
+George to Mary; again stared at the splendid orange form. "George," he
+said sharply--"George, what is that cat's name?"
+
+George regarded him with a whimsical smile. "Bill, you old duffer, you
+don't think it's the Rose, do you?"
+
+Yet more sharply than before Bill spoke. "George, is that cat's name
+Abishag?"
+
+"_Abishag?_ What an awful--"
+
+Bill turned from him with an impatient gesture. He called to the cat,
+"Abishag! Abishag!"
+
+With upreared tail the fine creature trotted to him.
+
+"Good Lord!" George broke out. "Is that _your_ cat, Bill?"
+
+Bill turned upon him. "_My_ cat! You know thundering well it's not my
+cat."
+
+"But it knows you, Mr. Wyvern," Mary told him wonderingly.
+
+There was sorrow, a look of pity in this young man's eyes as
+reproachfully he regarded my Mary.
+
+He swung round upon George. "George, you've made a fool of me once--"
+
+"I don't know what on earth's the matter with you," George told him.
+
+With knitted brows Bill for a moment searched his face. "I ask you
+point-blank," he said slowly. "Did you steal this cat, George?"
+
+George struck the stern young man upon the back. "Is _that_ what you're
+driving at, you old ass? Stole it! D'you suppose I'll ever _touch_ a
+cat again? That's the infernal cat Mrs. Major left in that hut when she
+hooked off the Rose. Marrapit told you, didn't he?"
+
+Into a chair Bill collapsed--legs thrust straight before him, head
+against the cushioned back. He gasped. "George, this is a licker, a
+fair licker." Enormously this staggered man swelled as he inhaled a
+tremendous breath; upon a vast sigh he let it go. "That cat--" he said.
+He got to his legs and paced the room; astonished, Mary and George
+regarded him. "That cat--I'll bet my life that's the cat!"
+
+
+
+III.
+
+My Mary was trembling before this fearful agitation. For support she
+took her George's hand. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!" she cried, "whatever is
+it? Have we got into another awful trouble through those dreadful,
+_dreadful_ cats?"
+
+"Look at the _Daily_," Bill said. "Look at the _Daily_. George, give me
+a cigarette. I must smoke. This is an absolute licker."
+
+My frightened Mary jumped for the paper where it had fallen; spread
+it upon the table; opened it. "Oh, George!" she cried. "Oh, George!";
+pressed a pretty finger upon these flaming words:
+
+  ANOTHER CAT OUTRAGE.
+
+  AMAZING STORY.
+
+  MR. VIVIAN HOWARD'S FAMOUS PET
+
+  STOLEN WHILE BACK TURNED.
+
+  "DAILY" OFFER.
+
+  500 POUNDS FOR OUR READERS.
+
+My Mary's golden head, my George's head of brown, pressed and nudged as
+with bulging eyes they read the crisp, telling paragraphs that followed
+in a column of leaded type.
+
+Readers of the _Daily_, it appeared, would be astonished to learn
+that the abduction of Mr. Marrapit's famous cat, the Rose of
+Sharon--concerning the recovery of which all hope had now been
+abandoned--had been followed by a similar outrage of a nature even more
+sensational, more daring.
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard, the famous author and dramatist, whose new novel,
+"Amy Martin," _Daily_ readers need not be reminded, was to start in the
+_Daily_ as a feuilleton on Monday week, had been robbed of his famous
+cat "Abishag the Shunamite."
+
+The whole reading public were well aware of Mr. Howard's devotion to
+this valuable pet. Scarcely a portrait of Mr. Howard was extant that did
+not show Abishag the Shunamite by his side.
+
+It was a melancholy coincidence that in the interview granted to the
+_Daily_ by Mr. Howard last Saturday he had told that Abishag had sat
+upon his table while every single word of the manuscript of "Amy
+Martin" was penned. He had admitted that she was his mascot. Without
+her presence he could not compose a line. _Daily_ readers would imagine,
+then, Mr. Howard's prostration at his appalling loss.
+
+The occurrence had taken place on Monday night. As _Daily_ readers were
+well aware, Mr. Howard had for some weeks been staying at the house of
+his widowed mother in Sussex Gardens. Nightly at nine it had been his
+custom to stroll round the gardens before settling down for three hours'
+work upon "Amy Martin." During his stroll Abishag would slip into the
+gardens, meeting her master upon his completion of the circuit.
+
+According to this practice, Mr. Howard, on Monday night, had followed
+his usual custom. He believed he might possibly have walked a little
+slower than usual as he was pondering deeply over his final revise of
+the proof of "Amy Martin." Otherwise his programme was identical with
+its usual performance. But upon his return the cat was not to be found.
+
+Theories, suggestions, investigations that had already been made,
+followed. The _Daily_ abundantly proved that the cat had not strayed
+but had been deliberately stolen by someone well acquainted with Mr.
+Howard's nightly promenade; pointed out that this second outrage showed
+that no one possessing a valuable cat was safe from the machinations of
+a desperate gang; asked, Where are the police? and concluded with the
+pica sub-head:
+
+  "DAILY" OFFER.
+
+The _Daily,_ it appeared, on behalf of the whole reading public of Great
+Britain, the Colonies, America, and the many Continental countries
+into whose tongues Mr. Howard's novels had been translated, offered 500
+pounds to the person who would return, or secure the return of, Abishag
+the Shunamite, and thus restore peace to the heart of England's premier
+novelist, whose new story, "Amy Martin," would start in the _Daily_ on
+Monday week.
+
+A sketch-map of Sussex Gardens, entitled "Scene of the Outrage," showed,
+by means of dotted lines, (A) Route taken by Mr. Vivian Howard; (B)
+Route into Gardens taken by cat; (C) Supposed route taken by thief.
+
+Mr. Henry T. Bitt had achieved a mammoth splash.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The golden head and the head of brown lifted simultaneously from the
+paper; stared towards Bill, pacing, smoking.
+
+Tremendous possibilities flickered in George's mind; made his
+voice husky. "Bill," he asked, "do you believe that cat is this
+Abishag--Vivian Howard's Abishag?"
+
+Bill nodded absently. This man's thoughts were afar--revolving this
+situation he had named "licker." "Look at the description," he said.
+"Look at the cat. It knows its name, doesn't it? I've seen a life-size
+painting of Abishag. It's a cert."
+
+George dropped upon the sofa; his thoughts, too, rushed afar.
+
+Tremendous possibilities danced a wild jig in his Mary's pretty head;
+trembled her voice. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!" she appealed, "what does it mean?
+What does it mean--for us?"
+
+"It's a licker," Bill told her. "It's a fair licker."
+
+Mary dropped by her George's side; to his her thoughts rushed.
+
+Presently Bill threw away his cigarette; faced George. He said slowly:
+"Mrs. Major must have stolen this cat, George. But how did she get it?
+She's been at Herons' Holt the last week."
+
+Mary gave a little jump. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern, she went up to town on Monday
+till Tuesday."
+
+Bill struck a hand upon the table. "That fixes it. By gum, that
+fixes it! I tell you what it is, George. I tell you what it is. I
+believe--yes, I believe she'd seen this cat before, knew it was like the
+Rose, and meant to have palmed it off on old Marrapit herself so as to
+get him to take her back. Margaret told me all about her getting the
+sack. I bet my life that's it. By gum, _what_ a splash for the _Daily!_"
+And upon this fine thought the young man stood with sparkling eyes.
+
+George timidly touched the castles he had been building: "Bill, where do
+I--where do Mary and I come in?"
+
+Bill clapped his hands together. "Why, my good old buck, don't you
+see?-don't you realise?-you get this L500. Just do you, eh?"
+
+_"Runnygate!"_ George burst out with a violent jerk; clasped his Mary in
+an immense hug.
+
+_"Runnygate!"_ came thickly from his Mary, face squashed against this
+splendid fellow.
+
+When they unlocked my blushing Mary suddenly paled: "Oh, but you, Mr.
+Wyvern--you found it really."
+
+"Not much," Bill declared. "Not likely. You found it. I couldn't have
+the reward, anyway. I'm one of the staff." He repeated the fine words:
+"One of the _staff_."
+
+She made to thank him. "Besides," he interrupted her, "I'll make a lot
+out of it. I'm doing awfully well. The chief was awfully pleased with
+the way I ran that Rose of Sharon job. Of course this is twice as big a
+splash, because Vivian Howard's mixed up in it. Look what a boost it
+is for our new serial--look what a tremendous ad. it is for the paper!
+Directly Howard came to us the editor dropped the Rose like a hot coal;
+plumped for this and put me in charge. Now I've pulled it off, just
+think how bucked up he'll be! It's a licker, George--a licker all
+round."
+
+"Bill," George said, "I can't speak about it. My head's whirling. I
+believe it's a dream."
+
+Indeed this George had rushed through so much in the past hours, was
+now suddenly come upon so much, that the excitement, as he attempted
+realisation, was of stunning effect. He sat white, head in hands.
+
+"Jolly soon show you!" Bill cried. "Come to the office straight away.
+Bring the cat. I was to meet the chief and Vivian Howard there at
+twelve."
+
+George sprang to his feet; ruddy again of face. "Come on!" he cried.
+"Bill, if it isn't his Abishag, if there's any hitch, I'll--I'll--oh,
+Mary, don't build too highly on this, old girl!"
+
+"Shall I come, Georgie?"
+
+George hesitated. "Better not. Better not, if you don't mind. I couldn't
+bear to see your face if Vivian Howard says it isn't the cat."
+
+White-faced, between tears and smiles, his Mary waved from the window as
+George, cat under arm, turned the corner with Bill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Excursions In A Newspaper Office.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Silent, white and stern of face, occupied with immense thoughts, the
+young men sat as the cab they had found outside Battersea Park station
+sped them towards Fleet Street.
+
+They were upon the Embankment, rattling beneath Hungerford Bridge, when
+from the tangle of his plans Bill at last drew a thread; weaved it to
+words. "George, we mustn't tell the chief anything about your being
+mixed up with the other cat outrage--the Rose. It might be awkward."
+
+George shifted the hand that firmly held Abishag on the seat between
+them; squeezed that fine creature's head to him with his arm; with his
+handkerchief wiped his sweating palms.
+
+"It's _going_ to be awkward," he said--"damned awkward! I see that. Oh,
+Bill!"
+
+He groaned. This young man was in desperate agitation.
+
+"Buck up," Bill told him. "This is a cert. Safe as houses."
+
+"All very well for you, Bill. I seem to have been living one gigantic
+lie all the past week."
+
+"Well, you have, you know," Bill granted. "By gum, you have! But you
+aren't now. You didn't steal _this_ cat. You found it just as anyone
+else might have found it. All I tell you is: Don't say anything about
+the Rose. Don't open your mouth, in fact. Leave the gassing to me."
+
+It was upon this repeated injunction that my poor George tottered up the
+stairs of the _Daily_ office, cat in arm, in Bill's wake.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Bill rapped upon Mr. Bitt's door; poked in his head at the answering
+call; motioned my trembling George to wait; stepped over the threshold.
+
+Mr. Bitt sat behind a broad table; before him, deep in an armchair,
+smoking a cigarette, lay Mr. Vivian Howard.
+
+"Ah! Wyvern," spoke Mr. Bitt. "Mr. Howard, this is Mr. Wyvern, one of my
+brightest young men. From to-day he takes in hand this business."
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard did not rise; stretched a white hand to Bill. This
+man had an appreciation of the position he had won. This man stood for
+English literature. Within a wide estimate of public opinion, and
+within that immense estimate of him that was his own, this man stood for
+literature. In a manner worthy of his proud standing this man comported
+himself. The talents that were his belonged to the nation, and very
+freely he gave them to the people. This man did not deny himself to the
+crowd as another might have denied himself. Of him it never could be
+said that he missed opportunity to let the public feed upon him. This
+man made such opportunities. Where excitement was, there this man,
+pausing between his novels, would step in. If a murder-trial had the
+public attention this man would write upon that trial; if interest
+were fixed upon a trade dispute this man would by some means draw that
+interest upon himself. Nothing was too small for this man. Walking the
+public places he did not shrink from recognition; he gladly permitted
+it. Not once but many times, coming upon a stranger reading one of
+his novels, he had announced himself; autographed the copy. This man's
+character was wholly in keeping with his gifts.
+
+Yet beautifully he could preserve the dignity that was his right.
+Preserving it now, he gave his hand to Bill but did not move his
+position.
+
+"It is a great pleasure to me to meet you, sir," Bill told him.
+
+"You have only lately joined the ranks of journalism, Mr. Bitt tells
+me," Mr. Vivian Howard graciously replied. "It is the stepping-stone to
+literature. Never forget that. Never lose sight of that. I shall watch
+your career with the greatest interest."
+
+Mr. Bitt broke in a trifle impatiently: "Well, well, we must keep to
+business just now. Mr. Howard will kindly give us a daily interview,
+Wyvern, until the feuilleton starts, or until the cat is found. You'd
+better--"
+
+Bill took a pace back; faced them both. "No need," he cried in bursting
+words. "The cat is found!"
+
+The cigarette dropped from Mr. Vivian Howard's lip to his waistcoat. He
+brushed at it violently; burnt his fingers; brushed again; swore with
+a ferocity that would have astonished his admirers; sprang to his feet
+amid a little shower of sparks and cloud of ash. "Found!" he exclaimed;
+jabbed a burnt finger in his mouth and thickly repeated, "Found!"
+
+Mr. Bitt simultaneously rose. "Found?" cried Mr. Bitt. "What the--"
+
+"I have the finder here," Bill told them; stepped to the door.
+
+On legs that shook my agitated George advanced.
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard drew forth his suffering finger with a loud pop; made
+three hasty strides to George; took the cat. "Abishag!" he cried in
+ecstasy, "Abishag!"
+
+In very gloomy tones Mr. Bitt announced that he was bust. "Well, I'm
+bust!" he said. "I'm bust. It _is_ your cat, eh?"
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard nodded the head he was bending over his Abishag.
+
+Bill signalled to George a swift wink. George drew a handkerchief; wiped
+from his face the beaded agony.
+
+Mr. Bitt dropped heavily into his seat. "Of course I'm very glad, Mr.
+Howard," he announced stonily. "_Very_ glad. At the same time--at the
+same _time_--" He turned upon George with a note that was almost savage.
+"You, sir!" he cried.
+
+George started painfully.
+
+"How the--How did you come to find this cat?"
+
+George forced his pocket handkerchief into his trousers pocket; rammed
+it down; cleared his throat; ran a finger round the inside of his
+collar; cleared again; said nothing.
+
+Bill hurried to the rescue. "Like this, sir. Let me tell you. This
+gentleman was at Paltley Hill, a place on the South-Western. He used to
+live there. He found the cat in a deserted kind of hut, took charge of
+it. I happened to meet him and brought him along. By Jove, sir, only
+published this morning and found within a few hours! It's pretty good,
+isn't it?"
+
+Mr. Bitt spoke with great disgust. "Pretty _good!_" he cried bitterly.
+"Pretty _good!_" He had no fit words in which to express his feeling.
+"Kindly step in there a moment," he addressed George.
+
+George trembled into the adjoining room indicated; closed the door.
+
+Mr. Bitt turned to Mr. Vivian Howard. "It will always be a great
+pleasure to me," he told the great novelist, "to think that the _Daily_
+was the means of restoring your cat."
+
+"I never shall forget it," Mr. Vivian Howard assured him. The famous
+author placed himself upon the couch, caressed Abishag the Shunamite
+upon his lap. "Never shall forget it. It was more than good of you,
+Mr. Bitt, to take up the matter and offer so handsome a reward. It was
+public-spirited."
+
+Mr. Bitt's deprecatory little laugh had a rueful note.
+
+He nerved himself to step upon the delicate ground that lay between him
+and his purpose. This man had not known Mr. Vivian Howard sufficiently
+long to put to him directly that the reward was offered, and gladly
+agreed to by Mr. Howard, for purposes of respective self-advertisement
+agreeable at once to the paper and to the man who stood for English
+literature. He nerved himself:
+
+"When you say public-spirited, Mr. Howard, you use the right term. I do
+not attempt to deny that I fully appreciated that this reward for your
+cat, and the interview you agreed to give us, would greatly benefit
+our paper. Why should I deny it? We editors must be business men first,
+nowadays; journalists afterwards. But I do ask you to believe me, Mr.
+Howard, that in offering this reward, in arousing this interest, I had
+in view also a matter that has been my aim since I was at College."
+
+Mr. Bitt's college was Rosa Glen College, 156 Farmer Road, Peckham; but
+he preferred the briefer designation.
+
+"The aim," he continued, gathering courage as he detected in Mr. Vivian
+Howard's face a look which seemed to show that the famous author was
+advancing upon the delicate ground to meet him, "the aim of attracting
+the people to good literature."
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard, as standing for that literature, took the implied
+compliment with a bow. "I congratulate you, Mr. Bitt."
+
+"Now, the _Daily_ is young," Mr. Bitt earnestly continued. "The
+_Daily_ has yet to make its way. If your 'Amy Martin' starts in normal
+circumstances a week hence, it will mean that this contribution to our
+highest literature will fall only to a comparatively small circle
+of people. But if--but if, as I had hoped, we had morning by morning
+attracted more and more readers by the great interest taken in your
+loss, 'Amy Martin' would then have introduced our best fiction to a
+public twice or thrice as large as our present circulation represents."
+
+"You mean--?" the great author inquired.
+
+"I mean," Mr. Bitt told him, "that for this reason I cannot but
+regret that the excitement aroused should disappear with our issue of
+to-morrow. I mean, Mr. Howard, that for the reason I have named I
+do think it is almost our _duty_--our _duty_, for the reason I have
+named--to conceal the cat's recovery for--er--for a day or so."
+
+Mr. Bitt blew his nose violently to conceal his agitation. This man was
+now in the precise centre of the delicate ground; was in considerable
+fear that it might open and swallow him.
+
+But Mr. Vivian Howard's reply made that ground of rock-like solidity.
+
+"As you put the matter, Mr. Bitt, I must say I agree. It would be false
+modesty on my part to pretend I do not recognise the worth of 'Amy
+Martin,' and the desirability of introducing it as widely as possible.
+Certainly that could best have been accomplished by Abishag not having
+been recovered so soon. But as it is--I do not see what can be done. You
+do not, of course, suggest deliberate deception of the public?"
+
+"Certainly _not!_" cried Mr. Bitt with virtuous warmth. Since this was
+precisely what he did suggest and most earnestly desired, he repeated
+his denial: "Certainly _not_! At the same time--"
+
+"One moment," Mr. Vivian Howard interrupted. "This cat was obviously
+stolen by someone and placed in the hut where it was found. Very well.
+We prosecute. We prosecute, and I could give you every morning my views
+on the guilt or otherwise--"
+
+Mr. Bitt shook his head. "I had thought of that. It won't do. It won't
+do, Mr. Howard. For one thing, a rigorous prosecution and sentence might
+create bad feeling against the paper. You have no idea how curious the
+public is in that way. For another, you, as the injured party, ought
+not to comment; and certainly I could not publish your views. The matter
+would be _sub judice_ directly arrest was made; and I once got into very
+serious trouble over a _sub judice_ matter--very serious trouble indeed.
+I shall not touch the law, Mr. Howard. It is unwise. At the same time,
+I think the thief should be made to suffer--be given a thorough fright.
+Now, if we inform the public that practically our Special Commissioner
+has his hand on the cat--which will be perfectly true--and is almost
+certain as to the identity of the thief--if we keep this up for the
+few days necessary for the publication of those magnificent articles
+of yours on 'What my Loss means to Me,' we shall be accomplishing three
+excellent objects. We shall be terrifying an evil-doer--we may take it
+for granted he reads the _Daily_; we shall be giving the public those
+articles which most certainly ought not to be lost to literature; and we
+shall be widening the sphere of influence of 'Amy Martin.'"
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard did not hesitate. "It is impossible to override your
+arguments, Mr. Bitt. I think we shall be doing _right_."
+
+Mr. Bitt concealed his immense joy. "I am convinced of it, Mr. Howard,"
+he said. "_Convinced_. The modern editor and the man of letters of your
+standing have enormous responsibilities."
+
+Impelled by the virtuous public duty they were performing, the two men
+silently grasped hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A Perfectly Splendid Chapter.
+
+
+Mr. Bitt turned to Bill; indicated the door behind which my poor George
+was wrestling in prayer. "The only difficulty is with that chap in
+there. He knows the cat is found! How can we--"
+
+"If you will leave that to me, sir," Bill told him, "I think I can
+arrange it without difficulty."
+
+"Or danger?" added Mr. Vivian Howard, who, standing for English
+literature, would not lightly imperil his integrity.
+
+"Or the least danger," Bill affirmed. "He's a kind of friend of
+mine--did I mention that, sir? I'll fix it up in a minute."
+
+He stepped briskly to George; closed the door behind him.
+
+George said faintly: "Say it quick, Bill. Quick."
+
+"You've got it, old man. Got it."
+
+George rose to his feet; stretched his arms aloft; wildly waved them.
+The tremendous shout for which he opened his mouth was stayed upon his
+lips by Bill's warning finger. He hurled himself on a couch; rolled in
+ecstasy.
+
+Rapidly Bill outlined the proposals. Then he struck a heavy hand upon
+George's shoulder. "And I've got it too!" he cried in an exultant
+whisper. "I've got it too! I've got Margaret!"
+
+"Margaret! However--?"
+
+"Like this. Plain as a fiddle-stick. To-morrow, when we get out this
+story about practically having our hand on the thief, I shall go bang
+down to Marrapit with the paper and tell him I know it was Mrs. Major
+who took the cat. You can imagine the state that'll put 'em both in.
+Then--then, my boy, I shall say 'Let Margy and me carry on and fix it
+up forthwith, and I'll promise Mrs. Major shall never hear a word more
+about the matter.' He'll agree like a shot. The chief's not going to
+prosecute, you see; so neither Mrs. Major nor you ever will hear a word
+more. George, we've done it! Done it! You've got your Mary and I've got
+my Margy!"
+
+With swelling bosoms, staring eyes, upon this tremendous happening the
+two young men clasped hands; stood heavily breathing. These men were
+glimpsing heaven.
+
+When they unlocked, George said: "There's one thing, Bill. Go in and
+tell that precious pair they can hold over the discovery till they
+please and that I shall never breathe a word. But tell 'em this: I don't
+agree unless I have my cheque right away."
+
+Bill advised no stipulations.
+
+George stood firm: "I don't care a snap, Bill. I will have it now. I've
+been badgered about quite enough. I want to feel safe. I'll either lose
+it all or have it all. No more uncertainty. Anything might happen during
+the week, for all I know."
+
+Bill took the message.
+
+Upon immediate payment Mr. Bitt at first stuck. "He might turn back on
+us, or start blackmailing us. He may have stolen the cat himself for all
+we know."
+
+"All the more likely, in that case, to keep his mouth shut," commented
+Mr. Vivian Howard. Despite he stood for literature, this man had strong
+business instincts.
+
+Bill urged compliance. He knew this finder of the cat; would speak for
+him as for himself.
+
+Mr. Bitt put a quill into his inkstand; took George's name; wrote a
+slip; handed it to Bill. "Take that to the cashier, Wyvern. He'll give
+you the cheque. Clear your friend out. Eh? No--no need for me to see him
+again. Of course you must get his story of how he found the cat, to use
+when the 'What my Loss means to Me' articles run out. Then come back and
+we'll fix up to-morrow's account."
+
+A cabman drove to St. Peter's Hospital a seemingly insane young man,
+who bounded into the cab with a piece of paper in his hand; who sang and
+rattled his heels upon the foot-board, shouted to passers-by; who paid
+with two half-crowns; who bounded, paper still fluttering in hand, up
+the steps of the Dean's entrance with a wild and tremendous whoop.
+
+George had scarcely explained to the Dean an incoherent story of L500
+won through a newspaper competition, when the Mr. Lawrence, M.R.C.S.,
+L.R.C.P., whose practice was at Runnygate, arrived.
+
+Informally the purchase was at once arranged; a further meeting settled.
+George bolted to another cab; drove to Meath Street by way of the
+florist near Victoria Station; took aboard an immense basket of flowers.
+
+At the house he gathered the flowers beneath his arm; on the way
+upstairs shifted them to his hands; flung wide the door.
+
+His Mary, white, a tooth on a trembling lip, her pretty hands clasped,
+was before him. In a great whirling shower he flung the blossoms about
+her; then took her in his arms.
+
+"Runnygate, Mary! Darling old girl, Runnygate!"
+
+He kissed his Mary.
+
+Last Shots from the Bridge.
+
+If you had patience for another peep from the bridge that I can build,
+you might catch a glimpse or so.
+
+Bending over you might see Bill seated at the editor's table of the
+editor's room of a monstrously successful monthly magazine of most
+monstrous fiction that Mr. Bitt's directors have started; Margaret, that
+sentimental young woman, by her husband's side is correcting the
+proofs of a poem signed "Margaret Wyvern." It is of the most exquisite
+melancholy.
+
+Bending over you might see George upon one of the summer evenings when,
+his duties through, he is taking his Mary for a drive in the country
+behind that rising seaside resort Runnygate. They are plunging along in
+a tremendous dogcart drawn by an immense horse. George is fully occupied
+with his steed; Mary, peeping at constant intervals through the veil
+that hides the clear blue eyes and the ridiculous little turned-up nose
+of her baby, at every corner says: "Oh, George! Georgie, do be careful!
+We were on _one_ wheel then, I _know_ we were!" But along the level the
+wind riots at her pretty curls as she sits up very straight and very
+proud, smiling at this splendid fellow beside her.
+
+Bending over you might see the garden of Herons' Holt, Mr. Fletcher
+leading from the house the fat white pony and tubby wide car which Mrs.
+Marrapit, formerly Mrs. Major, has prevailed upon her husband to buy.
+The pony has all the docile qualities of a blind sheep, but Mr. Fletcher
+is in great terror of it. When, while being groomed, it suddenly lifts
+its head, Mr. Fletcher drops his curry-comb and retires from the stall
+at great speed. "It's 'ard," says Mr. Fletcher--"damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a 'orse-breaker."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger, by
+Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger
+by Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Once Aboard The Lugger
+
+Author: Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6410]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 8, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Skip Doughty, Charles Aldarondo
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER--
+
+THE HISTORY OF GEORGE AND HIS MARY
+
+By
+
+A. S. M. HUTCHINSON
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ The Author's Advertisement Of His Novel
+
+
+ BOOK I.
+
+ _Of George._
+
+ I. Excursions In A Garden
+ II. Excursions In Melancholy
+ III. Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped
+ IV. Excursions In A Hospital
+ V. Upon Life: And May Be Missed
+ VI. Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine
+ VII. Moving Passages With A Heroine
+ VIII. Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine
+
+
+ BOOK II.
+
+ _Of his Mary._
+
+ I. Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine
+ II. Excursions In Vulgarity
+ III. Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine
+ IV. Excursions In A Nursery
+ V. Excursions At A Dinner-Table
+
+
+ BOOK III.
+
+ _Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: Of Love and of War._
+
+ I. Notes On The Building Of Bridges
+ II. Excursions Beneath The Bridge
+ III. Excursions In Love
+ IV. Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter
+ V. Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens
+ VI. A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens
+
+
+ BOOK IV.
+
+ _In which this History begins to rattle._
+
+ I. The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will
+ Lose Nothing By Not Accompanying Him
+ II. An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages
+ III. Alarums And Excursions By Night
+ IV. Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath
+ V. Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet
+ VI. The Girl Comes Near The Lugger
+
+
+ BOOK V.
+
+ _Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: Of George in Torment._
+
+ I. Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped
+ II. Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays
+ III. Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit
+ IV. The Rape Of The Rose
+ V. Horror At Herons' Holt
+ VI. A Detective At Herons' Holt
+ VII. Terror At Dippleford Admiral
+ VIII. Panic At Dippleford Admiral
+ IX. Disaster At Temple Colney
+
+
+ BOOK VI.
+
+ _Of Paradise Lost and Found._
+
+ I. Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise
+ II. Mrs. Major Finds The Lock
+ III. Mrs. Major Gets The Key
+ IV. George Has A Shot At Paradise
+ V. Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira
+ VI. Agony In Meath Street
+ VII. Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street
+ VIII. Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street
+ IX. Excursions In A Newspaper Office
+ X. A Perfectly Splendid Chapter
+
+ _Last Shots from the Bridge_
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS NOVEL.
+
+This book has its title from that dashing sentiment, "Once aboard the
+lugger and the girl is mine!" It is not to be read by those who in
+their novels would have the entertainment of characters that are
+brilliant or wealthy, noble of birth or admirable of spirit. Such have
+no place in this history. There is a single canon of novel-writing
+that we have sedulously kept before us in making this history, and
+that is the law which instructs the novelist to treat only of the
+manner of persons with whom he is well acquainted. Hence our
+characters are commonplace folks. We have the acquaintance of none
+other than commonplace persons, because none other than commonplace
+persons will have acquaintance with us.
+
+And there are no problems in this history, nor is the reader to be
+tickled by any risks taken with nice deportment. This history may be
+kept upon shelves that are easily accessible. It is true that you will
+be invited to spend something of a night in a lady's bedroom, but the
+matter is carried through with circumspection and dispatch. There
+shall not be a blush.
+
+Now, it is our purpose in this advertisement so clearly to give you
+the manner of our novel that without further waste of time you may
+forego the task of reading so little as a single chapter if you
+consider that manner likely to distress you. Hence something must be
+said touching the style.
+
+We cannot see (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a
+story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to
+come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience.
+Something of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in
+this history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or divert
+your attention as you read; but we too must be permitted to swing our
+legs and slide off upon matters that interest us, and that indirectly
+are relevant to the history. Life is not compounded solely of action.
+One cannot rush breathless from hour to hour. And, since the novel
+aims to ape life, the reader, if the aim be true, cannot rush
+breathless from page to page. We can at least warrant him he will not
+here.
+
+These are the limitations of our history; and we admit them to be
+considerable. Upon the other hand, the print is beautifully clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As touching the title we have chosen, this was not come by at the cost
+of any labour. Taken, as we have told, from that dashing sentiment,
+"Once aboard the lugger and the girl is mine!" it is a label that might
+be applied to all novels. It is a generic title for all modern novels,
+since there is not one of these but in this form or that sets out the
+pursuit of his mistress by a man or his treatment of her when he has
+clapped her beneath hatches. This is a notable matter. The novelist
+writes under the influences and within the limitations of his age, and
+the modern novelist correctly mirrors modern life when he presents
+woman as for man's pursuit till he has her, and for what treatment he
+may will when he captures her. The position is deplorable, is
+productive of a million wrongs, and, happily, is slowly changing; but
+that it exists is clear upon the face of our social existence, and is
+even advertised between the sexes in love: "You are mine" the man
+says, and means it. "I am yours" the woman declares, and, fruit of
+generations of dependence, freely, almost involuntarily, gives
+herself.
+
+But of this problem (upon which we could bore you to distraction) we
+are nothing concerned in our novel. Truly we offer you the pursuit of
+a girl; but my Mary would neither comprehend this matter nor wish to
+be other than her George's. From page 57 she waves to us; let us hurry
+along.
+
+
+
+
+  _.... Who so will stake his lot,
+  Impelled thereto by nescience or whim,
+  Cupidity or innocence or not,
+  On Chance's colours, let men pray for him._
+                         RALPH HODGSON.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+Of George.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Excursions In A Garden.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mr. Christopher Marrapit is dozing in a chair upon the lawn; his
+darling cat, the Rose of Sharon, is sleeping on his lap; stiffly
+beside him sits Mrs. Major, his companion--that masterly woman.
+
+As we approach to be introduced, it is well we should know something
+of Mr. Marrapit. The nervous business of adventuring into an assembly
+of strangers is considerably modified by having some knowledge of the
+first we shall meet. We feel more at home; do not rush upon subjects
+which are distasteful to that person, or of which he is ignorant;
+absorb something of the atmosphere of the party during our exchange of
+pleasantries with him; and, warmed by this feeling, with our most
+attractive charm of manner are able to push among the remainder of our
+new friends.
+
+Unhappily, the friendly chatter of the neighbourhood, which should
+supply us with something of the character of a resident, is quite
+lacking at Paltley Hill in regard to Mr. Marrapit. Mr. Marrapit rarely
+moves out beyond the fine wall that encircles Herons' Holt, his
+residence; with Paltley Hill society rarely mixes. The vicar, with
+something of a frown, might tell us that to his divers parochial
+subscription lists Mr. Marrapit has consistently, and churlishly,
+refused to give a shilling. Professor Wyvern's son, Mr. William
+Wyvern, has been heard to say that Mr. Marrapit always reminded him
+"of one of the minor prophets--shaved." Beyond this--and how little
+helpful it is!--Paltley Hill society can give us nothing.
+
+In a lower social grade of the district, however, much might be
+learned. In the kitchens, the cottages, and the bar-parlours of
+Paltley Hill, Mr. Marrapit is considerably discussed. Nicely mannered
+as we are, servants' gossip concerning one in our own station of life
+is naturally distasteful to us. At the same time it is essential to
+our ease on being introduced that we should know something of this
+gentleman. Assuring ourselves, therefore, that we shall not be
+prejudiced by cheap chatter, let us hear what the kitchens, the
+cottages, and the bar-parlours have to say.
+
+Let it, at least, be written down; we shall know how to value such
+stuff.
+
+Material for this gossip, then, is brought into the kitchens, the
+cottages, and the bar-parlours by Mr. Marrapit's domestic staff.
+
+Mrs. Armitage, his cook, has given tales of his "grimness" to the
+cottages where her comfortable presence is welcomed on Sunday and
+Thursday afternoons. She believes, however, that he must be a
+"religious gentleman," because (so she says) "he talks like out of the
+Bible."
+
+This would seem to bear out Mr. William Wyvern's allusion to the minor
+prophet element of his character.
+
+It is the habit of Clara and Ada, his maids, squeezing at the gate
+from positions dangerous to modesty into which their ardent young men
+have thrust them--it is their habit, thus placed, to excuse
+themselves from indelicate embraces by telling alarming tales of Mr.
+Marrapit's "carrying on" should they be late. He is a "fair old
+terror," they say.
+
+The testimony of Mr. Fletcher, his gardener, gloomy over his beer in
+the bar-parlours, seems to support the "stinginess" that the vicar has
+determined in Mr. Marrapit's character. Mr. Fletcher, for example, has
+lugubriously shown what has to be put up with when in the service of a
+man who had every inch of the grounds searched because a threepenny
+bit had been dropped. "It's 'ard--damn 'ard," Mr Fletcher said on that
+occasion. "I'm a gardener, I am; not a treasure-'unter." Murmurs of
+sympathy chorused endorsement of this view.
+
+Finally there are the words of Frederick, son of Mrs. Armitage, and
+assistant to Fletcher, whose pleasure it is to set on end the touzled
+hair of the youth of Paltley Hill by obviously exaggerated stories of
+Mr. Marrapit's grim rule.
+
+"'E's a tryant," Frederick has said.
+
+Such is an epitome of the kitchen gossip concerning Mr. Marrapit; it
+is wholesome to be away from such tattling, and personally to approach
+the lawn whereon its subject sits.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+This lawn, a delectable sight on this fine July afternoon, is set
+about with wire netting to a height of some six feet. By the energies
+of Mr. Fletcher and Frederick the sward is exquisitely trimmed and
+rolled; and their labours join with the wire netting to make the lawn
+a safe and pleasant exercise ground for Mr. Marrapit's cats.
+
+Back in the days of Mr. Marrapit's first occupancy of Herons' Holt,
+this man was a mighty amateur breeder of cats, and a rare army of cats
+possessed. Regal cats he had, queenly cats, imperial neuter cats; blue
+cats, grey cats, orange cats, and white cats--cats for which nothing
+was too good, upon which too much money could not be spent nor too
+much love be lavished. Latterly, with tremendous wrenchings of the
+heart, he had disbanded this galaxy of cats. Changes in his household
+were partly the cause of this step. The coming of his nephew, George,
+had seriously upset the peaceful routine of existence which it was his
+delight to lead; and a reason even more compelling was the gradual
+alteration in his attitude towards his hobby. This man perceived that
+the fancier's eye with which he regarded his darlings was becoming so
+powerful as to render his lover's eye in danger of being atrophied.
+The fancier's eye was lit by the brain--delighted only in "points," in
+perfection of specimen; the lover's eye was fed by the heart--glowed,
+not with pride over breed, but with affection for cats as cats. And
+Mr. Marrapit realised that for affection he was coming to substitute
+pride--that he was outraging the animals he loved by neglecting the
+less admirable specimens for those perfectly moulded; that even these
+perfect types he was abusing by his growing craze for breeding;
+polygamy in cats, he came to believe, desecrated and eventually
+destroyed their finer feelings.
+
+Therefore--and the coming of his nephew George quickened his
+determination--Mr. Marrapit dispersed his stud (the word had become
+abhorrent to him), keeping only four exquisite favourites, of which
+the Rose of Sharon--that perfect orange cat, listed when shown at the
+prohibitive figure of 1000 pounds, envy and despair of every cat-lover
+in Great Britain and America--was apple of his eye, joy of his
+existence.
+
+It was the resolve to keep but these four exquisite creatures that
+encompassed the arrival in Mr. Marrapit's household of Mrs. Major, now
+seated beside him upon the lawn--that masterly woman. The fine cat-
+house was pulled down, the attendant dismissed. A room upon the ground
+floor, having a southern aspect, was set apart as bed-chamber and
+exclusive apartment for the four favourites, and Mr. Marrapit sought
+about for some excellent person into whose care they might be
+entrusted. Their feeding, their grooming, constant attention to their
+wants and the sole care of their chamber, should be this person's
+duties, and it was not until a point some way distant in this history
+that Mr. Marrapit ceased daily to congratulate himself upon his
+selection.
+
+Mrs. Major, that masterly woman, was a distressed gentlewoman. The
+death of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning,
+seems to have given her her first chance of displaying those strong
+qualities which ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she
+was of those to whom plan of action comes instantly upon the arrival
+of opportunity. With lightning rapidity this woman welded chance and
+action; with unflagging energy and with dauntless perseverance used
+the powerful weapon thus contrived.
+
+The case of her husband's death may be instanced. Her hysterical
+distress on the day of the funeral (a matter that would have
+considerably surprised the late Mr. Major) was exchanged on the
+following morning for acute physical distress resulting from the means
+by which, overnight, she had tried to assuage her grief. Noticing, as
+she dressed, the subdued and martyrlike air that her face wore,
+noticing also her landlady's evident sympathy with the gentle voice
+and manner which her racking head caused her to adopt, Mrs. Major saw
+at once the valuable aid to her future which the permanent wearing of
+these characteristics might be. From that moment she took up the role
+of distressed gentlewoman--advertised by tight-fitting black, by
+little sighs, and by precise, subdued voice,--and in this guise
+sought employment at an Agency. The agency sent her to be interviewed
+by Mr. Marrapit. Ushered into the study, she, in a moment of masterly
+inspiration, murmured "The sweet! Ah, the sweet!" when viciously
+scratched by the Rose of Sharon, and upon those words walked directly
+in to Mr. Marrapit's heart.
+
+He required a lady--a _lady_ (Mrs. Major smiled deprecatingly) who
+should devote herself to his cats. Did Mrs. Major like cats? Ah, sir,
+she adored cats; her late husband--Words, at the recollection, failed
+her. She faltered; touched an eye with her handkerchief; wanly smiled
+with the resigned martyrdom of a true gentlewoman.
+
+As so-often in this life, the unspoken word was more powerful than
+mightiest eloquence. Mr. Marrapit is not to be blamed for the
+inference he drew. He pictured the dead Mr. Major a gentleman sharing
+with his wife a passion for cats; by memory of which fond trait his
+widow's devotion to the species would be yet further enhanced, would
+be hallowed.
+
+There is the further thought in this connection that once more, as so
+often in this life, the unspoken word had saved the lie direct. Once
+only, in point of fact, had Mrs. Major seen her late husband directly
+occupied with a cat, and the occasion had been the cause of their
+vacating their lodgings in Shepherd's Bush precisely thirty minutes
+later. Mr. Major, under influence of his unfortunate malady, with
+savage foot had sped the landlady's cat down a flight of stairs; and
+the landlady had taken the matter in peculiarly harsh spirit.
+
+All this, however, lay deeply hidden beneath Mrs. Major's unspoken
+word. The vision of a gentle Mr. Major that Mr. Marrapit conjured
+sealed the liking he had immediately taken to Mrs. Major, and thus was
+she installed.
+
+The masterly woman, upon this July afternoon, desisted from her
+crocheting; observed in the dozing figure beside her signs of
+movement; turned to it, ready for speech.
+
+This she saw. From the reluctant rays of a passing sun a white silk
+handkerchief protected a nicely polished head--a little bumpy, fringed
+with soft white hair. Beneath the head a long face, sallow of hue; in
+either cheek a pit; between them a dominating nose carrying
+eyeglasses. A long, spare body in an alpaca coat; long thin legs;
+brown morocco slippers without heels--upon the lap the peerless Rose
+of Sharon.
+
+"Time for the Rose to go in," Mrs. Major softly suggested.
+
+"The Rose," said Mr. Marrapit, passing a hand gently over the
+creature's exquisite form, "is, I fear, still ailing. Her sleep is
+troubled; she shivers. Her appetite?"
+
+"It is still poorly." The expression was that of a true distressed
+gentlewoman.
+
+"She has need," Mr. Marrapit said, "of the most careful attention, of
+the most careful dieting. Tend her. Tempt her. Take her."
+
+"I will, Mr. Marrapit." Mrs. Major gathered the Rose against her
+bosom. "You will not stay long? It is growing chilly."
+
+"I shall take a brief stroll. I am perturbed concerning the Rose."
+
+"Let me bring you a cap, Mr. Marrapit."
+
+"Unnecessary. Devote yourself, I pray, to the Rose. I am anxious.
+Nothing could console me should any evil thing come upon her. I am
+apprehensive. I look to you. I will take a stroll."
+
+Outside the wire fence Mr. Marrapit and Mrs. Major parted. The
+masterly woman glided swiftly towards the house; Mr. Marrapit, with
+bent head, passed thoughtfully along an opposite path.
+
+And immediately the sleeping garden awoke to sudden activity.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+First to break covert was Frederick, Mr. Fletcher's assistant.
+Abnormally steeped in vice for one so young (this wretched boy was but
+fourteen), with the coolness of a matured evil-doer Frederick
+extinguished his cigarette-end by pressing it against his boot-heel;
+dropped it amongst other ends, toilsomely collected, in a tin box;
+placed the box in its prepared hole; covered this with earth and
+leaves; hooked a basket of faded weeds upon his arm, and so appeared
+in Mr. Marrapit's path with bent back, diligently searching.
+
+Mr. Marrapit inquired: "Your task?"
+
+"Weedin'," said Frederick.
+
+"Weeding what?"
+
+"Weeds," Frederick told him, a little surprised.
+
+Mr. Marrapit rapped sharply: "Say 'sir'."
+
+"Sir," said Frederick, making to move.
+
+Mr. Marrapit peered at the basket. "You have remarkably few."
+
+"There ain't never many," Frederick said with quiet pride--"there
+ain't never many if you keep 'em down by always doin' your job."
+
+Mr. Marrapit pointed: "They grow thick at your feet, sir!"
+
+In round-eyed astonishment Frederick peered low. "They spring up the
+minute your back's turned, them weeds. They want a weed destroyer what
+you pours out of a can."
+
+"You are the weed-destroyer," Mr. Marrapit said sternly. "Be careful.
+It is very true that they spring up whenever _my_ back is turned.
+Be careful." He passed on.
+
+"Blarst yer back," murmured Frederick, bending his own to the task.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A few yards further Mr. Marrapit again paused. Against a laurel bush
+stood a pair of human legs, the seat of whose encasing trousers stared
+gloomily upwards at the sky. With a small twig he carried Mr. Marrapit
+tapped the seat. Three or four raps were necessary; slowly it
+straightened into line with the legs; from the abyss of the bush a
+back, shoulders, head, appeared.
+
+Just as the ostrich with buried head believes itself hid from
+observation, so it was with Mr. Fletcher, needing peace, a habit to
+plunge head and shoulders into a bush and there remain--showing
+nothing against the sky-line. Long practice had freed the posture from
+irksomeness. As a young man Mr. Fletcher had been employed in a public
+tennis-court, and there had learned the little mannerism to which he
+now had constant resort. In those days the necessity of freeing
+himself from the constant annoyance of nets to be tightened, or of
+disputes between rival claims to courts to be settled, had driven him
+to devise some means of escape. It was essential to the safety of his
+post, upon the other hand, that he must never allow it to be said that
+he was constantly absent from his duties. Chance gave him the very
+means he sought. Bent double into a bush one day, searching a tennis
+ball, he heard his name bawled up and down the courts; he did not
+stir. Those who were calling him stumbled almost against his legs; did
+not observe him; passed on calling. Thereafter, when unduly pressed,
+it became Mr. Fletcher's habit to bury head and arms in a bush either
+until the hue and cry for him had lulled, or until exasperated
+searchers knocked against his stern; in the latter event he would
+explain that he was looking for tennis balls.
+
+The habit had persisted. Whenever irritated or depressed (and this
+man's temperament caused such often to be his fate), he would creep to
+the most likely bush and there disappear as to his upper half. It is a
+fine thing in this turbulent life thus to have some quiet refuge
+against the snarlings of adversity.
+
+Mr. Fletcher drew up now and faced Mr. Marrapit; in his hand a snail.
+
+He said gloomily: "Another one"; held it towards his master's face.
+
+Here is an example of how one deception leads to another. This was no
+fresh snail; often before Mr. Marrapit had seen it. To lend motive to
+his concealment Mr. Fletcher carried always with him this same snail;
+needing peace he would draw it from his pocket; plunge to consolation;
+upon discovery exhibit it as excuse.
+
+"There is an abominable smell here," said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Mr. Fletcher inhaled laboriously. "It's not for me to say what it is."
+
+"Adjust that impression. Yours is the duty. You are in charge here.
+What is it?"
+
+"It's them damn cats."
+
+"You are insolent, sir. Your insolence increases. It grows
+unendurable."
+
+Mr. Fletcher addressed the snail. "He asts a question. I beg not to
+answer it. He insists. I tell him. I'm insolent." He sighed; the
+tyranny of the world pressed heavily upon this man.
+
+Mr. Marrapit advertised annoyance by clicks of his tongue: "You are
+insolent when you swear in my presence. You are insolent when you
+impute to my cats a fault that is not theirs."
+
+"I ain't blamin' the cats. It's natural to them. Whenever the wind
+sets this way I notice it. It's blamin' me I complain of. I don't draw
+the smell. I try to get away from it. It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a wind-shaft."
+
+Whenever Mr. Marrapit had occasion to speak with Mr. Fletcher, after
+the first few exchanges he would swallow with distinct effort. It was
+wrath he swallowed; and bitter as the pill was, rarely did he fail to
+force it down. Mr. Fletcher spoke to him as no other member of his
+establishment dared speak. The formula of dismissal would leap to Mr.
+Marrapit's mouth: knowledge of the unusually small wage for which Mr.
+Fletcher worked caused it to be stifled ere it found tongue. Thousands
+of inferiors have daily to bow to humiliations from their employers;
+it is an encouraging thought for this army that masters there be who,
+restrained by parsimony, daily writhe beneath impertinences from
+valuable, ill-paid servants.
+
+Mr. Marrapit swallowed. He said: "To the smell of which I complain my
+cats are no party. It is tobacco. The air reeks of tobacco. I will not
+have tobacco in my garden."
+
+Twice, with a roaring sound, Mr. Fletcher inhaled. He pointed towards
+an elm against the wall: "It comes from over there."
+
+"Ascertain."
+
+The gardener plunged through the bushes; nosed laboriously; his
+inhalations rasped across the shrubs. "There's no smoking here," he
+called.
+
+"Someone, in some place concealed, indubitably smokes. Yourself you
+have noticed it. Follow the scent."
+
+Exertion beaded upon Mr. Fletcher's brow. He drew his hand across it;
+thrust a damp and gloomy face between the foliage towards his master.
+
+"I'd like to know," he asked, "if this is to be one of my regular jobs
+for the future? Was I engaged to 'unt smells all day? It's 'ard-damn
+'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a blood-'ound."
+
+But Mr. Marrapit had passed on.
+
+"Damn 'ard," Mr. Fletcher repeated; drew the snail from his pocket;
+plunged to consolation.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+A short distance down the garden Mr. Marrapit himself discovered the
+source of the smell that had offended him. Bending to the left he came
+full upon it where it uprose from a secluded patch of turf: from the
+remains of a pipe there mounted steadily through the still air a thin
+wisp of smoke.
+
+Outraged, Mr. Marrapit stared; fuming, turned upon the step that
+sounded on the path behind him.
+
+The slim and tall young man who approached was that nephew George,
+whose coming into Mr. Marrapit's household had considerably disturbed
+Mr. Marrapit's peace. Orphaned by the death of his mother, George had
+gone into the guardianship of his uncle while in his middle teens. The
+responsibility had been thrust upon Mr. Marrapit by his sister. Vainly
+he had writhed and twisted in fretful protest; she shackled him to her
+desire by tearful and unceasing entreaty. Vainly he urged that his
+means were not what she thought; she assured him--and by her will bore
+out the assurance--that with her George should go her money.
+
+And the will, when read, in some degree consoled Mr. Marrapit for the
+sniffling encumbrance he took back with him to Herons' Holt after the
+funeral. It was a simple and trustful will--commended George into the
+keeping of her brother Christopher Marrapit; desired that George
+should be entered in her late husband's--the medical--profession; and
+for that purpose bequeathed her all to the said brother.
+
+George was eighteen when Mr. Marrapit entered him at St. Peter's
+Hospital in mild pursuit of the qualification of the Conjoint Board of
+Surgeons and Physicians. "I am entering you," Mr. Marrapit had said,
+consulting notes he had prepared against the interview--"I am entering
+you at enormous cost upon a noble career which involves, however, a
+prolonged and highly expensive professional training. Your mother
+wished it."
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not add that George's mother had expressly paid for
+it. This man had the knowledge that Youth would lose such veneration
+for Authority as it may possess were Authority to disclose the motives
+that prompt its actions.
+
+He continued: "For me this involves considerable self-denial and
+patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to
+your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy:
+you are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you.
+Stern life must be sternly faced."
+
+"I do not flinch," George had replied.
+
+"For your personal expenses I shall make you a small allowance. You
+will live in my house. Your wants should be insignificant."
+
+In a faint voice George squeezed in: "I have heard that one can work
+far better by living near the hospital in digs."
+
+"Elucidate."
+
+"Digs--lodgings. I have heard that one can work far better by living
+near the hospital in lodgings."
+
+"Adjust that impression," Mr. Marrapit had told him. "You are
+misinformed."
+
+George struggled: "I should have the constant companionship of men
+absorbed in the same work as myself. We could exchange views and notes
+in the evenings."
+
+"In your books seek that companionship. With them compare your views.
+Let your notes by them be checked. They are infallible."
+
+George said no more. At that moment the freedom of hospital as against
+the restraint of school, was a gallant steed upon which he outrid all
+other desires. The prospect of new and strange books in exchange for
+those he so completely abhorred, was an alluring delight. It is not
+until the bargain is complete that we discover how much easier to
+polish, and more comfortable to handle, are old lamps than new.
+
+Mr. Marrapit had referred to his notes: "In regard to the allowance I
+shall make you. I earnestly pray no spur may be necessary to urge you
+at your tasks. Yet, salutary it is that spur should exist. I arrange,
+therefore, that in the deplorable event of your failing to pass any
+examination your allowance shall be diminished."
+
+"Will it be correspondingly increased when I pass first shot?"
+
+The fearful possibilities of this suggestion Mr. Marrapit had
+hesitated to accept. Speculation was abhorrent to this man. Visions of
+success upon success demanding increase upon increase considerably
+agitated him. Upon the other hand, the sooner these successes were
+won, the sooner, he reflected, would he be rid of this incubus, and,
+in the long-run, the cheaper. He nerved himself to the decision. "I
+agree to that," he had said. "The compact is affirmed."
+
+It was a wretched compact for George.
+
+But the sum had not yet been fixed. George, standing opposite his
+uncle, twisted one leg about the other; twined his clammy hands; put
+the awful question: "By how much will the allowance be increased or
+cut down?"
+
+"By two pounds a quarter."
+
+George plunged: "So if I fail in my first exam. I shall get eleven
+pounds at the quarter? if I pass, fifteen?"
+
+Horror widened Mr. Marrapit's eyes; shrilled his voice: "What is the
+colossal sum you anticipate?"
+
+"I thought you said fifty-two pounds a year-a pound a week."
+
+"A monstrous impression. Adjust it. Four pounds a quarter is the sum.
+You will have no needs. It errs upon the side of liberality--I desire
+to be liberal."
+
+George twisted his legs into a yet firmer knot: "But two failures
+would wipe it bang out."
+
+"Look you to that," Mr. Marrapit told him. "The matter is settled."
+
+But it was further pursued by George when outside the door.
+
+"Simply to spite that stingy brute," vowed he, "I'll pass all my
+exams, with such a rush that I'll be hooking sixteen quid a quarter
+out of him before he knows where he is. I swear I will."
+
+It was a rash oath. When Youth selects as weapon against Authority
+some implement that requires sweat in the forging Authority may go
+unarmed. The task of contriving such weapons is early abandoned. In
+three months George's hot resolve was cooled; in six it was forgotten;
+at the end of three years, after considerable fluctuation, his
+allowance stood at minus two pounds for the ensuing quarter.
+
+Mr. Marrapit, appealed to for advance, had raved about his study with
+waving arms.
+
+"The continued strain of renewing examination fees consequent on your
+callous failures," he had said, "terrifies me. I am haunted by the
+spectre of ruin. The Bank of England could not stand it."
+
+Still George argued.
+
+With a whirlwind of words Mr. Marrapit drove him from the study:
+"Precious moments fly even as you stand here. To your books, sir. In
+them seek solace. By application to them refresh your shattered
+pocket."
+
+Shamefully was the advice construed. George sought and found solace in
+his books by selling his Kirke, his Quain and his Stone to Mr. Schoole
+of the Charing Cross Road; his microscope he temporarily lodged with
+Mr. Maughan in the Strand; to the science of bridge he applied himself
+with a skill that served to supply his petty needs.
+
+Notwithstanding, his career at St. Peter's was of average merit.
+George was now in the sixth year of his studies; and by the third part
+of his final examination, was alone delayed from the qualification
+which would bring him freedom from his uncle's irksome rule.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+His attempt at this last examination had been concluded upon this July
+day that opens our history, and thus we return to Mr. Marrapit, to
+George, and to the line of smoke uprising from the tobacco.
+
+Mr. Marrapit indicated the smouldering wedge.
+
+George bent forward. "Tobacco," he announced.
+
+"My nose informed me. My eyes affirm. Yours?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+"My simple rule. In the vegetable garden you may smoke; here you may
+not. Is it so hard to observe?"
+
+"I quite forgot myself."
+
+Mr. Marrapit cried: "Adjust that impression. You forgot me.
+Consistently you forget me. My desires, my interests are nothing to
+you."
+
+"It's a rotten thing to make a fuss about."
+
+"That is why I make a fuss. It _is_ a rotten thing. A disgusting and a
+noisome thing. Bury it."
+
+Into a bed of soft mould George struck a sullen heel; kicked the
+tobacco towards the pit. Mr. Marrapit chanted over the obsequies: "I
+provide you with the enormous expanse of my vegetable garden in which
+to smoke. Yet upon my little acre you intrude. I am Naboth."
+
+Ahab straightened his back; sighed heavily. Naboth started against the
+prick of a sudden recollection:
+
+"I had forgotten. Your examination?"
+
+George half turned away. The bitterest moment of a sad day was come.
+He growled:
+
+"Pipped."
+
+"_Pipped?_"
+
+"Pilled."
+
+"_Pilled?_"
+
+"Spun."
+
+"_Spun?"_
+
+"Three months."
+
+Mr. Marrapit put his hands to his head: "I shall go mad. My brain
+reels beneath these conundrums. I implore English."
+
+The confession of defeat is a thousandfold more bitter when made to
+unkind ears. George paled a little; spoke very clearly: "I failed. I
+was referred for three months."
+
+"I am Job," groaned Mr. Marrapit. "I expected this. The strain is
+unendurable. It is unnatural. The next chance shall be your last. What
+is the fee for re-examination?"
+
+"Five guineas."
+
+"My God!" said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He tottered away up the path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Excursions In Melancholy.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Gloom brooded over Herons' Holt that evening. Gloom hung thickly about
+the rooms: blanketed conversation; veiled eyes that might have
+sparkled; choked appetites.
+
+Nevertheless this was an atmosphere in which one member of the
+household felt most comfortable.
+
+Margaret, Mr. Marrapit's only child, was nineteen; of sallow
+complexion, petite, pretty; with large brown eyes in which sat always
+a constant quest--an entreaty, a wistful yearning.
+
+Hers was a clinging nature, readily responsive to the attraction of
+any stouter mind. Enthusiasm was in this girl, but it lay well-like--
+not as a spring. To stir it the influence of another was wanted; of
+itself, spontaneous, it could not leap. Aroused, there was no rush and
+surge of emotion--it welled, rose deeply; thickly, without ripple;
+crestless, flinging no intoxicating spume. Waves rush triumphant,
+hurtling forward the stick they support: the pool swells, leaving the
+stick quiescent, floating.
+
+Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is a clammy thing to
+attract. A curate with a glimpse at Shelley's mind once roused
+Margaret's enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly about
+him that he came near to damning Shelley and all his works; threw up
+his hat when opportunity put out a beckoning finger and drew him
+elsewhere.
+
+Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father; but she clung to
+him despite his oppressive foibles, because this was her nature. She
+loved church; incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound. She
+"wrote poetry."
+
+Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons' Holt upon this evening, she
+sat brooding upon her cousin George's failure until a beautiful
+picture was hatched. He had gone to his room directly after dinner;
+during the meal had not spoken. She imagined him seated on his bed,
+hands deep in pockets, chin sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that
+old devil despair. She knew that latterly he had worked tremendously
+hard. He had told her before the examination how confident of success
+he was, had revealed how much in the immediate prospect of freedom he
+gloried. She recalled his gay laugh as he had bade her good-bye on the
+first day, and the recollection stung her just as, she reflected, it
+must now be stinging him.... Only he must a thousand times more
+fiercely be feeling the burn of its venom....
+
+Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake into herself a
+profounder sense of her cousin's misfortune. By ten she was plunged in
+a most pleasing melancholy.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if
+they imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke
+lightness of heart in the majority. Only the surface of their spirits
+ripples under such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce the
+counterpart of a hearty laugh in your vigorous animal, a feast on
+melancholy must be provided. This is a quality that is common among
+the lower classes who find their greatest happiness in funerals. The
+sombre trappings; white handkerchiefs against black dresses; tears;
+the mystery of gloom--these trickle with a warm glow through all their
+senses. They are as aroused by grief, unpleasant to the majority, as
+the drunkard is quickened by wine, to many abhorrent.
+
+Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of melancholy in
+which she was now wrapped brought an added boon--arrayed in it she was
+best able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many
+of her brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at
+the heart she could be most merry--tinkling out her laughing little
+lines just as martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite
+of, they were devilishly racked.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A manuscript returned by the
+last post emphasised her gloom.
+
+Kissing her father good-night, Margaret crept to her room, aching with
+desire to write.
+
+She undressed, read a portion of the _Imitation_, then to her table by
+the open window.
+
+Two hours brought relief. Margaret placed her poem in an envelope
+against its presentation to George in the morning, then from her
+window leaned.
+
+From her thoughts at once George sped; they rushed across the sleeping
+fields to cling about the person of that Mr. William Wyvern who had
+spoken of Mr. Marrapit as reminding him of a minor prophet--shaved.
+This was Margaret's nightly practice, but to-night this girl was most
+exquisitely melancholy, and with melancholy her thoughts of her
+William were tinged. She had not seen him that day; and now she
+brooded upon the bitter happening that had forced all her meetings
+with her lover to be snatched--fugitive, secret.
+
+For Mr. William Wyvern was not allowed at Herons' Holt. When love
+first sent its herald curiosity into William's heart, the young man
+had sought to relieve its restlessness by a visit ostensibly on
+George, really upon Margaret, and extremely ill-advised in that at his
+heels gambolled his three bull-terriers.
+
+Korah, Dathan, and Abiram these were named, and they were abrupt dogs
+to a point reaching brusqueness.
+
+At the door, as William had approached, beamed Mr. Marrapit; upon the
+drive the queenly Rose of Sharon sat; and immediately tragedy swooped.
+
+The dogs sighted the Rose. Red-mouthed the shining pack flew at her.
+Dignity fell before terror: wildly, with streaming tail, she fled.
+
+Orange was the cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white
+ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt
+about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her
+pursuers--heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the
+doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief
+each time the parti-coloured ribbon flashed before his eyes.
+
+With Mr. Fletcher the end had come. Working indoors, aroused by the
+din, the gardener burst out past his master just as the ribbon
+fluttered into sight upon the completion of its fourth circuit. Like a
+great avalanche it poured against his legs; as falls the oak, so
+pressed he fell.
+
+Each eager jaw snapped once. Korah bit air, Dathan the cat's right
+ear. She wrenched; freed; sprang high upon the porch to safety, blood
+on her coat.
+
+Abiram put a steely nip upon Mr. Fletcher's right buttock.
+
+William called off his dogs; stood aghast. Mr. Marrapit stretched
+entreating arms to his adored. Mr. Fletcher writhed prone.
+
+The torn Rose slipped to Mr. Marrapit's bosom. Clasping her he turned
+upon William--"You shall pay for this blood!"
+
+William stammered: "I'm very sorry, sir. If--"
+
+"Never again enter my gates. I'll have your curs shot!"
+
+Curs was unfortunate; the evil three were whelped of a mighty strain.
+
+"If your fool of a man hadn't got in the way, the cat would have
+escaped," William hotly cried. Indignant he turned. Banishment was
+nothing then; in time it came to be a bitter thing.
+
+Mr. Marrapit had raged on to Mr. Fletcher, yet writhing.
+
+"You hear that?" he had cried. "Dolt! You are responsible for this!"
+He touched the blood-flecked side, the abrased ear; clasped close the
+Rose; called for warm water.
+
+Mr. Fletcher clapped a hand to his wound as shakily he rose.
+
+"I go to rescue his cat!" he said; "I'm near worried to death by
+'ounds. I'm a dolt. I'm responsible. It's 'ard,--damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a dog muzzle."
+
+A dimness clouded Margaret's beautiful eyes as this bitter picture--
+she had watched it--was again reviewed. She murmured "Oh, Bill!";
+stretched her soft arms to the night; moved her pretty lips in a
+message to her lover; snuggled between the sheets and made melancholy
+her bedfellow.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+By seven she was up and in the fresh garden. George was before her.
+
+She cried brightly: "Why, how early you are!" and ran to him--very
+pretty in her white dress: at her breast a rose, the poem fluttering
+in her hand.
+
+"Yes; for once before you."
+
+George's tone did not give back her mood, purposely keyed high. She
+played on it again: "Turning a new leaf?"
+
+He drummed at the turf with his heel: "Yes--for to-day." He threw out
+a hand towards her: "But in the same old book. I've had eight--nine
+years of it, and now there are three more months."
+
+"Poor George! But only three months, think how they will fly!"
+
+He was desperately gloomy: "I haven't your imagination. Each single
+day of them will mean a morning--here; a night--here."
+
+"Oh, is it so hard?"
+
+"Yes, now. It's pretty deadly now. You know, when I wasn't precisely
+killing myself with overwork, I didn't mind so much. When it was three
+or four years, anyway, before I could possibly be free, a few extra
+months or so through failing an exam, didn't trouble me. But this is
+different. I was right up against getting clear of all this"--he
+comprehended garden and house in a sweep of the hand--"counted it a
+dead certainty--and here I am pitched back again."
+
+"But, George, you did work so hard this time. It isn't as though you
+had to blame yourself." She put a clinging hand into his arm. "You can
+suffer no--remorse. That is what makes failure so dreadful--the
+knowledge that things might have been otherwise if one had liked."
+
+George laughed quite gaily. Gloom never lay long upon this young man.
+
+"You're a sweet little person," he said. "You ought to be right, but
+you are wrong. When I didn't work I didn't mind failing. It's when
+I've tried that I get sick."
+
+Margaret's eyes brightened. There was melancholy here.
+
+"Oh, I know what you mean. I know so well. I have felt that. You mean
+the--the haunting fear that you may never be able to succeed; that you
+have not the--the talent, the capacity." She continued pleadingly:
+"Oh, you mustn't think that. You can--you _will_ succeed next time,
+you know."
+
+"Rather!" responded George brightly.
+
+Margaret was quite pained. She would have had him express doubt,
+despondently sigh; would have heartened him with her poem. The
+confident "rather!" jarred. She hurried from its vigour.
+
+She asked: "What had you intended to do?"
+
+"I was to have got a _locum tenens_. I think it would have developed
+into a permanency. A big, rough district up in Yorkshire with a man
+who keeps six horses going. His second assistant--a pal of mine--wants
+to chuck it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why? Oh, partly because he's fed up with it, partly because he wants
+a practice of his own."
+
+"Ah! ... But, George, don't you want a practice of your own? You don't
+want to be another man's assistant, do you?"
+
+George laughed. "I can't choose, Margi. You know, if you imagine there
+are solid groups of people all over England anxiously praying for the
+arrival of a doctor, you must adjust that impression, as your father
+would say. These things have to be bought. I've got about three
+pounds, so I'm not bidding. They seldom go so cheap."
+
+Margaret never bantered. She had no battledore light enough to return
+an airy shuttlecock. Now, as always, when this plaything came
+buoyantly towards her she swiped it with heavy force clean out of the
+conversational field.
+
+She said gravely: "Ah, I know what you mean. You mean that father
+ought to buy you a practice--ought to set you up when you are
+qualified. I can't discuss that, can I? It wouldn't be loyal."
+
+"Of course not. I don't ask you."
+
+They moved towards the sound of the breakfast bell.
+
+"You think," Margaret continued, "that father ought to buy you a
+practice because your mother left him money for the purpose?"
+
+"I know she left him nearly five thousand pounds for my education and
+all that. I think I may have cost him three thousand, possibly four--
+_so_ I think I am entitled to something, _but_ I shan't get it,
+_therefore_ I don't worry. My hump is gone; in three months I shall be
+gone. Forward: I smell bacon!"
+
+Margaret smiled the wan smile of an invalid watching vigorous youth at
+sport. Firmly she banged the shuttlecock out of sight.
+
+"How bright you are!" she told him. "Look, here is a little poem I
+wrote for you last night. It's about failure and success. Don't read
+it now."
+
+George was very fond of his cousin. "Oh, but I must!" he cried. "I
+think this was awfully nice of you. He's not down yet. Let's sit on
+this seat and read it together."
+
+"Oh, not aloud. It's a silly little thing--really."
+
+"Yes--aloud."
+
+He smoothed the paper. She pressed against him; thrilled as she
+regarded the written lines. George begged her read. She would not--
+well, she would. She paused. Modesty and pride gathered on her cheeks,
+tuned her voice low. She read:
+
+  "So you have tried--So you have known
+  The burning effort for success,
+  The quick belief in your own prowess and your skill,
+  The bitterness of failure, and the joy
+  Of sweet success."
+
+"'Burning effort,'" George said. "That's fine!"
+
+"I'm glad you like that. And 'quick belief'--you know what I mean?"
+
+"Oh, rather."
+
+The poet warmed again over her words.
+
+  "So you have tried--
+  So you have known
+  The blind-eyed groping towards the goal
+  That flickers on the far horizon of Attempt,
+  Gleaming to sudden vividness, anon
+  Fading from sight."
+
+"Sort of blank verse, isn't it?" George asked.
+
+"Well, sort of," the poet allowed. "Not exactly, of course."
+
+"Of course not," George agreed firmly.
+
+Margaret breathed the next fine lines.
+
+  "So you have tried--
+  So you have known
+  The bitter-sweetness of Attempt,
+  The quick determination and the dread despair
+  That grapple and possess you as you strive
+  For imagery."
+
+George questioned: "Imagery...?"
+
+"That verse is more for me than you," the poet explained. "'For
+imagery'--to get the right word, you know."
+
+"Rather!" said George. "It does for me too--in exams, when one is
+floored, you know."
+
+"Yes," Margaret admitted doubtfully. "Ye-es. Don't interrupt between
+the verses, dear."
+
+Now emotion swelled her voice.
+
+  "Success be yours!
+  May you achieve
+  To heights you do not dream you'll ever touch;
+  The power's to your hand, the road before you lies--
+  Forward! The gods not always frown; anon
+  They'll kindly smile."
+
+"Why, that's splendid!" George cried. He put a cousinly arm about the
+poet; squeezed her to him. "Fancy you writing that for me! What a
+sympathetic little soul you are--and how clever!"
+
+Breathless she disengaged herself: "I'm so glad you like it. It's a
+silly little thing--but it's _real_, isn't it? Come, there's father."
+
+She paused against denial of the poem's silliness, affirmation of its
+truth; but George, moody beneath Mr. Marrapit's eye, glinting behind
+the window, had moved forward.
+
+Margaret thrust the paper in her bosom, tucked in where heart might
+warm against heart's child. Constantly during breakfast her mind
+reverted to it, drummed its rare lines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Upon Modesty In Art: And Should Be Skipped.
+
+
+Yet Margaret had called her poem silly. Here, then, was mock-modesty
+by diffidence seeking praise. But this mock-modesty, which horribly
+abounds to-day, is only natural product of that furious modesty which
+has come to be expected in all the arts.
+
+Modesty should have no place in true art. The author or the painter,
+the poet or the composer should be impersonal to his work. That which
+he creates is not his; it is a piece of the art to which he is
+servant, and as such (and such alone) he should regard it. His in the
+making and the moulding, thereafter it becomes the possession of the
+great whole to which it belongs. If it adorns that whole he may freely
+admire it; for he is impersonal to it.
+
+Unquestionably (or unconsciously) we accept this principle in regard
+to human life. The child belongs not to the mother who conceived it
+but to the race of which it is an atom. It hinders or it betters the
+race. The race judges it. By the race it is honoured or condemned; and
+to it the mother becomes impersonal. As it bears itself among its
+fellows, so she judges it--as the artist's work bears itself in the
+great art it joins, so should he judge it. And if the mother joins in
+his fellows' praise of her child, and if she proclaims her pride in
+it, is she called wanting in modesty?--and if the artist joins in
+praise of his work, and if he freely names it good, must he then be
+vain, boastful? The race grants that the mother who gave it this
+specimen of its kind has a first right to show her pride--to the
+artist who gives a fair specimen to his art we should allow a like
+voice.
+
+For in demanding modesty--in naming impersonality conceit--we have
+produced also mock-modesty; and because, as a people, we have little
+appreciation of the arts, hence little knowledge, hence no standard by
+which to judge, we continually mistake the one form of modesty for the
+other. Modesty we suspect to be mock-modesty, and mock-modesty we take
+to be pleasing humility.
+
+Coming to literature alone, the author should be impersonal to his
+work and must not cry that the writer is no judge of his own labour.
+Letters is his trade; and just as the mason well knows whether the
+brick he has laid helps or hinders, beautifies or insults the house,
+so the writer should be full cognisant whether his work helps make or
+does mar the edifice called literature. Nor must the term literature
+be denied to the ruck of modern writing. All that is written to
+interest or to instruct goes to make the literature of our day. We
+have introduced new expressions just as we have contrived new
+expressions in architecture; and as in the latter case so in the
+former the bulk of these is ephemeral. Nevertheless they are a part of
+literature, and all efforts in them better or sully the pages which in
+our day we are adding to the book of literature. From this book the
+winds of cycles to come will blow all that is unworthy--only the stout
+leaves will endure; but, no less because you write for the supplement
+than if you have virtue sufficient for the bound volume, remember that
+in every form of writing there are standards of good, and that every
+line printed helps raise or does tarnish the letters of our day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Excursions In A Hospital.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+By the half-past nine train George went to town; an hour later was at
+St. Peter's.
+
+From the bar of the Students' Club a throng of young men of his year
+loudly hailed him. He joined them; took with a laugh the
+commiserations on his failure; wrung the hands of those who had been
+successful.
+
+The successful young gentlemen were standing drinks-each man his
+round. There was much smoke and much laughter. Amusing experiences
+were narrated. You gathered that all who had passed their examination
+had done so by sheer luck, by astonishing flukes. Not one had ever
+worked. Each had been "ragged" on a subject of which he knew
+absolutely nothing. To the brilliancy with which he had gulled or
+bluffed his examiner, to the diplomacy with which he had headed him
+off the matters of which he knew absolutely less than nothing-to these
+alone were his success due.
+
+Such is ever Youth's account of battle with Age. Youth is a devil of a
+smart fellow, behind whom Age blunders along in the most ridiculous
+fashion. Later this young blood takes his place in the blundering
+ranks and then does learn that indeed he was right--Age knows nothing.
+For with years we begin to realise our ignorance, and the lesson is
+not complete when the grave slams the book. A few plumb the depths of
+their ignorance before death: these are able to speak--and these are
+the teachers of men. We get here one reason why giants are fewer in
+our day: with the growth of man's imaginings and his inventions there
+is more vanity to be forced through; the truths of life lie deeper
+hid; more phantasms arise to lure us from the quest of realities; the
+task of striking truth accumulates.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Soon after midday the party broke up. Its members lunched early;
+visiting surgeons and physicians went their rounds at half-past one.
+
+George strolled to the Dean's office.
+
+A woebegone-looking youth in spectacles stood before the table;
+opposite sat the Dean. He looked up as George entered, and nodded: he
+was fond of George.
+
+"Come along in," he said; "I shan't be a minute."
+
+He turned to the sad youth. "Now your case, Mr. Carter," he said, "is
+quite unique. In the whole records of the Medical School"--he waved at
+a shelf of fat volumes--"in the whole records of the Medical School we
+have nothing in the remotest degree resembling it. You have actually
+failed twice in--in--"
+
+The Dean searched wildly among a litter of papers; baffled, threw out
+an emphasising hand, and repeated, "_Twice_! Other hospitals, Mr.
+Carter, may have room for slackers--we have not. We have a record and
+a reputation of which we are proud. You are in your second year. How
+old are you?"
+
+A faint whisper said, "Nineteen."
+
+The Dean started. "Nineteen! Oh, dear me, dear me! this is worse than
+I thought--far worse. I am afraid, Mr. Carter, I shall have to write
+to your father."
+
+Guttural with emotion, Mr. Carter gasped: "I mean to work--indeed I
+do."
+
+Again the Dean frantically searched on his desk to discover the
+subject in which Mr. Carter had failed; again was unsuccessful. Deep
+thought ravelled his brow. His fingers drummed indecision on the
+table. It was a telling picture of one struggling between duty and
+kindliness--masterly as the result of long practice.
+
+"Mr. Carter," the Dean summed up, "I will consider your case more
+fully to-night. Against my better judgment I may perhaps decide not on
+this occasion to communicate with your father. But remember this. At
+the very outset of your career you have strained to breaking-point the
+confidence of your teachers. Only by stupendous efforts on your part
+can that confidence be restored. These failures, believe me, will dog
+you from now until you are qualified--nay, will dog your whole
+professional career. That will do."
+
+In a convulsion of relief and of agitation beneath this appalling
+prospect the dogged man quavered thanks; stumbled from the room.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+George laughed. "Same old dressing-down," he said. "Don't you ever
+alter the formula?"
+
+"It's very effective," the Dean replied. "That's the sixth this
+morning. Unfortunately I couldn't remember in what subject that boy
+had failed; so he didn't get the best part--the part about that being
+the one subject of all others which, if failed in, predicted ruin."
+
+"It was biology in my case," George told him. "I trembled with funk."
+
+"I think most of you do. It's fortunate that all you men when you
+first come up are afraid of your fathers. It gives us a certain amount
+of hold over you. If the thing were done properly, both at the
+'Varsities and the hospitals, there would be a system of marks and
+reports just as at schools. You are only boys when you first come up,
+and you should be treated as boys; instead, you are left free and
+irresponsible. It ruins dozens of men every year."
+
+"Perhaps that's why I'm here now," George responded. "You know I got
+ploughed?"
+
+The Dean told George how sorry he had been to hear it. He questioned:
+"Bad luck, I suppose? I thought it was a sitter for you this time."
+
+"Yes, rotten luck."
+
+"It's unfortunate, you know. You would have got a house appointment.
+I'm afraid you will miss that mow. There will be a crowd of very hot
+men up with you in October, junior to you, who will get the vacancies.
+What will you do?"
+
+George shrugged and laughed.
+
+The Dean frowned; interpreted the shrug. "Well, you should care," he
+said. "You ought to be looking around you. Won't your uncle help you
+to buy a partnership?"
+
+"We are on worse terms than ever after this failure. Not he."
+
+"And you're not trying to be on good terms, I suppose?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"You are a remarkably silly young man. You want balance, Leicester,
+you want balance. It would be the making of you to have some serious
+purpose in life. You will run against something of the kind soon--
+you'll get engaged, perhaps, and then you'll regret your happy-go-
+lucky ways." He fumbled amongst a pile of correspondence and drew out
+a letter. "Now, look here, I was thinking of you only a few moments
+ago. Here's a letter from a man who--who--where is it?--Ah, yes--If
+you could raise 400 pounds by the time you are qualified I could put
+you on to a splendid thing."
+
+"Not the remotest chance," said George. "The serious purpose must
+wait. I--"
+
+The Dean waved a hand that asked silence; consulted the letter. "This
+is from a man in practice at a place called Runnygate--one of these
+rising seaside resorts--Hampshire--great friend of mine. He's got
+money, and he's going to chuck it--doesn't suit his wife. I told him
+I'd find a purchaser if he would leave it with me. Merely nominal--
+only 400 pounds. He says that in a year or so there'll be a small
+fortune in the practice, because a company is taking the place over to
+develop it. You shall have first refusal. Come now, pull yourself
+together, Leicester."
+
+George laughed. He stood up. "Thanks, I refuse now. What on earth's
+the good?"
+
+"Rubbish," said the Dean. "Think over that serious interest in life.
+You never know your luck."
+
+George moved to the door. "I know my luck all right," he laughed.
+"Never mind, I'm not grumbling with it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Upon Life: And May Be Missed.
+
+
+In the ante-room, as it were, of a very short chapter, we must make
+ready to receive our heroine. She is about to spring dazzling upon our
+pages; will be our close companion through some moving scenes. We must
+collect ourselves, brush our hair, arrange our dress, prepare our
+nicest manner.
+
+And as in ante-rooms there are commonly papers laid about to beguile
+the tedium, and as the faint rustle of our heroine's petticoats is
+warning that George's assertion that he knew his luck is immediately
+to be disproved, let us make a tiny little paper on the folly of such
+a statement.
+
+For of his luck man has no glimmer of prescience. Day by day we rattle
+the box, throw the dice; but of how these will fall we have no
+knowledge. We only hope with the gambler's feverishness; and it is
+this very hazard that keeps us crowding and pushing to hold our place
+at the tables where fortune spins. Grow we sick of the game, sour with
+our luck, weary of the hazard, and relinquish we our place at the
+table, we are pushed back and out--elbowed, thrown, trampled.
+
+We are all treasure-seekers set on a treasure-island in a boundless
+sea. Cruelly marooned we are--flung ashore without appeal, and here
+deserted until the ship that disembarked us suddenly swoops and the
+press-gang snatches us again aboard--again without heed to our desire.
+Whence the ship brought us we do not know, and whither it will carry
+us we do not know; there is none to prick a return voyage disclosing
+the ultimate haven, though pilots there be who pretend to the
+knowledge--we cannot test them.
+
+But the marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our
+thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a
+pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being
+acclimatised, we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts
+already sunk, some seek to break new ground, but what the pick will
+next turn up no one knows.
+
+And it is this uncertainty, this hazard, that keeps us hammer, hammer,
+hammering; that keeps us, some from brooding against the marooners,
+their wanton desertion of us, our ultimate fate at their hands; others
+from making ready against the return voyage as entreated by the
+pilots.
+
+Certainly, when the pick strikes a pocket, we turn to carousing; cease
+cocking a timid eye at the horizon.
+
+And now our heroine is beckoning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant
+case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers,
+surgeons and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of
+the subject. He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts--three
+more months of dependency--to take greater interest.
+
+One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's
+side until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the
+cause, "Clumsy beast," said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: "Come
+on, Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West."
+
+In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's
+eye; a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the
+nose. "Tea," said he; "it is going to rain."
+
+He addressed the pretty waitress: "I have no wish to seem inquisitive,
+but which table do you attend?"
+
+The girl jerked her chin: "What's that to you?"
+
+"So much," Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, "that, until I know, here,
+beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand."
+
+"Well, all of 'em." She whisked away.
+
+"You're badly snubbed, Franklyn," George said. "This rain is nothing."
+
+A summer shower crashed down as he spoke; a mob of shoppers,
+breathless for shelter, drove them inwards.
+
+"George," said Mr. Franklyn, seating himself, "your base mind thinks I
+have designs on this girl. I grieve at so distorted a fancy. The child
+says prettily that she attends 'all of 'em.' It is a gross case of
+overwork into which I feel it my duty more closely to inquire."
+
+George laughed. "Do you always spend your afternoons like this?"
+
+"As a rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting
+that day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will
+be a sad wrench to leave the dear old home." He continued, a tinge of
+melancholy in his voice: "You know, I am the last of the old brigade.
+The medical student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword;
+he is a rabbit. Alone, undismayed, I uphold the old traditions. I am,
+so to speak, one of the old aristocracy. Beneath the snug
+characteristics of the latter-day student--his sweet abhorrence of a
+rag, his nasty delight in plays which he calls 'hot-stuff,' his
+cigarettes and his chess-playing--beneath these my head, like
+Henley's, is bloody but unbowed. Forgive a tear."
+
+The shower ceased; the tea was finished; the pretty waitress was coyly
+singeing her modesty in the attractive candle of Mr. Franklyn's
+suggestions. George left them at the game; strolled aimlessly towards
+the Marble Arch; beyond it; to the right, and so into a quiet square.
+
+Here comes my heroine.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The hansom, as George walked, was coming towards him--smartly, with a
+jingle of bells; skimming the kerb. As it reached him (recall that
+shower) the horse slipped, stumbled, came on its knees.
+
+Down came the shafts; out shot the girl.
+
+The doors were wide; the impetus took her in her stride. One tiny foot
+dabbed at the platform's edge; the other twinkled--patent leather and
+silver buckle--at the step, missed it, plunged with a giant stride for
+the pavement.
+
+"Mercy!" she cried, and came like a shower of roses swirling into
+George's arms.
+
+Completely he caught her. About his legs whipped her skirts; against
+him pressed her panting bosom; his arms--the action was instinctive--
+locked around her; the adorable perfume of her came on him like breeze
+from a violet bed; her very cheek brushed his lips--since the first
+kiss it was the nearest thing possible to a kiss.
+
+She twisted backwards. Modesty chased alarm across her face--caught,
+battled, overcame it; flamed triumphant.
+
+Fright at her accident drove her pale; shame at the manner of her
+descent--leg to the knee and an indelicacy of petticoats--agitated she
+had glimpsed it as she leapt--flushed her crimson from the line of her
+dress about her throat to the wave of her hair upon her brow.
+
+She twisted back. "Oh, what must you think of me?" she gasped.
+
+He simply could not say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Moving Passages With A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George could not say.
+
+His senses were washed aswim by this torrent of beauty poured
+unexpected through eyes to brain. It surged the centres to violent
+commotion, one jostling another in a whirlpool of conflict. Out of the
+tumult alarm flashed down the wires to his heart--set it banging;
+flashed in wild message to his tongue--locked it.
+
+The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He
+loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a
+moment the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down
+the street, a murderer with bloody hand, a liar with false words
+suddenly pumped.
+
+A moment later the driver is calm and aghast at the ruin he has
+contrived. Why, before God, did he pull the leg lever?--the arm
+lever?--the tongue lever? In an instant's action he has accomplished
+calamity; where sunshine laughed now darkness heaps; where the
+prospect smiled disaster now comes rolling up in thunder.
+
+These are your crises. Again, as now with George, the driver becomes
+temporarily idiot--stands us oafishly silent, or perhaps jerks out
+some stupid words; remembers when too late the quip that would have
+fetched the laugh, the thrust that would have sped the wound. He is an
+intolerable fellow.
+
+"Oh, what must you think of me?"
+
+That pause followed while the driver in George's brain stood gapingly
+inactive; and then came laughter to him like a draught of champagne.
+For the girl put up her firm, round chin and laughed with a clear pipe
+of glee--a laugh to call a laugh as surely as a lark's note will set a
+hedge in song; and it called the laugh in George.
+
+He said: "I am thinking the nicest things of you. But have you dropped
+from the skies?"
+
+"From a _cab_," she protested.
+
+She turned to the road; back to George in dismay, for the catapult,
+its bullet shot, had bolted up the street--was gone from view.
+
+"Oh!--I _was_ in a cab?" she implored.
+
+George said: "It _looked_ like a cab. But a fairy-car, I think."
+
+A pucker of her brows darkened the quick mirth that came to her eyes.
+She cried: "Oh, don't joke. She will be killed."
+
+"You were not alone?"
+
+"No--oh, no! What has happened to her?"
+
+"We had better follow."
+
+She corrected his number. "Yes, I had better. Thank you so much for
+your help." She took a step; faltered upon it with a little
+exclamation of pain; put a white tooth on her lip.
+
+"You have hurt your foot?" George said.
+
+"My ankle, I think. Oh dear!" and then again she laughed.
+
+It came even then to George that certainly she would have made her
+fortune were she to set up a gloom-exorcising bureau--waiting at the
+end of a telephone wire ready to rush with that laugh to banish the
+imps of melancholy. Never had he heard so infectious a note of mirth.
+
+"Oh, what must you think of me?" she ended. "I simply cannot help
+laughing, you know--and yet, oh dear!"
+
+She put the tips of the fingers of a hand against her lower lip, gazed
+very anxiously up the road, and then again she gave that clear pipe of
+laughter.
+
+"I can't help it," she told him imploringly. "I simply cannot help
+laughing. It is funny, you know. She was scolding me--"
+
+"_Scolding_!" George exclaimed.
+
+That beauty should be scolded!
+
+"Scolding--yes. Oh, I'm only a--well, scolding me, and I was wishing,
+_wishing_ I could escape. And then suddenly out I shot. And then I
+look around and she's--" A wave of her hand expressed a disappearance
+that was by magic agency.
+
+"But, _scolding_?" George said. "Need you trouble? She will be all
+right."
+
+"Oh, I must. I live with her."
+
+"Will she trouble about you?"
+
+"I think she will return for me. Please, _please_ go--would you mind?--
+to the corner, and see if there has been an accident."
+
+From that direction a bicyclist approached. George hailed. "Is there a
+cab accident round the corner?"
+
+The youth stared; called "Rats!"; passed.
+
+George interpreted: "It means No. Do you think if you were to take my
+arm you could walk to the turning?"
+
+Quite naturally she slipped a white glove around his elbow. The
+contact thrilled him. "No nice girl, you know, would do this," she
+said, "with a perfect stranger."
+
+George bent his arm a little, the better to feel the pressure of those
+white fingers. "I am not really perfect," he told her.
+
+She took his mood. "Nor I really nice," she joined. "In fact, I'm
+horrible--they tell me. But I think it is wise to follow, don't you?"
+
+"Profoundly wise. Who says you are horrible?"
+
+She gave no answer. Glancing, he saw trouble shade her eyes, tremble
+her lips.
+
+That beauty should know distress!
+
+Very slightly he raised his forearm so that the lock of his elbow felt
+her hand. He had no fine words. This George was no hero with exquisite
+ways. He was a most average young man, and nothing could he find but
+most painfully average words.
+
+"I say, what's up?" he asked.
+
+She spoke defiantly; but some stupid something that she hated yet
+could not repress trembled her lips, robbed her tone of its banter.
+"What's up?" she said. "Why, _you_ would say something was up if you'd
+just been shot plump out of a cab, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes, but you were laughing a minute ago." He looked down at her, but
+she turned her face. "Now, now, I believe--" He did not name his
+thought.
+
+She looked up. Her pretty face was red. He saw little flutters of
+eyelids, flutters round the eyes, flutters at the mouth. "Oh," she
+said, "oh, yes, and I don't know why. I'm--I believe--" She tried to
+laugh, but the little flutterings clouded the smile like soft, dark
+wings flickering upon a sunbeam.
+
+"I believe--it's ridiculous to a perfect--imperfect--stranger--I
+believe I'm nearly--crying."
+
+And this inept George could only return: "I say--oh, I say, can I
+help you?"
+
+She stopped; from his arm withdrew her hand. "Please--I think you had
+better go. Please go. Oh, I shall hate myself for behaving like this."
+
+So unhappy she was that George immediately planned her a backdoor of
+excuse. "But you have no occasion to blame yourself," he told her.
+"You've had an adventure--naturally you're shaken a bit."
+
+She was relieved to think he had misunderstood her agitation. "Yes, an
+adventure," she said, "that's it. And I haven't had an adventure for
+years, so naturally--But, please, I think you had better go. If my--
+my friend saw me with you like this she would be angry--oh, very
+angry."
+
+"But why? She saw you fall. She saw me save you."
+
+"You don't understand. She is not exactly my friend; she is my--my
+employer. I'm a mother's-help."
+
+The mirth that never lay deep beneath those blue eyes of hers was
+sparkling up now; the soft, dark wings were fluttering no longer.
+
+She continued: "A mother's-help. Doesn't that sound wretched? I'm
+terribly slow at learning the mother's-help rules, but I'm positive of
+this rule--mothers' helps may not shoot out of cabs and leave the
+mother; it's such little help--you must see that?"
+
+"But you will be less help still if you stay here for ever with your
+hurt ankle--you must see that? I must stay with you or see you to your
+home."
+
+When she answered, it was upon another change of mood. The soft, dark
+wings were fluttering again; and it was the banter of George's tone
+that had recalled them. For this was an adventure--and she had not
+known adventure for years; for these were flippant exchanges arising
+out of gay young hearts, and they recalled memories of days when such
+harmless bantering was of her normal life; for there had been sympathy
+in George's stammering inquiries, and it recalled the time when she
+lived amidst sympathy and amidst love.
+
+The soft, dark wings fluttered again: "I am very grateful to you for
+helping me," she told him. "You must not think me ungrateful; only, I
+think you had better go. In my position I am not free to--to do as I
+like, talk where I will. You understand?" Her voice trembled a little,
+and she repeated: "You understand?"
+
+George said, "I understand."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+And that was all that passed upon this meeting. A cab swung round the
+opposite corner; pulled up with a rattle; turned towards them; was
+alongside. Within, a brow of thunder sat.
+
+The cabman called, "I knowed you was all right, miss," raised the
+trap, and cheerfully repeated the information to his fare: "I knowed
+she was all right, mum."
+
+The mum addressed gave no congratulation to his prescience. He shut
+the lid; winked at George; behind his hand communicated, "Not 'arf
+angry, she ain't."
+
+The girl ran forward; agitation bound up her hurt ankle. "Oh!" she
+cried, "I am so glad you are safe!"
+
+The thunder-figure addressed said: "Please get in. I have had a severe
+shock."
+
+"This gentleman--" The girl half turned to George.
+
+"Please get in--instantly."
+
+Scarlet the girl went. "Thank you very much," she said to George;
+climbed in beside the cloud of wrath.
+
+Her companion slammed the door; dabbed at George a bow that was like a
+sharp poke with a stick; called, "Drive on."
+
+George stepped into the road, held half a crown to the driver: "The
+address?"
+
+The man stooped. With a tremendous wink answered, "Fourteen Palace
+Gardens, St. John's Wood."
+
+Away with a jingle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Astonishing After-Effects Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George did not return to St. Peter's that afternoon; watched the cab
+from view; walked back to Waterloo; thence took train to Paltley Hill
+with mind awhirl.
+
+Recovering from stunning shock the mind first sees a blur of events--
+formless, seething, inextricably tangled. Deep in this boiling chaos
+is one fact struggling more powerfully than the rest to cool and so to
+shape itself. It kicks a leg free here, there an arm, then another
+leg. Its exertions cause the whole more furiously to agitate--the
+brain is afire. Very suddenly this struggling fact jumps free. Laid
+hold of it is a cold spoon which, plunged back into the seething
+cauldron, arrests the turmoil of its contents.
+
+Or again, recovering from sudden shock the mind first sees a great
+whirling, blinding cloud of dust which hides and wreathes about the
+sudden topple of masonry that has provoked it. Here the slowly
+emerging fact may be likened to a clear gangway through the ruin up
+which the fevered owner may walk to investigate the catastrophe's
+cause and extent.
+
+So now with George. If not dazed by stunning shock, he was at least
+awhirl by set back of the swift sequence of events which suddenly had
+buffeted him; and it was not until strolling up from Paltley Hill
+railway station to Herons' Holt that one cooling fact emerged from
+which he might make an ordered examination of what had passed.
+
+The address that the cabman had given him was this fact--14 Palace
+Gardens, St. John's Wood. Here was the gangway through the pile of
+disorder, and here George resolutely made a start of examining events
+in place of wildly beating about through the dust of aimless
+conjectures.
+
+He visualised this Palace Gardens residence. A gloomy house, he
+suspected,--prison-like; its inhabitants warders, the girl their
+captive. A beautiful picture was thus presented to this ridiculous
+young man. For if the girl were indeed captive, warder-surrounded, how
+gratefully her heart must press towards him who was no turnkey! The
+more irksomely her captors held her, the more warmly would she
+remember him. Subconsciously he hoped for a rattle of chains, a
+scourging with whips. Every bond, every stroke would speed her spirit
+to the recollection of their meeting.
+
+But this delectable picture soon faded. Love--and this ridiculous
+George vowed he was in love--love is a mental see-saw. The nicely-
+balanced mind is set suddenly oscillating: now up, commandingly above
+the world, intoxicated with the rush and the elevation; now down to
+depths made horribly deep by contrast, wretchedly jarred by the bump.
+
+A new thought impelled a downward jolt of this kind. Failing a gloomy
+14 Palace Gardens, supposing the girl to be happily situated, it was
+horribly improbable that she would give him a moment's thought. This
+was a most chilling idea. Shivering beneath the douche, George's mind
+ran back along the episode of their meeting to discover arguments that
+would build up the chains and the whips.
+
+Memories banked high on either side. In search of his desire George
+gathered them haphazard, closely examined each.
+
+It was an unsatisfactory business. Here was a memory. She had said
+so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that might mean anything. He flung it
+down; took another. She had said so-and-so. Yes; but, damn it, that
+might have meant nothing.
+
+This was very disturbing. He must systematically go through the whole
+pile of memories--upon an ordered plan reconstruct each step of the
+episode.
+
+At first attempt it was a wretched business. Never was builder set to
+work with bricks so impossible as the bricks of conversation with
+which this reconstruction must be done. Each that the girl had
+supplied might dovetail in as he would have it go; upon the other hand
+it fitted equally well when twisted into the form in which, for all he
+knew, she might have constructed it. The bricks George had himself
+supplied he found even more disconcerting--they were stupid, ugly,
+laughable. He shoved them in, and they grinned at him--mocked him.
+None the less he persevered--he must get his answer; he must see both
+what she had thought of him and if she were likely still to be
+thinking of him. And at last the whole passage was reconstructed. He
+examined it, and once more down came the see-saw with a most
+shattering bump: he had made himself an idiot, and stood champion
+idiot if he believed she were likely to remember him.
+
+With a crash George sent the whole pile flying. Let him wander blindly
+in the dust of imaginings rather than be tortured by the grim
+austerity of ordered facts. More than this, there was one most
+comfortable memory to which he desperately clung--that falter in her
+voice when she had said "You understand?" Whenever, during that
+evening, doubt stirred and bade him recognise himself for a fool,
+George flattened the ugly spectre with the arm he contrived out of
+this memory.
+
+It was a lusty weapon.
+
+But a fresh vexation that lies in wait for all new lovers tore him
+when he got to bed. In the darkness he set his mind solely to
+recalling the girl's face. The picture tantalisingly eluded him.
+Generalities he could recall. She was fair, very, very fair; her hair
+was shining golden; but how was it arranged? In desperation he
+squirmed off to her eyes--blue; no, grey; no, blue. Damn it, he would
+forget whether she were black or white in a minute. Her chin? Ah, he
+had that!--white and firm and round. And her nose?--small, and a
+trifle tip-tilted. And her mouth?--her mouth, oh, heaven, he could not
+fix her mouth! The distracted young man tossed upon his pillow and
+went elsewhere. Distinctly he could remember her little feet with
+those silver buckles, quite different from any other feet. And she
+held herself slim and supple. Held herself? Why, good heavens! she was
+tall, and he had been thinking of her as short! This was appalling! He
+might meet her and pass her by. He might ... he rushed into troubled
+slumber.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The night gave him little rest. Whilst his body lay heavy, his brain,
+feverishly active, chased through the hours glimpses of the queen of
+his adventure. By early morning he was prodded into consciousness, and
+awaked to find himself instantly confronted with a terrible affair.
+Into his life, so he assured himself, had come a serious interest such
+as that which the Dean had hoped for him.
+
+Here, lying abed with fresh morning smiling in through the open
+window, for the first time he looked forward, following the face he
+had pursued through his dreams, into the future. Its chambers he found
+ghastly barren. He visualised it as a vast unfurnished house. To the
+merry eye with which two days ago he had looked upon the world, the
+picture, had he then conjured it, would have given him no gloom. He
+would have thought it a fine thing, this empty house that was his own-
+-empty, but representing freedom.
+
+The matter was different now. Into this empty house had danced the
+girl. Her gay presence discovered its barrenness. There was not a
+chair on which she could sit, not a dish in the larder.
+
+George recalled that tight little practice at Runnygate that might be
+had for 400 pounds; went down to breakfast rehearsing a scene with his
+uncle; was moody through the meal.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The breakfast dragged past its close. Mr. Marrapit spoke. "The moments
+fly," he observed.
+
+Margaret said earnestly: "Oh, yes, father."
+
+"I was addressing George."
+
+"Ur!" said George, suddenly aroused.
+
+Mr. Marrapit looked at his watch; repeated his observation.
+
+George read his meaning. "I thought of going up by the later train to-
+day," he explained.
+
+"A dangerous thought. Crush it." Mr. Marrapit continued: "Margaret,
+Mrs. Major, I observe you have concluded"; and when the two had
+withdrawn addressed himself again to George: "A dangerous thought. You
+recall our conversation of the day before yesterday?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Yet by later trains, by idleness, you deliberately imperil your
+future?"
+
+George did not answer the question. This was the very opportunity for
+which he had wished. "I would like to talk about my future," he said.
+
+"I dare not dwell upon it," replied Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"I have to. I shall pass all right this time. I want to know--the fact
+is, sir, I know I have slacked in the past; I am a man now, and I--I
+regret it. I fully realise my responsibilities. You may rely that I
+shall make a certainty of the October examination."
+
+"Commendable," Mr. Marrapit criticised.
+
+"I want to know what help I may expect when I qualify."
+
+"I cannot tell you." Mr. Marrapit threw martyrdom into his tone. "I am
+so little," he said, "in your confidence. Your expectations when
+qualified may be enormous. I am not favoured with them." He sighed.
+
+George said: "I mean what help I may expect from you."
+
+The piece of toast rising to Mr. Marrapit's mouth slowly returned
+towards his plate: "Reiterate that. From _me_?"
+
+"From you," said George.
+
+The toast dropped from trembling fingers. "_I_?" Mr. Marrapit dragged
+the word to tremendous length. "I? Is it conceivable that you expect
+money from me?"
+
+"I only ask."
+
+"I only shudder. Might I inquire the amount?"
+
+"The Dean told me of a practice I could have for 400 pounds."
+
+"Tea!" exclaimed Mr. Marrapit on a gasp. "I must steady myself! Tea!"
+He paused; gulped a cup; with alarmed eyes stared at George.
+
+The affair was going no better than George had expected. He remembered
+the face that was dear to him; nerved himself to continue. "I would
+pay it back," he said. "Will you lend me the 400 pounds?"
+
+"I must have air!" Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. "I reel
+before this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have
+supported you. Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I
+totter always through life with you upon my bowed back? I am Sinbad."
+
+"There's no need to exaggerate or make a scene."
+
+"Did I impel the scene?"
+
+"I only asked you a question," George reminded.
+
+"You have aroused a spectre," Mr. Marrapit answered.
+
+"Well, I may understand that I need expect nothing?"
+
+"I dare not answer you. I am shaken. I tremble."
+
+George rose. Though what hope he had possessed was driven by his
+uncle's attitude, he was as yet only upon the threshold of his love.
+Hence the refusal of what he suddenly desired for that love's sake was
+not so bitter an affair as afterwards it came to be. "This is
+ridiculous," he said; moved to the door.
+
+"To me a tragedy," Mr. Marrapit declaimed from the window, "old as
+mankind; not therefore less bitter--the tragedy of ingratitude. At
+stupendous cost I have supported, educated, clothed you. You turn upon
+me for more. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a
+thankless child! I am Lear."
+
+George tried a thrust: "I always understood my mother left you ample
+for me."
+
+"Adjust that impression. She left me less than a sufficiency--nothing
+approaching amplitude. To the best of my ability I have fulfilled my
+task. It has been hard. I do not complain. I do not ask you for
+repayment of any excess that may have been incurred. But I am
+embittered by yet further demands. I have been too liberal. Had I
+meted out strict justice as I have striven to mete out kindness, my
+grey hairs would not be speeding in poverty to the grave. I am
+Wolsey."
+
+Upon Wolsey George slammed the door; started for the station.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Palace Gardens, St. John's Wood, was his aim. There could be no work,
+nor even thought of work, until again he had met his lady. Yet how to
+meet her cost him another of the wrestles with conjecture that had
+been his lot since the cab carried her away.
+
+At first it was easy work. He would call, he decided, with polite
+inquiries; and as he pictured the scene his spirits rose. The thunder-
+figure that had poked a bow at him from the cab would come dragonish
+into the drawing-room where he waited. Her he would charm with the
+suavity of his manners; she would doff the dragon's skin; would say
+(he had read the scene in novels), "You would like to see Miss So-and-
+so?"
+
+The girl would come in ....
+
+With her appearance in his thoughts George's mind swung from coherent
+reasoning into a delectable phantasy ....
+
+A sudden thought swept the filmy clouds-landed him with a bump upon
+hard rock. He was not supposed to know their address. How, to the
+dragon, could he explain the venal trick by which he had acquired it?
+Now he beheld a new picture. Himself in the drawing-room; to him the
+dragon; her first words, "How did you know where we lived?"; his
+miserable answer.
+
+This was very unpleasant. As a red omnibus took him on towards St.
+John's Wood he decided that the meeting must be otherwise effected.
+The girl must sometimes go out. She had called herself a mother's-
+help; it suggested children; and, if children, doubtless her task to
+take them walking. Well, he would take up a post near to the house,
+and wait--just wait.
+
+And then there came a final thought that struck him cold and staring.
+What if she did not live at the house?--was merely about to visit
+there when the accident befell the cab?
+
+It was a sorely agitated young man that stepped off the 'bus and
+struck up Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+Of his Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Excursions In The Memory Of A Heroine.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+AS that cab swung round the corner bearing away the nameless haunter
+of George's dreams, she to the red wrath beside her turned, and, "Oh,
+Mrs. Chater," she said, "I hope you are not hurt!"
+
+By a mercy Mrs. Chater was not hurt. By a special intervention of
+Providence she had escaped a fearful death. Whether she would ever
+recover from the shock was another matter. Whether the shock would
+prove to be that sudden strain on her heart which she had been warned
+would end fatally, might at any moment be proved. Much anybody, except
+her darling children, would care if she were brought home dead in this
+very cab. Never had she known a heart to act as hers was acting now--
+thumping as if it would burst, first quickly then slowly. Perhaps Miss
+Humfray would feel it, and give her opinion.
+
+Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant Chaters had been
+nourished; the massive bosom was advertisement that they had done
+well. Beneath the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently
+contracted and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though Mrs. Chater
+said it throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned.
+
+The agitated woman panted, "Can it go on like that?"
+
+"I'm afraid I hardly--" Miss Humfray shifted her hand.
+
+"_Stupid!_ Take off your glove!"
+
+The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous and clumsy the girl
+struggled with it.
+
+"Miss _Humfray!_ How slow you are! _Pull_ it!"
+
+Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A crack answered the jerk,
+and the glove split away in her hand. "_There!_ Not my fault. Next
+time, perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently large. Oh, my poor
+heart! Now, feel. _Press!_"
+
+The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her throat. She pressed,
+as bid, into that heaving blouse; said she could feel it. It was not
+very violent, she. thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater lay back and closed
+her eyes--
+
+"_I_ was not able to jump out, you see," said Mrs. Chater, sinking.
+
+"Oh, you don't think I _jumped_ out--and left you? I _wouldn't_.
+Besides, it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would have
+prevented me in any case. I was thrown. I thought I was going to be
+killed."
+
+"You were with a young man."
+
+"He caught me."
+
+The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying. That lump in her
+throat seemed to be squeezing tears from her eyes--silly tears. She
+did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy, yet could not but reflect what
+disregard for her the utter absence of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts
+yet more dangerously squeezed the tears. She was a paid _thing_, that
+was all--not even a servant. Mrs. Chater was on kindly terms with her
+servants--had experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded it
+by the familiarity that was too useful to produce contempt--knew her
+maids' young men, entered into their quarrels with their young men,
+read their young men's letters.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner, the girl felt
+herself friendless, outcast, alone. Again she told herself that she
+did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy; yet it was the studied
+withholding of it--studied or callous because so natural, the merest
+conventionalism, to have asked, "Were you hurt?"--that made her
+acutely feel her position.
+
+A paradox, she thought, not to want a thing and yet to be wounded
+because it was not hers. A ridiculous paradox--and brightly she tried
+to smile at the silliness of it; blinking the tears that were swelling
+now, her face turned against the window towards the pavement.
+
+A tall, slim girl was passing, holding the arm of a nice-looking
+little old man with a grey moustache and military air. The tall, slim
+girl was laughing down at him, and he looked to be chuckling merrily,
+just as--Her mind swung off, and the tears must be blinked again.
+
+They reminded her, those two, of herself and her father. Such familiar
+friends as they looked so she had been with Dad who idolised her and
+whom she had idolised. Just like that--arm in arm, joking, "ragging"--
+she used to walk with him round about the home in Ireland--the world
+to one another and none else in the world, except the mother who was
+so intimately and inseparably of them that years past her death they
+still spoke of her as if she were alive.
+
+Thus, long after her death, it would be: "Dad, we can't go home by the
+hill; mother never lets Grizzle do that climb after a long day." And:
+"Mary, your mother won't like you being so late; we must turn back."
+And: "Mary, there's the pig by mother's almond tree; run and shoo
+him."
+
+Partly this refusal to recognise that, though dead, Mother was
+actually gone from them, no longer was sharing their little jokes and
+duties, was because death came with such steady, appreciable,
+unfrightening steps. First the riding stopped, and then the walks made
+shorter and shorter; then the strolls in the garden stopped, and then
+carrying the couch out under the trees--and none of them very fearful,
+because prepared: it was to be--almost the very day could have been
+named. Thus, when it came, though the blow swooped heavy, terrific,
+she never seemed actually to have left them.
+
+"Well, now, dear dears," she had said with a little smile and a little
+sigh, "we have been happy ... only a little way away...."
+
+But with Dad it was different. Somehow, looking back on it, one had
+supposed that nothing would ever touch the cheery little man; that she
+and he would go on and on and on--well, till they grew very old
+together.
+
+Nothing could ever touch him....
+
+"What a wicked beauty, eh, Mary?" he had said when the man brought
+round the half-broken filly that its owner "funked."
+
+And she had laughed and said: "Yes, an angel in a temper--what a run
+you will have, Dad!" and had waved from the gate as the angel in a
+temper curveted away around the corner.
+
+Nothing could ever touch him....
+
+And then the man on a bicycle--with a dent in his hat, she noticed.
+
+"If you can come quickly, missy. Top of the Three Finger field he
+lays."
+
+Bare-backed she had galloped Grizzle there, and as she sped could not
+for the life of her think of aught else than the dent in the man's
+hat; rode up Three Finger Lane wondering how it came there; approached
+the little group wondering why he did not push it out.
+
+Just as she galloped up they took off their hats. Someone who had been
+on his knees stood upright--she saw the stain of wet earth where he
+had been kneeling; forgot the dented hat; wondered if he knew of the
+Marvel Cleaning Pad that had done so wonderfully with Dad's breeches
+when he took a toss last Friday.
+
+Dad...! Of course...! It was to see Dad that she was here.
+
+Somebody tried to dissuade her ... better wait till they brought him
+home ... could do no good--now.
+
+"Why? Why not see him? Let me pass, Mr. Saunders."
+
+Well, the filly lay across him ... he had begged them not to move her
+because of the pain.... Better come away.
+
+She pushed through them.... Yes, better perhaps not to have seen ...
+all crumpled up....
+
+Recollecting, she could feel distinctly in her knees the creepy damp
+as the moisture of the marshy ground penetrated her skirts, bending
+over the twisted face.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Thereafter a blank of days in which events must have occurred but to
+which memory brought no lamp until the faint crunch as the coffin
+touched the earth seven feet down....
+
+Multitudinous papers after that. Wearying, sickening masses of
+documents; interminable writing of signature; interminable making of
+lists. And then the word LOT. "Lot I," "Lot 2," "Lot 50," "Lot 200"--a
+hammerlike word to thump the brain at night, frightening sleep,
+producing grotesque nightmares, as "Lot 12, a polished oak coffin,
+finished plain, brass Handles."
+
+No! No! That was not to be sold!--leaden hands holding her down;
+stifling hands at her mouth to stay her shouting "Stop!"
+
+Then sudden consciousness--only a dream! Bolt upright in bed staring
+into the darkness. A dream? How much of it a dream? Was it all a
+dream? The fevered brain would fetch her from her bed, groping to
+Dad's room, striking a match--no familiar form upon the bed; a big
+white ticket--"Lot 56."
+
+Back to the hot, crumpled couch, there, tossing, to lie attempting a
+grasp, a realisation of what it all meant....
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A dark little office in Dublin.... So much the "Lots" had fetched, so
+much the balance at the bank; no investments, it was to be feared; no
+insurance, my dear Miss Humfray; so much the bills and other claims on
+the estate.... "Don't wish to be bothered with figures? Of course not,
+my dear.... And then we come to the balance--I'm afraid a few pounds,
+practically nothing...."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+On the steamer bound for Holyhead.... During the crossing the stifling
+weight that had benumbed her intellect ever since the man with the
+dent in his hat came riding up the drive seemed suddenly to lift.
+Whipped away perhaps by the edged wind that rushed past her from
+England to Ireland sinking in the sea--a wind to cut you to the bone;
+discovering sensation in every marrow; stinging her to clear
+thought.... That idyllic life with Mother and Dad--the world to one
+another and none else in the world beside--had been rather the
+creation of circumstance than of design. Dad's people were furious
+when he married Mother; in defiance of hers, Mother married Dad.
+Relations on either side had shrieked their disapproval of the match,
+then left the couple to their own adventures. A thing to laugh at in
+those days, but bringing now to the child that was left the
+realisation of not a support in the world.
+
+Her mother's sisters had written after the funeral inviting her to
+come to them in England "while she looked about her." She could recall
+every sentence of that letter. It had burned. Each word, each comma
+was fresh before her eyes as the cab jolted on to Palace Gardens.
+
+"It would have been our pleasure constantly to have entertained you
+during your mother's life-time," they had written, "but she wilfully
+flouted our desires at her marriage and thereafter utterly ignored us.
+The fault for the rift between us was of her making, not ours; we sent
+her an Easter card one year, and had no reply; though we have no doubt
+that your father, not that we would say a word against him now,
+influenced her against her better judgment. However...."
+
+She had written back a hysterical letter.
+
+"Your letter came just after I had returned from burying my dear, dear
+father, who worshipped my darling mother. If I were begging in the
+street, starving, dying, I would not touch a crumb or a penny of
+yours. You are wicked--yes, you are wicked to write to me as you have
+written...."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+She could not stay in Ireland. Her only friends there lived about the
+dear home that was now no longer a home but a "desirable residence
+with some acres of garden and paddock." Her only friends there were
+friends who had been shared with Mother and Dad--whose presence now
+would be constant reminder of that happy participation now lost. One
+and all offered her hospitality, but she must refuse. "No, no silly
+idea of being a burden to you, dear, dear Mrs. Sullivan--only I can't,
+can't live anywhere near where we used to live."
+
+Years before a great friend of hers had married an English clergyman;
+had written often to her from London of the numerous activities in
+which she was engaged--principal among them a kind of agency and home
+for gentlewomen. "Governesses, dear, and all that kind of thing ...
+poor girls, many of them, who have suddenly had to earn a living."
+
+The correspondence had died, as do so many, from the effects of undue
+urgency at the outset; but she had the address, and was certain there
+of welcome and of aid. "Poor girls who have suddenly had to earn a
+living." The words took on a new meaning: she was of these.
+
+From Euston she drove to the address. Her friend had gone. Yes, the
+present occupant remembered the name. The present occupant had been
+there two years; had taken over the lease from the former tenant
+because the lady was ill and had been ordered abroad. That was all the
+present occupant knew; saw her to the door; closed it behind her.
+
+Alone in London. "Alone in London"--it had been one of Dad's jokes; he
+had written a burlesque on it, and they had played it one Christmas to
+roars of fun. O God! what a thing at which to laugh now that the
+realisation struck and one stood on the pavement in the dark with this
+great city roaring at one!
+
+Cabmen, she had heard, were brutes; but the man who had brought her to
+the house must be appealed to.... Where could she get the cheapest
+lodging of some kind?
+
+How did he know? What was she wanting to pay? ...
+
+The great city roared at her. Her head swum a little. An idler or two
+took up a grinning stand: the thing looked like a cab-fare dispute....
+What was she wanting to pay? ... Well, as little as possible. "I have
+never been in London before, and I don't know anybody. My friend here
+has gone. I have just arrived from Ireland." She began to cry.
+
+He from his box in a moment. "From Ireland!"
+
+Why, he was from Ireland! ... Not likely she was from Connemara? ...
+She was? ... From Kinsloe? ... Why, he knew it well; he was from
+Ballydag!
+
+He rolled his tongue around other names of the district; she knew them
+all; could almost have laughed at the silly fellow's delight.
+
+Why, the honour it would be if she would come and let his missus make
+her up a bed! "Don't ye cry, missie. Don't ye take on like that. It's
+all right ye are now." He put a huge, roughly great-coated arm about
+her--squeezed her, she believed; helped her into the cab.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Missus in the clean little rooms over the rattling mews was no less
+delighted. From Kinsloe? Why, missie saw that canary?--that was a
+present from Betty Murphy in Kinsloe, not three months before!
+
+The canary, aroused by the attention paid it, trilled upward in a
+mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her
+head ... louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird
+and cage became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have
+carried her to the bed in which she awoke.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Friends in Ireland had given her the addresses of friends in London on
+whom she must call. She visited some houses; then in a sudden wild
+despair tore the list. Either these people were dense of comprehension
+or she clumsy of explanation. To make them realise her position she
+found impossible. They were warmly kind, sympathetic--cheery in that
+lugubrious fashion in which we are taught to be "bright" with the
+afflicted. But when she spoke of the necessity to find employment they
+would warmly cry, "Oh, but you must not think of that yet, Miss
+Humfray ... after all you have been through.... You must keep quiet
+for a little."
+
+One and all gave her the same words. An impulse took her to kick over
+the tea-table--anything to arouse these people from their stereotyped
+mood of sympathy with a girl suddenly bereaved,--and to cry, "But
+don't you _understand_? I am living over a mews--over a _mews_ with
+twelve pounds and a few shillings, and then _nothing_--nothing at
+all."
+
+Wise, perhaps, had she indulged the outburst without the action; wiser
+had she written to some of the friends in Ireland, asked to go back to
+one of them for a while. But the dull grief beneath which she still
+lay benumbed prevented her from other course than tonelessly accepting
+the proffered sympathy; and the thought of returning to Ireland was
+impossible. She tore the list of London friends; appealed to Tim and
+Missus.
+
+Tim was helpful. He had taken fares to an Agency in Norfolk Street--an
+Agency for "Disturbed Gentlewomen," he called it; there took her one
+morning.
+
+"Distressed Gentlewomen," she found the brass plate to read--"The
+Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed Gentlewomen."
+
+A lymphatic-looking young woman, assisting the growth of a singularly
+stout face by sucking a sweet, and wearing brown holland sleeve
+protectors hooked up with enormous safety-pins, received her in the
+room marked "Enquiries"; put her into that labelled "Waiting." Here
+were two copies of the _Christian Herald_, some emigration pamphlets,
+a carafe of water covered by an inverted tumbler dusty with disuse,
+and three elderly females--presumably gentlewomen, possibly
+distressed, but not advertising either condition.
+
+In due time her turn for the room marked "Private"; interrogation by
+Miss Ram, a short, thin lady in black, who bowed more frequently than
+she spoke, possessing a range of inclinations of the head each of
+which had unmistakable meaning.
+
+Position sought?--Oh, anything; governess, companion. Last situation?
+--None; she was inexperienced. Capabilities?--Equally lacking, as
+discovered by a probing cross-examination. Salary required?--Oh,
+anything; whatever was usual; a _home_--that was the chief object in
+view.
+
+Miss Ram entered the details in a severe-looking book with a long thin
+pen--could hold out but faint hopes. The applicants whom she was
+accustomed to suit were "in nine and ninety cases out of one hundred
+cases" accomplished in the domestic or scholastic arts. However. Yes,
+Miss Humfray should call every morning. Better still, stay in the
+waiting-room. Be On the Spot--that was the first requisite for
+success, as Miss Humfray would find whether in a situation or awaiting
+a situation; be On the Spot.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+On the Spot. A nightmare week in the dingy waiting-room ... thoughts
+probing the mind, stabbing the heart.... Nine till one, a cup of tea
+and a roll at an A.B.C. shop, an aimless walk in the park; two till
+six, good-night to the stout young woman named Miss Porter in
+"Enquiries," home to the rattling mews and to Missus.
+
+On the Spot. Occasional interviews. "Miss Humfray, a lady will see
+you." ... "Oh, too young--far too young." ... "Thank you, that will
+do, Miss Humfray." ... "Oh, not my style at all." ... "Thank you, that
+will do, Miss Humfray."
+
+On the Spot. Fortunately On the Spot one day--a Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, as
+nursery governess, Streatham.
+
+For a week very much On the Spot with Mrs. Eyton-Eyton. Nursery
+governess was a comprehensive word in the Eyton-Eyton vocabulary;
+covered every duty that in a nursery must be performed. One must do
+the nursery fire, sweep the nursery floor, bring up and carry down the
+nursery meals--servants, you see, object to waiting upon one whom, as
+Mrs. Eyton-Eyton with a careless laugh pointed out, they regard as one
+of themselves. Quickly the lesson was appreciated that while a servant
+must never be "put upon," the same consideration need not be extended
+to a lady. Servants are rare in the market, young ladies cheap.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The lesson of dependence, subserviency, Mary found harder in the
+learning; did not study it; therein reaped disaster.
+
+She arrived on a Tuesday. Upon that day of the following week Mrs.
+Eyton-Eyton paid to the nursery one of her rare visits, beautifully
+gowned, the hired victoria waiting to take her a round of calls.
+
+Lunch, delayed not to disturb the midday sleep of Masters Thomas and
+Richard Eyton-Eyton, was not cleared--Master Thomas still struggling
+with a plate of sago pudding.
+
+Betwixt her children Mrs. Eyton-Eyton--beautifully gowned, hired
+victoria in waiting--took her seat; Mary hovered behind--and
+catastrophe swooped. Master Thomas grabbed for a glass of milk; Mary
+strove to restrain him. There was an awkward struggle, her elbow--or
+his--caught the plate of pudding, tipped the sticky mass into the
+silken lap of Mrs. Eyton-Eyton, beautifully gowned, hired victoria in
+waiting.
+
+Infuriated, Mrs. Eyton-Eyton turned upon Mary. "Oh, you little fool!"
+
+The rebuke that should have been taken with downcast eyes, murmured
+apologies, was otherwise received.
+
+"Mrs. Eyton! How dare you call me a fool!"
+
+Pause of blank amazement; sago-messed table-napkin in the scented
+hand; sago creeping down the silken skirt. That a nursery governess--
+not even a servant--should so presume!
+
+"Miss Humfray! You forget yourself!"
+
+"No!-No! It is you who forget yourself. How dare you speak to me like
+that!"
+
+Another moment of utter bewilderment; small Eyton-Eytons gazing round-
+eyed; the girl white, heaving; the woman dully red. Then "Pack your
+boxes, Miss!"
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+She was upon the platform at Victoria Station, a porter asking
+commands for her box, before she realised what she had done. A few
+pounds in her purse, and infinitely worse off now than a week before.
+Then she had no "character"; now employment was to be sought with Mrs.
+Eyton-Eyton as her "last place." She would not go back to Missus and
+Tim. Though they had tried to conceal it, secretly, she had seen, they
+were relieved when she left. They had not accommodation for her;
+latterly she had dispossessed of his bed a sailor son on leave from
+his ship.
+
+She left her box in the cloak-room; turned down Wilton Road from the
+station; penetrated the narrow thoroughfares between Lupus Street and
+the river; secured a bedroom with Mrs. Japes at six shillings a week.
+
+Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received
+a furious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel
+line of red ink ruled through the page that began "Name: Mary
+Humfray," and ended "Salary:--"
+
+"But I don't know a soul in London."
+
+"You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have a
+reputation for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk."
+
+A bow closed the interview.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+It was her landlady's husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, who
+dealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
+
+Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shops
+that had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and her
+presumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she found
+Mrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
+
+What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs.
+Up to her room--the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents
+scattered across the floor, the little case in which with her pictures
+of Mother and Dad she kept her money gone.
+
+A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which Mrs. Japes's
+property had also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ...
+had done time ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she'd
+best go ... of course she could tell the police.
+
+Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered and
+frightened her.
+
+To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new
+landlady into the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of
+wardrobe.... Answering of advertisements found in the public library
+in Great Smith Street.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus
+fares.... Always the same outcome. ... Experience?--None. References?
+--None.... "Thank you; I'm afraid--I'm sure it's all right, but one
+has to be so careful nowadays. Good morning." ... Always the same
+outcome.... The idea of writing to Ireland was hardly conceived. ...
+That life, those friends, seemed of a period that was dead, done,
+gone--ages and ages ago....
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow--a gentlemanly-looking
+person of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to an
+address copied from the _Daily Telegraph_. Why, by an extraordinary
+coincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!--flat,
+rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help.
+Might he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
+
+Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though
+putting now and then curious little questions which she could not
+understand.... Hadn't he seen her at the Oxford one night? ...
+Assuredly he had not; what was the Oxford?
+
+He laughed, evidently pleased. "Gad, you do keep it up!" he cried.
+
+So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
+
+"You understand why I can't use the lift?" he said. "They're beastly
+particular here."
+
+She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thus
+to a door where he took out a latch-key.
+
+It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, took
+her, trembling her limbs.
+
+She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
+
+"Why, it is the wrong number!" she cried.
+
+He had turned the key. "Lord! you do keep it up!" he laughed, his hand
+suddenly about her arm.
+
+Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the
+thing.
+
+"Ah, let me go--let me go!"
+
+"Oh, chuck it, you little ass!" His arm was about her waist now,
+dragging her; his face close.
+
+With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched
+from his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered
+his wits; across the hall and running--shaking, hysterical--down the
+street.
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Thereafter men were a constant horror to her--adding a new and most
+savage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair that
+bayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, she
+went again to Miss Ram at the Agency--almost upon her knees, crying,
+trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat to
+the man in Wilton Road.
+
+Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grim
+exterior; had never realised the actual circumstances; would do what
+she could; no need to be frightened.
+
+Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. No
+sharpness, no slight now could prick her spirit; she had learned too
+well; she would not face those streets again.
+
+That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds were
+healing now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at present
+discomforts. It was only now and again--as now--that she, driven by
+some sudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander--bruising
+itself in those dark passages.
+
+The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob;
+was herself.
+
+Mrs. Chater said: "Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Excursions In Vulgarity.
+
+
+A violent dispute with the cabman set that disturbed heart yet more
+wildly thumping in Mrs. Chater's bosom; the sight of her husband
+uneasily mooning in the dining-room heated her wrath to wilder
+bubblings.
+
+Mr. Chater--a 'oly dam' terror in Mincing Lane, if his office-boy may
+be quoted--was an astonishingly mild man in his own house.
+
+He said brightly, noting with a shiver the gusty stress of his wife's
+deportment: "You _drove_ up, my dear?--And quite right, too," he
+hastily added, upon a sudden fear that his remark might be interpreted
+as reproach.
+
+"How do you know?" Mrs. Chater's nose went into the brandy-and-soda.
+
+"I saw you from the window," her husband beamed. He repeated, "The
+window," and nervously pointed at it. There was a strained atmosphere
+in the room, and he was a little frightened.
+
+"_Oh!_" Out from the brandy-and-soda came the nose; down went the
+glass with an emphasising bang: "_Oh!_"
+
+Mr. Chater gave a startled little jump. He saw, immediately he had
+spoken, the misfortune into which his admission had plunged him; the
+bang of the glass twanged his already apprehensive nerves, and he
+jerked out, "Certainly, my dear," without any clear grasp as to what
+he was affirming.
+
+"If you had been a _man_," said Mrs. Chater, speaking with a slow and
+extraordinary bitterness--"if you had been a _man_, you would have
+come out and helped me."
+
+"But you had got out when I came to the window, my dear."
+
+"With the _cabman_, I mean." Mrs. Chater fired the word with alarming
+ferocity. "With the _cabman_. Did you not see that violent brute
+insulting me?"
+
+It was precisely because he had observed the episode that Mr. Chater
+had kept well behind the curtain; but he did not adduce the fact.
+
+"I certainly did not," he affirmed.
+
+"Ah! I expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the same
+thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut
+outside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. Making me--"
+
+Mr. Chater implored: "Oh, my dear, don't drag that up again!"
+
+"But I _do_ drag it up!" Mrs. Chater a little unnecessarily cried. "I
+_do_ drag it up, and I shall always drag it up--making me a fool as
+you did! I was ashamed of you. I was--"
+
+Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket
+handkerchief: "I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I
+never understood the circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was
+very much pushed about. If I had known the circumstances--"
+
+Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: "Circumstances!"
+
+"My dear," the agitated man replied, ticking off the points on soft
+fingers, "my dear, I had gone to the window of Swan and Edgar's,
+leaving you, as you expressly desired, to pay the man _yourself_. When
+I came _back_ to you, what I gathered was that the man was entitled to
+a further _sixpence_ and that you had no _change_."
+
+Mrs. Chater lashed herself with the recollection: "Nothing of the
+kind!" she burst. "Nothing of the kind! What did the man say to you
+when you asked what was the matter?"
+
+"I quite forget."
+
+"You do not forget."
+
+"My dear, I really and truly do forget."
+
+"For the hundredth time, then, let me tell you. He said that if you
+pushed your ugly mug into it he would knock off your blooming head."
+
+"Did he say _mug?_" asked Mr. Chater, assuming the air of one who,
+knowing this at the time, would have committed a singularly ferocious
+murder.
+
+"Well you know that he _did_ say mug--_ugly_ mug. Was _that_ a thing
+for a man of spirit to take quietly? Was _that_ a thing for a wife to
+hear bawled at her husband in the open street with the commissionaire
+grinning behind his hand? To my dying day I shall never forget my
+humiliation when you handed him sixpence."
+
+The unhappy husband murmured: "I do so wish you could, my dear."
+
+Mrs. Chater shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfect
+tactician, and hurled in the attack upon another quarter.
+
+She said: "Ah, now insult me! Insult me before Miss Humfray! That's
+right! _That's_ right! That's what I'm accustomed to. We all have our
+cross to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from my
+husband is mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open."
+
+Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice which
+implied that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyes
+tightly closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered
+nerves, swallowed it with the air of one draining a poison flask by
+way of happy release from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and,
+before her amazed husband could open his lips, hammered in the attack
+from a third quarter.
+
+"Little you would have cared," cried she, "if a miracle had not saved
+my life this afternoon!"
+
+Mr. Chater stood aghast. "My dearest! Saved you! From what?"
+
+His dearest bitterly inquired: "What does it matter to you? You take
+no interest. If my battered corpse--" Swept to tremendous heights by
+the combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her two
+brandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. "If my
+battered corpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this
+very afternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?"
+
+Mr. Chater, apprehension creeping among the roots of his hair,
+affirmed that he would have dropped dead in the precise spot at which
+he happened to be standing at the moment.
+
+Mrs. Chater trumpeted "Never!"--dropped to her chair, and continued.
+"You would have been glad." Her voice shook. "Glad--and in all this
+wide world only my Bob and my blessed lambs in the nursery would have
+wept o'er my body."
+
+Of so melancholy a character was the picture thus presented to her
+mind, augmenting her previous agitation, that the tumult within her
+welled damply through her eyes, with noisy distress through her lips.
+
+Patting her distressed back, imploring her to calm, Mr. Chater begged
+some account of the catastrophe from which she had escaped.
+
+Between convulsive sobs she told him, he bridging the hiatuses of
+emotion with "Oh-dear-oh-dears," in which alarm and sympathy were
+nicely mingled.
+
+Painting details with a masterly hand, "And there was I alone," she
+concluded--"alone, at the mercy of a wild horse and a drunken cabman."
+
+"But Miss Humfray was with you?"
+
+"Miss Humfray managed to jump out and leave me."
+
+Through all this scene--in one form or another a matter of daily
+occurrence, and therefore not to arouse interest--Mary had stood
+waiting its cessation and her orders. Mr. Chater turned upon her.
+Naturally disposed to be kind to the girl, he yet readily saw in his
+wife's statement a way of escape from the castigation he had been
+enduring. As the small boy who has been kicked by the bully will with
+delighted relief rush to the bully's aid when the kicks are at length
+turned to another, urging him on so that he may forget his first prey,
+so Mr. Chater, delighted at his fortune, eagerly joined in turning his
+wife's wrath to Mary's head. For self-preservation, at whatever cost
+to another, is the most compelling of instincts: its power great in
+proportion as we have allowed our fleshly impulses to master us. If,
+when they prompt, we coldly and impersonally regard them, find them
+unworthy and crush them back humiliated, they become in time
+disciplined--wither and die. In proportion as we permit them, upon the
+other hand, they come in time to drive us with a fierceness that
+cannot be checked.
+
+Mr. Chater had disciplined no single impulse that came to him with his
+flesh.
+
+In pious horror he turned upon the girl.
+
+"Managed to jump out!" he exclaimed, speaking as one re-echoing a
+horror hardly to be believed.
+
+"Managed to jump out! Miss Humfray, I would not have thought it of
+you!"
+
+She cried: "Mr. Chater, I fell!"
+
+Disregarding, and with a deeper note of pained reproach, he continued:
+"So many ties, I should have thought, would have bound you to my wife
+in such an emergency--the length of time you have been with us; the
+unremitting kindness she has shown you, treating you as one of
+ourselves, in sickness tending you, bountifully feeding and clothing
+you, going out of her way to make you happy. Oh, Miss Humfray!"
+
+The strain on his invention paused him. Mrs. Chater, moved by this
+astonishing revelation of her love, assumed an air in keeping--an air
+of some pain but no surprise at such ingratitude. She warmed to this
+husband who, if no hero in the matter of ferocious cabmen, could at
+least champion her upon occasion.
+
+Mary cried: "But I did not jump out! Indeed I did not, Mr. Chater; I
+fell."
+
+Mrs. Chater said _"Fell!"_ With sublime forbearance she added, "Never
+mind; the incident is past."
+
+"Mrs. Chater, you must know that I fell out. I was leaning out--you
+had asked me to see the name of the street--when the horse stumbled."
+
+"It is curious," said Mrs. Chater, with a pained little smile, "that
+you managed to 'fall out' before the horse could recover and bolt."
+
+"Very, very curious," Mr. Chater echoed.
+
+How hateful they were, the girl felt. She broke out: "I--"
+
+"Miss Humfray, that is enough. Help me upstairs. I will lie down."
+
+Mr. Chater jumped brightly to the bell. "My dear, do; I will send you
+a hot-water bottle."
+
+His wife recalled the shortcomings for which she had been taking him
+to task. "Send a fiddlestick," she rapped; "on a boiling day like
+this!"
+
+She took Mary's arm; leaning heavily, passed from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.
+
+
+Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted, eau-
+de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull the
+tumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.
+
+About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched
+it in the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she
+had learned to take buffetings.
+
+To be dispassionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upon
+a wounded spirit--to regard this Mary with the comically twitching
+face whom now she saw in the glass as a second person whose sufferings
+might be coldly regarded and dissected.
+
+It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to be
+philosophic upon the cares of another--nothing so easy as to wax
+impatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden by
+troubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, we
+can school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as one
+person, and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chiding
+that figure out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.
+
+With some success Mary had studied the art; now gave that Mary-in-the-
+glass who stood before her a healthy reproof.
+
+"The ridiculous thing you did," Mary-in-the-glass was told--"the
+ridiculous thing you did to make yourself miserable was to go thinking
+about--about Ireland."
+
+The mouth of Mary-in-the-glass ominously twitched.
+
+"There you go again. And it is so absolutely forbidden to think about
+that. Whatever's the use of it?"
+
+Mary-in-the-glass could adduce no reason, and must be prodded.
+
+"Does it do you any good? Does it do _them_ any good, do you suppose,
+to know that you can never think of them without making yourself
+unhappy?"
+
+Mary-in-the-glass attempted a weak quibble; was instantly snapped.
+
+"I'm not saying you are _never_ to think of them. Goodness knows what
+I should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you are
+happy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you choose
+to be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whining
+anywhere near them--understand? You only make them unhappy and make
+your troubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs.
+Chater, you must be a wretched sort of person. Her face when the cab
+brought her back! And trying to feel her heart! And her rage with that
+little worm of a Mr. Chater! Can't you see the fun of it instead of
+crying over it?"
+
+Mary-in-the-glass could. The successive recollections induced the
+prettiest dimples on her face. She was at once forgiven.
+
+Indeed, to snuggle back into her and to merge into her again was just
+now very desirable to the censorious Mary-outside-the-glass. For,
+merged in her sentimental and romantic personality, a most delectable
+line of thought could be pursued--a delectable line, since along this
+trail was to be encountered that stranger who had caught her in her
+wild ejection from the cab.
+
+Sinking in a chair, Mary adventured upon it; she was instantly met.
+
+Mary-outside-the-glass essayed her best to prevent the interview.
+"Poof!" Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young person, sneered.
+"Poof! You little idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five
+minutes, whom you will never again see, and from whose recollections
+you have most certainly passed unless to be recalled as a joke--
+perhaps to some other girl!" (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters
+these Marys-outside-the-glass.) "Why, you must be a donkey to think
+about him! For goodness' sake come away before you make yourself too
+utterly ridiculous! You won't. Well, perhaps you will try to recall
+the figure you must have cut in his eyes? Do you remember what you
+must have looked like as you shot out of the cab like a sack of straw?
+Pretty sight, eh? And can you imagine the expression on your face as
+you banged into his arms? Charming you must have looked, mustn't you?
+And can you by any means realise the idiot you must have looked when
+Mrs. Chater came up and swept you off like an escaped puppy,
+recaptured and in for a whipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you?
+You didn't happen to peep back through the little window at the back
+of the cab and see him laughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have
+looked...."
+
+And so on. This was the attitude of that cold, calculating,
+dispassionate Mary-outside-the-glass. But Mary smothered the voice--
+would not hear a word of it. Completely she became Mary-in-the-glass,
+that sentimental young woman, and in that personality tripped along
+the path of thought where stood her stranger.
+
+Delectably she relived the encounter. Paced down the street, took
+again his arm; without a fault recalled his words, without a check
+gave her replies; recalled the pitch of his voice to the nicest note,
+struck again the light in his eyes.
+
+Now why? She had met other men; in Ireland had thrice wounded her
+tender heart by negations that had caused three suitors most desperate
+anguish. None had awakened in her a deeper interest; and yet here was
+a stranger--suddenly encountered, as suddenly left--who in her mind
+had appropriated a track which she was eager to make a well-beaten
+path. Why?
+
+But Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, was no prober of
+emotions. They veiled the hard business of commonplace life; and amid
+them mistily she now floated afar into dim features where her
+stranger, stranger no more, walked with her hand in hand.
+
+There was attempt at first to construct an actual re-encounter. Mary-
+in-the-glass, that romantic young woman, very speciously pointed out
+that in London when once you see a man you may reasonably suppose that
+you will again meet him. For in London one does not aimlessly wander;
+one has some set purpose and traverses a thousand times the same
+streets, crossing daily at the same points as though upon the pursuit
+of a chalked line. Mary-in-the-glass, therefore, constructing a re-
+encounter, happened to be strolling along the scene of the accident,
+and lo! there was he!
+
+Unhappily this vision was transient. Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold
+young woman, got in a word here that erased the picture. The square
+where the cab crashed was too far afield to take the children for
+their walk; holiday was a boon rarely granted and never granted at the
+particular hour of the catastrophe--the only time of day at which,
+according to the chalked-line theory, she might reasonably expect to
+find the stranger in the same spot.
+
+But Mary did not brood long upon this melancholy obstacle; drove away
+Mary-outside-the-glass; became again Mary-in-the-glass. And they are
+impossible creatures these Marys-in-the-glass. They will approach an
+unbridged chasm across which no Mary-out-side could by any means
+adventure, and, floating the gulf, will deliriously roam in the fields
+beyond.
+
+So now. And in that dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her
+stranger sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all the
+favourite spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in them;
+introduced other persons, and marked their comment on her dear
+companion.
+
+It was he whom she made to do mighty deeds in those misty fields; of
+herself hers were merely a girl's gentle fancies, held modest by her
+sex's natural desire to be loved for itself alone--not for big
+behaviour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Excursions In A Nursery.
+
+
+The loud bang of a door was the gong that called Mary back from those
+pleasant fields. They whirled from her, leaving her in sudden
+realisation of the material.
+
+She glanced at the clock.
+
+"Goodness!" cried she, and fell to scattering her outdoor finery at a
+speed dangerous under any but the deftest fingers. Into a skirt of
+black and a simple blouse she slipped, and down, skimming the stairs,
+to where her charges bided their bedtime.
+
+Opening the nursery door she paused upon the threshold with a little
+"Oh!" of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between
+the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon the
+window-pane.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater turned at her entry. "I've been waiting for you a long
+time," he said.
+
+She asked, "Whatever for?" and in her tone there was a chill.
+
+"Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids
+tubbed?"
+
+"I didn't think you meant it."
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed. "Well, now you see that I did. I've been
+looking forward to this all day."
+
+Plainly she was perturbed. She said: "Mr. Chater, I really would
+rather you did not, if you don't mind."
+
+"Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be
+the bitterest disappointment."
+
+His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man, black-
+eyed, dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.
+
+She would not catch his mood. "I am sure when I ask you--"
+
+"Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know," he laughed; "'cause I ain't
+going."
+
+Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and
+Angela, her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.
+
+It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.
+
+"I say, be decent to a fellow, Miss Humfray," he said. "Look here, I
+hadn't seen the kids for two years when I came back yesterday. They
+hardly remember their kind big brother." He addressed the small girl
+whose round eyes, moving from speaker to speaker since Mary had
+entered, were now upon him. "Do you, Angela?" he asked.
+
+"I--hate--you," Angela told him, in the slow utterance of one giving
+completest effect to a carefully weighed sentiment.
+
+With equal impressiveness, David, seated beside her, lent his
+authority to the statement. "I--hate--you--too," he joined.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed a little stupidly.
+
+Mary cried: "Oh, Angela! Oh, David! How can you speak like that!"
+
+"He is perfectly abom'able," Angela said, unmoved. "He made Davie cry.
+He trod on Davie's beetle."
+
+The cracked corpse of a mechanical beetle, joy of David's heart, was
+produced in evidence; its distressed owner reddening ominously at this
+renewed recollection of the calamity.
+
+Mary took the sad pieces tenderly. "Silly children! He never meant to
+break it. Oh, such silly children!"
+
+Angela protested, "He did! He did! He put his foot over it while it
+was running, and stopped it. He told David to get it away if he could,
+and David bit his leg, and he said 'Damn you!' and crushed it crack."
+
+Mary whipped a glance at the murderer. She ignored the evidence. "To-
+morrow!" said she. "Why, what fun! To-morrow we'll play hospital like
+we did when Christabel broke her arm. We'll make Mr. Beetle just as
+well as ever he was before!"
+
+"I'll be doctor!" cried David, transported into delight.
+
+"Yes, and Angela nurse. Look, we'll put poor Mr. Beetle on the
+mantelpiece to-night, right out of the draughts. If he got a draught
+into that crack in his back, goodness knows what wouldn't happen. He
+must eat slops like Christabel did. _What_ fun! Now, bed--_bustle!_"
+
+Their adored Mary had restored confidence. They clung about her.
+
+"It was a pure accident," explained Mr. Bob Chater, gloomily watching
+this scene. "I'll buy you another to-morrow."
+
+"There!" Mary cried. "Think of that!"
+
+David reflected upon it without emotion. He regarded his big brother
+sullenly; sullenly said, "I don't want another."
+
+Mary cried brightly: "Rubbish! Come, kiss your brother good-night, and
+say 'thank you!' Both of you. Quick as lightning!"
+
+They hung back.
+
+Mary had obtained so complete a command of their affections that her
+word was the wise law which, ordinarily, they had come unquestioningly
+to accept. In their short lives David and Angela had experienced a
+procession of nurses, of nursery-governesses, of lady-helps, each one
+of whom received or gave her month's notice within a few weeks of
+arrival, and against whom they had conducted a sullen or a violent
+war. From the first it had been different with Miss Humfray. As was
+their custom (for this constant change tried tempers) upon the very
+day of her arrival they had met her with frank hostility, had declared
+mutiny at her first command. But her reception of this attitude they
+found a new and astonishing experience. She had not been shocked, had
+not been angry, had ventured no threat to tell their mother. Instead,
+at the outbreak of defiance, she went into the gayest and most
+infectious laughter, kissed them--and they had capitulated before they
+realised the event.
+
+A second attempt at mutiny, made upon the following day, met with a
+reception equally novel. Again this pretty Miss Humfray had laughed,
+but this time had fully sympathised with their view of the point at
+issue and had made of the affair a most entrancing game. She, behold,
+was a pirate captain; they were the rebellious crew. In five minutes
+they had marooned her upon the desert island represented by the
+hearthrug; had rowed away with faces which, under her instructions,
+were properly stern; and only when she waved the white flag of truce
+had they taken her aboard again. Meanwhile the subject of the quarrel
+had been forgotten.
+
+Never a dispute arose thereafter. They idolised this pretty Miss
+Humfray: whatsoever she said was clearly right.
+
+Here, however, was a dangerous conflict of opinion. They hung back.
+
+"Quickly," Mary repeated. "Kiss him, and say thank-you quickly, or
+there will be no story when you are in bed."
+
+It was a terrific price to pay; their troubled faces mirrored the
+conflict of decision.
+
+David found solution. In his slow, solemn voice, "You kiss him first,"
+he said. Miss Humfray always took their medicine first, and David
+argued from the one evil necessity to this other.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater laughed delightedly. "That's a brilliant idea!" he
+cried; came two strides towards Mary; put a hand upon her arm.
+
+So sudden, so unexpected was his movement, that by the narrowest
+chance only did she escape his purpose. A jerk of her head, and he had
+mouthed at the air two inches from her face.
+
+She shook her arm free. "Oh!" she cried; and in the exclamation there
+was that which would have given a nicer man pause.
+
+Mr. Bob Chater was nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air had
+made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who
+worked for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be
+agreeable to her--at all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped
+affairs that this was the first time his theory had found disproof. He
+saw she was offended; so much the more tickling; conquest was thereby
+the more enticing.
+
+He laughed; said he was only "rotting."
+
+Mary did not reply. The command to kiss their brother went by default;
+she hurried her charges through the door to the adjoining night
+nursery.
+
+When they were started upon undressing she came back.
+
+"You're going to let me see you tub them?" Bob asked her.
+
+Busy replacing toys in cupboards, she did not reply.
+
+"You're not angry, are you?"
+
+She gave him no answer.
+
+Bob Chater discarded the laugh from his tone. "If you are angry, I'm
+very sorry. You must have known I was only fooling. It was only to
+make the kids laugh."
+
+So far as was possible she kept her back to him.
+
+The continued slight pricked him. His voice hardened. "When I have the
+grace to apologise, I think you might have the grace to accept it."
+
+Mary said in low tones: "If you meant only to make them laugh, of
+course I believe you. It is all right."
+
+"Good. Well, now, may I see them tubbed?"
+
+"I have told you I would rather not."
+
+"Dash it all, Miss Humfray, you're rather unkind, aren't, you? Here
+have I been away nearly two years--I've been travelling on the
+Continent for the firm-you know that, don't you?"
+
+She said she had heard Mr. and Mrs. Chater talking of it.
+
+"Well, and yet you won't let me come near my darling little sister and
+my sweet little brother to tell 'em all about it?"
+
+"But I'm not keeping you from them, Mr. Chater. You have had plenty of
+time."
+
+"Time! Why, I only got back yesterday!"
+
+"You have been in here this afternoon."
+
+"Ah, they were shy. They're better when you are here."
+
+She had finished her task, and she turned to him. "Mr. Chater, you
+know I could not keep David and Angela from you even if I dreamed of
+doing such a thing. Only, I say I would rather you did not come in
+while I bath them, that is all."
+
+"Yes, but why?"
+
+"Mrs. Chater would not like it for one thing, I feel sure."
+
+"Oh, that's all rot. Mother wouldn't mind--anyway, I do as I like in
+this house."
+
+From all she had heard of Mrs. Chater's beloved Bob, Mary guessed this
+to be true. Long prior to his arrival she had been prejudiced against
+him; acquaintance emphasised the prophetic impression.
+
+"Another night, then," she said.
+
+He felt he was winning. No girl withstood him long.
+
+"No, to-night. Another thing--I want to know you better. This
+arrangement is all new to me. There was a nurse here in your place
+when I went. I've hardly spoken to you. Have you ever been abroad?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you--and the kids--some of my adventures while you're
+tubbing 'em. Lead on."
+
+She was at the night-nursery door. Evidently this man would not see
+her conventional reason for not wishing him at the tubbing. Angela had
+grown a biggish girl since he went away.
+
+She said, "Please not to-night."
+
+"I'm jolly well coming," he chuckled.
+
+The lesson of dependence was wilfully forgotten. Mary agreed with
+Angela and David: she hated this Bob.
+
+"No," she said sharply, "you are not."
+
+He had thrown his cigar into the grate; taken out another; stooped to
+the hearth to scratch a match. His back was to her; to him all her
+tone conveyed was that a "rag" was on hand.
+
+"We'll see," he laughed; struck the match.
+
+She stepped swiftly within the door; closed it.
+
+Bob Chater laughed again; ran across.
+
+The lock clicked as she turned the key.
+
+"Let me in!" he cried, rattling the handle. "Let me in!"
+
+The splash of water answered him.
+
+He thumped the panel. "Open the door!"
+
+"Now, Angela," he heard her say, "quick as lightning with that
+chimmy."
+
+Bob's face darkened; he damned beneath his breath. Then with a laugh
+he turned away. "I'm going to have some fun with that girl," he told
+himself; and on the way downstairs, her pretty face and figure in his
+mind, pleased himself with vicious anticipation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Excursions At A Dinner-Table.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two distressing reasons combined to compel Mrs. Chater to give Mary
+place at the evening meal. There was the aggravating fact that
+mothers'-helps, just as if they were ordinary people, must be fed;
+there was also the contingency that servants most strongly objected to
+serving a special meal--even "on a tray"--to one who was not of the
+family, yet who had airs above the kitchen.
+
+Except, then, when there were guests Miss Humfray must be accommodated
+at late dinner. Mrs. Chater considered it annoying, yet found in it
+certain comfortable advantages--as sympathy from friends: "Mustn't it
+be rather awkward sometimes, Mrs. Chater?" A plaintive shrug would
+illustrate the answer: "Well, it is, of course, very awkward
+sometimes; but one must put up with it. That class of person takes
+offence so easily, you know; and I always try to treat my lady-helps
+as well as possible." "I'm sure you do, Mrs. Chater. How grateful they
+should be!" And this time a sad little laugh would illustrate: "Oh,
+one hardly expects gratitude nowadays, does one?"
+
+Mary at dinner must observe certain rules, however. Certain dishes--a
+little out of season, perhaps, or classed as luxuries--were borne
+triumphantly past her by a glad parlour-maid acting upon a frown and a
+glance that Mrs. Chater signalled. Certain occasions, again, when
+private matters were to be discussed, were heralded by "Miss Humfray,"
+in an inflexion of voice that set Mary to fold her napkin and from the
+room.
+
+The girl greeted these early dismissals with considerable relief.
+Dinner was to her a nightly ordeal whose atmosphere swept appetite
+sky-high--took the savour from meats, dried the throat.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Descending to the dining-room upon this evening, her normal shrinking
+from the meal was considerably augmented. On the previous night--the
+first upon which Mr. Bob Chater's legs had partnered hers beneath the
+table--his eyes (like some bold gallant popping out on modesty
+whenever it dared peep from the doorway) had captured her glance each
+time she ventured look up from her plate. The episode of the nursery
+was equivalent to having slapped the gallant's face, and the re-
+encounter was proportionately uncomfortable.
+
+Taking her place she was by sheer nervousness impelled to meet his
+gaze--so heavily freighted it was as to raise a sudden flush to her
+cheek. Her eyes fled round to Mrs. Chater, received a look that
+questioned the blush, drove it duskier; through an uncomfortable half-
+hour she kept her face towards her plate.
+
+It was illuminative of the relations between husband and wife that
+Mrs. Chater carved; her husband dealt the sweets. The carving knife is
+the domestic sceptre of authority: when it is wielded by the woman,
+the man, you will find, is consort rather than king.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Upon the previous evening Mr. Bob Chater had led the conversation. To-
+night he was indisposed for the position--would not take it despite
+his mother's desperate attempts to board the train of his ideas and by
+it be carried to scenes of her son's adventures. A dozen times she
+presented her ticket; as often Bob turned her back at the barrier.
+
+It was a rare event this refusal of his to carry passengers. So loudly
+did he whistle as a rule as to attract all in the vicinity, convinced
+that there was an important train by which it would be agreeable to
+travel.
+
+For Mr. Bob Chater was a loud young man, emanating a swaggering air
+that the term "side" well fitted. To have some conceit of oneself is
+an excellent affair. The possession is a keel that gives to the craft
+a dignified balance upon the stream of life--prevents it from being
+sailed too close to mud; helps maintain stability in sudden gale.
+Other craft are keelless--they are canoes; bobbing, unsteady, likely
+to capsize in sudden emergency; prone to drift into muddy waters;
+liable to be swept anywhither by any current. Others, again--and Mr.
+Bob Chater was of these--are over-freighted upon one quarter or
+another: they sail with a list. Amongst well-trimmed boats these learn
+in time not to adventure, since here they are greeted with ridicule or
+with contempt; yet among the keelless fleets they have a position of
+some authority; holding it on the same principle as that by which
+among beggars he who has a coin--even though base--is accounted king.
+
+Bob Chater's list was ego-wards. His mighty "I"--I am, I do, I say, I
+know, I think--bulged from him, hanging from his voice, his glance,
+his gesture, his walk. In it Mrs. Chater bathed; to be carried along
+in the train of his mighty "I" was delectable to her. But to-night she
+could not effect the passage.
+
+A final effort she made to get aboard. "And in St. Petersburg!" she
+tempted. "I wonder if you ever saw the _Tsar_ when you were in St.
+Petersburg?"
+
+Bob drove her back: "St. Petersburg's a loathsome place."
+
+Mrs. Chater tried to squeeze through. "So _gay_, they say."
+
+Bob slammed the gate. "I wish you'd _tell_ me something instead of
+expecting _me_ to do all the talking. I want to hear all that's been
+going on here while I've been away, but I'm hanged if I can find out."
+
+A little mortified, Mrs. Chater said: "I've hardly seen you, dear,
+except at meals"--then threw the onus for her son's lack of local
+gossip upon her husband. Addressing him, "You've been with Bob all the
+morning," she told him. "I wonder you haven't given him all the news.
+But, there! I suppose you've done nothing but question him about what
+business he's done!"
+
+Mr. Chater, startled at the novelty of being drawn into table
+conversation while his son and his wife were present, dropped his
+spoon with a splash into his soup, wiped his coat, frowned at the
+parlour-maid, cleared his throat, and, to gain time to determine
+whether he had courage to say that which was burning within him, threw
+out an "Eh?" for his pursuing wife to Worry.
+
+Mrs. Chater pounced upon it; shook it. "What I said was that I suppose
+you've been doing nothing but question poor Bob about what he has done
+for the firm while he's been away,"
+
+Mr. Chater nerved himself to declare his mind. "There wasn't very much
+to question him about," he said.
+
+His words--outcome of views forcibly expressed by his partners in
+Mincing Lane that morning--were the foolhardy action of one who pokes
+a tigress with a stick.
+
+The tigress shook herself. "Now, I wonder what you mean by _that_?"
+she challenged.
+
+Mr. Chater dropped the stick; precipitantly fled. "Of course it was
+all new to Bob," he granted, throwing a bone.
+
+Very much to his alarm the tigress ignored the bone; rushed after him.
+"All you seem to think about," cried she, "is making the boy slave.
+He's never had a proper holiday since he left school, and yet the very
+first time he goes off to see the world you must be fidgeting yourself
+to death all the time that he's not pushing the firm sufficiently; and
+immediately he comes back you must start cross-examining just as if he
+was an office-boy--not a word about his health or his pleasure. Oh,
+no! of course not!"
+
+Squirming in misery, Mr. Chater remarked that he had his partners to
+consider. "I'm only too glad that Bob should enjoy himself--only too
+glad. But you must remember, my dear, that part of his expenses for
+this trip was paid for by the firm--the _firm_. He was to call on
+foreign houses--"
+
+The tigress opened her mouth for fresh assault. Mr. Chater hurriedly
+thrust in a bone. "I don't say he hasn't done a great deal for us--not
+at all; I'd be the last to say that. What I say is that in duty to my
+partners I must take the first opportunity to ask him a few questions
+about it. Bob sees that himself; don't you, Bob?"
+
+"Oh, do let's keep shop off the table," Bob snarled. "Fair sickens me
+this never getting away from the office."
+
+"There you are!" Mrs. Chater cried. "There you are! Always business,
+business, business--that's what _I_ complain of."
+
+With astounding recklessness Mr. Chater mildly said: "My dear, you
+started it."
+
+Mrs. Chater quivered: "Ah, put it on me! Put it on me! Somehow you
+always manage to do that. Miss Humfray, when you've _quite_ finished
+your soup _then_ perhaps Clarence can take the plates."
+
+Mary's thoughts, to the neglect of her duty, had crept away beneath
+cover of these exchanges. Now she endured the disaster of amid silence
+clearing her plate with four pairs of eyes fixed upon her. Clarence
+removed the course; Mr. Chater, leaping as far as possible from the
+scene of his ordeal, broke a new topic.
+
+He enticed tentatively: "I saw a funny bit in the paper this morning."
+
+The tigress paused in the projection of another spring; sniffed
+suspiciously. "Oh!"
+
+"About that young Lord Comeragh," Mr. Chater hurried on, delighted
+with his success. "He was up at Marlborough Street police-court this
+morning--at least his butler was; of course his lordship wouldn't go
+himself--charged with furiously driving his motorcar; and who do you
+think was in the car with him at the time? Ah!"
+
+Mrs. Chater, naming a young lady who nightly advertised a pretty leg
+from the chorus of a musical comedy, announced that she would not be
+surprised if that was the person. Being told that it was none other,
+and that Mr. Chater had heard in the City that morning that Lady
+Comeragh was taking proceedings and had named the nicely-legged young
+lady the cause of infidelity, became highly astonished and supremely
+diverted.
+
+Conversation of a most delectable nature was by this means supplied. A
+pot of savoury gossip, flavoured with scandal, was upon the table; and
+Mary, lost to sight behind the cloud of steam that uprose as the three
+leaped about it, finished her dinner undisturbed.
+
+A nod bade her leave before dessert. As she passed out the signaller
+spoke. "I want to see you," Mrs. Chater said. "Wait for me in the
+drawing-room."
+
+The command was unusual, and Mary, waiting as bid, worried herself
+with surmises upon it. She prayed it did not mean she was to soothe
+Mr. Bob Chater's digestion with lullabies upon the piano; that it
+boded an unpleasant affair she was assured.
+
+She did not err. Mrs. Chater came to her, dyspeptic-flushed, sternly
+browed.
+
+"Miss Humfray, I have one thing to say to you, no more. No
+explanations, no excuses, please. I hear you have been trying to
+entertain my son in the nursery this evening. If that, or anything
+like it, occurs again--You understand?"
+
+"Mrs. Chater--"
+
+A massive hand signalled Stop. "I said 'not a word.' That is all. Good
+night."
+
+And Mary, crimson, to her room.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+Of Glimpses at a Period of this History: of Love and of War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Notes On The Building Of Bridges.
+
+
+Within the limits of this short section of our story we shall cram two
+months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages
+as they plod through it.
+
+This is well within our power, since the position of the novelist in
+regard to his characters may be compared with that of the destiny
+which in the largest comedy moves to and fro mankind its actors. As
+destiny moves its puppets, so the novelist moves his--upraising,
+debasing; favouring, tormenting; creating, wiping from the page.
+
+And of the pair the novelist is the more just. Has villainy in a novel
+ever gone unpunished? Has virtue ever failed of its reward? Your
+novelist is of all autocrats the most zealous of right and wrong.
+Villain may through two-thirds of his career enjoy his wicked
+pleasures, exceedingly prosper despite his baseness; but ever above
+him the cold eye of his judge keeps watch, and in the end he is
+apportioned the most horrible deserts that any could wish. Virtue may
+by the gods be hounded and harried till the reader's heart is wrung.
+But spare your tears; before Finis is written, down swoops the judge;
+the dogs are whipped off; Virtue is led to fair pastures and there
+left smiling.
+
+Contrasted with this autocrat of the printed page, the destiny whose
+comedy began with the world and is indefinitely continued makes sorry
+show. Here the wicked exceedingly flourish and keep at it to the end
+of their chapter; here virtue, battling with tremendous waves of
+adversity, is at last engulfed and miserably drowned. Truly, their fit
+rewards are apportioned, we are instructed, after death. But there is
+something of a doubt; the novelist, in regard to his characters, takes
+no risks.
+
+Upon another head, moreover, the novelist shows himself the more
+kindly autocrat. There is his power, so freely exercised, to bridge
+time. Whereas destiny makes us to watch those in whom we are
+interested plod every inch and step of their lives-over each rut,
+through each swamp, up each hill,-the novelist, upon his characters
+coming to places dull or too difficult, immediately veils from us
+their weary struggles. Destiny will never grant such a boon: we must
+watch our friends even when they bore us, even when they cause us
+pain. Yet this boon is the commonest indulgence of the novelist-as it
+now (to become personal) is mine.
+
+I bridge two months.
+
+And you must imagine this bridge as indeed a short and airy passage
+across a valley, down into which the persons of our story must
+carefully climb, across which they must plod, and up whose far side
+they must laboriously scramble to meet us upon the level ground. For
+we are much in the position, we novel readers, of village children
+curiously watching a caravan of gipsies passing through their
+district. The gipsies (who stand for our characters) plod wearily away
+along a bend of dusty road. The children cease following, play awhile;
+then by a short-cut through the fields overtake the travellers as
+again they come into the straight.
+
+So now with you and me. We have no need to follow our gipsies down the
+valley that takes two months in the traversing: we skip across the
+bridge.
+
+But, leaning over, we may take a shot or two at them as here and there
+they come into view.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Excursions Beneath The Bridge.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Thus we see the meeting again of George and Mary.
+
+When the agitated young man on the day following the cab accident had
+alighted from the omnibus at the bottom of Palace Gardens he was
+opposite No. 14 by half-past ten; waiting till eleven; going,
+convinced she did not live there; returning, upon the desperate hope
+that indeed she did; waiting till twelve--and being most handsomely
+rewarded.
+
+Her face signalled that she saw him, but her eyes gave no recognition
+--quickly were averted from him; the windows behind her had eyes, she
+knew.
+
+My agitated George, who had made a hasty step at the red flag that
+fluttered on her cheeks, as hastily stepped away beneath the chill of
+her glance; in tremendous perturbation turned and fled; in tremendous
+perturbation turned and pursued. In Regent's Park he saw her produce a
+brilliant pair of scarlet worsted reins, gay with bells; heard her
+hiss like any proper groom as tandemwise she harnessed David and
+Angela, those restive steeds.
+
+The equipage was about to start--she had cracked her whip, clicked her
+tongue--when with thumping heart, with face that matched the flaming
+reins, hat in hand he approached; spoke the driver.
+
+Her steeds turned about; with wide, unblinking eyes, searched his face
+and hers.
+
+"Your faces are very red," Angela said. "Are you angry?"
+
+"You have got very red faces," David echoed. "Are you in a temper?"
+
+Mary told them No; George said they were fine horses; felt legs;
+offered to buy them.
+
+His words purchased their hearts, which were more valuable.
+
+After the drive they would return to the stable, which was this seat,
+Mary told him; she could not stay to speak to him any longer. George
+declared he was the stable groom and would wait.
+
+Away they dashed at handsome speed, right round the inner circle;
+returned more sedately, a little out of breath. There had been,
+moreover, an accident: leader, it appeared, had fallen and cut his
+knees.
+
+"I shied at a motor," David explained, proud of the red blood now that
+the agony was past.
+
+George unharnessed them; dressed the wounds; scolded the coachman
+because no feed had been brought for the horses; promised that to-
+morrow he would bring some corn--bun corn.
+
+"Will you come to-morrow?" Angela asked.
+
+George glanced at Mary. "Yes," he told them.
+
+"Every to-morrow?"
+
+"Every to-morrow."
+
+Tremendous joy. Well delighted, they ran to a new game.
+
+Every to-morrow ran but to three: George and Mary had by then
+exchanged their histories. The pending examination was discussed, and
+Mary simply would not speak to him if, wasting his time, he came daily
+to idle with the children (so she expressed it). She would abandon the
+Park, she told him--would take her charges to a Square gardens of
+which they had the entry, where George might not follow.
+
+George did not press the point. As he wrestled out the matter in the
+hours between their meetings she was a fresh incentive to work. But
+once a week he must be allowed to come: here he was adamant, and she
+gladly agreeable. Saturday mornings was the time arranged.
+
+Mary had been fearful at this first re-encounter that it would be the
+last. The children would certainly tell their mother; Mrs. Chater
+would certainly make an end to the acquaintance.
+
+"Ask them not to tell," George had suggested.
+
+Impossible to think of such a thing: it would be to teach them deceit.
+
+"Well, I'll ask them."
+
+"But that would be just as bad. No--if they tell, it cannot be helped.
+And after all--"
+
+"Well, after all...?"
+
+"After all--what would it matter?"
+
+George said: "It would matter to me--a lot."
+
+He glanced at her, but she was looking after Angela and David. He
+asked: "Wouldn't it matter to you?"
+
+She flushed a little; answered, with her eyes still averted towards
+the children, "Why--why, of course I should mind. I mean--"
+
+But there are meanings for which it is difficult to find clothes in
+which they may decently take the air; and here the wardrobe of Mary's
+mind stood wanting.
+
+George enticed. "Do you mean you would be sorry not to--not to--"
+
+He also found his wardrobe deficient.
+
+Then Mary sent out her meaning, risking its decency. "Why, yes, I
+would be sorry not to see you again; why should I mind saying so? I
+have liked meeting you." And, becoming timid at its appearance, she
+hurried after it a cloak that would utterly disguise it. "I meet so
+few people," she said.
+
+But George was satisfied; she had said she would mind--nay, even
+though she had not spoken it, her manner assured him that indeed she
+would regret not again meeting him. It was a thought to hug, a memory
+to spur his energies when they flagged over his studies; it was a
+brush to paint his world in lively colours.
+
+Nor, as the future occurred, need either have had apprehension that
+the children would tell their mother and so set up an insurmountable
+barrier between them. A previous experience had warned Angela that it
+were wise to keep from her mother joys that were out of the ordinary
+run of events.
+
+Returning homeward that day, a little in advance of Mary, she
+therefore addressed her brother upon the matter.
+
+"Davie, I hope that man will come to-morrow."
+
+"I hope it, too."
+
+"We won't tell mother, Davie."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because mother'll say No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she _always_ says No, stupid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, Davie, you _are_ stupid! I don't know why; I only _know_. Don't
+you remember that lady that used to talk to Miss Humf'ay and play with
+us? Well, when we told mother, mother said No, didn't she? and the
+lady played with those abom'able red-dress children that make faces
+instead."
+
+"Will he play with the abom'able red-dress children that make faces if
+we tell mother?"
+
+"Of _course_ he will."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They always _do_, stupid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Angela ran back. "Oh, Miss Humf'ay, Davie is so _irrating!_ He will
+say _Why_ ...."
+
+There is a lesson for parents in that conversation, I suspect.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Leaning from our bridge we may content ourselves with a hurried shot
+at George, laboriously toiling at his books, sedulously attending his
+classes, with his Mary spending glorious Saturday mornings that, as
+they brought him nearer to knowledge of her, sent him from her yet
+more fevered; and, straining towards another point, we will focus for
+an instant upon Margaret his cousin, and Bill Wyvern, her adored.
+
+Mr. William Wyvern had most vigorously whacked about among events
+since that evening when his Margaret had composed her verses for
+George. At that time a fellow-student with George at St. Peter's
+Hospital, he had now abandoned the profession and was started upon the
+literary career (as he named it) that long he had wished to follow.
+The change had been come by with little difficulty. Professor Wyvern--
+that eminent biologist whose fame was so tremendous that even now a
+normally forgetful Press yet continued to paragraph him while he spent
+in absent-minded seclusion the ebb of that life which at the flood had
+so mightily advanced knowledge--Professor Wyvern was too much attached
+to his son, too docile in the hands of his loving wife, to gainsay any
+wish that Bill might urge and that Mrs. Wyvern might support.
+
+Bill achieved his end: the stories he had had printed in magazines,
+secretly shown to his proud mother, were now brought forth and
+chuckled over with glee by the Professor. The famous biologist
+struggled through one of the stories, vowed he had read them all,
+cheerily patted Bill's arm with his shaky old hand, and cheerfully
+abandoned the hope he had held of seeing his son a great surgeon.
+
+It was Bill's burning ambition to obtain a post upon a paper. Not
+until later did he learn that it is the men outside the papers who
+must have a turn for stringing sentences; that those inside are
+machines, cutting and serving the material with no greater interest in
+it than has the cheesemonger in the cheese he weighs and deals.
+Meanwhile, the glimpse we may take of him shows Bill Wyvern urging
+along his pen until clean paper became magic manuscripts; living upon
+a billow of hope when the envelopes were sped, submerged beneath
+oceans of gloom when they were returned; trembling into Fleet Street
+deliciously to inhale the thick smell of printer's ink that came
+roaring up from a hundred basements; with goggle eyes venerating the
+men who with assured steps passed in and out the swing-doors of
+castles he burned to storm; snatching brief moments for the boisterous
+society of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, those rare bull-terriers; and
+finally, expending with his Margaret moments more protracted--stealthy
+meetings, for the most part--in Mr. Marrapit's shrubbery.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+But two more peeps from our bridge need we take, and then our
+characters will be ready to meet us upon the further side.
+
+A glance from here will reveal to us Mrs. Major, that masterly woman,
+inscribing in her diary:
+
+"_Getting on with Mr. M. Should sue. Precip. fat._"
+
+Fill out the abbreviations to which Mrs. Major, in her diary, was
+prone, and we have:
+
+"_Getting on with Mr. Marrapit. Should succeed. Precipitancy fatal._"
+
+Succeed in what? To what would precipitancy of action be irreparable?
+Listen to a conversation that may enlighten us--spoken upon the lawn
+of Herons' Holt; Mr. Marrapit in his chair making a lap for the Rose
+of Sharon; Mrs. Major on a garden seat, crocheting.
+
+A stealthy peep assuring her that his eyes were not closed, Mrs. Major
+nerved herself with a deep breath; with a long sigh let it escape in
+the form, "A year ago!"--dropped hands upon her lap and gazed
+wistfully at the setting sun. She had seen the trick very successfully
+performed upon the stage.
+
+Mr. Marrapit turned his eyes upon her.
+
+"You spoke, Mrs. Major?"
+
+With an admirable start Mrs. Major appeared to gather in wandering
+fancies. "I fear I was thinking aloud, Mr. Marrapit. I beg pardon."
+
+"Do not. There is no occasion. You said 'A year ago.'"
+
+"Did I, Mr. Marrapit?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+A pause followed. The wistful woman felt that, were the thing to be
+done properly, the word lay with her companion. To her pleasure he
+continued:
+
+"To-day, then, is an anniversary?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Of a happy event, I trust?"
+
+Mrs. Major clasped her hands; spoke with admirable ecstasy. "Oh, Mr.
+Marrapit, of a golden--golden page in my life."
+
+"Elucidate," Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+Mrs. Major put into a whisper:
+
+"The day I came here."
+
+Mr. Marrapit slowly moved his head towards her.
+
+Her eyes were averted. "The time has passed swiftly," he said.
+
+Mrs. Major breathed: "For me it has flown on--on--" She searched
+wildly for a metaphor. "On wings," she concluded.
+
+Again there was a pause, and again Mrs. Major felt that for this
+passage to have fullest effect the word lay with Mr. Marrapit. But Mr.
+Marrapit, himself considerably perturbed, did not speak. The moments
+sped. Fearful lest they should distance beyond recovery the sentiments
+she felt she had aroused, Mrs. Major hastened to check them.
+
+She said musingly: "I wonder if they are right?"--sighed as though
+doubtful.
+
+"To whom do you refer?"
+
+"Why, the people who say that time flies when it is spent in pleasant
+company."
+
+"They are correct," Mr. Marrapit affirmed.
+
+"Oh, I do not doubt it for my part, Mr. Marrapit. I never knew what
+happiness was until I come here--came here. But if--" The masterly
+woman paused.
+
+"Continue" Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+The hard word was softly spoken. Mrs. Major's heart gave two little
+thumps; her plan clear before her, pushed ahead. "But if to you also,
+Mr. Marrapit, the time has seemed to fly, then--then Mr. Marrapit, my
+company has--has been agreeable to you?"
+
+Certainly there was a softness in Mr. Marrapit's tones as he made
+answer.
+
+"It has, Mrs. Major," he said, "it has. Into my establishment you have
+brought an air of peace that had for some time been lacking. Prior to
+your arrival, I was often worried by household cares that should not
+fall upon a man."
+
+Earnestly Mrs. Major replied: "Oh, I _saw_ that. I strove to lift
+them."
+
+"You have lifted them. You have attended not only my cats but my
+kitchen. I am now able often to enjoy such evenings as these. This
+peace around us illustrates the tranquillity you have brought--"
+
+The tranquillity was at that moment disastrously shattered. A bed of
+shrubbery lay within a few feet of where they sat. What had appeared
+to be a gnarled stump in its midst now quivered, broadened, fell into
+a line with the straightening back of Mr. Fletcher.
+
+Mr. Marrapit was startled and annoyed. "What are you doing there,
+sir?"
+
+"Snailin'," said Mr. Fletcher gloomily; exhibited his snail.
+
+"Snail elsewhere. Do not snail where I am."
+
+"I snails where there's snails."
+
+"Cease snailing. You must have been there hours."
+
+"What if I have? This garden's fair planted with snails."
+
+"Snail oftener. Depart."
+
+Mr. Fletcher moved a few steps; then turned. "I should like to ast if
+this is to be part of my regular job. First you says 'cease snailin','
+then you says 'snail oftener,' then you says 'snail elsewhere.' Snails
+take findin'. They don't come to me; I has to go to them. It's 'ard--
+damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a lettuce-leaf."
+
+He gloomily withdrew.
+
+Mr. Marrapit's face was angrily twitching. The moment was not
+propitious for continuing her conversation, and with a little sigh
+Mrs. Major withdrew.
+
+But it was upon that night that she inscribed in her diary:
+
+_"Getting on with Mr. M. Should suc. Precip. fat."_
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A last peep, ere we hurry across the bridge, will disclose to us Mr.
+Bob Chater still pressing upon Mary the attentions which her position,
+in relation to his, made it so difficult for her to escape. Piqued by
+her attitude towards him, he was the more inflamed than ordinarily he
+would have been by the fair face and neat figure that were hers. Yet
+he made no headway; within a month of the date of his return to Palace
+Gardens was as far from conquest as upon that night in the nursery.
+
+To a City friend, Mr. Lemuel Moss, dining at 14 Palace Gardens with
+him one night, he explained affairs.
+
+"Dam' pretty girl, that governess of yours, or whatever she is," said
+Mr. Moss, biting the end from a cigar in the smoking-room after
+dinner. "Lucky beggar you are, Bob. My mater won't have even a servant
+in the place that wouldn't look amiss in a monkey-house. Knows me too
+well, unfortunately," and Mr. Moss, taking a squint at himself in the
+overmantel, laughed--well enough pleased.
+
+Bob pointed out that there was not so much luck about it as Mr. Moss
+appeared to think. "Never seen such a stand-offish little rip in all
+my life," he moodily concluded.
+
+"What, isn't she--?"
+
+Bob understood the unvoiced question. "Won't even let a chap have two
+minutes' talk with her," he said, "let alone anything else."
+
+Mr. Moss stretched himself along the sofa; rejoined: "Oh, rats! Rats!
+You don't know how to manage 'em--that's what it is."
+
+"I know as well as you, and a dashed sight better, I don't mind
+betting," Bob returned with heat. In some circles it is an aspersion
+upon a man's manliness to have it hinted that a petticoat presenting
+possibilities has not been ruffled.
+
+"Well, it don't look much like it. I caught her eye in the passage
+when we were coming downstairs, and you don't tell me--not much!"
+
+"Did you though?" Bob said. Himself he had never been so fortunate.
+
+"No mistake about it. Why, d'you mean to say you've never got as far
+as that, even?"
+
+"Tell you she won't look at me."
+
+Mr. Moss laughed. Enjoyed the "score" over his host for a few moments,
+and then:
+
+"Tell you what it is, old bird," said he, "you're going the wrong way
+about it. I know another case just the same. Chap out Wimbledon way.
+His people kept a girl--topper she was, too--dark. He was always
+messing round just like you are, and she was stand-offish as a nun.
+One night he came home early, a bit screwed--people out--girl in. Met
+her in the drawing-room. Almost been afraid to speak to her before.
+Had a bit of fizz on board him now--_you_ know; didn't care a rip for
+anybody. Gave her a smacking great kiss, and, by Gad!--well, she _was_
+all right. Told him she'd always stood off up to then because she was
+never quite sure what he meant--afraid he didn't mean anything, and
+that she might get herself into no end of a row if she started playing
+around. Same with this little bit of goods, I'll lay."
+
+Bob was interested. "Shouldn't be surprised if you're right," he said;
+and moodily cogitated upon the line of action prescribed.
+
+Mr. Moss offered to bet that where girls were concerned he was never
+far wrong. "Slap-dash style is what they like," he remarked, and with
+a careless "It's all they understand" dismissed the subject.
+
+It remained, however, in Bob's mind throughout the evening; sprang
+instantly when, after breakfast upon the following day, he caught a
+glimpse of Mary as he prepared for the City.
+
+Standing for a moment in the hall, it occurred to him that this very
+evening offered the opportunity he sought. Mr. and Mrs. Chater were to
+dine at the house of a neighbour. The invitation had included Bob--
+fortunately he had refused it. Returning to the morning-room, "I
+shan't be in to-night," he told his mother.
+
+"Then I needn't order any dinner for you?"
+
+"No." He hung about irresolute, then lit a cigar, and between the
+puffs, "Shall you be late?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"Sure to be," Mrs. Chater told him. "It's going to be a big bridge
+drive, you know. We shan't get back before midnight. Don't sit up for
+us, dear."
+
+Bob inhaled a long breath from his cigar, exhaled it deliciously. The
+chance for the slap-dash style was at hand.
+
+"Oh, I'll be later than you. Lemmy Moss has got a bachelors' party on.
+We're going to have a billiard match."
+
+"That's capital then, dear. I shall let the servants go to Earl's
+Court--I've promised them a long time."
+
+Bob whistled gaily as he mounted his 'bus for the City. The
+opportunity was surely exceptional.
+
+At eight o'clock he returned; noiselessly let himself in.
+
+The gas in the hall burned low. Beneath the library door gleamed a
+stronger light. Bob turned the handle.
+
+Mary was curled in a big chair with a book. Certainly the opportunity
+was exceptional.
+
+At the noise of his entry she sprang to her feet with a little cry.
+"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed: "what a fright you gave me!"
+
+Bob pushed the door. He laughed. "Did I?"; came towards her. "Are you
+all alone? What a shame!"
+
+"Minnie is in the kitchen, I think. Mrs. Chater said you wouldn't be
+in to-night."
+
+"Why do you think I came?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I came to see you."
+
+She gave a nervous little laugh and made to pass him.
+
+Bob fell back a pace, guarding the door. "Don't you think that was
+thoughtful of me?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean. There was no need."
+
+"What! No need! You all alone like this when all the rest are enjoying
+themselves!"
+
+"So was I. A long evening with a book."
+
+She had fallen back as he, speaking, had slowly advanced.
+
+Now the great chair in which she had been seated was alone between
+them.
+
+"Oh, books! Books are rot." He stepped around the chair.
+
+She fell back; was cornered between the hearth and a low table.
+
+Bob dropped into the chair; boldly regarded her; his eyes as
+expressive of his slap-dash intentions as he could make them: "Look
+here, I want you to enjoy yourself for once. I'm going to take you to
+a music-hall or somewhere."
+
+He stretched a foot; touched her.
+
+She drew back close against the mantelpiece, her agitation very
+evident.
+
+"Well, don't that please you?"
+
+"You know it is impossible."
+
+Bob paid no regard. This was that same diffidence with which the chap
+near Wimbledon had had to contend.
+
+"We'll come out of the show early and have a bit of supper and be back
+before half-past eleven. Who's to know? Now, then?"
+
+"It's very kind of you. I know you mean it kindly--"
+
+"Of course I do--"
+
+"But I'd rather not."
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+She was desperately afraid. Her face, the shaking of her hand where it
+was pressed back against the wall, and the catch in her voice
+advertised her apprehension. She was afraid of this big young man
+confidently lolling before her.
+
+She said weakly: "It would not be right."
+
+Bob sat up. "Is that all?" he laughed. His hands were upon the arms of
+the chair, and he made to pull himself up towards her.
+
+She saw her mistake. "No," she cried hurriedly--"no; I would not go
+with you in any case."
+
+A shadow flickered upon Bob's face. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean what I say. Please let me pass."
+
+"I want to be friends with you. Why can't you let me?"
+
+"Please let me pass. Mr. Chater."
+
+Bob lay back. He said with a laugh, "Well, I'm not stopping you, am
+I?"
+
+She hesitated a moment. The passage between the table and the long
+chair was narrow. But truly he was not stopping her--so far as one
+might judge.
+
+She took her skirts about her with her left hand; stepped forward; was
+almost past the chair before he moved.
+
+Then he flung out a hand and caught her wrist, drawing her.
+
+"Now!" he cried, and his voice was thick.
+
+She gave a half-sound of dismay--of fear; tried to twist free. Bob
+laughed; pulled sharply on her arm. She was standing sideways to him--
+against the sudden strain lost her balance and half toppled across the
+chair.
+
+As Bob reflected, when afterwards feeding upon the incident, had he
+not been as unprepared as she for her sudden stumble, he would have
+made--as he put it--a better thing of it. As it was, her face falling
+against his, he was but able to give a half kiss when she had writhed
+herself free and made across the room.
+
+But that embrace of her had warmed Bob's passions. Springing up, he
+caught her as she fumbled with the latch; twisted her to him.
+
+For a moment they struggled, he grasping her wrists and pressing
+towards her.
+
+With the intention of encircling her waist he slipped his hold. But
+panic made her the quicker. Her outstretched arms held him at bay for
+a breathing space; then as he broke them down she dealt him a swinging
+blow upon the face that staggered him back a step, his hand to his
+cheek.
+
+Mrs. Chater opened the door.
+
+"Oh, he kissed me! He kissed me!" Mary cried.
+
+Bob said very slowly, "You--infernal--little--liar."
+
+Mrs. Chater glowered upon Mary with cruel eyes. "It was a fortunate
+thing," she said coldly, "that a headache brought me home. Go to your
+room, miss."
+
+We may hurry across the bridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Excursions In Love.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Saturday was the day immediately following this scene.
+
+George, on a 'bus carrying him towards Regent's Park, was in spirit at
+one with the gay freshness that gave this September morning a spring-
+like air.
+
+A week of torrid heat, in which London crawled, groaned, and panted,
+had been wiped from the memory by an over-night thunderstorm that
+burst the pent-up dams of heaven and loosed cool floods upon the
+staring streets. No misty drizzle nor gusty shower it had been, but a
+strong, straight, continuous downpour, seemingly impelled by
+tremendous pressure. Dusty roofs, dusty streets, dusty windows it had
+scoured and scrubbed and polished; torrents had poured down the
+gutters--whenever temporarily the pressure seemed to relax, the ears
+of wakeful Londoners were sung to by the gurgle and rush of frantic
+streams driving before them the collected debris of many days.
+
+Upon this morning, in the result, a tempest might have swept the town
+and found never a speck of dust to drive before it. The very air had
+been washed and sweetened; and London's workers, scurrying to and from
+their hives, seemed also to have benefited by some attribute of the
+downpour that tinted cheeks, sparkled eyes, and, rejuvenating limbs,
+gave to them a new sprightliness of movement.
+
+George, from his 'bus, caught many a bright eye under a jaunty little
+hat; gave each back its gleam from the depths of gay lightness that
+filled his heart. Nearing the Park he alighted; made two purchases.
+From a confectioner bun-corn for David and Angela, those ramping
+steeds; from a florist the reddest rose that an exhaustive search of
+stock could discover.
+
+Mary had from him such a rose at their every meeting. She might not
+wear it back to Palace Gardens--it would not flourish beneath Mrs.
+Chater's curiosity; but while they were together she would tuck it in
+her bosom, and George tenderly would bear it home and set it in a vase
+before him to lend him inspiration as he worked.
+
+It is almost certain that such a part is one for which flowers were
+especially designed.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Those splendid steeds, David and Angela, having been duly exercised,
+groomed, and turned out to browse upon bun-corn, George rushed at once
+upon the matter that was singing within him.
+
+Where he sat with his Mary they were sheltered from any but chance
+obtrusion. She had taken off her gloves, and George gave her hands, as
+they lay in her lap, a little confident pat. It was the tap of the
+baton with which the conductor calls together his orchestra--for this
+was a song that George was about to tune, very confident that the
+chords of both instruments that should give the notes were in a
+harmony complete.
+
+He said: "Mary, do you know what I am going to talk about?"
+
+She had been a little silent that morning, he had thought; did not
+answer now, but smiled.
+
+He laid a hand upon both hers. "You must say 'yes.' You've got to say
+'yes' about twenty times this morning, so start now. Do you know what
+I'm going to talk about?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No objections this time?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He laughed; gave her hand a little smack of reproof. (You who have
+loved will excuse these lovers' absurdities.) "No, no; you are only to
+say 'yes' when I tell you. No objections to the subject this morning?"
+
+His Mary told him "No."
+
+"Couldn't have a better morning for it, could we?"
+
+She took a little catch at her breath.
+
+George dropped the banter in his tone. "Nothing wrong to-day, is
+there, dear? Nothing up?"
+
+How sadly wrong everything in truth was she had determined not to tell
+him until she more certainly knew its extent. She shook her head;
+reassuringly smiled.
+
+"Well, that's all right--there couldn't be on a morning like this. Now
+we've got to begin at the beginning. Mary, I planned it all out last
+night--all this conversation. We've got to begin at the beginning--Do
+you know I've never told you yet that I love you? You knew it, though,
+didn't you, from the first, the very first? Tell me from when?"
+
+"George, this is awfully foolish, isn't it?"
+
+"Never mind. It's jolly nice. It's necessary, too. I've read about it.
+It's always done. Tell me from when you knew I loved you."
+
+"After last Saturday."
+
+"Oh, Mary! Much earlier than _that_! You must have!"
+
+"Well, I thought perhaps you--you cared after that first day when you
+came here."
+
+"Not before that?"
+
+She laughed. "Come, how _could_ I? Why, I'd hardly seen you."
+
+"Well, I did, anyway," George told her. "I loved you from the very
+minute you shot out of the cab that day. There! But even this isn't
+the proper thing. I've been promising myself all night to say four
+words to you--just four. Now I'm going to say them: Mary, I love you."
+
+She looked in his eyes for a moment, answering the signal that shone
+thence; and then she laughed that clear pipe of mirth which was so
+uniquely her own possession.
+
+"Oh, I say, you mustn't do that," George cried. He was really
+perturbed.
+
+"I can't help it. You are so utterly foolish."
+
+"I'm not. It's the proper thing. I tell you I've planned it all out. I
+love you. I've never said it to you before. Now it's your turn."
+
+"But what on earth am I to say?"
+
+"You've got to say that you love me."
+
+"You're making a farce of it."
+
+"No, I tell you I've planned it all out. I can't go on till you've
+said it."
+
+"You can't expect me to say: 'George, I love you.' It's ridiculous.
+It's like a funny story."
+
+"Oh, never mind what it's like. Do be serious, Mary. How can I be sure
+you love me if you won't tell me?"
+
+For the first moment since its happening the thought of Bob Chater and
+of Mrs. Chater passed completely from Mary's mind. She looked around:
+there was no soul in sight. She listened: there was no sound. She
+clasped her fingers about his; leaned towards him, her face
+upturned....
+
+He kissed her upon the lips....
+
+"The plans," said George after a moment, "have all gone fut. I never
+thought of that way."
+
+"It's much better," Mary said.
+
+"The other's not a patch upon it," said George.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+You must conjecture of what lovers think when, following their first
+kiss, they sit silent. It is not a state that may be written down in
+such poor words as your author commands. For the touch of lips on lips
+is the key that turns the lock and gives admission to a world dimly
+conceived, yet found to have been wrongly conceived since conceived
+never to be so wonderful or so beautiful as it does prove. Nor, ever
+again, once the silence is broken and speech is found, has that world
+an aspect quite the same. For the door that divides this new world
+from the material world can never from the inside be closed. It is at
+first--for the space of that silence after the first kiss--pushed
+very close by those who have entered; but, soon after, the breath of
+every rushing moment blows it further and further ajar. Drab objects
+from the outer world drift across the threshold and obtrude their
+presence--vagabond tramps in a rose-garden, unpleasant, marring the
+surroundings, soiling the atmosphere. Cares drift in, worldly
+interests drift in; in drift smudgy, soiled, unpleasant objects
+brushing the door yet wider upon its hinges till it stands back to its
+furthest extent and the interior becomes at one with the outer world.
+The process is gradual, indiscernible. When completed the knowledge of
+what has been done dawns suddenly. One knocks against an intruder
+especially drab, starts into wakefulness to rub the bruise, and
+looking around exclaims, "And this is love!"
+
+Well, it was love. But a rose-garden will not long remain beautiful if
+no care is taken of what may intrude.
+
+If we but stand sentinel at the door, exercising a nice discretion,
+the garden may likely remain unsoiled, its air uncontaminated.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+George said that though across the first portion of the scheme he had
+so laboriously planned he had been shot at lightning speed by the
+vehicle of Mary's action, its latter portion yet remained to be
+discussed. "We've got to marry, dearest--and as quick as quick. We
+can't go on like this--seeing each other once a week. No, not even if
+it were once a day. It's got to be always."
+
+"Always and always, dear," Mary said softly.
+
+Women are more intoxicated than men by the sudden atmosphere of that
+new world. The awe of it was still upon her. The light of love comes
+strongly to men, with the sensation of bright sunshine; to women as
+through stained glass windows, softly.
+
+She continued: "Fancy saying 'always' and being glad to say it! I
+never thought I could. Do you know--will this frighten you?--I am one
+of those people who dread the idea of 'always.' I never could bear the
+idea of looking far, far ahead and not seeing any end. It frightened
+me. Ever since father died, I've been like that--even in little
+things, even in tangible things. When we go to the seaside in the
+summer I never can bear to look straight across the sea. That gives me
+the idea of always--of long, long miles and miles without a turn or a
+stop. I want to think every day, every hour, that what I am doing
+can't go on--mustchange. It suffocates me to think otherwise. I want
+to jump out, to scream."
+
+Then she gave that laugh that seldom failed to come to her relief, and
+said: "It's a sort of claustrophobia--isn't that the word?--on a
+universal scale. But why is it? And why am I suddenly changed now? Why
+does the thought of always, always, endless always with you, bring a
+sort of--don't laugh, dear--a sort of bliss, peace?"
+
+This poor George of mine, who was no deep thinker, nevertheless had
+the reason pat. He said:
+
+"I think because the past has all been unhappy and because this, you
+know, means happiness."
+
+She gave a little sigh; told him: "Yes, that's it--happiness."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+And now they fell to making plans as mating birds build nests. Here a
+bit of straw and there a tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred
+of wool--George would do this and George would do that; here the house
+would be and thus would they do in the house. Probabilities were
+outraged, obstacles vaulted.
+
+Castles that are builded in the air spring into being quicker than
+Aladdin's palace--bricks and mortar, beams and stones are
+featherweight when handled in the clouds; every piece is so
+dovetailed, marked and numbered that like magic there springs before
+the eye the shining whole--pinnacled, turreted, embattled.
+
+Disaster arrives when the work is completed. "There!" we say, standing
+back, a little flushed and out of breath with the excitement of the
+thing. "There! There's a place in which to live! Could any existence
+be more glorious?" And then we advance a step and lean against the
+walls to survey the surrounding prospect. It is the fatal action. The
+material body touches the aerial structure and down with a crash the
+castle comes--back we pitch into the foundations, and thwack, bump,
+thwack, comes the masonry tumbling about us, bruising, wounding.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+George had built the castle. Mary had sat by twittering and clapping
+her hands for glee as higher and higher it rose. He knew for a fact,
+he told her, that his uncle had not expended upon his education much
+more than half the money left him for the purpose. He was convinced
+that by hook or by crook he could obtain the 400 pounds that would buy
+him the practice at Runnygate of which the Dean had told him. They
+would have a little house there--the town would thrive--the practice
+would nourish--in a year--why, in a year they would likely enough have
+to be thinking of getting a partner! And it would begin almost
+immediately! In three weeks the examination would be held. He could
+not fail to pass--then for the 400 pounds and Runnygate!
+
+And then, unhappily, George leaned against this castle wall; provoked
+the crash.
+
+"Till then, dear," he said, "you will stay with these Chater people. I
+know you hate it; but it will be only a short time, a few weeks at
+most."
+
+Instantly her gay twittering ceased. Trouble drove glee from her eyes.
+Memory chased dreams from her brain. Distress tore down the gay
+colours from her cheeks. She clasped her hands; from her seat half
+rose.
+
+"Oh!" she cried; and again, "Oh! I had forgotten!"
+
+"Forgotten? Forgotten what?"
+
+"Dearest, I should have told you at the beginning, but I could not. I
+wanted to wait until I knew. I have not seen her yet this morning."
+
+My startled George was becoming pale. "Knew what? Seen whom? What do
+you mean?"
+
+She said, "No, I won't tell you. I won't spoil all this beautiful
+morning we have spent. I will wait till next week."
+
+"Mary, what do you mean? Wait till next week? No. You must tell me
+now. How could I leave you like this, knowing you are in some trouble?
+What has happened? You must tell. You must. I insist."
+
+"Ah, I will." Her agitation, as her mind cast back over the events of
+the previous night, was enhanced by the suddenness of the change from
+the sunshine in which she had been disporting to the darkness that now
+swept upon her. She was as a girl who, singing along a country lane,
+is suddenly confronted from the hedgeside by some ugly tramp.
+
+She said, "You know that young Mr. Chater?"
+
+Dark imaginings clouded upon George's brow. "Yes," he said. "Yes;
+well--?"
+
+"Last night--" And then she gave him the history of events.
+
+This simple George of mine writhed beneath it.
+
+It was a poison torturing his system, twisting his brow, knotting his
+hands. Her presence, when she finished, did not stay his cry beneath
+his rackings: he was upon his feet. "By Gad," he cried, "I'll thrash
+the life out of him! The swine! By Gad, I'll kill him!"
+
+She laid a hand upon his arm. "Georgie, dear," she pleaded. "Don't,
+don't take it like that. I haven't finished."
+
+Roughly he turned upon her. "Well, what else? What else?"
+
+"I haven't seen him since. He went away early this morning for the
+week-end. And I have not seen Mrs. Chater again either. I am to see
+her this afternoon. She sent me word to take the children as usual and
+that she would see me at three."
+
+My poor George bitterly broke out: "Oh! Will she? That's kind of her!
+That's delightful of her! Are you going to see her?"
+
+"Of course I shall see her."
+
+"'Of course'! 'Of course'! I don't know what you mean by talking in
+that tone. You won't stay there another minute! That's what you'll
+tell her if you insist upon seeing her. If you had behaved properly
+you'd have walked out of the house there and then when it happened
+last night."
+
+Spite of her trouble Mary could not forbear to laugh. "Dearest, how
+could I?"
+
+But this furious young man could not see her point. His fine passion
+swept him above contingencies.
+
+"Well, then, this morning," he laid down. "The first thing this
+morning you should have gone." He supplied detail: "Packed your box,
+and called a cab and gone."
+
+His dictatory air drew from her another sad little laugh.
+
+"Oh, George, dear," she cried, "gone where?"
+
+It was a bucket of water dashed upon his flames, and for a moment they
+flickered beneath it--then roared again: "_Where? Anywhere!_"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "you are stupid! You don't see--you don't understand!
+Easy to say 'anywhere,' but where--_where_? I have no money. I have no
+friends--I--"
+
+The knowledge of her plight and her outlook crowded upon her speech;
+broke her voice.
+
+Her distracted George in a moment had her hands in his. "Oh, my dear,"
+he cried, "what a fool I am! What a beast to storm like that! I was so
+wild. So mad. Of course you had to think before you moved. You were
+right, of course you were right. But, my darling, I'm right now. You
+see that, don't you? You can't stay a moment longer with those
+beasts."
+
+And then he laughed grimly. "Especially," he added, "after what I'm
+going to do to Master Bob."
+
+She too laughed. The thought of Bob learning manners beneath the
+tuition of those sinewy brown hands that were about hers was very
+pleasant to her. But it was a pleasure that must be denied--this she
+saw clearly as the result of weary tossings throughout the night; and
+now she set about the task of explaining it to George.
+
+She said: "Oh, my dear, you're not right. Georgie, I can't go--if Mrs.
+Chater will let me stay I must stay."
+
+He tried to be calm, to understand these women, to understand his
+Mary. "But why?" he asked. "Why?"
+
+"Dearest, because I must bridge over the time until you are ready to
+take me. You see that?"
+
+"Of course. But why there? You can easily get another place."
+
+"Oh, easily! If you had been through it as I have been! The first
+thing they ask you for is a reference from your former situation.
+Think what a reference Mrs. Chater would give me!"
+
+He would not agree. He plunged along in his blundering, man fashion:
+"In time you could get a place where they would not ask questions--or
+rather--yes, of course this is it. Tell them frankly all that
+happened. Who could see you and not believe you? Tell them everything.
+There must be some nice people in the world."
+
+"There may be. But they don't want helps or governesses--in my
+experience." The little laugh she gave was sadly doleful.
+
+He was still angry. "You can't generalise like that. There are
+thousands who would believe you and be glad to take you. Suppose you
+have to wait a bit--well, you have a little money that she must give
+you; and I--oh, curse my poverty!--I can borrow, and I can sell
+things."
+
+The help that a man would give a woman so often has lack of sympathy;
+he is unkind while meaning to be kind. George's obdurateness, coming
+when she was most in need of kisses, hurt her. Trouble welled in her
+eyes.
+
+"I wouldn't do that," she said. "For one thing, we want all our money.
+Why throw it away to get me out of a place in which I shall only be
+for a few weeks longer? Another thing--another thing--" She dragged a
+ridiculous handkerchief from her sleeve; dabbed her brimming eyes.
+"Another thing--I'm afraid to risk it. I'm afraid to be alone and
+looking for a place again. There--now you know. I'm a coward."
+
+She fell to sniffing and sobbing; and her wretched George, cursing
+himself for the grief he had evoked, cursing Bob Chater, cursing Mrs.
+Chater, cursing his uncle Marrapit, put his arms about her and drew
+her to him. She quivered hysterically, and he frantically moaned that
+he was a beast, a brute, unworthy; implored forgiveness; entreated
+calm; by squeezing her with his left arm and with his right hand
+dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, screwed to a pathetic little
+damp ball, strove to stem the flood that alarmingly welled from them.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+It was an awful position for any young man; and just as my poor
+George, distinguished in nothing, inept, bewildered, was in a mood
+murderous to the whole world save this anguished fairy, a wretched old
+gentleman must needs come sunning himself down the path, making for
+this seat with hobbling limbs.
+
+He collapsed upon it, and then, glancing to his right, was struck with
+palpitations by sight of the heaving back of a young woman over whose
+shoulder glared at him with hideous ferocity the face of a young man.
+
+"Dear me, dear me," said he; "nothing wrong, sir, I trust?"
+
+"Go away!" roared my distracted George.
+
+"Eh?" inquired the old gentleman, horribly startled.
+
+"Go away! Go away!"
+
+The fire of those baleful eyes, of that bellowing voice, struck terror
+into the aged heart. He clutched his stick.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear," said he; hobbled away at a speed dangerous to his
+life and limbs to seek protection of a park-keeper.
+
+The sobs grew longer, less hysterical: changed into long "ohs" of
+misery; died away.
+
+"There, there," said George, patting, dabbing. "There, there."
+
+With a final frantic sniff she recovered her self-possession.
+
+"I'm a little f--fool," said she.
+
+"I'm a brute," said George.
+
+The bitter knowledge nerved each to better efforts. Calm reigned.
+
+Mary said, "Now you must listen and believe, dear."
+
+"Let me have your hand, then."
+
+She gave it with a little confiding, snuggling movement, and she
+continued: "You must believe, because I have thought it all out,
+whereas to you it is new. If I were a proper-spirited girl"--she
+rebuked his negation with a gesture--"if I were a proper-spirited
+girl I know I should leave Mrs. Chater at once--walk out and not care
+what I might suffer rather than stay where I had been insulted. Girls
+in books would do it. Oh, Georgie, this isn't books. This is real. I
+have been through it, and I would die sooner than face it again. You
+know--I have told you--what it is like being alone in cheap lodgings
+in London. Afraid of people, dear. Afraid of men, afraid of women. I
+couldn't, could not go through it again. And after all-don't you see?
+--if Mrs. Chater will let me stay, what have I to mind? I shall be
+better off than before, if anything. Mrs. Chater has always been--
+well, sharp. She may be a little worse--there's nothing in that. But
+this Bob Chater, since he came, has been the worst part of it. And as
+things are now, his mother watchful and he--what shall I say? angry,
+ashamed--why, he will pay no further attention to me. Come, am I not
+right? Isn't it best?--if only she will let me stay."
+
+"I don't like it," George said. "I don't like it."
+
+"Dearest, nor I. But we can't, can't have what we like, and this will
+be the best of the nasty things. For so short a time, too. I'm quite
+bright about it. Am I not? Look at me."
+
+George looked. Then he said, "All right, old girl."
+
+She clapped her hands. "Only one thing more. You mustn't seek out--you
+mustn't touch the detestable Bob."
+
+With the gloom of one relinquishing life's greatest prize George said,
+"I suppose I mustn't." He added, "I tell you what, though. You mustn't
+interfere with this. I'll save it up for him. The day I take you out
+and marry you I'll pull him out--and pay him."
+
+They parted upon the promises that Mary would write that evening to
+tell him of the result of her interview with Mrs. Chater, and that, in
+the especial circumstances, he might come to see her in the Park for
+just two minutes on Monday morning.
+
+And each went home, thinking, not of that portending interview with
+Mrs. Chater, but upon the love they had declared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+At ten o'clock that night Mary took up her pen.
+
+"First, my dear, to tell you that it is all right. I may stay. I had
+lunch with the children in the nursery, and just as we had finished a
+maid came to say that Mrs. Chater would see me in the study. Down I
+crawled, wishing that I was the heroine of a novel who would have
+passed firmly down the stairs and into the room, 'pale, but calm and
+serene.' Oh! I was pale enough, I feel sure. But as to serene!--my
+heart was flapping about just like a tin ventilator in a wind, and I
+was jumpy all over. You see what a coward am I.
+
+"Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her. Of that I am convinced.
+She sat, enormous, thunder-browed, bolt upright in a straight chair. I
+stood and quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books the
+consciousness of virtue gives one complete self-possession in the face
+of any accusation, however terrible. In books it is the accuser of the
+innocent who is ill at ease. Oh, don't believe it! Mrs. Chater had the
+self-possession, I had the jim-jams.
+
+"'I have not seen you since last night,' she said.
+
+"I gave a kind of terrified little squeak. I had no words.
+
+"'Your version of what happened I do not wish to hear,' she went on.
+
+"This relieved me, because for the life of me I could not have told
+her had she wished to hear it. So I gave another little mouse-squeak.
+
+"'My son has told me.' Her voice was like a deep bell. 'How you can
+reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you have received at my
+hands, here beneath my roof'--she was very dramatic at this point--'I
+do not know.'
+
+"Nor did I--but not in the way she meant. I was thinking how ignoble
+was my meek attitude in light of what had happened. But you don't know
+what it was like, facing that woman and dreading the worse fate of
+being turned out into this awful London again. Another wretched little
+squeak slipped out of me, and she went on.
+
+"'My boy,' said she, 'has implored me to overlook this matter. My boy
+has declared there were faults on both sides' (!!!!). 'If I acted
+rightly as a mother, what would I do?'
+
+"I didn't tell her, Georgie. Could I tell her that if she acted
+rightly as a mother she would box her boy's fat ears until his nose
+bled? I couldn't. I squeaked instead.
+
+"'If I acted rightly as a mother,' said she, 'I would send you away.
+I am not going to.'
+
+"I squeaked.
+
+"'I choose to believe that your behaviour in this matter was a slip. I
+believe the episode will be a lesson to you. That is all. Go.' I goed."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George, when he had read thus far, was broadly grinning. Obviously
+Mrs. Chater was not such a bad sort after all. If--as no doubt--she
+implicitly believed her son's version of the incident, then her
+attitude towards Mary was, on the whole, not so bad.
+
+But his Mary, when she had written thus far, laid down her pen, put
+her pretty head upon the paper and wept.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" she choked. "There, that will make you think it was all
+right. You shall never know--never--what really happened. Oh, Georgie,
+Georgie, come very quick and take me away! How can I go on living with
+these beasts? Oh, Georgie, be quick, be quick!"
+
+Then this silly Mary with handkerchief, with india-rubber, and with
+pen-knife erased a stain of grief that had fallen upon her pretty
+story; sniffed back her tears; lifted again her pen.
+
+Now she wrote in an eager scrawl; nib flying. Had her George not been
+so very ordinary a young man he must have perceived the difference
+between that first portion so neatly penned--parti-coloured words
+showing where the ink had dried while the poor little brain puzzled
+and planned at every syllable--and this where emotion sped the
+thoughts.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"So that's all right" (she wrote), "and now we've only got to wait, a
+few, few weeks. Dearest, will they fly or will they drag? What does
+love do to time, I wonder--whip or brake?--speed or pull? Georgie
+mine, I feel I don't care. If the days fly I shall be riding in them--
+galloping to you, wind in the face; shouting them on; standing up all
+flushed with the swing and the rush of it; waving to the people we go
+thundering past and gazing along the road where soon I will see you--
+nearer and nearer and nearer.
+
+"And if the days creep? Well, at first, after that picture, the
+thought seems melancholy, unbearable. But that is wrong. The
+realisation will not be unbearable. If they creep, why, then I shall
+lie in them, very comfortable, very happy; dreaming of you, seeing
+you, speaking with you, touching you. Yes, touching you. For, my dear,
+you are here in the room with me as I write. I look up just to my
+right, and there you are, Georgie mine; sitting on the end of my bed,
+smiling at me. You have not left me, my dear, since we parted on the
+seat this morning. Why, I cannot even write that it is only in
+imagination that I see you. For me it is not imagination. I do, do see
+you, Georgie mine. You are part of me, never to leave me.
+
+"How new, how different, love makes life! Everything I do, everything
+I see, everything I hear has a new interest because it is something to
+share with you, something to save up and tell you. I am in trouble
+(you understand that I am not, shall never be again; this is only
+illustration--you must read it 'if I were in trouble'). I am in
+trouble, and you are sharing it with me, sympathising so that trouble
+is an unkind word for what is indeed but an opportunity acutely to
+feel the joy of loving and being loved. I am happy, and the happiness
+is a thousandfold increased because it comes to me warmed through you.
+I am amused, and it is something to tell you and to laugh at the more
+heartily by the compelling sound of your own laughter.
+
+"Everything is new. Why, my very clothes are new. Look, here in my
+left hand is my handkerchief. Only a handkerchief this morning, and to
+other eyes still but a handkerchief. But to mine! Why, you have had it
+in your hand and indeed it speaks to me of you. Here you laid your
+arm, this was the side upon which you touched me as we sat together,
+here in my hair your fingers caressed me--each and all they are new--
+different from this morning.
+
+"Are you thinking me silly when I write like this, or are you
+dreadfully bored with it? I can't help it, Georgie; love means so much
+more to us women than to you men. It is essentially different. When a
+man in love thinks of the woman he thinks of her as 'mine,' and that
+thrills him--possession. But when the woman thinks of him she thinks
+of herself as 'his,' and that moves every fibre of her, strikes every
+chord--capitulation. The man expresses love by saying 'You are mine';
+the woman by 'I am yours.' That is how it is with me. I sing to myself
+that I am yours, yours, yours. I want you to have every bit of me. I
+want you to know every thought I have. If I had bad thoughts, I would
+tell them you. If I had desires, I would make them known and would not
+blush. I want you to see right into my very heart. I want to lay
+everything before you--to come to you bound and naked. That is what
+love is with women, dear. Some of us resist it, school it otherwise--
+but I do not think they are happy; not really happy. It is our nature
+to be as I have said, and to fight against nature is wearying work,
+leaving marks: it is to get tossed aside out of the sun.
+
+"Are you thinking me unutterably tiresome and foolish?--but you will
+not think that; because you love me.
+
+"Ah, let me write that again!-because you love me. And let me write
+this: I love you.
+
+"My dear, is not that curious?--the precious joy of saying 'I love
+you,' and the constant yearning to hear it said. Not lovers alone have
+this joy and this desire. Mothers teach their babies to say 'I love
+you, mother,' and constantly and constantly they ask, 'Do you love me,
+baby? '--yes, and are not satisfied until they have the assurance. And
+babies, too, will get up suddenly from their toys to run to say,
+'Mother, I _do_ love you.'
+
+"Why is it? Why is love so doubted that it must for ever be declared?
+So doubted that even those who do love must constantly be proclaiming
+the fact to the object of their affections, impelled either by the
+subconscious fear that that object mistrusts the devotion, or by the
+subconscious fear that they themselves are under delusion and must
+protest aloud--just as a child upon the brink of being frightened in
+the dark will say aloud, 'I'm not afraid!' Why is it?
+
+"Actions are allowed to proclaim hate, deeds suffice to advertise
+sympathy, but love must be testified by bond. To what crimes must love
+have been twisted and contorted that it should come to such a pass?
+How often must it have been used as disguise to be now thus suspected?
+
+"You never knew I thought of things like this, did you?
+
+"My dear dear, I who am so frivolous think of yet deeper things. And I
+would speak of them to you tonight, for I would have you know my heart
+and mind as, dearest (how dear to think!), you know my face. Yes, of
+deeper things. I suppose clever people would laugh at the religion my
+mother and father lived in, taught me, died in, and now is mine. They
+believed--and I believe--in what I have heard called the Sunday School
+God! the God who lives, who listens, and to whom I pray. I have read
+books attempting to shatter this belief--yes, and I think succeeding
+because written with a cunning appeal only to the intelligence of man.
+Can such a Being as God exist? they ask. And since man's intelligence
+can only grasp proved facts, proofs are heaped upon proof that He
+cannot. The impossibilities are heaped until man must--of his
+limitations--cry that it is impossible. But in my belief God is above
+the possibilities--not to be judged by them, not to be reduced to
+them. I suppose such a belief is Faith--implicit Faith--the Faith that
+we are told makes all things possible. Well, fancy, for the sake of
+having a 'religion' that comes into line with 'reason,' abandoning the
+sense of comfort that comes after prayer! Fancy receiving a 'reasoned'
+belief and paying for it the solace of entreating help in the smallest
+trouble and in the largest!
+
+"Do you know, my dear dear, that I pray for you every night?--for your
+health, your happiness, and your success?
+
+"Now you know a little more of me. Is there more to learn, I wonder?
+Not if I can make it clear.
+
+"The candle is in a most melancholy condition: in the last stage of
+collapse. I have prodded it out from its socket with my knife and set
+it flabbily on a penny--so it must work to its very last drop of
+life. That will not be long delayed. I shall suddenly be plunged into
+darkness and must undress in the dark. I shall be smiling all the time
+I am undressing, my thoughts with you.
+
+"At eleven--ten minutes' time--I am to be leaning from the window
+gazing at Orion as you too--so we agreed--will be gazing. Each will
+know the other has his thoughts, and we will say 'good-night.' How
+utterly foolish! How contemptibly absurd, common!--and how mystically
+delightful! You and I with Orion for the apex of eye's sight and our
+thoughts flying from heart to heart the base!
+
+"Georgie mine, if we had never met could we have ever been so happy?
+Impossible! Impossible! Before I pray for you to-night, I thank God
+for you.
+
+"I have kissed the corner where I shall just be able to squeeze in--
+good-night."
+
+Such was her letter-disloyal to women in its exposure of those truths
+of women's love which are theirs by the heritage of ages, by their
+daily training from childhood upward, and against which they should
+most desperately battle; simple in its ideas of religion; silly in its
+baby sentiment.
+
+Such was my Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Beefsteak For 14 Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Friday was the night of the incident in the library between Bob Chater
+and Mary; Saturday the exchange of love in the Park between Mary and
+her George; Saturday evening the writing of Mary's letter; upon Monday
+George read it.
+
+Now it was Monday morning, and precisely at ten o'clock three persons
+set out for the same seat in Regent's Park--the mind of each filled
+with one of the others, empty of all thought of the third.
+
+Mary--accompanied by David and Angela--carried towards the seat the
+image of her George, but had no heed of Mr. Bob Chater's existence;
+she was the magnet that drew Bob, ignorant of George; George sped to
+his Mary and had no thought of Bob.
+
+Our young men were handicapped in point of distance. Mary, with but a
+short half-mile to go, must easily be first to make the seat; Bob,
+coming to town from a week-end up the river, would occupy little short
+of an hour. George from Herons' Holt to that dear seat, allowed full
+seventy-five minutes.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon the whole, Mr. Bob Chater had not enjoyed his week-end; ideally
+circumstanced, for once the attractions it offered had failed to
+allure.
+
+Mr. Lemmy Moss, in the tiny riparian cottage he rented for the summer
+months, was the most excellent of hosts; Claude Avinger was widely
+known as a rattling good sort; the three young ladies who came down
+early on Sunday morning and had no foolish objections to staying
+indecorously late, were in face, figure and morals all that Bob,
+Lemmy, and Claude could desire. Yet throughout that day in the
+cushioned punt Bob won more pouts than smiles from the lady who fell
+to his guardianship.
+
+Disgustedly she remarked to her friends on the home journey, "Fairly
+chucked myself at him, the deadhead "--wherein, I apprehend, lay her
+mistake. For whether a man's assault upon a woman be dictated by love
+or desire, its vehemence is damped by acquiescence, spurred by rebuff.
+Doubtless for our lusty forefathers one-half the fascination of
+obtaining to wife the naked ladies who caught their eye lay in the
+tremendous excitement of snatching them from their tribes; while for
+the ladies, the joy of capture comprised a great proportion of the
+amorous delights.
+
+The characteristics remain. Maidens are more decorously won to-day;
+their tribes do not defend them; but they do the fighting for
+themselves. The sturdier the defence they are able to make, the
+greater the joy of at length being won; while, for the suitor, the
+more pains he hath endured in process of conquest the more keenly doth
+he relish his captive.
+
+So with Bob. The young lady fairly chucking herself at him in the punt
+he could not forbear to contrast with the enticing reserve of Mary.
+The more playfully (or desperately, poor girl) she chucked herself at
+him, the more did her charms cloy as against those of that other prize
+who so stoutly kept him at arm's-length. Nay, the more strenuously did
+she seek to entice his good offices, the more troubled was he to
+imagine why another of her sex should so slightingly regard him.
+
+Thus, as the day wore on, was Bob thrice impelled towards Mary--by
+initial attraction of her beauty; by natural instinct to show himself
+master where, till now, he had been bested; and by the stabbings of
+his wounded vanity.
+
+On Monday morning, then, he caught the ten o'clock train to town, hot
+in the determination immediately to see her and instantly to press his
+suit. He would try, he told himself, a new strategy. Bold assault had
+been proved ill-advised; for frontal attack must be substituted an
+advance more crafty. Its plan required no seeking. He would play--and,
+to a certain extent, would sincerely play--the part of penitent. He
+would apologise for Friday's lapse; would explain it to have been the
+outcome of sheer despair of ever winning her good graces.
+
+As to where he would find her he had no doubts. Dozing one day over a
+book, he had not driven David and Angela from the room until they had
+forced upon him a wearisome account of the secluded seat they had
+discovered in Regent's Park. His patience in listening was an example
+of the profit of casting one's bread upon the waters; for, making
+without hesitation for the seat, he discovered Mary.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The children, as he approached, were standing before her. David had
+scratched his finger, and the three were breathlessly examining the
+wounded hand for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was explaining
+that the place of the wound was over the home of very big drops of
+"blug," which could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window; when
+Angela, turning at footsteps, exclaimed: "Oh, dear, oh, dear, what
+_shall_ we do? Here's Bob!"
+
+Alarm drummed in Mary's heart: fluttered upon her cheeks. She had
+felt, as she told her George, so certain that from Bob she had now not
+even acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion set her
+mind bounding into disordered apprehensions--stumbling among them,
+terrified, out of breath.
+
+When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning, she could but sit
+dumbly staring at him-questioning, incapable of speech.
+
+It was Angela that answered his salutation: "Oh, why _have_ you come
+here? You spoil _everything_."
+
+"Hook!" said Bob.
+
+David asked: "What's hook?"
+
+"Run away."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I tell you to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Bob exclaimed: "Hasn't mother told you not to say 'Why' like that? Run
+away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray."
+
+David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted instead an
+observant poke: "Miss Humfray doesn't want to speak to you. She hates
+you."
+
+The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross ill-
+mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to his
+mother. The belief that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary's
+mouth served further to harden his tones.
+
+He said: "Look here, you run away when I tell you, or I'll see you
+don't come out here any more."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Bob swallowed. It was necessary before he spoke to clear his tongue of
+the emotions that surged upon it.
+
+Angela, in the pause, entreated David: "Oh, don't keep saying 'Why?',
+David," and before he could ask the reason she addressed Bob: "We
+won't go for you. If Miss Humf'ay tells us to go, _then_ we will go."
+
+Bob looked at Mary. "I only want to speak to you for a minute."
+
+Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary
+had struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have
+been chance, not deliberate--how should he have known where to seek
+them? Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to
+take the apology with which doubtless he had come--well to be on good
+terms.
+
+Encouraged by these supports, "Shoo!" she cried to her charges. "Don't
+you hear what your brother asks?"
+
+"Do _you_ want us to go?"
+
+"Oh, shoo! shoo!"
+
+Laughing, they shoo'd.
+
+Bob let them from earshot. "I want to say how sorry I am about Friday
+night."
+
+"I have forgotten all that."
+
+"I want to know that you have forgiven me."
+
+"I tell you I have forgotten it."
+
+"That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it." He took a seat
+beside her; repeated: "You can't have forgotten it. How can you have
+forgotten a thing that only happened three days ago?"
+
+"In the sense that I have wiped it out--I do not choose to remember
+it."
+
+"Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want
+to know that you forgive me."
+
+She told him: "Yes, then--oh yes, yes." His persistence alarmed her,
+set her again to flight among her apprehensions.
+
+"Not when you say it like that."
+
+Her breath came in jerks, responsive to the unsteady flutters of her
+heart. She made an effort for control; for the first time turned to
+him: "Mr. Chater, please go."
+
+Her words pricked every force that had him there--desire, obstinacy,
+wounded vanity.
+
+"Why do you say that?" he asked.
+
+"You happened to be passing--"
+
+"Nothing of the kind," he told her.
+
+"You have come purposely?" One foothold that seemed safe was proving
+false.
+
+"Of course. I tell you--why won't you believe me?--that I have been
+ashamed of myself ever since that night. At the first opportunity I
+have come straight to tell you so, I ought to be in the City. I could
+not rest until I had made my apology."
+
+"Well, you have made it--I don't mean to say that sharply. I think--I
+think it is very nice of you to be so anxious, and I freely accept
+your apology. But don't you see that you are harming me by staying
+here? I beg you to go."
+
+"How am I harming you? Am I so distasteful to you that you can't bear
+me near you?"
+
+This was the personal note that of all her apprehensions had given
+Mary greatest alarm. "Surely you see that you are harming me--I mean
+hurting me--I mean, yes, getting me into trouble by staying like this
+with me. Mrs. Chater might have turned me off on Saturday--"
+
+"I spoke for you."
+
+"Yes." The words choked her, but she spoke them--"I am grateful to
+you for that. But if she found me talking to you again--especially if
+she knew you came here to see me, she would send me away at once. She
+told me so."
+
+"How is she to know?"
+
+"The children--"
+
+"I'll take care of that."
+
+"You can't prevent it. In any case--"
+
+Bob said bitterly: "In any case! Yes, that's it. In any case you hate
+the sight of me."
+
+She cried: "Oh, why will you speak like that? I mean that in any case
+it is not right. I promised."
+
+Bob laughed. "If that's all, it is all right. You didn't promise for
+me."
+
+"It makes no difference. You say you are sorry--I believe you are
+sorry. You can only show it one way. Mr. Chater, please leave me
+alone."
+
+Her pretty appeal was fatal to her desire. It enhanced her graces. In
+both phrase and tone it was different from similar request in the
+petulant mouths of those ladies amongst whom Bob purchased his way.
+Dissatisfied, they would have said "Oh, chuck it! Do!" But "Mr.
+Chater, please leave me alone!"--that had the effect of moving Mr.
+Chater a degree closer along the seat.
+
+He said: "You shan't have cause to blame me. Look here, you haven't
+asked me to explain my conduct on Friday."
+
+"I don't wish you to."
+
+"Don't you want to know?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Aren't you curious?" His voice was low with a note of intensity. This
+was love-making, as he. knew the pursuit.
+
+He went on: "I'm sure you're curious. Look here, I'm going to tell
+you."
+
+"I'm going," she said; made to rise.
+
+He caught her hand where it lay on her lap; pressed her down. "You're
+not. If you do I shall follow--but I won't let you," and he pressed
+again in advertisement.
+
+Now she was alarmed--not for the result of this interview, but for its
+very present perils. Fear strangled her voice, but she said, "Let me
+go."
+
+"You must hear me, then."
+
+"I wish to go."
+
+"You must stay to hear me." He believed a fierce assault would now win
+the heights. He released her hand; but she was still his prisoner, and
+he leant towards her averted head.
+
+"I'm going to tell you why I behaved like that that night. It was
+because I could not contain myself any longer. You had always been so
+icy to me; kept me at arm's-length, barely let me speak to you; and
+all the time I was burning to tell you that I loved you--there, you
+know it now. On that night you were still cold when you might have
+been only barely civil and I could have contained myself. But you
+would not give me a word, and at last all that was in me for you burst
+out and I could not hold myself. It was unkind; it was frightening to
+you, perhaps; but was it a crime?--is it a crime to love?"
+
+His flow checked, waiting an impulse from her.
+
+She was but capable of a little "Oh!"--the crest of a gasp.
+
+He misread her emotion. "Has it all been pretence, your keeping me
+from you like this? I believe it has. But now that you know you will
+be kind. Tell me. Speak."
+
+Encouraged by her silence he took her hand.
+
+That touch acted as a cold blast upon her fevered emotions. Now she
+was calm.
+
+She shook off his hand. "Have you done?"
+
+The tone more than the question warned him.
+
+"Well?" he said; sullen wrath gathering.
+
+"Well, never speak to me again."
+
+"You won't be friends?"
+
+"Friends! With you!"
+
+Her meaning--that he had lost--stung him; her tone--that she despised
+him--was a finger in the wound.
+
+He gripped her arm. "You little fool! How are you going to choose? If
+I want to be friends with you, how are you going to stop it? By God,
+if you want to be enemies it will be the worse for you. If I can't be
+friends with you at home, I'll get you turned out and I'll make you be
+friends outside."
+
+She was trying to twist her arm from his grasp.
+
+He gripped closer. "No, I don't mean that. I love you--that's why I
+talk so when you rebuff me. I'll not hurt you. We shall--I will be
+friends."
+
+His right arm held her. He slipped his left around her, drew her to
+him, and with his lips had brushed her cheek before she was aware of
+his intention.
+
+The insult swept her free of every thought but its memory. By a sudden
+motion she slipped from his grasp and to her feet; faced him.
+
+"You beast!" she cried. "You beast!"
+
+He half rose; made a half grab at her.
+
+She stepped back a pace; something in her action reminded him of that
+stinging blow she had dealt him in the library; he dropped back to his
+seat and she turned and fled up the path whither Angela and David had
+toddled.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was while Bob sat gazing after her, indeterminate, that he felt a
+hand from behind the seat upon his shoulder; looked up to see a tall
+young man, fresh faced, but fury-browed, regarding him.
+
+"What's your name?" asked George.
+
+"What the devil's that to do with you?"
+
+The tone of the first question had been of passion restrained. The
+passion broke now from between George's clenched teeth, flamed in his
+eyes.
+
+He tightened his grip upon the other's shoulder so that he pinched the
+flesh.
+
+"A lot to do with me," he cried. "Is it Chater?"
+
+"What if it is? Let me go, damn you!"
+
+"Let you go! I've been itching for you for weeks! What have you been
+saying to Miss Humfray?"
+
+"Damn you! Take off your hand! She's a friend of yours, is she?"
+
+My furious George choked: "Engaged to me." Further bit upon his
+passion he could not brook. He brought his free hand down with a crash
+upon the face twisted up at him; relaxed his hold; ran round the seat-
+-those brown hands clenched.
+
+If Bob Chater at no time had aching desire for a brawl, he was at
+least no coward: here the events he had suffered well sufficed to whip
+his blood to action. He sprang to his feet, was upon them as George,
+sideways to him, came round the arm of the seat; lunged furiously and
+landed a crack upon the cheekbone that spun George staggering up the
+path.
+
+It was a good blow, a lusty blow--straight from the shoulder and with
+body and leg work behind it; a blow that, happier placed, might well
+have won the battle.
+
+A ring upon Bob's finger cut the flesh he struck, and he gave a savage
+"Ha!" of triumph as he saw George go spinning and the red trickle come
+breaking down his cheek.
+
+A great ridge in the gravel marked the thrust of foot with which
+George stayed his stagger, from which he impelled the savage spring
+that brought him within striking distance.
+
+There was no science. This was no calmly prepared fight with cool
+brains directing attack, searching weak points, husbanding strength,
+deft in defence. Here was only the animal instinct to get close and
+wound; to grapple and wound again.
+
+George it was that provoked this spirit. Till now he had not seen this
+flushed face before him. But he had for many days conjured it up in
+his fancy--sharpening upon it the edge of his wrath, bruising himself
+against the wall of wise conduct that kept him from meeting and
+visiting upon it the distress his Mary had endured.
+
+Now that he saw it in the flesh (and it was not unlike his
+conception), he came at it with the impulse of one who, straining
+against a rope, rushes headlong forward when a knife parts the bond.
+
+The impulse thus given more than countered the greater bulk and reach
+that should have told in Bob's scale. Bob felt his wits and his
+courage simultaneously deserting him before the pell-mell of blows
+that came raining against his guard. Whensoever he effected a savage
+smash that momentarily checked the fury, it served but to bring back
+this seemingly demented young man with a new rush and ardour.
+
+Bob gave step by step, struck short-arm, felt the faint saltness of
+blood upon his lips, staggered back before a tremendous hit between
+the eyes, stumbled, tripped, fell.
+
+"Get up!" George bellowed; waited till Bob came rushing, and sent him
+reeling again with a broken tooth that cut the brown knuckles.
+
+Bob lacked not courage and had proved it, for he was sorely battered.
+But the pluck in him was whipped and now venom alone bade him make
+what hurt he could.
+
+His heavy stick was leaning against the seat. He seized it; swung it
+high; crashed a blow that must have split the head it aimed.
+
+George slipped aside; the blow missed. He poised himself as Bob,
+following the impulse, went staggering by; put all his weight behind a
+crashing hit and sent him spinning prone with a blow that was
+fittingly final to the exhibition of lusty knocks.
+
+Bob propped himself on one arm, rose to his feet; glared; hesitated--
+then fell to brushing his knees.
+
+It was a masterly white flag.
+
+"Had enough?" George panted. "Had enough? Are you whipped, you swine?"
+
+Bob assiduously brushed.
+
+"When you're better, let me know," George cried; turned and hurried up
+the path whither Mary had disappeared.
+
+The forced draught of fury, pain, and exertion sent Bob's breath
+roaring in and out in noisy blasts--now long and laboured, now
+spasmodic quick.
+
+He examined his bill of health and damage. Face everywhere tender to
+the touch; clothes dust-covered and torn; both knees of trousers rent;
+silk hat stove in when in a backward rush he had set his foot upon it.
+His tongue discovered a broken tooth, his handkerchief a bleeding
+nose, his fingers blood upon his chin, trickling to his shirt front.
+
+So well as might be he brushed his person; straightened his hat;
+clapped handkerchief to his mouth; past staring eyes, grinning faces,
+hurried out of the Park to bury himself in a cab.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+From a window Mrs. Chater saw the bruised figure of her darling boy
+alight; with palpitating heart rushed to greet him.
+
+"Bob! My boy! My boy! What has happened?"
+
+Her boy brushed past; bounded to his room. Laboriously, sick with
+fear, the devoted mother toiled in pursuit--found him in his room
+tearing off his coat.
+
+"My boy! My boy!"
+
+Her boy bellowed: "_Hot water!_"
+
+Can a mother's tender care cease towards the child she bare?
+
+Oh! needless to ask such a question, you for whom is pictured this
+devoted woman plunging at breakneck speed for the bathroom, screaming
+as she runs: "Susan! Kate! Jane! Jane! Kate! Susan!"
+
+Doors slammed, cries echoed, stairs shook, as trembling servants
+rushed responsive.
+
+Crashing of cans, rushing of water, called them to the bathroom.
+
+"Oh, m'am! What is it?"
+
+Water flew in sprays as the agonised mother tested its temperature
+with her hands; cans rattled as she kicked them from where, in
+dragging one from the shelf, the others had clattered about her feet.
+
+Jane, Kate, and Susan clustered in alarm about the door: "Oh, m'am!
+M'am! Whatever is it?"
+
+Mrs. Chater gave no reply. Her can full, she plunged through them.
+This way and that they dodged to give her passage; dodge for dodge,
+demented, hysterical, she gave them--slopping boiling water on to
+agonised toes; bursting through at last; thundering up the stairs.
+
+The three plunged after her: "Oh, m'am! M'am! Whatever is it?"
+
+The devoted woman paused at the head of the stairs; screamed down
+orders: "Sticking-plaster! Lint! Cotton-wool! Mr. Bob has had an
+accident! Hot-water bottles! Ice! Doctor! Go for the doctor, one of
+you!"
+
+A figure with battered face above vest and pants bounded from its
+room. "No!" Bob roared. "No!"
+
+"No!" Mrs. Chater echoed, not knowing to what the negative applied,
+but hysterically commanding it.
+
+"No!" screamed the agitated servants, one to another.
+
+"No! no doctor!" bellowed Bob; grabbed the can from his mother; shot
+back to his room.
+
+"No doctor!" Mrs. Chater screamed to the white-faced pack upon the
+stairs; fled after him.
+
+"My boy! Tell me!"
+
+Her boy raised his dripping face from the basin. "For God's sake shut
+the door!" he roared.
+
+She did. "Tell me!" she trembled.
+
+"It's that damned girl."
+
+"That girl?"
+
+"Miss Humfray!"
+
+"Miss Humfray! Done that to you! Oh, your poor face! Your poor face!"
+
+"No!--no! Do be quiet, mother! Some infernal man she goes about with
+in the Park! I spoke to him and he set on me!"
+
+"The infamous creature! The wicked, infamous girl! A bad girl, I knew
+it!--"
+
+Agitated tapping at the door: "The cotton-wool m'am." "Sticking-
+plaster, m'am." "'Ot bottle, m'am."
+
+"Go away!" roared Bob. "Go away! O-oo, my face!" He hopped in wrath
+and pain. "Send those damned women away!"
+
+Mrs. Chater rushed to the door. Passing, she for the first time caught
+full sight of her son's face now that the hot water had exposed its
+wreck. "Oh, your eyes! Your poor eyes! They're closing up!"
+
+Bob staggered to the mirror; discovered the full horror of his marred
+beauty. "Curse it!" he groaned and gave an order.
+
+Mrs. Chater flew to the telephone.
+
+In the office of Mr. Samuel Hock, purveyor of meat, by appointment, to
+the Prince of Wales, the telephone bell sharply rang. Mr. Hock stepped
+to the receiver, listened, then bellowed an order into the shop:
+
+"One of beefsteak to 14 Palace Gardens, sharp!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A Cab For 14 Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+With tremendous strides, with emotion roaring in and out his nostrils
+in gusty blasts of fury, my passionate George encompassed the Park
+this way and that until he came at length upon his trembling Mary.
+
+Save for that first blow where Bob's ring had marked his cheek he had
+suffered but little in the fight--sufficiently, notwithstanding,
+coupled with his colossal demeanour, for Mary's eyes to discover that
+something was amiss.
+
+She came to him; cried at a little distance: "Oh, dearest, I--I could
+not meet you at the seat."
+
+Then she saw more clearly. She asked: "What has happened?" and stood
+with quivering lip recording the flutters of her heart.
+
+George took one hand; patted it between both his. For the moment his
+boiling anger cooled beneath grim relish of his news. "I've pretty
+well killed that Chater swine," he said.
+
+"Mr. Chater?--you've met Mr. Chater?"
+
+Now emotion boiled again in her turbulent George. He said: "I saw you
+run from him. I saw--what had he been doing?"
+
+"Oh, Georgie!"
+
+"Well, never mind. I'd rather not hear. I've paid him for it, whatever
+it was."
+
+"You fought? Oh, and your face--and your hand bleeding too!"
+
+Tears stood in this ridiculous Mary's eyes. Women so often cry at the
+wrong moment. They should more closely study their men in the
+tremendous mannish crises that come to some of us. This was no moment
+for tears; it was an hour to be Amazon. To be hard-eyed. To count the
+scalps brought home by the brave--in delight to squeal over them; in
+pride to clap the hands and jump for joy at such big behaviour.
+
+My Mary erred in every way. Her moistening eyes annoyed George.
+
+"Oh, don't make a fuss about that, Mary," he cried irritably. "It's
+nothing. Master Bob won't be able to see for a month."
+
+"Oh, George, why did you do it?"
+
+Then the tremendous young man flamed. "Why did I do it? 'Pon my soul,
+Mary, I simply don't understand you sometimes. You've made me stand by
+and see you insulted for a month, and then I see him catch hold of
+you, and you run, and I go and thrash him, and you say, 'Why did you
+do it?' _Do_ it? _Do_ it? Why, good Lord, what would you have had me
+do--apologise for you?"
+
+She turned away, dropped his hand.
+
+My unfortunate George groaned aloud: sprang to her. "Mary, darling,
+dearest, you know I didn't mean that."
+
+She kept her face from him; her pretty shoulders heaved.
+
+He cried in misery, striving to see her face: "What a brute I am! What
+a brute! Mary, Mary, you know I didn't mean that."
+
+She gasped: "You ge-get angry so quick."
+
+"I know, I know. I'm not fit--I couldn't help--Mary, do look up."
+
+She swallowed a sob; gave him her little hand.
+
+He squeezed it, squeezed it as it were between his love for her and
+the tremendous passion that was consuming him. Contrition at his sharp
+words to her hammered the upper plate, wrath at the manner of her
+reception of his news was anvil beneath. The poor fingers horribly
+suffered.
+
+There are conditions of the male mind--and this George was in the very
+heart of one--when softness in a woman positively goads to fury. The
+mind is in an itching fever, and--like a bull against a gate-post--
+requires hard, sharp corners against which to rub and ease the
+irritation. Comes the lord and master home sulky or in fury, the wise
+wife will meet him with a demeanour so spiked that he may scratch his
+itching at every turn. To be soft and yielding is the most fatal
+conduct; it is to send the lumbering bull crashing through the gate-
+post into the lane to seek solace away from the home paddock.
+
+Unversed in these homely recipes, this simple Mary had at least the
+wit not to cry "Oh!" in pain and move her hand. They found a seat, and
+for good five minutes this turbulent George sat and threshed in his
+wrath like a hooked shark--this little hand the rope that held him.
+Soon its influence was felt. His tuggings and boundings grew weaker.
+The venom oozed out of him.
+
+He uncovered the crushed fingers; raising, pressed them to his lips.
+
+He groaned. "Now you know me at last."
+
+She patted those brown hands; did not speak.
+
+"You know the awful temper I've got," he went on. "Uncontrollable--
+angry even with you--foul brute--"
+
+"But I annoyed you, Georgie."
+
+He flung out an accusatory hand against himself. "How? By being sweet
+and loving! Why, what a brute I must be!"
+
+She told him: "You shan't call yourself names. In fact, you mustn't.
+Because that is calling me names too. We belong, Georgie."
+
+The pretty sentiment tickled him. Gloom flew from his brow before
+sunshine that took its place. He laughed. "You're a dear, dear old
+thing."
+
+She gave a whimsical look at him. "I ought to have said at once what I
+am going to say now: Did you hurt him much?"
+
+"I bashed him!" George said, revelling in it. "I fairly bashed him!"
+
+She snuggled against this tremendous fellow.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+It was a park-keeper who, from that opium drug of sweet silence with
+which lovers love to dull their senses, recalled them to the urgency
+for action.
+
+The park-keeper led David by one hand, Angela by the other, whence he
+had found them wandering. Disappointment that their owner was a
+protected lady instead of a nicely-shaped nursemaid whom by this
+introduction he might add to his recreations, delivered him of stern
+reproof at the carelessness which had let these children go astray.
+
+"I would very much like to know," he concluded, "what their ma would
+say."
+
+"My plump gentleman," said George pleasantly, "meet me at this
+trysting-place at noon to-morrow, and your desire shall be gratified."
+
+The park-keeper eyed him; thought better of the bitter words he had
+contemplated; contented himself with: "Funny, ain't yer?"
+
+"Screaming," said George. "One long roar of mirth. Hundreds turned
+away nightly. Early doors threepence extra. Bring the wife."
+
+The park-keeper withdrew with a morose air.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+And now my George and his Mary turned upon the immediate future.
+Conning the map of ways and means and roads of action, a desolate and
+almost horrifying country presented itself. No path that might be
+followed offered pleasant prospects. All led past that ogre's castle
+at 14 Palace Gardens; at the head of each stood the ogress shape of
+Mrs. Chater, gnashing for blood and bones over the disaster to her
+first-born. She must be faced.
+
+George flared a torch to light the gloom: "But why should you go near
+her, dearest? Let me do it. I'll take the children back. I'll see her.
+I'll get your boxes."
+
+Even the sweetest women trudge through life handicapped by the
+preposterous burden of wishing to do what their sad little minds hold
+right. It is a load which, too firmly strapped, makes them dull
+companions on the highway.
+
+Mary said: "It wouldn't be _right_, dear. The children are in my
+charge; how could I send them back to their mother in the care of a
+strange man? And it wouldn't be right to myself, either. It would look
+as if I admitted myself in the wrong. No; I must, must face her."
+
+George's torch guttered; gave gloom again. He tried a second: "Well,
+I'll come with you. That's a great idea. She won't dare say much while
+I'm there."
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't be _right_, Georgie. You oughtn't to come to the
+house--to see her--after what you've done to the detestable Bob. No,
+I'll go alone and I'll go now. You shall come as far as the top of the
+road and there wait."
+
+"And then?" George asked.
+
+This was to research the map for rest-houses and for fortunes that
+might be won after the ogre castle had been passed.
+
+Mary conned and peered until the strain squeezed a little moisture in
+her eyes. "I don't know," she said faintly.
+
+Her bold George had to know. "It won't be for very long, dear old
+girl. You must find another situation. Till then a lodging. I know a
+place where a man I know used to have digs. A jolly old landlady. I'll
+raise some money--I'll borrow it."
+
+Mary tried to brighten. "Yes, and I'll go to that agency again. I
+must, because I shall have no character, you see. I'll tell her
+everything quite truthfully, and I think she'll be nice."
+
+"It's no good waiting," George said. His voice had the sound of a
+funeral bell.
+
+Mary arose slowly, white. She said: "Come along."
+
+With a tumbril rumble in their ears, the children dancing ahead, they
+started for Palace Gardens.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The groans and curses of her adored Bob, his bulgy mouth and shutting
+eyes, his tender nose and the encrimsoned water where he had layed his
+wounds--these had so acted upon Mrs. Chater's nerves, plunged her
+into such vortex of hysteria, that the manner of her reception of Mary
+was true reflection of her fears, nothing dissembled.
+
+Withdrawing her agitated face from the dining-room window as Mary and
+the children approached, she bounded heavily to the door; flung it
+ajar; collapsed to her knees upon the mat; clasped David and Angela to
+that heaving bosom.
+
+"Safe!" she wailed. "Safe! Thank God, my little lambs are safe!"
+
+Distraught she swayed and hugged; kissed and moaned again.
+
+David pressed away. "You smell like whisky, mummie," he said.
+
+It was a dash of icy water on a fainting fit; wonderfully it strung
+the demented woman's senses. She pushed her little lambs from her;
+fixed Mary with awful eye.
+
+"So you've come back--_Miss?_"
+
+Mary quivered.
+
+"I wonder you dared. I wonder you had the boldness to face me after
+your wicked behaviour. You've got nothing to say for yourself. I'm not
+surprised--"
+
+Mary began: "Mrs. Chater, I--"
+
+"Oh, how can you? How can you dare defend yourself? Never, never in
+all my born days have I met with such ingratitude; never have I been
+deceived like this. I took you in. I felt sorry for you. I fed you,
+clothed you, cared for you, treated you as one of my own family; and
+this is my reward. There you stand, unable to say a word--"
+
+"If you think, Mrs. Chater--"
+
+"Don't _speak_! I won't hear you. Here have I day after day been
+entrusting my beloved lambs to your care, and heaven alone knows what
+risks they have run. My boy--my Bob, who would die rather than get a
+living soul into trouble--sees you with this man you have been going
+about with. He does his duty to me, his mother, and to my precious
+lambs, his brother and sister, by reproving you, and you set this man
+--this low hired bully--upon him to murder him. I'll have the law on
+the coward. I'll punish him and I'll punish you, miss. No wonder you
+were frightened when my Bob caught you. No wonder."
+
+"That is untrue, Mrs. Chater."
+
+"Don't _speak!_"
+
+"I will speak. I shall speak. It is untrue."
+
+"You dare--"
+
+"It is a lie. Yes, I don't mind what I say when you speak to me like
+that. It is a wicked lie."
+
+"Girl--!"
+
+"If your son told you he caught me with the man who thrashed him as he
+deserved, he told you a lie. He never saw me with him. He followed me
+into the Park this morning and tried to repeat what he did on Friday
+night. He is a coward and a cad. The man to whom I am engaged caught
+him at it and thrashed him as he deserved. There! Now you know the
+truth!"
+
+Very white, my ridiculous Mary pressed her hand to her panting breast;
+stopped, choked by the wild words that came tumbling up into her
+mouth.
+
+Very red, swelling and panting in turkey-cock fury, Mrs. Chater,
+towering, swallowed and gasped, breathless before this vixenish
+attack.
+
+But she was the first to find speech; and incoherently she stormed as
+at a scratching do those persons whose true selves lie beneath a
+tissue film of polish.
+
+She bubbled and panted: "Oh, you wicked girl!--oh, you wicked girl!--
+oh, you wicked girl!--bold as brass-calling me a liar--_me_--and
+my battered boy--engaged indeed!--I'll have the law and the police and
+the judges--my solicitors--libel and assault, and slander and
+attempted murder--boxes searched--my precious lambs to hear their
+mother spoken to like this--get out of the hat-rack, David, and go
+upstairs this instant--Angela, don't stand there--if I wasn't a lady
+I'd box your ears, miss--only a week ago didn't I give you a black
+silk skirt of mine?--and fed you like a princess, with a soft feather
+pillow too, because you said the bolster made your head ache--servants
+to wait on you hand and foot--and this is my reward--how I keep my
+hands off you heaven only knows--but you shall suffer, miss--oh, yes
+you shall--I'll give you in charge--I'll call a policeman."
+
+She turned towards the kitchen stairs; screamed "Susan! Kate! Jane!
+Susan!"
+
+Small need to bellow. Around the staircase corner three white-capped
+heads--Kate holding back Susan, Susan restraining Jane, Jane holding
+Kate--had been with delighted eyes and straining ears bathing in this
+rare scene. With glad unanimity they broke their restraint one upon
+the other; crushed pell-mell, hustling up the narrow stairs.
+
+Mrs. Chater plumped back into a chair; with huge hands fanned her
+heated face. "Fetch a policeman!"
+
+They plunged for the door.
+
+Bob's swollen countenance came over the banisters. He roared "Stop!"
+
+Kate, Jane and Susan swung between the conflicting authorities.
+
+"Call a policeman! Summon a constable! Fetch an officer!" In gusty
+breaths from behind Mrs. Chater's hands, working like a red paddle-
+wheel, came the commands.
+
+"Stop!" roared Bob; and to enforce pushed forward the battered face
+till it stuck out flat over the hall.
+
+His alarmed mother screamed: "Bob, you'll fall over the banisters!"
+
+The two kept up a battledore and shuttlecock of agitated conversation.
+
+"Well, stop those women!" Bob cried; "for God's sake, stop them,
+mother! What on earth are you thinking of?"
+
+"I'll give her in charge!"
+
+"You can't, you can't. Oh, my God, what a house this is!"
+
+"She called me a liar!"
+
+"You can't charge her for that."
+
+"She half murdered you!"
+
+"She never touched me. Why don't you do as I told you? Why don't you
+send her away?"
+
+"Mercy, Bob! you'll fall and kill yourself!"
+
+"Do as I say, then! Do as I say!"
+
+"Well, put back your head! Put back your head."
+
+"Do as I say, then!"
+
+Mrs. Chater stopped the paddle-wheel; rose to her feet. Bob's ghastly
+face drew in to safer limits. She addressed Mary: "Again my boy has
+interceded for you. Oh, how you must feel!" She addressed the maids:
+"Is her box packed?"
+
+They chorused "Yes"; pointed, and Mary saw her tin box, corded, set
+against the wall.
+
+"Call a cab," Mrs. Chater commanded; and as the whistle blew she
+turned again upon Mary.
+
+"Now, miss, you may go. I pack you off as you deserve. But before you
+go--"
+
+The battered face shot out again above the banisters: "Pay her her
+wages and send her away, mother. Do, for goodness' sake, send her
+away!"
+
+"Wages! Certainly not! Mercy! Your head again! Go back, Bob!"
+
+The maddened, pain-racked Bob bellowed: "Oh, stop it! stop it! I shall
+go mad in a minute. She is entitled to her wages. Pay her."
+
+"I won't!"
+
+"Well, I will. Susan! Susan, come up here and take this money. How
+much is it?"
+
+"She is not to be paid," Mrs. Chater trumpeted.
+
+"She is to be paid," bawled her son. "Do you want an action brought
+against you? Oh, my God, what a house this is!"
+
+"My boy! You will fall! Very well, I'll pay her." Mrs. Chater turned
+to Mary. "Again and yet again my son intercedes for you, miss. Oh, how
+you must feel!" She grabbed around her dress for her pocket; found a
+purse; produced coins; banged them upon the table. "There!"
+
+And now my Mary, who had stood upright breasting these successive
+surges, spoke her little fury.
+
+With a hand she swept the table, sending the coins flying this way and
+that--with them a card salver, a vase, a pile of prayer-books. With
+her little foot she banged the floor.
+
+"I would not touch your money--your beastly money. You are
+contemptible and vulgar, and I despise you. Mr. Chater, if you are a
+man you will tell your mother why you were thrashed. Do you dare to
+say you interfered because you found me with someone? Do you dare?"
+
+With masterly strategy Bob drove home a flank attack. To have affirmed
+he did dare might lead to appalling outburst from this little vixen.
+He said very quietly, as though moved by pity: "Please do not make
+matters worse by blustering, Miss Humfray." He sighed: "I bear you no
+ill-will."
+
+My poor Mary allowed herself to be denuded of self-possession. His
+words put her control to flight; left her exposed. Tears started in
+her eyes. She made a little rush for the stairs. "Oh, you coward!" she
+cried. "You coward! I will make you say the truth."
+
+Would she have clutched the skirts of his dressing-gown, forgetting
+the proper modesty of a nice maiden, and dragged him down the stairs?
+Would she indelicately have pursued him to his very bedroom, and
+there, regardless of his scanty dress, have assaulted him?
+
+Bob believed she would. It is so easy for the world's heroines to
+remain calm against attack. My Mary was made of commoner stuff--the
+wretched, baser clay of which not I, but my neighbours, not you, but
+your acquaintances, are made.
+
+Bob believed she would. He cried, "Send her away! Why the devil don't
+you send her away?"; gathered his skirts; fled for the safety of a
+locked door.
+
+Mrs. Chater believed she would. Mrs. Chater plunged across the hall;
+stood, an impassable and panting guardian, upon the lowermost step.
+Her outstretched arm stayed Mary; a voice announced, "The cab'm."
+
+My Mary stood a moment; little fists clenched, flashing eyes; blinked
+against the premonition of a rush of tears; then, as they came, turned
+for the door.
+
+"Go!" trumpeted Mrs. Chater. "Go!"
+
+Mary was upon the mat when Angela and David made a little rush; caught
+her skirts. The alarming scenes had hurtled in sequence too rapid and
+too violent to be by the children understood. But a scrap here and a
+scrap there they had caught, retained, correctly interpreted; and the
+whole, though it supplied no reason, told clearly that their adored
+Mary was going from them.
+
+"You're coming back soon, aren't you?" David cried.
+
+"You're not going away, are you, Miss Humf'ay?" implored Angela.
+
+Mrs. Chater shrilled: "Children, come away. Come here at once."
+
+Mary dropped one knee upon the mat; caught her arms about the
+children. She pressed a cool face against each side her wet and
+burning countenance, gave kisses, and upon the added stress of this
+new emotion choked: "Good-bye, little ducklings!"
+
+"Oh, darling, _darling_ Miss Humf'ay, we _will_ be good if you'll
+stay!" They felt this was the desperate threat that so often followed
+their misdemeanours put into action.
+
+She held them, hugging them. "It isn't that. You have been good."
+
+"Then you said you would stay for ever and ever if we were good."
+
+"Not ever and ever; I said--I said perhaps a fairy prince would come
+to take me. Didn't I?"
+
+This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He
+regarded the hansom at the door: "That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy
+princes don't come in cabs."
+
+"The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear
+Angle, kiss me."
+
+She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon
+the small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about
+which they clung.
+
+They screamed, "Let me go!"
+
+David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and howl: "Take away
+your _hand_, mother!"
+
+Angela gasped: "Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!"
+
+With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater's stormy eyes, my Mary
+stooped over David.
+
+"David!" The calm ring of the tones he had learned to obey checked his
+clamour, his plunging kicks. She stooped; kissed him. "Be good as
+gold," she commanded. "Promise."
+
+"Good as gold--yes--p'omise," David choked.
+
+Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula. Mary stepped back.
+Susan slammed the door.
+
+With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.
+
+"Drive down the street," she choked; lay back against the cushions;
+gave herself to shaking sobs.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Her George met her a very few yards down the street. He gave an order
+to the cabman and sat beside her.
+
+It was not long before her grief was hushed. She dried her eyes;
+nestled against this wonderful fellow who, as love had now constituted
+her world, was the solace against every trouble that could come to
+her, the shield against any power that might arise to do her hurt.
+
+They debated the position and found it desperate; discussed the
+immediate future to discover it threatening. Yet the gloom was
+irradiated by the glowing light of the prospective future; the
+rumbling of present fears was lost in the tinkling music of their
+voices, striking notes from love.
+
+The cab twisted this way and that; clattered over Battersea Bridge,
+down the Park, to the right past the Free Library, and so into Meath
+Street and to the clean little house of the landlady whom George knew.
+
+To her, in the tiny sitting-room, the story was told.
+
+It appeared that she had never yet taken a lady lodger. In her street
+ladies were regarded with suspicion; that no petticoats were ever to
+be fetched across the threshold was a rule to which each medical
+student who engaged her rooms must first subscribe.
+
+None the less she was here acquiescent. She knew George well; had for
+him an affection above that which commonly she entertained for the
+noisy young men who were her means of livelihood. Mary should pay for
+the little back bedroom that Mr. Thornton had; and, free of charge,
+should have use of the sitting-room rented by Mr. Grainger. There
+would be no lodgers until the medical schools reopened in October.
+
+So it was settled--and together in the sitting-room where Mrs. Pinking
+made them a little lunch again they debated the immediate future. It
+was three weeks before George's examination was due. Again he declared
+himself confident that, when actually he had passed, his uncle would
+not refuse the 400 pounds which meant the world to them--which meant
+the tight little practice at Runnygate. But the intervening weeks were
+meanwhile to be faced. Mary must have home. At the Agency she must
+pour forth her tale and seek new situation till they could be married.
+If the Agency failed them--They shuddered.
+
+Revolving desperate schemes for the betterment of this position into
+which with such alarming suddenness they had been thrust, George took
+his leave. He would have tarried, but his Mary was insistent that his
+work must not be interfered with. Upon its successful exploitation
+everything now depended.
+
+Brightly she kissed her George good-bye. He was not to worry about
+her. She was to be shut from his mind. To-morrow she would go to the
+Agency. He might lunch with her, and, depend upon it, she would greet
+him with great news.
+
+So they parted.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+In which this History begins to rattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Author Meanders Upon The Enduring Hills; And The Reader Will Lose
+Nothing By Not Accompanying Him.
+
+
+In pursuit of our opinion that the novel should hark back to its
+origin and be as a story that is told by mouth to group of listeners,
+here we momentarily break the thread.
+
+It is an occasion for advertisement.
+
+As when the personal narrator, upon resumption of his history, will at
+a point declare, "Now we come to the exciting part," so now do I.
+
+Heretofore we have somewhat dragged. We have been as host and visitor
+at tea in the drawing-room. Guests have arrived; to you I have
+introduced them, and after the shortest spell they have taken their
+leave.
+
+My Mary and my George--favoured guests--have sat with us through our
+meal; but how fleeting our converse with those others--with Mr.
+William Wyvern, with Margaret, with Mrs. Major and with Mr. Marrapit!
+I grant you cause to grumble at their introduction, so purposeless has
+been their part. I grant you they have been as the guests at whose
+arrival, disturbing the intimate chatter, impatient glances are
+exchanged; at whose departure there is shuffle of relief.
+
+Well, I promise you we shall now link our personages and set our
+history bounding to its conclusion. We have collected them; now to
+switch on the connection and set them acting one against the other
+until the sparks do fly; watching those sparks shall be your
+entertainment.
+
+The switch which thus sets active the play of forces I shall call
+circumstance. If it has been long delayed, I have the precedent of all
+the story of human life as my excuse. For we are the children of
+circumstance. We move each in our little circle by a stout hedge
+encompassed. Circumstance suddenly will break the wall: some fellow
+man or woman is flung against us, and immediately the quiet ambulation
+of our little circle is for some conflict sharp exchanged. To-day we
+are at peace with the world, to-morrow warring with all mankind.
+
+I say with all mankind, because so narrow and so selfish is our
+outlook upon life that one single man or woman--a dullard neighbour or
+a silly girl--who may interfere with us, throws into turmoil our whole
+existence. Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out. all life save
+only this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world--
+engaging our complete faculties.
+
+Deeper misfortune cannot be conceived. It is through allowing such
+occurrences to crush us that brows are wrinkled before their time;
+nerves broken-edged while yet they should be firmly strung; death
+reached ere yet the proper span of life is lived.
+
+For these unduly wrinkled brows, too early broken nerves, too soon
+encountered graves, civilised man has agreed upon an excuse. He names
+it the strain of life in modern conditions. There is no body in this
+plea. It is not the conditions that matter; it is our manner of
+receiving those conditions. Bend to them and they will crush; face
+them and they become of no avail; allow them to be the Whole of life,
+and immediately they are given so great a weight that to withstand
+them is impossible; regard them in their proper proportion to the
+scheme of things, and they become of airy nothingness.
+
+For if we regulate each to its right importance all that surrounds us,
+not forgetting that since life is transient time is the only ultimate
+standard of value, how unutterably insignificant must small human
+troubles appear in their relation to the whole scheme of things, to
+the enduring hills, the immense seas, vast space.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Compare vexations encompassed by the
+artifice of man with the tremendous life that is mothered by nature.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Set troubles against the enduring hills,
+misfortunes against the immense seas, perplexities against vast space,
+torments against the stout trees. Learn to take tribute of strength
+from every object that is built of strength--the strength of solidity
+that a stout beam may give, the strength of beauty that from a picture
+or a statuary irradiates.
+
+Gain strength from strength. It is a first principle of warfare to
+band undisciplined troops with tried regiments, to shoulder recruits
+with veterans. The horse-breaker will set the timid colt in harness
+with the steady mare. Thus is stiffening and a sense of security
+imparted to the weaker spirit; timidity oozes and is burned by the
+steady flame of courage that from the stronger emanates. In the heat
+of that flame latent strength warms and kindles in the weaker.
+
+Gain strength from strength. Seek intercourse with the minds that are
+above you; if not to be encountered, they are to be purchased in
+books. Avoid communion with the small minds below you and of your
+level.
+
+No man, nor book, nor thing can be touched without virtue passing
+thence into you. See to it that who or what you touch gives you
+strength, not weakness; uplifts, not debases. The aspiring athlete
+does not seek to match his strength against inferiors. These give him-
+-easy victory. Contact with them is for him effortless; they tend to
+draw him to their plane. Rather, being wise, he shuns them to pit his
+prowess against such as can give him best, from whom he may learn, out
+of whom he will take virtue, by whom he will be raised to all that is
+best in him. Gain strength from strength. The attributes strength and
+weakness are as infectious as the plague. Make your bed so that you
+may lie with strength and catch his affection.
+
+I do not pretend that these are thoughts which influenced the persons
+of my history. My unthinking George and my simple Mary would care
+nothing for such things. Sight of the enduring hills would evoke in my
+George the uttered belief that they would be an infernal sweat to
+climb; sound of the immense seas if in anger would move my Mary to
+prayer for all those in peril on the wave, if in lapping tranquillity
+to sentimental thoughts of her George. But they had laughter and they
+had love. Adversity can make little fight against those lusty weapons.
+
+And now we have an exquisite balcony scene and rare midnight alarms
+for your delectation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+An Exquisite Balcony Scene; And Something About Sausages.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+On that day when George left his Mary at the little lodgings in Meath
+Street, Battersea, Bill Wyvern returned to Paitley Hill after absence
+from home for a week upon a visit.
+
+His Margaret was his first thought upon his arrival. Letters between
+the pair were, by the sharpness of Mr. Marrapit's eye, compelled to be
+exchanged not through the post but by medium of a lovers' postal box
+situate in the hole of a tree in that shrubbery of Herons' Holt where
+they were wont by stealth to meet. Thus when Bill, upon this day of
+his return, scaled the tremendous wall and groped among the bushes, he
+saw the trysting bower innocent of his love--then searched and found a
+letter.
+
+A sad little note for lover's heart. Mr. Marrapit, it said, abed of a
+chill, prevented Margaret meeting her Bill that afternoon. Her father
+must be constantly ministered; impossible to say when she would be
+released. She heard him calling, she must fly to him. With fondest
+love. No time for more.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The lines chilled Bill's heart. His was a fidgety and nervous love
+that took fright at shadow of doubt. The week that had divided him
+from Margaret was the longest period they had not embraced since their
+discovery one of another. Was it not possible, he tortured himself,
+that loss of his presence had blurred his image in her heart?
+Countless heroes of his own stories who thus had suffered rose to
+assure him that possible indeed it was. The more he brooded upon it
+the more probable did it become.
+
+Bedtime found him desolated. In apprehension he paced his room. The
+thought of sleep with this devil of doubt to thump his pillow was
+impossible. Leaning from his window he gazed upon the stars and
+groaned; dropped eyes to the lawn, silvered in moonlight, and started
+beneath the prick of a sudden thought. It was a night conceived for
+lovers' tryst. He would seek his Margaret's open window, whistle her
+from her bed, and bring this damned doubt of her to reality or knock
+the ghostly villain dead.
+
+It was an inspiriting thought, and Bill started to whistle upon it
+until he remembered the demeanour in which he would have sent forth
+one of his own heroes upon such a mission. "Dark eyes gleaming
+strangely from a pale, set face," he would have written. Bill's eyes
+were of a clearest, childlike blue which interfered a little with the
+proper conception of the role he was to play; but blanketing his
+spirits in melancholy he stepped from his room and passed down the
+stairs.
+
+That favoured bull-terrier Abiram, sleeping in the hall, drummed a
+tattoo of welcome upon the floor.
+
+"Chuck it," said Bill morosely.
+
+The "faithful hound" that gives solace to the wounded heart is a
+pretty enough thing in stories; Abiram had had no training for the
+part. This dog associated his master not with melancholy that needed
+caressing but with wild "rags" that gave and demanded tremendous
+spirits.
+
+Intelligence, however, showed the wise creature that the tone of that
+command meant he was to be excluded from whatever wild rag might be
+now afoot. It was not to be borne. Therefore, to lull suspicion,
+Abiram ceased his drumming; rose when Bill had passed; behind him
+crept stealthily; and upon the door being opened bounded around his
+master's legs and into the moonlight with a joyous yelp.
+
+Fearful of arousing Korah and Dathan in their kennels to tremendous
+din if he bellowed orders, Bill hissed commands advising Abiram to
+return indoors under threat of awful penalties.
+
+Abiram frisked and skipped upon the lawn like a young lamb.
+
+Bill changed commands for missiles.
+
+Abiram, entering into the thing with rare spirit, caught, worried, and
+killed each clod of earth hurled at him, then bounded expectant
+forward for the next sacrifice that would be thrown for his delight in
+this entrancing game.
+
+"Very well," spoke Bill between his teeth. "Very well. You jolly well
+come, my boy. Wait till you get near enough for me to catch you,
+that's all."
+
+Beneath this understanding they moved forward across the lawn and down
+the road; Abiram sufficiently in the rear to harass rats that might be
+going about their business, without himself being in the zone of his
+master's strength.
+
+Heaving a sigh burthened with fond memory as he passed the wall of
+Herons' Holt where it gave upon the secret meeting-place in the
+shrubbery, Bill skirted the grounds; for the second time in his life
+passed through the gate and up the drive.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Well he knew his adored's window. From the shrubbery she had pointed
+it him. Now with a bang of the heart he observed that the bottom sash
+stood open so that night breezes, mingling freely with the perfumes of
+her apartment, unhindered could bear in to her his tremulous love-
+signals.
+
+He set a low whistle upon the air. It was not louder, he felt, than
+the agitated banging of his heart that succeeded it.
+
+Again he whistled, and once again. There was a rustling from within.
+
+"Margaret!" he softly called. "Margaret!"
+
+She appeared. The blessed damosel leaned out. About her yearning face
+the long dark hair abundantly fell; her pretty bed-gown, unbuttoned
+low, gave him glimpse of snowy bosom, beautifully rounded.
+
+"Oh, Bill!" she cried, stretching her arms.
+
+Then, glancing downwards at her person, she stepped back swiftly.
+Reappearing, the soft round of her twin breasts was not to view.
+
+She had buttoned up her night-dress.
+
+"Oh, Bill!"
+
+"Oh, Margaret!"
+
+"_Wow!_" spoke Abiram in nerve-shattering welcome. "_Wow!_"
+
+The blessed damosel fled. Bill plunged a kick. Abiram took the skirt
+of it; waddled away across the lawn, his waving stern expressing
+pleasure at having at once shown his politeness by bidding a lady good
+evening, and at being, like true gentleman, well able to take a hint.
+
+Bill put upon the breeze:
+
+"It's all right. He's gone."
+
+No answer. Shuddering with terror lest that hideous _wow!_ had
+disturbed the house the blessed damosel lay trembling abed, the
+coverings pressed about her straining ears.
+
+"He's gone," Bill strained again, his larynx torn with the rasp of
+whispers that must penetrate like shouts and yet speed soft-shod.
+"He's gone!"
+
+Margaret put a white leg to the ground--listened; drew forth its
+companion--listened; glimpsed her white legs; shuddered at such
+immodesty with a man so close; veiled them to their toes with her bed-
+gown; listened; stepped again to the window.
+
+"Oh, Bill!"
+
+"Oh, Margaret!"
+
+"Has anyone heard, do you think?"
+
+"My darling, not a soul. It sounded loud to us. Oh, Margaret--"
+
+"Hush! Yes?"
+
+"Do you know why I am come?"
+
+"Hush!--no."
+
+"I thought--from your note--that you didn't care to see me again. I
+thought-being away like that--that you found you didn't-love me after
+all. Oh, I was tortured, Margaret. Oh--!"
+
+"Hush! Listen!"
+
+"Damn!" said Bill.
+
+The blessed damosel poked her beautiful head again into the night.
+"It's all right. I thought I heard a sound. We must be careful."
+
+"Oh, Margaret, I was tortured--racked. I had to come to you. Tell me I
+was wrong in thinking--"
+
+"Oh, Bill, Bill, I--"
+
+This girl was well-nigh in a swoon of delicious excitement. Emotion
+took her and must be gulped ere she found voice. She stretched her
+arms down towards him.
+
+"Oh, Bill, I thought so, too."
+
+A steely pang struck at his heart. "You thought you didn't love me
+after all?"
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+Emotion dragged her from the window to her waist. Her long hair
+cascaded down to him so that the delicious tips, kissing his face,
+might by his lips be kissed.
+
+"No, no," she breathed; "I thought the same of you. I thought you
+might have found--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"Damn!" said Bill.
+
+She reappeared; again her tresses trickled to him. "It's all right. I
+thought you might have found you didn't love me after all. Dearest,
+not hearing from you--"
+
+In sympathy of spirit Bill groaned: "What could I do?"
+
+She clasped her hands in a delicious ecstasy. "I know, I know. But you
+know how foolish I am. I felt--oh, Bill, forgive me!--I felt that, if
+you had really cared, a way of sending me a message might have been
+found. Of course, it was impossible. And there was more than that.
+When we parted last week, I thought you seemed not to care very much--"
+
+"Oh, Margaret!"
+
+"I know, I know. I know now how foolish I was, but that is what I
+thought--and, Bill, it tortured me. I've not been able to sleep at
+nights. That is how I was awake just now."
+
+"Margaret, I believe you're crying."
+
+"I'm so--so happy now."
+
+"Oh, so am I! Aren't you glad I came, Margaret?"
+
+She murmured, "Oh, Bill!"; gave him a smile that pictured her answer.
+
+Mutually they gazed for a space, drinking delight.
+
+Her thirst quenched, Margaret said:
+
+"Bill, those nights, those terrible nights when I have been doubtful
+of you, filled me with thoughts that shaped into a poem last night."
+
+"A poem to me?"
+
+"About us. Shall I read it?--now that the doubt is all over."
+
+He begged her read.
+
+She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand
+paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful
+moon:
+
+  "Our meeting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature knew we met?
+  Twilight soft with a gentle breeze
+  Bearing scent of the slumbering seas;
+  Music sweet--'twas a nightingale,
+  Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail--
+  Golden sky that was flecked with red
+  (Ribands of rose on a golden bed).
+  Ah, love! when first we met!"
+
+She paused. "It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest," she
+whispered, "and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That
+is the imagery of it--as it seemed to me."
+
+Bill said: "And to me; a beautiful imagery."
+
+She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: "Oh, it's nothing,
+really. You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in
+song. One has to set them down."
+
+"One is merely the instrument," Bill said.
+
+"Yes, the instrument." She hugged the phrase. "The _instrument_. How
+cleverly you put things!"
+
+Bill disavowed the gift. Margaret breathed, "Oh, you do; I have so
+often noticed it." Bill again denied.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Conventionality demanded this little exchange of them, and to-day the
+empress sway of conventionality is rarely rebelled. Even, as here,
+when treading the path of love, the journey must constantly be stopped
+while handfuls of the sweet-smelling stuff are tossed about our
+persons. Neglect the duty and you must walk alone. For to neglect
+conventionality is like going abroad without clothes; the naked man
+appears. Now, nothing can be more utterly horrid to our senses than a
+stark woman or stark man walking down the street. We should certainly
+pull aside the blind to have a peep, and the more we could see of the
+nakedness the further would we crane our heads (provided no one was by
+to watch); but to go out and chat, to be seen in company with the
+naked creature, is another matter. We would sooner chop off our legs.
+So with the conventions. The fewer of them you wear, the more naked
+(that is to say, real) do you become. Eyes will poke at you round the
+blinds, but you must walk quickly past the gate, please. If you will
+not go through the machine and come out a nice smooth sausage, well,
+you must remain original flesh and gristle; but you will smell horrid
+in nice noses.
+
+Is it not warming, as you read this, to know perfectly well that you
+are not one of the sausages?
+
+
+
+V.
+
+When they had sufficiently daubed themselves, Margaret asked:
+
+"Shall I read the next verse? That was the imagery of our meeting;
+this of our parting."
+
+Bill gulped. This man was fondling the scented tresses that trickled
+about his face; speech was a little difficult.
+
+She put her page beneath the moon; gave her voice to its rapture:
+
+  "Our parting! Do you remember, dear,
+  How Nature our folly knew?
+  Mournful swish of the sobbing rain;
+  Distant surge of the Deep in pain;
+  Whispering wail of the wandering wind,
+  Seeking, sobbing, a rest to find;
+  Fitful gleam from a troubled sky
+  (Nature weeping to see love die).
+  Ah, love, when last we met!
+
+"It was a perfect day, really," she said. "Very hot, and just before
+lunch, do you remember? But there, again, it is the _imagery_ of it as
+it seemed to our inner selves. It comes to one, and one is the
+_instrument_."
+
+Bill's voice was hoarse. "Margaret, come down to me," he said.
+
+"I dare not."
+
+"You must. I must touch you--kiss you. You must come down!"
+
+"Bill, I dare not; I should be heard."
+
+He bitted his next words as they came galloping up. Dare he give them
+rein? And then again he bathed in the ecstasy of the scene. The black
+square of the open window; the scented roses that framed it; the
+silver night that lit its picture--her dusky face between her
+streaming hair, her white arms, bare to where the pushed-back sleeves
+gave them to the soft breeze to kiss, the soft outline of her breast
+where the press of her weight drew close her gown.
+
+It was not to be borne. The bitted words lashed from his hold. He
+gasped:
+
+"Then I am coming up!"
+
+Was she aghast at him? he asked himself. He stood half-checked while
+her steady eyes left his face, roamed from him--contrasting, as
+ashamed he felt, the purity of the still night with the clamour of his
+turbulent passions--and settled on an adjacent flowerbed.
+
+At last she spoke, very calmly.
+
+"There is a potting-box just there," she said. "If you turned it on
+end you could reach the window, and then--"
+
+The box gave him two feet of reach. He jumped for the ledge--caught
+it; pulled; fetched the curve of an arm over the sill.
+
+Then between earth and paradise he hung limp; for a sudden horror was
+in his Margaret's eyes.
+
+She put upon his brow a hand that pressed him back; gave words to her
+pictured alarm: "A step upon the gravel!"
+
+'Twixt earth and window, with dangling legs and clutching arms, in
+muscle-racking pain he hung.
+
+Truly a step, and then another step.
+
+And then a very tornado of sound beat furiously upon the trembling
+night; with it a flash; from it the pattering of a hundred bullets.
+
+Someone had discharged a gun.
+
+As Satan was hurled, so, plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill
+fell. And now the still air was lashed into a fury of sound-waves,
+tearing this way and that in twenty keys; now the sleeping garden was
+torn by rushing figures, helter-skelter for life and honour.
+
+Sounds!--the melancholy bellow of that gardener, Mr. Fletcher, as the
+recoil of the bell-mouthed blunderbuss he had fired hurled him prone
+upon the gravel; the dreadful imprecations of Bill striving to clear
+his leg of the potting-box through whose side it had plunged; piercing
+screams of Mrs. Major from a ground-floor room; shrills of alarm from
+Mr. Marrapit; _gurr-r-ing_ yelps from Abiram in ecstasy of man-hunt.
+
+Rushing figures!--Bill, freed from his box, at top speed towards the
+shrubbery; Mr. Fletcher, up from his fall, with tremendous springs
+bounding across the lawn; Abiram in hurtling pursuit.
+
+More sounds!--panic screams from Mr. Fletcher, heavily labouring; the
+protest of a window roughly raised; from George's head, thrust into
+the night: "Yi! Yi! Yi! Hup, then! Good dog! Sock him! Sock him! Yi!
+Yi! Yi!"
+
+We must seek the fuse that touched off this hideous turbulence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Alarums And Excursions By Night.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+We are going into a lady's bedroom, but I promise you the thing shall
+be nicely done: there shall not be a blush.
+
+It was midnight when Bill Wyvern projected the scheme whose execution
+we have followed through sweetness to disaster. Two hours earlier the
+Marrapit household had sought its beds.
+
+It was Mr. Marrapit's wise rule that each member of his establishment
+should pass before him as he or she sought their chambers. Night is
+the hour when the thoughts take on unbridled licence; and he would
+send his household to sleep each with some last admonition to curb
+fantastic wanderings of the mind.
+
+Upon this night Mr. Marrapit was himself abed of the chill that
+Margaret had mentioned in her note to Bill. But the review was not
+therefore foregone. Upon his back, night-capped head on pillow
+propped, he lay as the minute-hand of his clock ticked towards ten.
+
+His brow ruffled against a sound without his door. He called:
+
+"Mrs. Armitage!"
+
+"Sir?" spoke Mrs. Armitage through the oak.
+
+"Breathe less stertorously."
+
+Mrs. Armitage, his cook, waiting outside upon the mat, gulped wrath;
+respirated through open mouth.
+
+The clock at Mr. Marrapit's elbow gave the first chime of ten.
+Instantly Mrs. Armitage tapped.
+
+"Enter," said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+She waddled her stout figure to him. Behind her Clara and Ada, those
+trim maids, took place.
+
+Mr. Marrapit addressed her. "To-morrow, Mrs. Armitage, arouse your
+girls at six. Speed them at their toilet; set them to clean your
+flues." He glanced at a tablet taken from beneath his pillow. "At 4.6
+this afternoon I smelt soot."
+
+"The flues were cleaned this morning, sir."
+
+"Untrue. Your girls were late. Prone in suffering upon my couch, my
+ears tell me all that is accomplished in every part of the house. Ten
+minutes after your girls descended I heard the kitchen fire roar. I
+suspect paraffin."
+
+Mrs. Armitage wriggled to displace the blame. "I rose them at six,
+sir. They sleep that heavy and they take that long to dressing, it's a
+wonder to me they ever do get down."
+
+Mr. Marrapit addressed the sluggards. "Shun the enervating couch.
+Spring to the call. Cleanliness satisfied, adorn not the figure;
+pursue the duties. Ponder this. Seek help to effect it. Contrive a
+special prayer. To your beds."
+
+They left him; upon the mat encountered Frederick, and him, in abandon
+of relief, dug vitally with vulgar thumbs.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Squirming, Frederick, the gardener's boy, advanced to the bedside.
+
+Mr. Marrapit sternly regarded him: "Recite your misdeeds."
+
+"I've done me jobs, sir."
+
+"Prostrated, I cannot check your testimony. One awful eye above alone
+can tell. Upon your knees this night search stringently your heart.
+Bend."
+
+Frederick inclined his neck until his forehead was upon the coverlet.
+Mr. Marrapit scanned the neck.
+
+"Behind the ears are stale traces. Cleanse abundantly. To your bed."
+
+Without the door Frederick encountered Mr. Fletcher. "You let me catch
+you reading abed to-night," Mr. Fletcher warned him.
+
+"Cleanse yer blarsted ear-'oles," breathed Frederick, pushing past.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Mr. Fletcher moved in to the presence.
+
+"Is all securely barred, bolted and shuttered?" Mr. Marrapit asked.
+
+"It's all right."
+
+"I am apprehensive. This is the first night I have not accompanied you
+upon your round. Colossal responsibility lies upon you. Should thieves
+break through and steal, upon your head devolves the crime."
+
+Wearily Mr. Fletcher repeated: "It's all right."
+
+Mr. Marrapit frowned: "You do not inspire confidence. Sleep films your
+eye. I shudder for you. Women and children are in your care this
+night. The maids, Mrs. Armitage, Mrs. Major, my daughter, the young
+life of Frederick, are in your hands. What if rapine and murder,
+concealed in the garden, are loosed beneath my roof this night?"
+
+Mr. Fletcher passed a fist across his brow; spoke wearily: "It's all
+right, Mr. Marrapit. I can't say more; I can't do more. I tell you
+again it's all right."
+
+"Substantiate. Adduce evidence."
+
+Mr. Fletcher raised an appealing hand: "How can I prove it? My word's
+a good word, ain't it? I tell you the doors are locked. I can't bring
+'em up to show you, can I? I'm a gardener, I am."
+
+"By zeal give proof. Set your alarum-clock so that twice in the night
+you may be roused. Gird then yourself and patrol. But lightly slumber.
+Should my bell sound in your room spring instantly to my bedside. To
+your couch."
+
+Battling speech, Mr. Fletcher moved to the door. At the threshold
+protest overcame him. He gave it vent: "I should like to ast if I was
+engaged to work by night as well as day? Can't I even have me rest?
+'Ow many nights am I to patrol the house? It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a
+gardener, I am; not a watchdog."
+
+"Away, insolence."
+
+Insolence, upon the stairs, morosely descending, drew aside to give
+room to Margaret and George.
+
+Margaret parted her lips at him in her appealing smile. "Oh, Mr.
+Fletcher," in her pretty way she said, "you locked me out. Indeed you
+did." She smiled again; tripped towards Mr. Marrapit's door.
+
+Mr. Fletcher stayed George, following. "Mr. George, did you shut up
+secure behind Miss Margaret?"
+
+George reassured him; questioned his earnestness.
+
+Mr. Fletcher pointed through a window that gave upon the garden. "I've
+the 'orrors on me to-night," he said. "According to Master there's
+rapine lurking in them bushes. Mr. George, what'll I do if there's
+rapine beneath this roof to-night?"
+
+"Catch it firmly by the back of the neck and hold its head in a bucket
+of water," George told him.
+
+Mr. Fletcher passed, pondering the suggestion. "Only something to do
+with rats after all," he cogitated with wan smile of relief.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Margaret, at her father's bedside, luxuriously mouthed the fine
+phrases of the Book of Job which nightly she read him. Her chapter
+finished, she inquired: "Shall I read on?"
+
+"Does Job continue?"
+
+"No, father. The next begins, 'Then answered Bildad, the Shuite.'"
+
+George coughed upon the threshold.
+
+"Terminate," said Mr. Marrapit. "Bildad is without."
+
+"Oh, father, George is not!"
+
+"He torments me. He is Bildad. Terminate. To your bed."
+
+She pressed a warm kiss upon Job's brow; took on her soft cheek the
+salute of his thin lips. "You have everything, dear father?"
+
+"Prone on my couch I lack much. I am content. You are a good girl,
+Margaret."
+
+"Oh, father!" She tripped from the room in a warmth of satisfaction.
+
+The rough head of Bildad the Shuite came round the door; spoke "Good
+night."
+
+"Approach," said Job. Bildad's legs came over the mat. "You seek your
+room? But not your couch?"
+
+"I'm going to bed, if that's what you mean," George told him.
+
+Mr. Marrapit groaned. "Spurn it. Shun sloth. In the midnight oil set
+the wick of knowledge. Burn it, trim it, tend it."
+
+George withdrew to his room; set the midnight pipe in his mouth;
+leaning from his window sped his thoughts to Battersea.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+One member of the house remained to be sent to sleep. Mrs. Major put a
+soft knuckle to the door; came at the call; whispered "I thought I
+might disturb you."
+
+"You never disturb me, Mrs. Major."
+
+A little squeak sprung from the nutter in the masterly woman's heart.
+
+"You sigh, Mrs. Major?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I can't bear to see you lying there. The"--she
+paused against an effort, then took the aspirate in a masterly rush--
+"the house is not the same without you."
+
+"Your sympathy is very consoling to me, Mrs. Major."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Marrapit!" She plunged a shaft that should try him: "I wish I
+had the right to give you more."
+
+"Your position in this house gives you free access to me, Mrs. Major.
+Regard your place as one of my own circle. Do not let deference stifle
+intercourse."
+
+The masterly woman hove a superb sigh. "If you knew how I feel your
+kindness, Mr. Marrapit. Truly, as I say to myself every night, fair is
+my lot and goodly is my--" Icy dismay took her. Was the missing word
+"hermitage" or "heritage"? With masterly decision she filled the blank
+with a telling choke; keyed her voice to a brilliant suggestion of
+brightness struggling with tears: "The sweetling cats are safely
+sleeping. I have come straight from them. Ah, how they miss you! How
+well they know you suffer!"
+
+"They do?" A tremble of pleasure was in Mr. Marrapit's voice.
+
+"They does--do." Mrs. Major recited their day, gave their menu. "I
+must not tarry," she concluded; "you need rest. Good night, Mr.
+Marrapit. Good night."
+
+"Good night, Mrs. Major."
+
+Mr. Marrapit put out his candle.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+And now in every room, save one, Sleep drew her velvet fingers down
+recumbent forms; pressed eyelids with her languorous kiss; upon her
+warm breast pillowed willing heads; about her bedfellows drew her
+Circe arms.
+
+Mrs. Major's room was that single exception, and it is that masterly
+woman's apartment we now shall penetrate.
+
+Hurrying to semi-toilet; again assuring herself that the key was
+turned; peering a last time for lurking ravishers beneath the bed,
+Mrs. Major then fumbled with keys before her box--threw up the lid.
+
+Down through a pile of garments plunged her arm. Her searching fingers
+closed about her quest and a very beautiful smile softened her face--a
+smile of quiet confidence and of trust.
+
+In greater degree than men, women have this power of taking strength
+from the mere contact of an inanimate object. A girl will smile all
+through her sleep because, hand beneath pillow, her fingers are about
+a photograph or letter; no need, as with Mrs. Major there was no need,
+even to see the thing that thus inspires. The pretty hand will delve
+to recesses of a drawer, and the thrill that brings the smile will run
+up from, it may be, a Bible, a diary, or a packet of letters touched.
+Dependent since Eden, woman is more emotionally responsive to aught
+that gives aid than is man; for man is accustomed to battle for his
+prizes, not to receive them.
+
+Mrs. Major drew up, that smile still upon her face, and the moon
+through uncurtained window gave light upon the little joy she fetched
+from the depths of her trunk.
+
+"Old Tom Gin."
+
+The neck of Old Tom's bottle clinked against a glass; Old Tom gurgled
+generously; passed away through the steady smile he had inspired.
+
+       *       *        *       *        *
+
+Mrs. Major set a carafe of water upon a little table; partnered it
+with Old Tom; reclined beside the pair on a comfortable seat; closed
+her eyes.
+
+At intervals, as the hand crept between eleven and twelve of the
+clock, she would open them; when she did so diluted Old Tom in the
+glass fell lower, full-bodied Old Tom in the bottle marched steadily
+behind.
+
+The further Old Tom crept downwards from the neck of his captivity,
+with the greater circumspection did Mrs. Major open her eyes.
+Considerable practice had told this masterly woman that Old Tom must
+be commanded with a steady will: else he took liberties. Eyes suddenly
+opened annoyed Old Tom, and he would set the furniture ambulating
+round the room in a manner at once indecorous in stable objects and
+calculated to bewilder the observer. Therefore, upon setting down her
+glass, this purposeful woman would squarely fix the bureau that stood
+opposite her, would for a moment keep her gaze upon it with a
+sternness that forbade movement, then gently would close her eyes.
+When Old Tom must be again interviewed she would lift the merest
+corner of an eyelid; catch through it the merest fraction of the
+bureau; determine from the behaviour of this portion the stability of
+the whole.
+
+Thus if the corner she sighted showed indecorous propensities--as,
+swelling and receding, fluttering in some ghostly breeze, or
+altogether disappearing from view,--she would drop her lid and wait
+till she might catch it more seemly. This effected, she would work
+from that fixed point, inch by inch, until the whole bureau was
+revealed--swaying a little, perhaps, but presently quiescent.
+
+When, and not until, it was firmly anchored she would slowly start her
+eye in review around the other objects of her apartment. If the wash-
+stand had tendency to polka with the bed, or the wardrobe unnaturally
+to stretch up its head through the ceiling, Mrs. Major would march her
+gaze steadily back to the bureau, there to take fresh strength and
+start again. When all was orderly--then Old Tom.
+
+Masterly in all things, this woman was most masterly in her cups.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+Into Mr. Marrapit's dreams there came a whistle.
+
+He pushed at Sleep; she crooned to him and he snuggled against her.
+
+Upon his brain there rapped a harsh _Wow_!
+
+He wriggled from his bedfellow; she put an arm about him, drew him to
+her.
+
+Now there succeeded a steady wash of sound--rising, falling, murmuring
+persistent against his senses.
+
+He turned his back upon Sleep. She crooned; he wriggled from her.
+Seductively she followed; he kicked a leg and jarred her, threw an arm
+and hurt her. Disgusted, she slipped from bed and left him, leaving a
+chilly space where she had warmly lain.
+
+Mr. Marrapit shivered; felt for Sleep; found her gone; with a start
+sat upright.
+
+The breakwater gone, that wash of sound which had lapped around his
+senses rushed in upon them. Lingering traces of the touch of Sleep
+still offered resistance--a droning hum. The wash surged over, poured
+about him--_VOICES_!
+
+Mr. Marrapit violently cleared his throat. The voices continued.
+Violently again. They still continued. Tremendously a third time. They
+yet continued. From this he argued that they could not be very close
+to his door. Intently he listened, then located them--they came from
+the garden. He felt for the bell-push that carried to Mr. Fletcher's
+room; put his thumb upon it; steadily pressed.
+
+Sleep toyed no tricks in Mr. Fletcher's bed. Like some wanton mistress
+discovered in the very act of betrayal, she at the first tearing
+clamour of the electric bell bounded from the sheets, scuttled from
+the room.
+
+"Rapine!" cried Mr. Fletcher; plunged his head beneath the bedclothes
+and wrestled in prayer.
+
+The strident gong faltered not nor failed. Steady and penetrating it
+dinned its hideous call. Mr. Fletcher waited for screams. None came.
+He pushed the sheet between his chattering teeth, listened for
+cudgelling and heavy falls. None came. That bell had single possession
+of the night. The possibility that only patrolling was required of him
+nerved him to draw from his concealment. He lit a candle; into
+trousers pushed his quivering legs; upon tottering limbs passed up the
+stairs to Mr. Marrapit's room.
+
+"Judas!" Mr. Marrapit greeted him.
+
+Mr. Fletcher sighed relief: "I thought it was rapine."
+
+"You have betrayed your trust. You are Iscariot."
+
+"I come when you rung."
+
+"Silence. I have heard voices."
+
+"God help us," Mr. Fletcher piously groaned; the candle in his shaking
+hand showered wax.
+
+"Blasphemer! He will not help the craven. Gird yourself."
+
+"I'll call Mr. George."
+
+"Refrain. I will attend to that. Gird yourself. Take the musket from
+the hall. It is loaded. Patrol!"
+
+"I don't want the musket."
+
+"Be not overbold. Outside you may be at their mercy."
+
+"_Outside!_"
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"Me patrol outside!"
+
+"That is your task. Forward!"
+
+By now Mr. Marrapit had risen; swathed himself in a dressing-gown.
+Sternly he addressed Mr. Fletcher: "As you this night quit yourself so
+will I consider the question of your dismissal. If blood is spilt this
+night it will be upon your head."
+
+Mr. Fletcher trembled. "That's just it. It's 'ard--damn 'ard--"
+
+"Forward, Iscariot." Mr. Marrapit drove Judas before him; in the hall
+took down the gun and pressed it into the shaking hands. He drew the
+bolts, impelled Iscariot outward, and essayed to close the door.
+
+Mr. Fletcher clutched the handle. Mr. Marrapit pushed; hissed through
+the crack: "Away! Search every nook. Penetrate each fastness. Use
+stealth. Track, trace, follow!"
+
+Discarding entreaty, Mr. Fletcher put hoarse protest through the slit
+of aperture that remained: "I should like to ast if I was engaged for
+this, Mr. Marrapit," he panted. "I'm a gardener, I am--"
+
+"I recognise that. To your department. With your life forefend it."
+
+Mr. Marrapit fetched the door against the lintel; in the brief moment
+he could hold it close slid the lock.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+No tremor of fear or of excitement ruffled this remarkable man. Calm
+in the breezes of life he was calm also in its tempests. This is a
+natural corollary. As a man faces the smaller matters of his life so
+he will face its crises. Each smallest act accomplished imprints its
+stamp upon the pliable mass we call character; our manner of handling
+each tiniest common-place of our routine helps mould its form; each
+fleeting thought helps shape the mould.
+
+The process is involuntary and we are not aware of its working.
+Character is not made by tremendous thumps, but by the constant
+patterings of minutest touches. The athlete does not build his
+strength by enormous exertions, but by consistent and gentle training.
+Huge strains at spasmodic intervals, separated by periods in which he
+lies fallow in sloth, add nothing to his capacity for endurance; it is
+by the tally of each minute of his preparation that you may read how
+he will acquit himself against the test. Thus also with the shaping of
+character, and thus was Mr. Marrapit, collected in minor affairs,
+mighty in this crisis.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+Turning from the door he marched steadily across the hall towards the
+stairs to arouse George.
+
+At the lowermost step a movement on the landing above made him pause.
+He was to be spared the trouble. Placing the candle upon a table he
+looked up. He spoke. "George!"
+
+"Wash it?" said a voice. "Wash it?"
+
+"Wash nothing," Mr. Marrapit commanded. "Who is this?"
+
+The answer, starting low, ascended a shrill scale: "Wash it? Wash it?
+Wash it?"
+
+"Silence!" Mr. Marrapit answered. "Descend!"
+
+He craned upwards. The curl-papered head of Mrs. Major poked at him
+over the banisters.
+
+"Darling," breathed Mrs. Major. "Darling--_um!_"
+
+"Mrs. Major! What is this?"
+
+"Thash what _I_ want to know," said Mrs. Major coquettishly.
+"Wash it? Wash _ish_ it?"
+
+"You are distraught, Mrs. Major. Have no fear. To your room."
+
+The curl-papered head waggled. Mrs. Major beamed. "Darling. Darling--
+um!"
+
+"Exercise control," Mr. Marrapit told her. "Banish apprehension. There
+are thieves; but we are alert."
+
+The head withdrew. Mrs. Major gave a tiny scream: "Thieves!" She took
+a brisk little run down the short flight which gave from where she
+stood; flattened against the wall that checked her impulse; pressed
+carefully away from it; stood at the head of the stairs facing Mr.
+Marrapit.
+
+He gazed up. "I fear you have been walking in your sleep, Mrs. Major."
+
+Mrs. Major did not reply. She pointed a slippered toe at the stair
+below her; swayed on one leg; dropped to the toe; steadied; beamed at
+Mr. Marrapit; and in a high treble coquettishly announced, "_One_!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit frowned: "Retire, Mrs. Major."
+
+Mrs. Major plumped another step, beamed again: "_Two_!"
+
+"You dream. Retire."
+
+Mrs. Major daintily lifted her skirt; poised again. The projected
+slipper swayed a dangerous circle. Mrs. Major alarmingly rocked. That
+infamous Old Tom presented three sets of banisters for her support;
+she clutched at one; it failed her; "Three four five six seven eight
+nine ten--_darling_!" she cried; at breakneck speed plunged downwards,
+and with the "_Darling_!" flung her arms about Mr. Marrapit's neck.
+
+Back before the shock, staggering beneath the weight, Mr. Marrapit
+went with digging heels. They could not match the pace of that swift
+blow upon his chest. Its backward speed outstripped them. With
+shattering thud he plumped heavily to his full length upon the floor;
+Mrs. Major pressed him to earth.
+
+But that shock was a whack on the head for Old Tom that temporarily
+quieted him. "What has happened?" Mrs. Major asked, clinging tightly.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gasped: "Release my neck. Remove your arms."
+
+"Where are we?"
+
+"You are upon my chest. I am prone beneath you. Release!"
+
+"It's all dark," Mrs. Major cried; gripped firmer.
+
+"It is not dark. I implore movement. Our juxtaposition unnaturally
+compromises us. It is abhorrent."
+
+Mrs. Major opened the eyes she had tightly closed during that
+staggering journey and that shattering fall. She loosed her clutch;
+got to her knees; thence tottered to a chair. That infamous Old Tom
+raised his head again; tickled her brain with misty fingers.
+
+Mr. Marrapit painfully rose. He put a sympathetic hand upon the seat
+of his injury; with the other took up the candle. He regarded Mrs.
+Major; suspiciously sniffed the air, pregnant with strange fumes;
+again regarded his late burden.
+
+Upon her face that infamous Old Tom set a beaming smile,
+
+"Follow me, Mrs. Major," Mr. Marrapit commanded; turned for the
+dining-room; from its interior faced about upon her.
+
+With rare dignity the masterly woman slowly arose; martially she
+poised against the hat-rack; with stately mien marched steadily
+towards him.
+
+Temporarily she had the grip of Old Tom--was well aware, at least, of
+his designs upon her purity, and superbly she combated him.
+
+With proud and queenly air she drew on--Mr. Marrapit felt that the
+swift suspicion which had taken him had misjudged her.
+
+Mrs. Major reached the mat. Old Tom gave a playful little twitch of
+her legs, and she jostled the doorpost.
+
+With old-world courtesy she bowed apology to the post. "Beg pardon,"
+she graciously murmured; stood swaying.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+Step by step with her as she had crossed the hall, Mr. Fletcher,
+recovering from the coward fear in which he shivered outside the door,
+had crept forward along the path around the house. As Mrs. Major stood
+swaying upon the threshold of the dining-room he reached the angle;
+peered round it; in horror sighted Bill's figure pendant from
+Margaret's window.
+
+Thrice the bell-mouth of his gun described a shivering circle; tightly
+he squeezed his eyelids--pressed the trigger.
+
+BANG!
+
+Mr. Marrapit bounded six inches--hardly reached the earth again when,
+with a startled scream, Mrs. Major was upon him, again her arms about
+his neck.
+
+And now shriek pursued shriek, tearing upwards through her throat. Old
+Tom had loosed the ends of all her nerves. Like bolting rabbit in
+young corn the tearing discharge of that gun went madly through them,
+and lacerated she gave tongue.
+
+Stifled by the bony shoulder that pressed against his face, Mr.
+Marrapit went black. He jerked his head free, put up his face, and
+giving cry for cry, shrilled, "George! George! George!"
+
+The din reached George where from his window he leaned, crying on
+Abiram in the man-hunt across the garden. He drew in his head, bounded
+down the stairs. Over Mrs. Major's back, bent inwards from the toes to
+the rock about which she clung, Mr. Marrapit's empurpled face stared
+at him.
+
+Upon George's countenance the sight struck a great grin; his legs it
+struck to dead halt.
+
+Mrs. Major's shrieks died to moans.
+
+"Action!" Mr. Marrapit gasped. "Remove this creature!"
+
+George put a hand upon her back. It shot a fresh shriek from her; she
+clung closer.
+
+"Pantaloon!" Mr. Marrapit strained. "Crush that grin! Action! Remove
+this woman! She throttles me! The pressure is insupportable. I am
+Sinbad."
+
+George again laid hands. Again Mrs. Major shrieked; tighter clung.
+
+Mr. Marrapit, blacker, cried, "Zany!"
+
+"Well, what the devil can I do?" George asked, hopping about the pair;
+Mrs. Major's back as responsive to his touch as the keys of a piano to
+idle fingers.
+
+"You run to and fro and grin like a dog," Mr. Marrapit told him. "Each
+time you touch her she screams, grips me closer. I shall be throttled.
+Use discretion. Add to mine your assurance of her safety. She is not
+herself."
+
+George chuckled. "She's not. She's tight as a drum."
+
+"Liar!" moaned Mrs. Major.
+
+"Intoxicated?" Mr. Marrapit asked.
+
+"Blind."
+
+Sharp words will move where entreaty cannot stir.
+
+Mrs. Major relaxed her hold; spun round. "Monster" and "Perjurer"
+rushed headlong to her lips. "Ponsger!" she cried; tottered back
+against the sofa; was struck by it at the bend of her knees; collapsed
+upon it. Her head sunk sideways; she closed her eyes.
+
+"You can see for yourself," George said.
+
+Mr. Marrapit sniffed: "My nose corroborates."
+
+"Ponsger!" the prone figure wailed.
+
+Mr. Marrapit started: "Mrs. Major!"
+
+She opened her eyes: "Call me Lucy. Darling-_um!_" She began to
+snore.
+
+"Abhorrent!" Mr. Marrapit pronounced.
+
+Whisperings without made him step to the door. White figures were upon
+the stairs. "To your beds!" he cried.
+
+"Oh, whatever is it, sir?" Mrs. Armitage panted.
+
+"Away! You outrage decency." Mr. Marrapit set a foot upon the stairs.
+The affrighted figures fled before him.
+
+George, when his uncle returned, was peering through the blind. "Who
+the devil loosed off that gun? It is immaterial. All events are buried
+beneath this abhorrent incident. The roof of my peace has crashed
+about me." Mr. Marrapit regarded the prone figure. "Her inspirations
+grate upon me; her exhalations poison the air. Rouse her. Thrust her
+to her room."
+
+"You'll never wake her now till she's slept it off."
+
+"Let us then essay to carry her. She cannot remain here. My shame
+shall not be revealed, nor hers uncovered."
+
+George began: "To-morrow--"
+
+"To-morrow I speed her from my gates. My beloved cats have been in the
+care of this swinish form. They have been in jeopardy. I tremble at
+their escape. To-morrow she departs."
+
+A sudden tremendous idea swept over George, engulfing speech.
+
+With no word he moved to the sofa; grasped the prone figure; put it
+upon its weak legs. They gave beneath it. "You must take her feet," he
+said.
+
+Averting his gaze, Mr. Marrapit took the legs that Old Tom had
+devitalised. The procession moved out; staggered up the stairs.
+
+Heavy was the burden; bursting with vulgar laughter was George; but
+that huge idea that suddenly had come to him swelled his muscles, lent
+him strength.
+
+He heaved the form upon the bed.
+
+On the dressing-table a candle burned. By its light Mr. Marrapit
+discovered Old Tom's bottle, two fingers of the villain yet remaining.
+
+He beat his breast. "Extinguish that light. I to my room. Seek
+Fletcher. He patrols the garden for malefactors. In the morning I will
+see you. Before this disaster my chill is sped. You are of my flesh. Cleave
+unto me. In our bosoms let this abhorrent sore be buried. Seek
+Fletcher."
+
+The distraught man tottered to his room.
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+George went slowly down the stairs, bathing in the delicious thrills
+of unfolding the wrappings from about his great idea. He had yet had
+time but to feel its shape and hug it as a child will feel and hug a
+doll packed in paper. Now he stripped the coverings, and his pulses
+thumped as he saw how fine was it. Almost unconscious to his actions
+he unbarred the door; stepped into the thin light; was not aroused
+until, treading upon Mr. Fletcher's musket, his idea was suddenly
+jolted from him.
+
+Here the gun that gave the echoes; where the hand that started it?
+
+A hoarse cry came to him: "Mr. George! Mr. George!"
+
+He looked along the sound. Above a hedge below the lawn an apple-tree
+raised its branches. Within them he could espy a dark mass that as he
+approached took form. Mr. Fletcher.
+
+The grass hushed George's footsteps. Rounding the hedge he came upon
+the little drama that gave that note of dread to Mr. Fletcher's calls.
+
+Beneath the gardener's armpits one branch of the apple-tree passed;
+behind his knees another. Between them hung his heavy seat. Whitely a
+square of it peered downwards; melancholy upon the sward lay the lid
+of corduroy that should have warmed the space. For ten paces outwards
+from the tree-trunk there stretched a pitted path. Abiram, as George
+came, turned at this path's extremity; set his sloe eye upon the dull
+white patch in Mr. Fletcher's stern; hurled forward up the track;
+sprang and snapped jaws an inch below the mark as Mr. Fletcher
+mightily heaved.
+
+A lesser dog would have yapped bafflement, fruitlessly scratched
+upwards from hind legs. Abiram was perfect dog of the one breed of dog
+that is in all things perfect. Silently he plodded back; turned; ran;
+leapt again. Again Mr. Fletcher heaved, and again the fine jaws
+snapped an inch beneath the pallid square of flesh.
+
+As once more uncomplaining he turned, Abiram sighted George; ruffled.
+George spoke his name. Abiram wagged that short tail that marked his
+Champion Victor Wild blood, shook the skull that spoke to the same
+mighty strain.
+
+This dog expected in his human friends that same devotion to duty
+which is the governing trait of his breed. His shake implied, "No time
+for social niceties, sir. I have a job in hand."
+
+"Call 'im off, Mr. George," Mr. Fletcher implored. "Call 'im--_ur!_"--
+he heaved upward as Abiram again sprang--"off," he concluded, sinking
+once more as the bull-terrier trotted up the little path.
+
+It was a fascinating scene. "You're quite safe," George told him.
+
+"Safe! I'm _tired!_ I can't keep on risin' and fallin' ail night. It's
+'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a--_ur!_" He heaved again.
+
+George told him: "You do it awfully well, though; so neat."
+
+"Call 'im off," Mr. Fletcher moaned. "He'll have me in a minute. He's
+'ad a bit off of me calf; he's 'ad a piece out of me trousers. He'll
+go on. He's a methodical dog--_ur!_"
+
+George took a step; caught Abiram's collar. "How on earth did you get
+up there?"
+
+"Jumped."
+
+"Jumped! You couldn't jump up there!"
+
+Mr. Fletcher took a look to see that Abiram was securely held; then
+started to wriggle to a pose of greater comfort. "I'd jump a house
+with that 'orror after me," he said bitterly. By intricate squirmings
+he laid a hand upon the cold patch of flesh that gazed starkly
+downwards from his stern. "If I ain't got hydrophobia I've got frost-
+bite," he moaned. "Cruel draught I've had through this 'ole. Take 'im
+off, Mr. George."
+
+George was scarcely listening. His thoughts had returned to the
+delicious task of fingering his great idea.
+
+"Take 'im off, Mr. George," Mr. Fletcher implored.
+
+George passed a handkerchief under Abiram's collar; tugged for the
+gate; there dispatched the dog down the road.
+
+Abiram shook his head; trotted with dejected stern. A job had been
+left unfinished.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Hallooing safety to the apple-tree, too preoccupied to inquire further
+into the reason for the gun and the presence of Bill's dog, George
+turned for the house.
+
+Awakening birds carolled his presence. They hymned the adventures of
+the day that Dawn, her handmaiden, came speeding, silver-footed,
+perfume-bearing, fresh from her dewy bath, to herald.
+
+George put up an answering pipe. For him also the day was adventure-
+packed and must lustily be hymned. Entering Mr. Marrapit's study he
+drew the blinds; upon a telegraph form set Mary's name and her
+address; pondered; then to these words compressed his great idea:
+
+"_Go agency this morning. Get name on books. Meet you there. Think can
+get you situation here. George._"
+
+"Immediately the office opens," said George; trod up to his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mr. Marrapit Takes A Nice Warm Bath.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+As Mr. Marrapit had said, the disaster of the night had sped his
+complaint.
+
+He appeared at breakfast. No word was spoken. He ate nothing.
+
+Once only gave he sign of interest. Midway through the meal muffled
+sounds came to the breakfast party. Scufflings in the hall struck an
+attentive light in Mr. Marrapit's eyes; slam of the front door jerked
+him in his seat; wheels, hoofs along the drive drew his gaze to the
+window. A cab rolled past--a melancholy horse; a stout driver, legs
+set over a corded box; a black figure, bolt upright, handkerchief to
+eyes.
+
+The vision passed. Mr. Marrapit gazed upwards; his thin lips moved.
+
+Vulgar curiosity shall not tempt us to pry into the demeanour with
+which, an hour earlier, this man had borne himself in the study with
+Mrs. Major. Of that unhappy woman's moans, of her explanations, of the
+tears that poured from her eyes--bloodshot in a head most devilishly
+racked by Old Tom--we shall not speak.
+
+Margaret stretched her hand for more bread. Despite the moving scenes
+in which during the night she had travelled with her Bill, her
+appetite was nothing affected. With her meals her sentimentality was
+upon the friendliest terms. This girl was most gnawed by hunger when
+by emotion she was most torn.
+
+She stretched for a third slice.
+
+Mr. Marrapit cleared his throat. The sound shot her. She caught his
+eye and the glance pierced her. Her outstretched hand dropped upon the
+cloth, toyed with crumbs.
+
+Mr. Marrapit said: "I perceive you are finished?"
+
+Margaret murmured: "Yes." Her voice had a tremulous note. It is a
+bitter thing to lose a slice of bread-and-butter for which the whole
+system imperatively calls.
+
+"Withdraw," Mr. Marrapit commanded.
+
+She put a lingering glance upon the loaf; wanly glided from the room.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+As she closed the door George prepared for his great idea. He drank
+deeply of a cup of tea; drew down his cuffs; pondered them. They were
+covered in pencilled notes, evolved by desperate work all that
+morning, to aid him when the hour was at hand.
+
+He absorbed Note I; spoke: "I am afraid last night's events very much
+distressed you, sir--"
+
+"They are interred. Do not resurrect them."
+
+George hurried to Note 2. "My sympathies with you--"
+
+"Let the dead bury the dead. Mourn not the past."
+
+George skipped to Note 3. "What I am concerned about is the cats."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Oh, sir, indeed I am. I am not demonstrative. Perhaps you have not
+guessed my fondness for the cats?"
+
+"I have not."
+
+"Believe me, it is a deep affection. When I saw that unhappy woman
+tigh--under the influence of spirits, what was my first thought?"
+
+"Supply the answer."
+
+George took another glimpse at Note 3. "What was my first thought?" he
+repeated. "Was it distress at sight of a woman so forgetful of her
+modesty? No. Was it sympathy for the cruel deception that had been
+practised upon you? Forgive me, sir, it was not." (He glanced at his
+notes.) "What, then?"
+
+He paused brightly.
+
+"It is your conundrum," said Mr. Marrapit. "Solve it."
+
+George raised an impressive hand. "What, then? It was the thought of
+the risks that the cats I so loved had run whilst beneath the care of
+this woman."
+
+Mr. Marrapit's groan inspirited George. He was on the right track. He
+took Note 4. "I asked myself, Who is responsible for the jeopardy in
+which these creatures have been placed? Heaven knows, I said, what
+they may not have suffered. This woman may have neglected their food,
+she may have neglected their comforts. In a drunken fit she might have
+poisoned them, beat them, set furious dogs upon them."
+
+Mr. Marrapit writhed in anguish.
+
+George acted as Note 4 bade him. He dropped his voice. "Let us trust,
+sir," he said, "that none of these things has taken place."
+
+"Amen," Mr. Marrapit murmured. "Amen."
+
+George's voice took a sterner note. "But, I asked myself, Who is
+responsible for those horrors that might have been, that may have
+been?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit dropped his head upon his hands. He murmured: "I am.
+Peccavi."
+
+George rose in noble calm. He read Note 5; gave it with masterly
+effect: "No, sir. I am."
+
+"You!"
+
+"I! I have not slept since I leftyou, sir. I have paced my room and"
+(he read a masterly note) "remorse has paced with me, step by step,
+hour by hour. Did I help my uncle, I asked myself, when he was
+selecting this Mrs. Major? No. Was I by his right hand to counsel and
+advise him? No. Has not my training at hospital, my intercourse with
+ten thousand patients, taught me to read faces like an open book? It
+has. Should not I then have been by his side to help him when he
+selected a woman for the post of caring for our-forgive me, sir, I
+said 'our'--caring for our cats? I should. I asked myself how I could
+make amends. Only by begging my uncle's forgiveness for my
+indifference and by imploring him to let me help him in the choice of
+the next woman he selects."
+
+A masterly pause he followed with an appeal sent forth in tones of
+rare beauty: "Oh, sir, I do beg your forgiveness; I do implore you let
+me make amends by helping you in your next choice."
+
+Mr. Marrapit wiped moist eyes. "I had not suspected in you this
+profundity of feeling."
+
+George said brokenly: "I have given you no reason."
+
+Mr. Marrapit replied on a grim tone: "Assuredly you have not."
+
+George glanced at Note 6; fled from the danger zone.
+
+"Where I fear the mistake was made in Mrs. Major," he hurried, "was
+that she was not a perfect lady. Our--forgive me for saying 'our'--our
+cats are refined cats, cats of gentle birth, of inherent delicacy.
+Their attendant should be of like breeding. She should be refined, her
+birth should be gentle, her feelings delicate. She should be a lady."
+
+"You are right," Mr. Marrapit said. "As sea calleth to sea, as like
+calleth to like, so would an ebb and flow of sympathy be set in motion
+between my cats and an attendant delicately born. Is that your
+meaning?"
+
+George murmured in admiration: "In beautiful words that is my
+meaning." He paused. Now the bolt was to be shot, and he nerved
+himself against the strain. He fired: "I have a suggestion."
+
+"Propound."
+
+No further need for notes. George pushed back his cuffs; gulped the
+agitation that swelled dry and suffocating in his mouth. "This is my
+suggestion. Because I have had experience in the reading of faces;
+because I wish to make recompense for my share in the catastrophe of
+Mrs. Major's presence; because--"
+
+"You are drowning beneath reasons. Cease bubbling. Strike to the
+surface."
+
+George had not been drowning. He had been creeping gingerly from
+stepping-stone to stepping-stone. The endeavour had been to come as
+close as possible to the big rock upon which he intended to spring.
+The less the distance of the leap the more remote the chance of
+slipping down the rock and being whirled off in swift water. It is a
+method of progression by which, in the race of existence, many lives
+are lost. The timid will hobble from stone to stone, landing at each
+forward point more and yet more shaky in the knees. The torrent roars
+about them. Sick they grow and giddy; stepping-stones are green and
+slimy; the effort of balancing cannot be unduly prolonged.
+
+Ere ever they feel themselves ready for the leap they slip, go
+whirling and drowning downstream past the stepping-stones that are
+called Infirmity of Purpose. Or they may creep close enough the rock,
+only to find they have delayed over their hobbling progression until
+the rock is already so crowded by others who have been bolder over the
+stones as to show no foothold remaining. They leap and fall back.
+
+We are all gifted with strength sufficient for that spring; but
+disaster awaits him who scatters his energies in a hundred hesitating
+little scrambles.
+
+Now George sprang; poised upon that last "because."
+
+"And because--I wish--" He sprang--"Therefore I suggest that I should
+go to town to-day and search every agency until I find you a lady I
+think suitable."
+
+The thud of his landing knocked the breath out of him. In terror he
+lay lest Mr. Marrapit's answering words should have the form of
+desperate fellows who would hurl him from his hold, throw him back.
+
+"I agree," Mr. Marrapit said.
+
+George was drawn to his feet. He could have whooped for joy.
+
+"I agree. I have misjudged you. In this matter I lay my trust in you.
+Take it, tend it, nurse it; cherish it so that it may not be returned
+to me cold and dead. Speed forth."
+
+"Have I a free hand?" George asked.
+
+"Emphatically no. Every effort must be made to keep down expenses.
+Here are two shillings. Render account. As to salary--"
+
+George burst out: "Oh, she'll come for anything."
+
+Mr. Marrapit started. "She? Whom?"
+
+George threw a blanket to hide the hideous blunder. "Told of such a
+home as this is," he explained, "a true lady would come for anything."
+
+The blunder sank, covered. "I earnestly pray that may be so," Mr.
+Marrapit said. "I doubt. Rapacity and greed stalk the land. Mrs. Major
+had five-and-twenty pounds per annum. I will not go above that
+figure."
+
+George told him: "Rely upon me. But, by a free hand I meant a free
+hand as to engaging what I may think a suitable person."
+
+"Emphatically no. You are the lower court. Sift sheep from goats. Send
+sheep here to me. I am the tribunal. I will finally select."
+
+The refusal placed a last obstacle in the path of George's scheme, but
+he did not demur. Primarily he dared not. To demur might raise again
+that blunder he had let escape when he had said, "She'll come for
+anything"; this time it might rage around and not be captured. All
+might be wrecked. Secondly he felt there to be no great need for
+protest. The confidence of having won thus far gave him courage
+against this final difficulty.
+
+"Trust me, sir," he said.
+
+Very soberly he paced from the room; gently closed the door; with the
+tread of one bearing a full heart heavily moved up the stairs.
+
+He reached his room; ripped off sobriety. "Oh, Mary!" he exultantly
+cried, "if I can get you down here, old girl!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit, meanwhile, stepped to the room where his cats lived;
+lovingly toyed with his pets; took the Rose of Sharon a walk in the
+garden. He was in pleasant mood. Great had been the distress of the
+night, but this man had enjoyed a luxurious warm bath--in crocodile's
+tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Miss Porter Swallows A Particularly Large Sweet.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mary in the little Battersea lodgings was at breakfast when her
+George's telegram arrived. She puckered over its mystery; shaped
+events this way and that, but could make of them no keyhole that the
+message would fit and unlock.
+
+She flew among the higher improbabilities: George, she conjectured,
+had misrepresented this stony-hearted uncle; last night had told all
+to Mr. Marrapit, and Mr. Marrapit had warmed to her and bade him fetch
+her to Herons' Holt. She ripped George's description of his uncle from
+about the old man; dressed Mr. Marrapit in snowy locks and a benign
+smile; pictured him coming down the steps with outstretched hand to
+greet her. She heard him say, "My daughter"; she saw him draw George
+to her, lock their hands; she heard him murmur, "Bless you, my
+children."
+
+This was a romantic young woman. A poached egg was allowed to grow
+cold as she trembled over her delectable fancies.
+
+But a glance at the telegram pulled her from these delicious flights;
+bumped her to earth. "_Think can get you situation here._" "Situation"
+drove the fatherly air from Mr. Marrapit; once more rehabilitated him
+as her George presented him--grim and masterly.
+
+Further conjecture altogether drove Mr. Marrapit from the picture.
+What situation could be offered her in the Marrapit household? Why
+should "here" mean Herons' Holt? It must mean at a house in the
+district.
+
+Upon the magic carpet of this new thought my Mary was whirled again in
+an imaged paradise. She would be near her George.
+
+High in these clouds she ran to her bedroom for her hat; but with it
+there descended upon her head a new thought that again sent her
+toppling earthwards. Characterless, and worse than characterless, how
+was she to get any such delightful post? My Mary started up the street
+for the Agency, blinking tears.
+
+At Battersea Bridge a new thought came sweeping. She clutched on to
+it; held it fast. Into her tread it put a spring; to her chin gave a
+brave tilt. If everything failed, if of the telegram nothing came,
+why, at least she had the telegram!--was making for the Agency under a
+direct command from her George. The thought swelled her with
+confidence and comfort. How warm a thing it was to feel that she did
+not face the world alone! Her George's arm was striking for her, her
+George's hand was pointing a terse command. "Go to Agency." She was
+obeying him; she belonged to him.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Mary had intended to wait outside the Agency until her George should
+arrive and explain his mysterious message. But she was scarcely at the
+building when Miss Ram, also arriving, accosted her--took her
+upstairs. Miss Ram quite naturally regarded the meeting as evidence
+that Mary had come for help. Mary, in a flutter as to George's
+intentions, could but meekly follow.
+
+In the room marked "Private," settled at her table, Miss Ram icily
+opened the interview. "I have heard from Mrs. Chater. I did not expect
+to see you again."
+
+Mary began: "I don't know what you have heard--"
+
+Miss Ram stretched for a letter.
+
+"Oh, I don't wish to," Mary cried; put out a hand that stayed the
+action. "To hear all she says would again begin it all. It would be
+like her voice. It would be like being with her again. Please, please,
+Miss Ram, don't tell me."
+
+"You have your own version?"
+
+"I have the truth." Mary pointed at the letter-file. "The truth isn't
+there. Mrs. Chater isn't capable of the truth. She cannot even
+recognise the truth when she hears it."
+
+In yet more freezing tones Miss Ram replied: "She is an old and valued
+client."
+
+"You only know her in this office," Mary told her. "You don't know her
+in her home."
+
+"I have suited her with other young ladies. I have heard of her from
+them."
+
+"And they have spoken well of her?"
+
+"Discounting the prejudice of a late employee, they have spoken well."
+
+"Was her son there with them?"
+
+"They have not told me so."
+
+"Ah!" said Mary; sat back in her chair.
+
+"Then your version is about the son?"
+
+Mary nodded. Recollection put a silly lump in her throat.
+
+Miss Ram said: "Miss Humfray, when I received that letter from Mrs.
+Chater, I said I would have no more to do with you. I told Miss Porter
+I would not see you. Why, out of all my ladies, do you come back to me
+characterless from your situations? I will listen to your story. Make
+it very brief. Don't exaggerate. I have sat in this chair for
+seventeen years. I can distinguish in a minute between facts and
+spleen. You desire to tell your version?"
+
+"I must," Mary said. "What I'd like to do would be to get up and say,
+'If you doubt me, I'll not trouble to convince you.' I'd like to walk
+out and leave you and face anything rather than 'explain.' Why should
+I 'explain' to anybody? But I'm not going to walk out. I haven't the
+pluck. I know what it is like to be alone out there." She gave a
+little choke. "I've learnt that much, anyway." She went on. "I'll just
+tell you, that's all. I don't want your sympathy; I only want your
+sense of justice."
+
+"I like your spirit," Miss Ram said. It was a quality she rarely found
+in her applicants. "Go on."
+
+Then Mary told. She phrased bluntly. Her recital was after the manner
+of the fireworks called "Roman candles." These, when lit, pour out
+fire and smoke in a rather weak-kneed dribble. They must be held
+tightly. When tensely enough constricted, of fire and smoke there is
+little, but at intervals out there pops an exceedingly luminous ball
+of flame.
+
+My Mary kept the pressure of pride upon her throat. There was no
+dribble of emotion. Only the facts popped out--hard and dry, and to
+Miss Ram intensely illuminative. Mary did not mention George's name.
+She concluded her narrative with jerky facts relative to the scene in
+the Park. "Then I ran away," she said, "and a friend of mine came up.
+He had seen. And he thrashed him. When I got back to Mrs. Chater's her
+son had arrived--battered. He told his mother that he had seen me with
+a man and had interfered. That the man assaulted him. That's all."
+
+"The miserable hound!" pronounced Miss Ram with extraordinary
+ferocity.
+
+From a drawer in her desk she took a manuscript book, bound in limp
+leather, tied with blue ribbon. Herein were contained the remarkable
+thoughts which from time to time had come to this woman during her
+seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the
+flyleaf was inscribed "Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram." It was her intent
+to publish this darling work when beneath each letter of the alphabet
+twelve aphorisms were written.
+
+"The miserable hound!" cried she, when the full tale of Mr. Bob
+Chater's vileness was told; drew "Aphorisms" towards her and wrote in
+hot blood.
+
+Then looked at Mary. "_L,_" she read, "_L. Lust. Lust is the sound
+meat of natural instinct gone to carrion. Men eat meat, wolves eat
+carrion. Some men are wolf-men_--Hand me the dictionary, Miss Humfray.
+Two r's in carrion. I _thought_ so. Thank you."
+
+She replaced "Aphorisms." "My dear, I will do what I can for you," she
+told Mary. "I _do_ believe you. Go into the interview room. I hear a
+step."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+That step was George's. Abashed in this home of women he shuffled
+uneasily in the passage, then put a hesitating knuckle upon
+"Enquiries."
+
+From within a violent movement was followed by a strange guttural
+sound. George entered.
+
+With scarlet face and watery eyes, Miss Porter--the stout young woman
+who presided over this department, and whose habit it was to suck
+sweets the better to beguile the tedium of her duties--gazed at him;
+made guttural sounds. The start of George's knock had caused this girl
+to swallow a particularly large sweet, and its downward passage was
+inflicting upon her considerable pain.
+
+Her face was an alarming sight. "I'm afraid--" George began.
+
+"Pardon!" gasped Miss Porter, driving the sweet with a tremendous
+swallow. "Pardon!"
+
+"Not at all," George pleasantly said. "Not at all. I called with
+reference to a lady-help."
+
+The grinding sweet forbade the pleasant dalliance
+
+Miss Porter could have wished with this handsome young man. In a brave
+spasm (this girl was in great suffering), "I will tell the Principal,"
+she said; trod heavily to Miss Ram's door.
+
+Fate is an abominable trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand it
+gave Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her
+enjoying him. Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of a fine
+sweet.
+
+Reappearing and holding the door ajar: "Miss Ram will see you," she
+murmured. Tears were in this girl's eyes; the bolted sweet was still
+paining her very much indeed.
+
+IV.
+
+In two clever bows Miss Ram without a word greeted George; indicated a
+chair.
+
+George sat down. "I want," he began--"that is, my uncle wants, a
+lady-help--"
+
+"Name, please," rapped Miss Ram, opening the ledger.
+
+George gave it; stretched a leg to indicate a confidence he did not
+feel; pitched his voice to aid the presentment. "When I say lady-help--"
+
+"Address, please," said Miss Ram with a pistol-snap.
+
+George withdrew the signs of confidence with a jerk. He gave the
+information. Then waited Miss Ram to give him a lead. He had twice
+been shot; was in no desire again to expose his person.
+
+Miss Ram fixed her small black eyes upon him. She said nothing. The
+intrusion of a young man into matters essentially domestic she
+strongly disapproved. Under "D" in "Aphorisms" this woman had a
+trenchant note touching this matter. "_D. Domesticity. Domesticity_,"
+said this note, "_is the offspring of all the womanly virtues. The
+virtues impregnate the woman, and domesticity is the resultant child.
+Absence of a single womanly trait aborts or debilitates the offspring.
+Men have nothing whatever to do with it, and nothing is more
+abominable than a man who meddles with domestic matters._"
+
+The rays of Miss Ram's disconcerting eye pushed George steadily
+backwards from the rock of such small confidence as remained to him.
+Assailed by the inquiring bows with which she now interrogated his
+further purpose, he slipped from it, plunged wildly into the sea of
+what he required, and for five minutes beat this way and that, hurling
+the splash of broken sentences at Miss Ram's unbending countenance.
+
+Beginning a description of Mr. Marrapit's household, he floundered
+thence to a description of the required lady's duties; abandoning that
+unfinished, splashed to a description of the manner of person for whom
+he sought.
+
+It was his object to paint a character and appearance as near to his
+Mary's as he could master; to induce Miss Ram to suggest her as likely
+candidate for the post. He could not introduce his Mary to his uncle
+unless she came under the auspices of some recognised institution.
+
+So he floundered on.
+
+Miss Ram did not move. His struggles grew less; he caught at haphazard
+words; flung them desperately; at last relapsed; sat sweating.
+
+Miss Ram poked him with a questioning bow. He did not stir.
+
+With a further bow she accepted his defeat; handed him a pink paper.
+"Now, kindly fill up this form. State precisely what you require.
+Write clearly, please."
+
+George obeyed. Miss Ram studied the answers to her printed
+interrogations; opened her ledger. "I have several suitable ladies."
+She started to read a list. "Miss Minna Gregor; aged 25; daughter of
+the late Humphrey Gregor, stockbroker; three years' character from
+Mrs. Mountsaffron of Charles Street, to whom she was lady-help and
+from whom an excellent reference may be obtained."
+
+"Too old," said George.
+
+Miss Ram frowned; returned to the ledger. "Miss Ellen Hay; aged 20;
+daughter of Lieutenant Hay, late R.N. For two years with Mrs. Hoyle-
+Hoyle of Knightsbridge."
+
+George squeaked, "Too young." He had not anticipated this ordeal.
+
+Miss Ram read on. At the fifteenth name George was in desperate
+agitation. His list of objections was exhausted. Each protest had
+narrowed his field.
+
+"This is the last upon my books," Miss Ram severely told him. "She
+fills all your requirements. None of your objections applies. You will
+certainly engage her."
+
+"I feel sure I shall," George brightly said. If this was the last name
+it must be Mary.
+
+"I am glad to hear that," Miss Ram announced. "You are hard to please.
+This is a most admirable young woman."
+
+George leaned forward with an expectant smile. Miss Ram read: "Miss
+Rosa Brump--"
+
+George's smile died. An "Eh?" was startled out of him.
+
+"Brump," said Miss Ram testily. "Brump. B-r-u-m-p, _Brump_."
+
+George said "Oh!"; ran a finger around the inside of his collar.
+
+Miss Ram read on, emphasising the Brumps with the suggestion of a ball
+bouncing from rock to rock:
+
+"Miss Rosa _Brump_; aged 21; daughter of the late Selwyn Agburn
+_Brump_, barrister-at-law. Companion to Miss Victoria Shuttle of
+Shuttle Hall, Shuttle, Lines, until that lady's death. The late Miss
+Shuttle dying suddenly, Miss _Brump_ has no reference from her. What
+that reference would have been, however, is clearly evidenced by the
+fact that in her will Miss Shuttle bequeathed 'to my faithful
+companion Rosa _Brump_,' her terra-cotta bust of the late Loomis
+Shuttle, Esq., J.P., inventor of the Shuttle liquid manure."
+
+Miss Ram wagged a finger at George. "That speaks for itself," she
+said.
+
+George did not answer. He was in a confusion of fear. This terrible
+woman would force Miss Brump upon him. He was powerless in her hands.
+He was in chains.
+
+"Does it not?" poked Miss Ram.
+
+"Rather," said George. "Oh, rather."
+
+"Very good. I congratulate your uncle upon obtaining this estimable
+young woman. She should call here in a few minutes. You can then make
+final arrangements. Meanwhile, this form--"
+
+George hurled himself free from this hypnotic panic. Anything must be
+done to shake off this intolerable Brump.
+
+"One moment," he said. "I had forgotten--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What colour is Miss Brump's hair?"
+
+"Her _what?_"
+
+"Hair. Her hair."
+
+"How extraordinary! Brown."
+
+George effected an admirable start. He echoed: "_Brown?_ Oh, not
+brown?"
+
+"Certainly. Brown."
+
+George mournfully shook his head. "Oh, dear! How unfortunate! I'm
+afraid Miss Brump will not suit, Miss Ram. My uncle--extraordinary
+foible--has a violent objection to brown hair. He will not have it in
+the house."
+
+"Unheard of!" Miss Ram snapped. "Unheard of!"
+
+George rubbed together his sweating palms; blundered on. "None the
+less a fact," he said impressively. He dropped his voice. "It is a
+very sad story. He had fifteen brothers--"
+
+"Fifteen!"
+
+"I assure you, yes. All were black-haired except one, who was brown--
+the first brown-haired child in the history of the house. 'Bantam'
+they used to call him when they were girls and boys together--
+'Bantam.'"
+
+"_Girls_! You said brothers!"
+
+"Ah, yes. Girls as well. Twelve, twelve girls."
+
+"Twelve girls and fifteen boys!"
+
+"I assure you, yes. A record. As I was saying, the brown-haired child,
+he took to drink. It is most painful. Died in a madhouse. My uncle,
+head of the family, reeled beneath the stigma--reeled. Vowed from that
+day that he would never let a brown-haired person cross his
+threshold."
+
+George wiped his streaming face; sat back with a sigh. Miss Brump was
+buried.
+
+Miss Ram's next words caused him to start in his seat.
+
+"But your hair is brown."
+
+My contemptible George, all his lies now rushing furious upon him, put
+his hand to his head; withdrawing it, gazed at the palm with the air
+of one looking for a stain.
+
+"How about _that_?" rapped Miss Ram.
+
+George gave a wan smile. "It is my misfortune," he said simply--"my
+little cross. We all have our burdens in this life, Miss Ram. Pardon
+me if I do not care to dwell upon mine."
+
+With a bow Miss Ram indicated sympathy; decorously closed the subject.
+
+George gave a little sigh. With a simulation of brightness he
+proceeded: "You are sure you have no other lady?"
+
+"I have one," said Miss Ram. "She would not suit."
+
+"May I be allowed to judge?"
+
+Miss Ram turned to the ledger. "'Miss Mary Humfray.'"
+
+George started. "It is nothing," he explained. "One of those shivers;
+that is all."
+
+Miss Ram bowed. "'Miss Mary Humfray; aged 21; only child of the late
+Colonel Humfray, Indian Army; references from former employer not
+good, but with extenuating circumstances.'"
+
+"I think she might suit," George said. "She--she--" he groped wildly
+--"she is the daughter of a colonel."
+
+"So were four others."
+
+George wiped his brow. "The--the _only_ daughter."
+
+"You consider that a merit?"
+
+"My uncle would. He has curious ideas. He is himself an only child."
+
+Miss Ram stared. George had the prescience of trouble, but could not
+find it. "Oh, yes," he said, "oh, yes."
+
+"Fifteen brothers and twelve sis--"
+
+George saw the gaping pit; sprang from it. "_Has_ an only child," he
+corrected. "_Has_, not _is_."
+
+Miss Ram glared, continued: "What of the absence of character?"
+
+"I imagine the fact of being an only child would override that. You
+said there were extenuating circumstances?"
+
+"There are. I personally would speak for the young lady."
+
+Excitement put George upon his feet. "I thank you very much, Miss Ram.
+I feel that this lady will suit."
+
+"You have asked nothing about her. With the others you were unusually
+particular."
+
+"I act greatly by instinct. It is a family trait. Something seems to
+assure me in this case."
+
+Miss Ram gazed searchingly at George; answered him upon an interested
+note. "Indeed!" she spoke. "Remarkable. Pray pardon me." She drew
+"Aphorisms" from its drawer; hesitated a moment; with flowing pen
+wrote beneath "I."
+
+She turned towards George. "Pray pardon me," she repeated. "What you
+tell me of acting by instinct greatly interests me as a student of
+character. In this little volume here I--allow me." She emphasised
+with a quill-pen. "_I. Instinct. Instinct is the Almighty's rudder
+with which He steers our frail barques upon the tempestuous sea of
+life at moments when otherwise we should be quite at a loss. Some of
+us answer quickly to this mysterious helm and for example something
+seems to tell them in the middle of the night that the house is on
+fire, and they get up and find it is. Let those who don't answer
+quickly beware!_"
+
+"That's awfully well put," said George. "Awfully well."
+
+For the first time Miss Ram smiled. "You would wish to interview the
+young lady?" she asked. "Fortunately she is present. Kindly step to
+the Interview Room."
+
+She led the way. With thundering pulses George followed. His Mary
+rose. Miss Ram introduced them.
+
+George rolled his tongue in a dry mouth; passed it over dry lips. He
+had no words.
+
+"Have you no questions?" Miss Ram asked severely.
+
+For a third time since he had entered this building, panic broke
+damply upon George's brow. He blew his nose; in a very faint voice
+asked: "Your age is twenty-one?"
+
+Upon an agitated squeak his Mary told him: "Yes."
+
+"Ah!" In desperation he paused: caught Miss Ram's awful eye; was
+goaded to fresh plunge. "Ah, one-and-twenty?"
+
+In a tiny squeak Mary replied: "Yes."
+
+He shuffled in desperation. "When will you be twenty-two?"
+
+"In February."
+
+"Ah! February." This was awful. "February."
+
+Miss Ram's eye stabbed him again.
+
+"February. Then you must be twenty-one now?"
+
+"_Tch-tch!_" sounded Miss Ram.
+
+"Twenty-one," George stammered. "Twenty-one--"
+
+From the other room at that moment Miss Porter called.
+
+"I am required," said Miss Ram, "elsewhere. I will return in a
+moment." She passed out; closed the door.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+"My darling!" cried George.
+
+"Georgie!"
+
+They embraced.
+
+He held her to him; kissed the soft gold hair.
+
+On a movement in the next room his Mary wriggled free. "Tell me."
+
+"By Gad, it's been awful! Did you hear me in that room?"
+
+She nodded, laughing at him. He kissed the smiles.
+
+"Oh, do be careful! Let _go_, George; let _go_. I couldn't hear what
+you said. But you were hours--_hours_."
+
+"Years," said George. "Years. Aeons of time. I have aged considerably.
+I thought it would never end. It was appalling."
+
+She clasped her pretty hands. "But tell me, George. Do tell me. I
+don't understand _anything_. What has _happened?_"
+
+"Give me time," George told her. "I am not the same George. The light-
+hearted George of yore is dead under Miss Ram's chair. I am old and
+seamed with care."
+
+"George, _do, do_ tell me! Don't fool."
+
+"I'm not fooling. I can't fool. You don't realise what I have been
+through. You have no heart. I can't fool. When I was a child I thought
+as a child; I did childish things. But now that I have been through
+Miss Ram's hands my bright boyhood is sapped. I am old and stricken in
+years."
+
+"Oh, Georgie, _do, do_ tell me!"
+
+This ridiculous George gave a boyish laugh; clasped his Mary again;
+squeezed her to him till she gasped. "I've got you, Mary!" he said. He
+kissed the gold hair. "I've got you. I'm going to see you every day.
+You're coming down to live at Herons' Holt."
+
+Then he told her.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Miss Ram returned; directed at George a bow that Was one huge note of
+interrogation.
+
+"Quite satisfactory," George replied. "I am sure my uncle will agree."
+
+"There is, of course," objected Miss Ram, "the unfortunate matter of
+references."
+
+George took a frank air. "Miss Ram, I am quite willing to take your
+personal assurances on that matter. On behalf of my uncle I accept
+them."
+
+"I will send a written statement of the matter," said Miss Ram. Her
+air was dogged.
+
+"I most solemnly assure you that is unnecessary."
+
+Miss Ram killed him with a bow. "It is my custom. I have the
+reputation of seventeen years to sustain."
+
+George quailed.
+
+"Your uncle," Miss Ram exclaimed, "will also wish to see Miss Humfray.
+She shall go this afternoon."
+
+"Not this afternoon," George told her. "No. To-morrow. He could not
+see her to-day."
+
+"Very well. To-morrow. To-night I will write the references to him.
+Kindly pay the fee to Miss Porter in the office. Good morning!"
+
+She pushed him off with a stabbing bow. He fled.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+In that delectable interview during Miss Ram's absence George had
+arranged with his Mary that this was a day to be celebrated. She
+should not proceed instantly to be weighed by Mr. Marrapit; let that
+ordeal be given to the morrow. This splendid day should splendidly
+end; tremendous gaiety should with a golden clasp fasten the golden
+hours of the morning. In the afternoon he had a lecture and clinical
+demonstrations. Like a horse he would work till half-past six. At
+seven he would meet his Mary in Sloane Square.
+
+So it was. At that hour George from the top of his 'bus spied his Mary
+upon the little island in the Square. He sprang down and his first
+action was to show a fat and heavy sovereign, pregnant with delights,
+lying in his palm.
+
+"Borrowed," said George. "One pound sterling. Twenty shillings net.
+And every penny of it is going to fly."
+
+He called a hansom, and they smoothly rolled to Earl's Court.
+
+When sovereigns are rare possessions, how commanding an air the feel
+of one imparts! Mary watched her George with pride. How masterful was
+he! How deferential the head waiter at the restaurant in the
+Exhibition became! The man was putting them off with an inner table.
+Her George by a look and a word had him in a minute to right-abouts,
+and one of the coveted tables upon the verandah was theirs. Waiters
+flocked about. With such an air did George command the cheapest wine
+upon the list that the waiter, whose lip ordinarily would have curled
+at such an order, hastened to its execution with dignity of task,
+deference of service.
+
+They ate robustly through the menu: faltered not nor checked at a
+single dish. They passed remarks upon their neighbours. At intervals
+George would say, "Isn't this fine, Mary?"; or his Mary would say,
+"Oh, Georgie, isn't this splendid?" And the other would answer,
+"Rather!"
+
+A meal and a conversation to make your proper lovers shudder! There
+was no nibbling at and toying with food; there was no drinking and
+feasting from the light of one another's eyes. When George felt
+thirsty he would put his nose in the cheap claret and keep it there
+till mightily refreshed; such hungry yearnings as his Mary felt she
+satisfied with knife and fork. These were very simple children and
+exceedingly healthy.
+
+But while his Mary's tongue ached with a cold, cold ice, George was in
+the pangs of mental arithmetic. As the bill stood, that pregnant
+sovereign had given birth to all the delights of which it was capable;
+was shattered and utterly wrecked in child-bed.
+
+A waiter came bustling. There was just time. George leant across.
+"Mary, when I ask you if you'll have coffee, say you prefer it
+outside--it's cheaper there."
+
+"Coffee, sir?"
+
+"Special coffee," George ordered nonchalantly. "Yes, two. One moment.
+Would you rather have your coffee outside near the band, Mary?"
+
+His Mary was splendid. She looked around the room, she looked into the
+cool night--and there her eye longer lingered. "It's cooler outside,"
+she said. "I think it would be nicer outside, if you don't mind."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Sure you don't mind?"
+
+"Oh, no; no, not a bit. Bill, waiter."
+
+The waiter bowed low over his munificent tip; dropped it into a
+jingling pocket. George gathered his miserable change; slid it
+silently to where it lay companionless; with his Mary passed into the
+warm night.
+
+In the Empress Gardens they found a hidden table; here sipped coffee,
+and here were most dreadfully common. Mary's hand crept into her
+George's; they spoke little. The warm night breeze gently kissed their
+faces; the band stirred deepest depths; they set their eyes upon the
+velvety darkness that lay beyond the lights, and there pictured one
+another in a delectable future. Mary saw a very wonderful George; now
+and then glimpsed a very happy little Mary in a wonderful home. George
+also saw a happy little Mary in a wonderful home, but he more clearly
+followed a very wonderful George, magnificently accomplishing the
+mighty things that made the little Mary happy.
+
+       *       *        *       *        *
+
+George kissed his Mary upon the doorstep of the Battersea lodgings;
+caught the last train to Paltley Hill; and as he walked home from the
+station the scented hedges murmured to him with his Mary's voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Girl Comes Near The Lugger.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+At breakfast upon the following day George set forth the result of his
+labours; with urgent eloquence extolled the virtues of this Miss
+Humfray.
+
+Before Mr. Marrapit's plate lay an open envelope; upon the back George
+could read the inscription "Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed
+Gentlewomen."
+
+What had Miss Ram said of his Mary? The thought that she had written a
+reference which at the last moment would dash into dust this mighty
+scheme, was as a twisting knife in George's vitals. Every time that
+Mr. Marrapit stretched his hand for the letter the agitated young man
+upon a fresh impulse would dash into defiant eulogy of his darling;
+and so impetuous was the rush of his desperate words that at the beat
+of every new wave Mr. Marrapit would withdraw his startled hand from
+the letter; frown at George across the coffee-pot.
+
+At last: "Sufficient," he announced. "Curb zeal. Mount discretion.
+Satisfy the demands of appetite. You have not touched food. Tasks he
+before you. Do not starve the brain. I am tired of your eulogies of
+this person. For twenty-one minutes you have been hurling
+advertisements at me. I am a hoarding."
+
+The bill-sticker pushed a piece of bacon into a dry mouth; sat with
+goggling eyes.
+
+The hoarding continued: "I have here this person's reference. It is
+good."
+
+"Down shot the piece of bacon; convulsively bolted like Miss Porter's
+sweet.
+
+"Good!" cried George.
+
+"I said good. For faulty articulation I apologise."
+
+"I know, I heard. I meant that I am pleased."
+
+"Strive to express the meaning. The person arrives for inspection at
+mid-day. For your assistance I tender thanks. The incident is now
+closed. Do you labour at hospital to-day?"
+
+George had determined to be at the fount of news. In town, uncertain,
+he could have applied himself to nothing. He said:
+
+"No, here; I work here to-day."
+
+"To your tasks," commanded Mr. Marrapit.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George went to his room, but his tasks through that morning lay
+neglected.
+
+Impossible to work. He was in a position at which at one time or
+another most of us are placed. He was upon one end of a balanced see-
+saw, and he was blindfolded so that it was impossible to see what
+might happen upon the other extremity. Suddenly he might be swung up
+to highest delight; suddenly he might be dashed earthwards to hit
+ground with a jarring thud. The one eventuality or the other was
+certain; but he must sit blindfold and helpless--unable to affect the
+balance by an ounce. Here is the position in which all of us are made
+cowards. Bring the soldier into action, and his blood will run hot
+enough to make him intoxicated and insensible to fear; hold him in
+reserve, and courage will begin to ooze. Give us daylight in which we
+may see aught that threatens us, and likely enough we shall have
+desperate courage sufficient to rush in and grapple; it is in the
+darkness that uncertainty sets teeth chattering. More prayers are
+said, and with more devotion, at night than in the morning. We creep
+and crawl and squirm to heaven when the uncertainty of the night has
+to be faced; but we can get along well enough, thank you, when we
+spring out of bed with the courage of morning.
+
+George could not work until he knew whether he was to be swung high or
+thrown low. He paced his room; glimpsed his watch; tremendously
+smoked--and groaned aloud as, at every turn, he would receive the
+buffets of recollection of some important point upon which he had
+omitted to school his Mary.
+
+In those desperate moments he decided finally that Margaret should not
+be told that Mary and he were so much more than strangers. Supposing
+all went well, and his Mary came to Herons' Holt, her safety and his
+would certainly be imperilled by giving the key of their secret to his
+cousin. It was a hard resolve. About the beautiful romance of the
+thing Margaret's nature would have crooned as a mother over her
+suckling. She would have mothered it, cherished it, given them a
+hundred opportunities of exchanging for clasps and whispers the chilly
+demeanour they must bear one to another. But the pleasure must be
+foregone. My George had the astonishing sense to know that the animal
+instinct in Margaret's nature would outride the romance. Twice the
+countless years that separate us from the gathering of our first
+instincts may pass, and this the strongest of them--the abhorrence of
+secrecy-will never be uprooted. When all life was a ferocious struggle
+for life, secrecy--and it would have been the secret of a store of
+food--was inimical to the existence of the pack: it was opposed to the
+first of the slowly forming laws of nature. There must be equality of
+opportunity that all might equally be tested. Thus it was that a
+secret hoard of food, when come upon, instantly was noised abroad by
+the discoverer, and its possessor torn to death; and thus it is to-day
+that a secret once beyond the persons immediately concerned is carried
+from mouth to mouth till the world has it, and its first possessors
+take the violence of discovery.
+
+For a reason that was almost similar George negatived the impulse
+which bade him meet his Mary at the station, walk with her to the
+house, and leave her before the gates. For, supposing again that she
+were accepted and came to Herons' Holt, this suspicious meeting would
+come flying to Mr. Marrapit upon the breezes that whirl in and out of
+every cranny and nook in small communities. Towns are blind and deaf;
+villages have peeping eyes, straining ears, loose mouths, that pry and
+listen and whisper.
+
+Almost upon the hour of twelve there came to the agitated young man's
+ears a ring that could be none other than hers.
+
+He tip-toed to the banisters; peered below. His Mary was ushered in.
+
+While she stood behind the maid who tapped on Mr. Marrapit's door, she
+glanced up. George had a glimpse of her face; waved encouragement from
+the stairhead.
+
+The maid stood aside. His Mary passed in to the ogre's den.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Clad in a dressing-gown, Mr. Marrapit was standing against the
+fireplace. My trembling Mary settled just clear of the closing door;
+took his gaze. He put his eye upon her face; slowly travelled it down
+her person; rested it upon her little shoes; again brought it up;
+again carried it down; this time left it at her feet.
+
+The gaze seemed to burn her stockings. She shuffled; little squirms of
+fright nudged her. She glanced at her feet, fearful of some hideous
+hole in her shoes.
+
+"I am--" she jerked.
+
+Then Mr. Marrapit spoke: "I see you are. Discontinue."
+
+The command was shot at her. Trembling against the shock she could
+only murmur: "Discontinue?"
+
+"Assuredly. Discontinue. Refrain. Adjust."
+
+"Discontinue...?" With difficulty she articulated the word, then put
+after it on a little squeak: "... What?"
+
+"It," rapped Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"I am afraid--"
+
+"I quake in terror."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Pah!" Mr. Marrapit exclaimed. "You said 'I am.' Were you not about to
+say 'I am standing on the polished boards'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I believed that was in your mind. Let it now enter your mind. You are
+on the polished boards. You have high heels. I quake in terror lest
+they have left scratch or blemish. Adjust your position."
+
+Mary stepped to the carpet. She was dumb before this man.
+
+Mr. Marrapit bent above the polished flooring where she had stood.
+"There is no scratch," he announced, "neither is there any blemish."
+He resumed his post against the fireplace and again regarded her: "You
+are young."
+
+"I am older really."
+
+"Elucidate that."
+
+"I mean--I am not inexperienced."
+
+"Why say one thing and mean another? Beware the habit. It is
+perilous."
+
+"Indeed it is not my habit."
+
+"It is your recreation, then. Do not indulge it. Continue."
+
+"I am young, but I have had experience. I think if you were to engage
+me I would give you satisfaction."
+
+"Adduce grounds."
+
+"I would try in every way to do as you required. I understand I am to
+look after cats."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Here."
+
+"Abandon that impression. I have not said so."
+
+"No, I mean if you engage me."
+
+"Again you say one thing and mean another. I am suspicious. It is a
+habit."
+
+"Oh, _indeed_ it is not."
+
+"Then if a recreation, a recreation to which you are devoted. You romp
+in it. Twice within a minute you have gambolled."
+
+My Mary blinked tears. Since rising that morning, her nerves had been
+upon the stretch against this interview. She had schooled herself
+against all possibilities so as to win into the house of her dear
+George, yet at every moment she seemed to fall further from success.
+
+"You ca-catch me up so," she trembled.
+
+Mr. Marrapit expanded upwards. "Catch you up! A horrible accusation.
+The table is between us."
+
+"You mis-misunderstand me." She silenced a little sniff with a dab of
+her handkerchief. She looked very pretty. Mr. Marrapit placed beside
+her the mental image of Mrs. Major; and at every point she had the
+prize. He liked the soft gold hair; he liked the forlorn little face
+it enframed; he liked the slim little form. His cats, he suspected,
+would appreciate those nice little hands; he judged her to have nice
+firm legs against which his cats could rub. Mrs. Major's, he
+apprehended, would have been bony; not legs, but shanks.
+
+Mary made another dab at her now red little nose. The silence
+increased her silly fright. "You mis-misunderstand me," she repeated.
+
+With less asperity Mr. Marrapit told her: "I cannot accept the blame.
+You wrap your meanings. I plunge and grope after them. Eluding me, I
+am compelled to believe them wilfully thrown. Strive to let your yea
+be yea and your nay nay. With circumspection proceed."
+
+Mary gathered her emotion with a final little sniff. "I like ca-cats."
+
+"I implore you not to accuse me of misunderstanding you. A question is
+essential. You do not always pronounce 'cats' in two syllables?"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Satisfactory. You said 'ca-cats.' Doubtless under stress of emotion.
+Proceed."
+
+Mary sniffed; proceeded. "I like ca-cats--cats. If you were to engage
+me I am sure your cats would take to me."
+
+"I admit the possibility. I like your appearance. I like your voice.
+Had you knowledge of the acute supersensitiveness of my cats you would
+understand that they will appreciate those points. I do not require in
+you veterinary knowledge; I require sympathetic traits. I do not
+engage you to nurse my cats--though, should mischance befall, that
+would come within your duties,--but to be their companion, their
+friend. You are a lady; themselves ancestral they will appreciate
+that. I understand you are an orphan; there also a bond links you with
+them. All cats are orphans. It is the sole unfortunate trait of their
+characters that they are prone to forget their offspring. In so far as
+it is possible to correct this failing amongst my own cats, I have
+done my best. Amongst them the sanctity of the marriage tie is
+strictly observed. The word stud is peculiarly abhorrent to me.
+Polygamy is odious. There is a final point. Pray seat yourself."
+
+Mary took a chair. Mr. Marrapit, standing before her, gazed down upon
+her. From her left he gazed, then from her right. He returned to the
+fireplace.
+
+"It is satisfactory," he said. "You have a nice lap. That is of first
+importance. The question of wages has been settled. Arrive to-morrow.
+You are engaged."
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+Of Mr. Marrapit upon the Rack: of George in Torment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Prosiness Upon Events: So Uneventful That It Should Be Skipped.
+
+
+If we write that Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful, we
+use the term as a figure of speech that must be taken in its accepted
+sense; not read literally. For it is impossible that life, in whatever
+conditions, can be eventless. The dullest life is often with events
+the most crowded. In dulness we are thrown back upon our inner selves,
+and that inner self is of a construction so sensitive that each
+lightest thought is an event that leaves an impression.
+
+In action, in gaiety, in intercourse we put out an unnatural self to
+brunt the beat of events. We are upon our guard. There are eyes
+watching us, and from their gaze we by instinct fend our inner self
+just as by instinct we fend our nakedness.
+
+Overmuch crowded with such events, the inner self is prone to shrivel,
+to fade beneath lack of nutriment; and it may happen that in time the
+unnatural self will take its place, will become our very self.
+
+That is gravely to our disadvantage. Overmuch in action, the man of
+affairs may win the admiration of a surface-seeing world; may capture
+the benefits of strong purpose, of wealth, and of position. But he is
+in danger of utterly losing the fruits that only by the inner, the
+original, and true self can be garnered.
+
+Life presents for our pursuit two sets of treasures. The one may be
+had by the labours of the hands; the other by exercise of the
+intellect--the true self. And at once this may be said: that the
+treasures heaped by the hands soil the hands, and the stain sinks
+deep. The stain enters the blood and, thence oozing, pigments every
+part of the being--the face, the voice, the mind, the thoughts. For we
+cannot labour overlong in the fields without besweating the brow; and
+certainly we cannot ceaselessly toil after the material treasures of
+life without gathering the traces of that labour upon our souls. It
+stains, and the stain is ugly.
+
+Coming to treasures stored by exercise of the intellect, the true
+self, these also put their mark upon the possessor; but the action is
+different and the results are different. Here the pigment that colours
+the life does not come from without but distils from within. Man does
+not stoop to rend these treasures from the earth; he rises to them.
+They do not bow; they uplift. They are not wrenched in trampling
+struggle from the sties where men battle for the troughs; they are
+absorbed from the truths of life that are as breezes upon the little
+hills. They are in the face of Nature and in Nature's heart; they are
+in the written thoughts of men whose thoughts rushed upward like
+flames, not dropped like plummet-stones--soared after truth and struck
+it to our understanding, not made soundings for earthy possessions
+showing how these might be gained.
+
+Yet it is not to be urged that the quest of material treasures is to
+be despised, or that life properly lived is life solely dreaming among
+truths. The writer who made the story of the Israelites sickening of
+manna, wrapped in legend the precept that man to live must work for
+life. We are not living if we are not working. We cannot have strength
+but we win meat to make strength.
+
+No; my protest is against the heaping of material treasure to the
+neglect of treasure stored by the true self. Material treasure is not
+ours. We but have the enjoyment of it while we can defend it from the
+forces that constantly threaten it. Misfortune, sorrow, sickness--
+these are ever in leash against us; may at any moment be slipped.
+Misfortune may whirl our material treasures from us; sorrow or
+sickness may canker them, turn them to ashes in the mouth. They are
+not ours; we hold them upon sufferance. But the treasures of the
+intellect, the gift of being upon nodding terms with truth, these are
+treasures that are our impregnable own. Nothing can filch them,
+nothing canker them: they are our own--imperishable, inexhaustible;
+never wanting when called upon; balm to heal the blows of adversity,
+specific against all things malign. Cultivate the perception of
+beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to distinguish between the
+realities of life and the dross of life; and you have a great shield
+of fortitude of which certainly man cannot rob you, and against which
+sickness, sorrow, or misfortune may strike tremendous blows without so
+much as bruising the real you.
+
+And it is in the life that is called uneventful that there is the most
+opportunity for storing these treasures of the intellect. Perhaps
+there is also the greater necessity. In the dull round of things we
+are thrown in upon ourselves, and by every lightest thought and deed
+either are strengthening that inner self or are sapping it. Either we
+are reading the thoughts of men whose thoughts heap a priceless store
+within us, or we are reading that which--though we are unaware--
+vitiates and puts further and further beyond our grasp the truths of
+life; either we are watching our lives and schooling them to feed upon
+thoughts and deeds that will uplift them, or we are neglecting them,
+and allowing them to browse where they will upon the rank weeds of
+petty spites, petty jealousies, petty gossipings and petty deeds. In
+action we may have no time to waste over this poisonous herbage; but
+in dulness most certainly we do have the temptation--and as we resist
+or succumb so shall we conduct ourselves when the larger events of
+life call us into the lists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Margaret Fishes; Mary Prays.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful: need not be
+recorded. We are following the passage of the love 'twixt her and
+George; and within the radius of Mr. Marrapit's eye love durst not
+creep. She saw little of her George. They were most carefully
+circumspect in their attitude one to another, and conscience made
+their circumspection trebly stiff. There are politenesses to be
+observed between the inmates of a house, but my Mary and my George, in
+terror lest even these should be misconstrued, studiously neglected
+them.
+
+The aloofness troubled Margaret. This girl wrapped her sentiment about
+Mary; delighting in one who, so pretty, so young, so gentle-voiced,
+must face life in an alien home. The girls came naturally together,
+and it was not long before Margaret bubbled out her vocation.
+
+The talk was upon books. Margaret turned away her head; said in the
+voice of one hurrying over a commonplace: "I write, you know."
+
+She tingled for the "Do you?" from her companion, but it did not come,
+and this was very disappointing.
+
+She stole a glance at Mary, sitting with a far-away expression in her
+eyes (the ridiculous girl had heard an engine whistle; knew it to be
+the train that was taking her George to London). Margaret stole a
+glance at Mary; repeated louder: "I write, you know."
+
+It fetched the delicious response. Mary started: "Do you?"
+
+Margaret said hurriedly: "Oh, nothing worth speaking of."
+
+Mary said: "Oh!"; gave her thoughts again to the train.
+
+It was wretched of her. "Poems," said Margaret, and stressed the word
+"_Poems_."
+
+Mary came flying back from the train. "Oh, how interesting that is!"
+
+At once Margaret drew away. "Oh, it is nothing," she said, "nothing."
+She put her eyes upon the far clouds; breathed "Nothing" in a long
+sigh.
+
+From this it was not a far step to reading, with terrible reluctance,
+her poems to Mary; nor from this again was it other than an obvious
+step to telling of Bill. Her pretty verses were so clearly written at
+some heart which throbbed responsive, that Mary must needs put the
+question. It came after a full hour's reading--the poet sitting upon
+her bed in a litter of manuscripts, Mary in a low chair before her.
+
+In a tremulous voice the poet concluded the refrain of an exquisite
+verse:
+
+  "Beat for beat, your heart, my darling,
+          Beats with mine.
+  Skylarks carol, quick responsive,
+          Love divine."
+
+The poet gave a little gulp; laid down her paper.
+
+Mary also gulped. From both their pretty persons emotion welled in a
+great flood that filled the room.
+
+"I'm sure that is written _to_ somebody," Mary breathed.
+
+Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing
+to be capable of words.
+
+Mary implored: "Oh, do tell me!"
+
+Then Margaret told the story of Bill--with intimate details and in the
+beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding
+emotion piled upwards to the very roof.
+
+Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will
+examine a baby--if they must--with a bashful diffidence that pulls
+down the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch
+of its chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love--
+if they must--with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
+
+It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must
+not be discovered.
+
+When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her
+confidence: "And have you--are you--I know practically nothing about
+you, Mary, dear. _Do_ tell me, are _you_ in love?"
+
+Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She
+laughed. "Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?"
+
+Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
+
+Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another
+by knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer
+sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the
+arrow that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions
+so that she should not flinch at the wound.
+
+Margaret twanged the bow-string. "No time to fall in love?" she
+murmured. She fitted the shaft; let fly. "Do you like George, dear?"
+
+Mary stooped to her shoe-laces. Despite her preparations the arrow had
+pierced, and she hid her face to hide the blood.
+
+"George?" said she, head to floor.
+
+"Yes, George. Do you like George?"
+
+My Mary sat up, brazen. "George? Oh, you mean your cousin? I daresay
+he's very nice. Practically I've never even spoken to him since I've
+been here."
+
+"I know. Of course he's very busy just now. Do you think you would
+like him if you did know him?"
+
+It was murderous work. Mary was beginning to quiver beneath the
+arrows; was in terror lest she should betray the secret. A desperate
+kick was necessary. She wildly searched for a foothold; found it;
+kicked:
+
+"I'm sure I shouldn't like him."
+
+The poet softly protested: "Oh why, Mary?"
+
+"He's clean-shaven."
+
+"And you don't like a--"
+
+"I can't stand a--"
+
+"But if he had a--"
+
+"Oh, if he had a--Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly."
+She fled.
+
+Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope
+paper towards her; wrote:
+
+  "Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?"
+
+A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued
+the idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his
+return. After a few paces, "George," she asked, "do you like Mary?"
+
+George was never taken aback. "Mary? Mary who?"
+
+"Miss Humfray."
+
+"Oh, is her name Mary?"
+
+"Of course it is." Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up
+at him. "Do you like her, George?"
+
+"Like whom?"
+
+"Why, Mary--Miss Humfray."
+
+"Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major--in some ways. If
+that's what you mean."
+
+Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this
+girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.
+
+"George, dear, I wish you would do something for me."
+
+"Anything."
+
+"How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?"
+
+She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from
+his pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.
+
+She asked him: "What is the matter?"
+
+He said brokenly: "You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a
+moustache. It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one
+way. It is by pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a
+tooth-brush and tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have
+to do it every morning, and I somehow can never remember it."
+
+Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.
+
+She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic
+temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept
+waiting for its meals.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the
+hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate,
+and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of
+an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to
+approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated
+air advertised long neglect.
+
+It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by
+chance, George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into
+the copse, had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick
+undergrowth had plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had
+taken him within, shown him an outer and an inner room, and, in the
+second, a sight that had given him laughter; for he discovered there
+sundry empty bottles labelled "Old Tom," a glass, an envelope
+addressed to Mrs. Major. It was clear that in this deserted place--
+somehow chanced upon--the masterly woman had been wont, safe from
+disturbance, to meet the rascal who, taken to Herons' Holt on that
+famous night, had so villainously laid her by the heels.
+
+Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this
+day when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief
+whispered moment to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking
+pale, had told her to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately
+George gave her directions for the hut; there he would meet her at
+five o'clock; there not the most prying eye could reach them.
+
+Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him,
+just within the threshold of the open door. It was their first
+secluded meeting since she had come to Herons' Holt.
+
+Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed "I have thee, girl";
+sprang on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.
+
+"The first moment together in Paltley Hill!" he cried. "The first holy
+kiss!"
+
+His Mary wriggled. "George! You frightened me nearly out of my life.
+It's not holy. You're hurting me awfully."
+
+"My child, it is holy. Trust in me."
+
+"George, you _are_ hurting."
+
+"Scorn that. It is delicious!"
+
+He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a space,
+looking at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild
+spirits, despite her roguishness, for a space they did not speak. His
+hands were below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was
+the junction whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being
+received and pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without
+hitch or delay the delectable thrill came pouring; above, between
+their eyes, on wires invisible they signalled its safe arrival.
+
+They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the
+intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with
+thirst will with a little sigh put down the glass that has touched him
+back to vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made
+them dumb before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they
+had been whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit
+through the medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven
+out of us, we are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted
+for the needs about us, we have no words to express the elevation.
+Debase love and we can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its
+apotheosis and we must be dumb.
+
+With a little laugh they broke.
+
+"Going on all right, old girl?" George asked.
+
+"Splendidly."
+
+"Happy?"
+
+She laughed and said: "I will give the proper answer to that. How can
+I be other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?"
+
+"I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way--very, very
+lucky. Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure.
+Cherish it, tend it, love it."
+
+"Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you
+waste them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me--about your exam."
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+She was at once serious. "To-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow
+my angel voice trills in the examiners' ears."
+
+"I thought you had a paper first, before the viva?"
+
+"Do not snap me up, girl. I speak in metaphors. To-morrow my angel
+hand glides my pen over the paper. On Thursday my angel tongue gives
+forth my wisdom with the sound of a tinkling cymbal."
+
+"The paper to-morrow, the viva on Thursday?"
+
+He bowed his angel head.
+
+"George, don't, _don't_ fool. Are you nervous? Will you pass?"
+
+"I shall rush, I shall bound. I shall hurtle through like a great
+boulder."
+
+"_Georgie!_ Will you?"
+
+He dropped his banter. "I believe I shall, old girl. I really think I
+shall. I've simply sweated my life out these weeks--all for you."
+
+She patted his hand. "Dear old George! How I shall think of you! And
+then?"
+
+"Then--why, then, we'll marry! Mary, I shall hear the result
+immediately after the viva. Then I shall rush back here and tackle old
+Marrapit at once. If he won't give me the money I think perhaps he'll
+lend it, and then we'll shoot off to Runnygate and take up that
+practice and live happily ever after."
+
+With the brave ardour of youth they discussed the delectable picture;
+arranged the rooms they had never seen; planned the daily life of
+which they had not the smallest experience.
+
+Twice in our lives we can play at Make-Believe--once when we are
+children, once when we are lovers. And these are the happiest times of
+our lives. We are not commoners then; we are emperors. We touch the
+sceptre and it is a magic wand. We rule the world, shaping it as we
+will, dropping from between our fingers all the stony obstacles that
+would interfere with its plasticity. Between childhood and love, and
+between love and death, the world rules us and bruises us. But in
+childhood, and again in love, we rule the world.
+
+So they ruled their world.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+That night Mary prayed her George might pass his examination--a prayer
+to make us wise folk laugh. The idea of our conception of the Divinity
+deliberately thrusting into George's mind knowledge that he otherwise
+had not, the idea of the Divinity deliberately prompting the examiners
+to questions that George could answer--these are ludicrous to us in
+our wisdom. We have the superiority of my simple Mary in point of
+intelligence; well, let us hug that treasure and make the most of it.
+Because we miss the sense of confidence with which Mary got from her
+knees; passed into her dreams. With our fine intellects we should lie
+awake fretting such troubles. These simple, stupid Marys just hand the
+tangle on and sleep comforted. They call it Faith.
+
+Yes, but isn't it grand to be of that fine, brave, intellectual, hard-
+headed, business-like stamp that trusts nothing it cannot see and
+prove? Rather!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Barley Water For Mr. Marrapit.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Up the drive George came bounding with huge strides. The fires of
+tremendous joy that roared within him impelled him to enormous energy.
+
+Upon the journey from Waterloo to Paltley Hill he could with
+difficulty restrain himself from leaping upon the seat; bawling "I've
+passed! I've passed! I'm qualified!" He could not sit still. He
+fidgeted, wriggled; thrust his head first from one window, then from
+the other. Every foot of the line was well known to him. To each
+familiar landmark his spirit bellowed: "Greeting! When last you saw me
+I was coming up in a blue funk. Now! Oh, good God, now--" and he would
+draw in, stride the carriage, and thrust his head from the other
+window.
+
+His four fellow-passengers regarded him with some apprehension. They
+detected signs of lunacy in the young man; kept a nervous eye cocked
+upon the alarm cord; at the first stopping place with one accord arose
+and fled. One, signing herself "Lady Shareholder," had her alarming
+experience in her daily-paper upon the following morning.
+
+At his station George leapt for the platform a full minute before the
+train had stopped. Up the lanes he sent his bursting spirits flying in
+shrill whistlings and gay hummings; slashed stones with his stick;
+struck across the fields and took gates and stiles in great spread-
+eagled vaults.
+
+So up the drive, stones still flying, whistlings still piping.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon the lawn he espied Mr. Marrapit and his Mary. She, on a garden
+seat, was reading aloud from the _Times_; Mr. Marrapit, on a deep
+chair stretched to make lap for the Rose of Sharon, sat a little in
+advance of her.
+
+George approached from Mr. Marrapit's flank; soft turf muffled his
+strides. The warm glow of kindliness towards all the world, which his
+success had stoked burning within him, put a foreign word upon his
+tongue. He sped it on a boisterous note:
+
+"Uncle!" he cried. "Uncle, I've passed!"
+
+Mary crushed the _Times_ between her hands; bounded to her feet. "Oh!"
+she cried. "Hip! hur--!"
+
+She bit the final exclamation; dropped to her seat. Mr. Marrapit had
+twisted his eye upon her.
+
+"You are in pain?" he asked.
+
+"No--oh, no."
+
+"You have a pang in the hip?"
+
+"Oh no--no."
+
+"But you bounded. You cried 'hip'! Whose hip?"
+
+"I was startled."
+
+"Unsatisfactory. The brain, not the hip, is the seat of the emotion.
+Elucidate."
+
+"I don't know why I said 'hip.' I was startled. Mr. George startled
+me."
+
+"Me also he startled. I did not shout hip, thigh, leg nor knee.
+Control the tongue."
+
+He turned to George. "Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has
+projected this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you repeat it."
+
+Sprayed upon between mortification and laughter at the manner of his
+greeting, George's enthusiasm was a little damped. But its flame was
+too fierce to be hurt by a shower. Now it roared again. "I've passed!"
+he cried. "I'm qualified!"
+
+"I tender my felicitations. Accept them. Leave us, Miss Humfray. This
+is a mighty hour. Take the Rose. Give her cream. Let her with us
+rejoice."
+
+Mary raised the cat. She faced about so that she directly shut Mr.
+Marrapit from his nephew; with her dancing eyes spoke her happiness to
+her George; passed down the lawn.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright.
+"Again, accept my felicitations," he said. "They are yours. Take
+them."
+
+With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: "It is a
+mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to
+port, through hurts to harbour."
+
+He paused.
+
+"You mean--" George said, groping.
+
+"Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our
+minds and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand.
+Westward the setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows.
+Between us the horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer
+stands. It is banished by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is
+ended. The vow which I swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept.
+I would nourish you, I declared, until you were a qualified physician.
+You are a qualified physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the
+future, upon a written invitation, I trust you will visit this home in
+which your youth has been spent. When do you leave?"
+
+The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm
+came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He
+had not anticipated it. He jerked: "When do I--leave?"
+
+"Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness
+and waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When
+does it fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope,
+spend beneath my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?"
+
+George flamed. "You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me."
+
+Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:
+
+"Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood." He
+became stern. "Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not
+to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to
+wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you
+Godspeed."
+
+George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became
+humble. "I am sorry," he said. "I see what you mean. I appreciate your
+kindness. You ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them
+before you."
+
+Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one
+waiting a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some
+kind would be necessary. "Proceed," he said.
+
+George said: "My plans--" He swallowed. "My plans--" Again he
+swallowed. His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought
+despairingly for one that would not at the very outset turn Mr.
+Marrapit into screams. "My plans--" he stammered.
+
+"My God!" Mr. Marrapit groaned. "My God! What is coming?"
+
+George said on a rush: "These are my plans. I intend to marry--"
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.
+
+"Then--then--" said George, floundering. "After that--then--I intend
+to marry--I--"
+
+"Bigamy," Mr. Marrapit murmured. "Bigamy."
+
+"Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little
+seaside practice that is for sale."
+
+Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes
+half closed, face working upon some inward stress.
+
+"Those are my plans," George summarised: "to marry and buy this
+practice."
+
+A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face
+ceased; he opened his eyes, sat up. "When?" he asked.
+
+"At once."
+
+"This practice--"
+
+"I have it in my eye."
+
+"Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?"
+
+"You mean the price?"
+
+"I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes."
+
+"Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you."
+
+"To _me?_"
+
+"Yes. I wanted to ask--"
+
+"You intend to ask me for money?"
+
+"I want to suggest--"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Four--five hundred pounds."
+
+"Great heaven!" Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the
+end of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: "Margaret!"
+
+She tripped to him. "Father! What is it?"
+
+"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit throated. "Barley water!"
+
+While she was upon her errand no--words passed between the two. Mr.
+Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. "Leave us," he
+said. He drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench
+beside him; gave George a wan smile. "I am stricken in years," he
+said. "I have passed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will
+have had experience of such affections of the brain. I thought"--the
+hideous memory shook him--"I thought you asked me for five hundred
+pounds."
+
+George said defiantly: "I did."
+
+Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly
+gulped. "I shall have a stroke," he cried. "My hour is at hand."
+
+My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. "Oh, I say, uncle,
+don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me."
+
+"I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences
+to myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns."
+
+George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. "Oh,
+for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is
+it impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I
+ask, you have only to say no."
+
+"You promise that?"
+
+"Of course; of course."
+
+"I say it now, then. No."
+
+"But you haven't heard me."
+
+"Unnecessary."
+
+The tortured young man raised his voice.
+
+"It is necessary! You shall! You must!"
+
+"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit gasped. "Barley water! I am going to be
+murdered."
+
+"Oh, this is insupportable!" George cried.
+
+"I endorse that. A double death threatens me. I shudder between a
+stroke and a blow. I shall be battered to death on my own lawn."
+
+"If you would only listen to me," George implored. "Why can we never
+be natural when we meet?"
+
+"Search your heart for the answer," Mr. Marrapit told him. "It is
+because your demands are unnatural."
+
+"You haven't heard them. Listen. I am on the threshold of my career. I
+am sure you will not ruin it. The real price of this practice is 650
+pounds--the value of a year and a half's income; that is the usual
+custom. I am offered it for four hundred. Then I want to marry and to
+have a little balance with which to start--say 100 pounds for that.
+That makes 500 pounds altogether. I implore you to lend--lend, not
+give--that sum. I will pay you back 50 pounds at the end of the first
+year and a hundred a year afterwards. Interest too. I don't know much
+about these things. Any interest you like. We would get a solicitor to
+draw up an agreement. Say you will lend the money. I feel sure you
+will."
+
+"You delude yourself by that assurance."
+
+"Oh, wait before you refuse. My prospects are so bright if only you
+will help me. I have no one else to whom I can turn. It is only a loan
+I ask."
+
+"It is refused."
+
+George stamped away, hands to head. The poor boy was in agony. Then
+returned:
+
+"I won't believe you. You will not be so heartless. Think over what I
+have said. Tell me to-night--to-morrow."
+
+"My answer would be the same."
+
+"You absolutely refuse to lend me the money?"
+
+"I refuse. It is against my principles."
+
+My frantic George clutched at a shimmering hope. "Against your
+principles to lend? Do you mean that you will give--give me 500
+pounds?"
+
+"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit gasped. He drank; gasped: "Give 500
+pounds! You are light-headed!"
+
+"Then lend it!" George supplicated on a last appeal. "Make any
+conditions you please, and I will accept them. Uncle, think of when
+you were a young man. Remember the time when you were on the threshold
+of your career. Think of when you were engaged as I am now engaged.
+Imagine your feelings if you had been prevented marrying. You won't
+stand in my way? The happiest life is before me if you will only give
+your aid. Otherwise--otherwise--oh, I say, you won't refuse?"
+
+"I implore you to close this distressing scene."
+
+"Will you lend me the money?"
+
+"My principles prevent me."
+
+"Then damn your principles!" George shouted. "Damn your principles!"
+
+While he had been battering his head against this brick wall he had
+been saved pain by the hope that a last chance would carry him
+through. Now that he realised the futility of the endeavour, the
+stability of the wall, he had time to feel the bruising he had
+suffered--the bitterness of failure and of all that failure meant. The
+hurts combined to make him roar with pain, and he shouted furiously
+again: "Damn your principles!"
+
+"Barley water!" throated Mr. Marrapit on a note of terror. He reached
+for the glass. It was empty.
+
+He struggled to his feet; got the chair between George and himself;
+cried across it: "Beware how you touch me."
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to touch you. You needn't be afraid."
+
+"I have every need. I am afraid. Keep your distance. You are not
+responsible for your actions."
+
+"You needn't be afraid, I tell you. It is too ridiculous."
+
+"I repeat I have need. Keep your distance. My limbs tremble as one in
+a palsy." Mr. Marrapit gripped the chair-back; his shudders advertised
+his distress.
+
+"I only want to say this," George declaimed, "that if you refuse what
+I ask, you are refusing what is lawfully mine. My mother left you 4000
+pounds for my education. At the outside you have spent three. The 500
+pounds is mine. I have a right to it."
+
+"Keep your distance, sir."
+
+My furious George took three steps forward.
+
+"Can you answer what I say?" he shouted.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave a thin cry: turned, and with surprising bounds made
+across the lawn. A slipper shot from his foot. He alighted upon a
+stone; bounded heavenwards with a shrill scream; and hopping, leaping,
+shuffling, made the corner of the house.
+
+George swung on his heel. It occurred to him to visit Bill Wyvern.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Rape Of The Rose.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Bill was away from home, the maid who answered the door told George;
+Mrs. Wyvern was out; the Professor was in his study.
+
+George found the great biologist warming his chilly old bones in a
+vast armchair before a fire.
+
+With a twinkling of his sky-blue eyes that spoke to pleasant temper,
+the Professor greeted George; nodded him into an opposite seat.
+
+"I am reading a letter," he announced. This man spoke very slowly,
+never abbreviated; had now an air of child-like happiness. "It is a
+letter from Bill."
+
+George said: "Ah, what is Bill doing? I've not seen him for days."
+
+Professor Wyvern chuckled away and fumbled with clumsy old fingers
+among the closely-written sheets on his lap. One he selected and
+inclined towards George. Its upper half was thickly lettered in heavy
+red type, prominent among which there bawled forth in wavy capitals,
+thickly underscored:
+
+  "THE DAILY." EVERYBODY'S PAPER. PRICE 1/2d.
+
+"Hot stuff!" George cried. "Is old Bill on the staff of the
+_Daily_?"
+
+"Old Bill is on the staff of the _Daily_," the Professor returned
+with more chuckling. "You have heard of it?"
+
+"Well, it's advertised everywhere. You can't get away from it. First
+number out to-morrow, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it is. I think it will be a very terrible production--a very
+horrible production indeed. But I am an annual subscriber because of
+Bill, and I have written a short article for the first issue also
+because of Bill. Bill says" (the Professor fumbled again; ran his nose
+twice up and down each sheet; finally struck the passage) "Bill says,
+'You were a brick, dear old governor, to send that article. It is a
+most thundering scoop for the _Daily_, and made the Boss most
+awfully bucked up with me. You are a brick, dear old Governor."
+
+A little tear rolled out of Professor Wyvern's silly old eye, and he
+blew his nose in a series of terrific thunder-claps.
+
+"There!" he said. "You see how pleased Bill is with himself. I am
+afraid he uses the most terrible expressions in his letters, but he
+does not use them when he is writing his stories. He is a clever boy,
+and I am very proud of him. Now let me tell you." He fell to nosing
+the sheets again. "All this first part is about his dogs. '... if
+Abiram and Dathan start scrapping, just hoof Abiram--it's his fault.'"
+
+The Professor looked up at George. "I would more readily kick a police
+constable than I would kick Abiram," he said. "I must tell Hocken all
+this."
+
+He continued, "'... see that Korah is kept short of meat for a bit ...
+when they are exercising, for goodness' sake don't let them be taken
+down Windmill Lane. There is a collie there that they have got a
+grudge against and will tear to bits if they catch.'"
+
+The Professor paused. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! I must give all this part
+to Hocken to keep. Ah! Now here is about his work. They have engaged
+him at four pounds a week. He does not know exactly what he is. Not a
+sub-editor. Not a reporter. He thinks they will put him on to what he
+calls 'special jobs,' or he may have to do what he calls 'ferret
+round' and find jobs for himself. The understanding is that he is only
+on probation. If he does anything very good they will put him on the
+permanent staff; if not, he is liable to go at a week's notice. Then
+he says, 'Tell all this to George, and give him my love. He was up for
+his exam--'"
+
+Professor Wyvern broke off. "Dear me!" he cried; "oh, dear me, I have
+forgotten! You have been up for your examination?"
+
+George nodded.
+
+Kindly old Professor Wyvern misinterpreted the lack of enthusiasm.
+"When I was a medical student," he said, "I failed dozens of times in
+my final examination--dozens. It's no criterion of knowledge, you
+know: it is just luck. Never let examination failure dishearten you.
+Go along happily, George, and take your chance when it comes."
+
+"It's come," George said, beaming; recollection of his splendid
+success temporarily overshadowed recollection of his tragic failure.
+
+"You have qualified?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Professor's sky-blue eyes danced with glee. He struggled on to his
+tottery old legs; before George could save him the exertion, had
+hobbled over the hearth-rug and was wringing his hand in tremendous
+pleasure.
+
+"Well done, George!" he bubbled. "Well done! Well done! It is the most
+splendid news. I have not had such a happy day for a long time.
+Qualified! Well, that is splendid! Splendid!"
+
+He fell back into his chair, panting with his excitement. "Ring that
+bell, George. We must celebrate this."
+
+A maid appeared. "Susan," said the Professor, "bring up a small bottle
+of champagne and two glasses. Mr. George has passed his examination.
+Be very quick, Susan."
+
+Susan was very quick. The cork popped; the glasses foamed and fizzed.
+"Now we will have one glass each," the Professor said. "I think, it
+will kill me at this hour, and if my wife catches me she will send me
+to bed; so we must be very quick. Now, this is your health, George.
+God bless you and good luck!"
+
+He drained his glass like the brave old boy that he was; and when his
+eyes had done streaming, and he had finished gasping and choking, bade
+Susan hurry away the signs of the dreadful deed before her mistress
+should catch her.
+
+"And now tell me your plans, George. Which road to Harley Street, eh?"
+
+Then George poured into those kindly old ears all the tragic story--
+the girl he was going to marry; the practice he was going to buy; the
+wrecker who had wrecked his fair ships ere ever he had put to sea.
+
+There were in the Professor's nature no sympathies that enabled him
+even to comprehend miserliness in any degree. Made aware of the taint
+in Mr. Marrapit, he became red and furious in his abhorrence of it.
+With snorts and fumes he punctuated the recital; when it closed, burst
+out: "Why, but it is yours! the money is yours. It is misappropriation."
+"That's just what I say." "Well, he must be made to give it you."
+George laughed grimly. "I say that, too. But how?"
+
+"Are you certain of your facts, George?" "I've been to Somerset house
+and seen my mother's will."
+
+"Legally, then--we'll get it out of him by law." "I've thought of
+that," George said. "I don't think it is possible. Look, the passage
+runs like this. I have it word for word. 'To my brother Christopher
+Marrapit 4000 pounds, and I desire him to educate in the medical
+profession my son George.' Not even 'with which I desire him,' you
+see. I don't think there's any legal way of getting the money I want--
+the five hundred."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+For full ten minutes Professor Wyvern made no answer. He stared in the
+fire, and every now and again one of his little chuckles set his bent
+old shoulders bobbing. Upon a longer chuckle they waggled for a space;
+then he turned to George. "Not legally; well, then, what about
+illegally, George?"
+
+George did not comprehend.
+
+"A very bad notion has come into my head," the Professor continued. "I
+ought to be ashamed of it, but I am not. I think it would be very
+funny. I think your uncle would deserve it. I am sure it would be very
+funny, and I think it would be proper and justifiable."
+
+"Go on," George said. "Tell me."
+
+The Professor's old shoulders bobbed about again. "No, I will not tell
+you," he said. "I will not be a party to it; because if my wife found
+out she would send me to bed and keep me there. But I will tell you a
+little story, George. If it sets up a train of action that you like to
+follow--well, I think it will be very funny. Only, don't tell me."
+
+"I say, this is mysterious. Tell me the story."
+
+"Yes, I will. This is the story. When I was a student in Germany we
+had a professor called Meyer. He wore a wig because he was quite bald.
+He was very sensitive about his baldness and would have no one know--
+but we knew. Upon one afternoon there was a great violinist who was
+coming to play at our town. All the professors announced that for this
+occasion they would postpone the lectures they should then have given,
+so that their classes might attend the concert. But this Professor
+Meyer said that he would not postpone his lecture. It was a link in a
+series, you understand--not to be missed,--so his class, of which I
+was one; were very furious. We told him that we were entitled to a
+holiday this day since all had it, but he would not hear us. We were
+very angry, for this holiday was our right. Now, also, one week before
+the concert the burgomaster of our town was to give a great banquet to
+the celebration of the centenary of a famous citizen. Here our
+Professor Meyer was to make a speech. Well, when he remained adamant,
+determined to give us no holiday, we had a great meeting, and thus we
+arranged to procure the holiday that was ours by right. Our plot was
+justified by his mulishness. He should lose the thing he most
+cherished--he should lose his wig two days before his banquet with the
+burgomaster. One of us would take his wig, seizing him as by night he
+walked to his rooms. Before his distress we should be most
+sympathetic, offering every aid. Perchance he would encourage our
+efforts by offer of the prize we most desired. The plot worked, with
+no misadventure, to a brilliant triumph. We took the wig. We enveloped
+him in our sympathy. 'Search out and restore my wig,' said he, 'and
+you shall have your holiday.' Then we found his wig and we enjoyed the
+holiday that was our right. That is the story," Professor Wyvern
+ended.
+
+Mystification clouded George's face. He pushed out a leg, stared at
+the toe. He stared at the fire; at the Professor, chuckling and
+rubbing his hands, he stared. His brain twisted the story this way and
+that, striving to dovetail it into his own circumstances.
+
+In such a process the eyes are the mouth of the machine whence the
+completed manufacture sends forth its sparkling. But while the
+mechanism twists and turns the fabrics there is no sparkle--the eyes
+are clouded in thought, as we say.
+
+The eyes that George turned upon toe, upon fire, and upon Professor
+Wyvern, were dull and lack-lustre. The machine worked unproductive;
+there was a cog that required adjustment, a lever that wanted a pull.
+
+George sought the foreman machinist; said slowly: "But I don't see how
+the story helps me?"
+
+"Well, you must think over it," Professor Wyvern told him. "I dare not
+tell you any more. I must be no party to the inference that can be
+drawn. But do you not see that the thing our Professor cherished most
+was his wig? Now, Bill has told me that the thing your uncle cherishes
+above all price is--"
+
+Click went the machine; round buzzed the wheels; out from George's
+eyes shot the sparkles. He jumped to his feet, his face red. "Is his
+cat!" he cried. "His Rose of Sharon! I see it! I see it! By Gad, I'll
+do it! Look here now--"
+
+"No, I will not," the Professor said. "I do not wish to know anything
+about it. I hear my wife's step."
+
+"I understand. All right. But don't tell a soul--not even Bill."
+
+"I cannot tell, because I do not know. But I suspect it is something
+very funny," and the Professor burst into a very deep "Ho! ho! ho!"
+
+"My dearest," said Mrs. Wyvern at the door, "whatever can you be
+laughing at so loudly?"
+
+"Ho! ho! ho! ho!" boomed the Professor, belling like a bloodhound. "It
+is something very funny."
+
+Mrs. Wyvern kissed the thin hairs on the top of his mighty head. "Dear
+William, I do trust it was not one of those painful stories of your
+young days."
+
+George stayed to dinner. By nine he left the house. He did not make
+for home. Striking through lanes he climbed an ascending field,
+mounted a stile, and here, with an unseeing eye upon Herons' Holt
+twinkling its bedroom lights in the valley below, he smoked many
+pipes, brooding upon his scheme.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+It was not a melancholy process. Every now and again a crack of
+laughter jerked him; once he took his pipe from his mouth and put up a
+ringing peal of mirth that sent a brace of bunnies, flirting near his
+feet, wildly scampering for safety. Long he brooded....
+
+A church clock gave him eleven. At ten he had been too deeply buried.
+Now his head was pushed clear from the burrow in which he had been
+working, and the sound caught his attention. No light now pricked
+Herons' Holt upon the dusky chart stretched beneath him. Its occupants
+were abed.
+
+"I'll do it to-night!" cried George. "I'll do it at once!"
+
+He drew on his pipe. A full cloud of smoke came. The pipe was well
+alight, and caution bidding him that it were well to bide a while so
+that sleep might more cosily warm the beds of the household, he
+determined that he would have out his last smoke as plotter: his next
+would be smoked as doer of the deed.
+
+He rehearsed his plan. A knife would slip back the catch of the window
+behind which the Rose of Sharon lay. Possessing himself of her person
+he would speed to that tumbled hut in the copse. There she might lie
+in safety for the night: neither hut nor copse was in any man's road.
+Upon the morrow, when the hideous circumstance had been discovered, he
+would bear himself as events seemed to demand. He would be boundless
+in his sympathy, a leader in the search. If the idea of reward did not
+occur to Mr. Marrapit, he must suggest it. Unlikely that in the first
+moment of loss, when the Rose would still seem to be near, the reward
+would approach the figure at which he aimed. That was for his cunning
+to contrive. But obviously it would be impossible permanently to keep
+the Rose in the hut. To-morrow, when pretending to search for her he
+could guard the place where she lay; but he could not always be
+sentinel. The countryside would be scoured; no stone left unturned, no
+spinney unbeaten.
+
+As he saw the matter, the plan would be to get somewhere down the
+railway line on pretext of a clue, taking the Rose of Sharon with him;
+for the success of the whole scheme depended upon his concealing the
+cat until Mr. Marrapit should be upon his bended knees in his
+distress, in deepest despair as to the Rose's recovery, and hence
+would be transported to deepest gratitude when it was restored to his
+arms. George told himself he must be prepared against the eventuality
+of his uncle failing to offer in public reward so large a sum as 500
+pounds. That did not greatly distress. Best indeed if that sum were
+offered, but, failing it, it was upon Mr. Marrapit's gratitude that
+George ultimately reckoned. Surely when he "found" the cat it would be
+Mr. Marrapit's natural reply to give in exchange the sum he had that
+afternoon so violently refused. At the least, he could not refuse to
+lend it.
+
+Early in his brooding George had decided he must not tell his Mary.
+First, it would be cruel to set her upon the rack of acting a part
+before Mr. Marrapit, before the household, before every questioner she
+must encounter; second--second, my ignoble George had doubts as to in
+what spirit his Mary would regard this plot did he make her partner in
+it. That it was wholly justifiable he personally would have contended
+before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that
+was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother had
+given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have protested-
+without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of righteousness,
+with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his cause before his
+Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion to protest; his
+Mary might see eye to eye with him in the matter. She might; but it
+was an eventuality he did not care to try against a test. His Mary was
+a girl--and girls are in their conduct narrowed by scruples that do
+not beset men. His Mary--and this it was that would make a test so
+violent--his Mary was his Mary, and well he knew, and loved, the
+little heart so delicately white as instantly to discover the finest
+specks of sootiness--if specks there were--in any breeze that might
+cross its surface.
+
+No, he would not tell his Mary. When the thing was done--when he, the
+black-hearted rogue, had the little saint safe in the toils she would
+find so delicious, then--then he would tell her, would silence her
+frightened squeals--if she squealed--by his intention to pay back the
+money, whether won as reward (which was improbable) or earned as token
+of gratitude (which was highly likely). He had only asked to borrow,
+and it should only be a loan.
+
+Across the dark fields in spirit he kissed his little saint. ... Of
+course--of course--one must admit these brutal things--of course the
+scheme might fail. Anything might happen to crash it about his ears.
+That was a deadly, dismal thought, but he flattened it from sight with
+that lusty hammer that gay youth uses--"I shan't be any worse off if
+it does fail."
+
+The smoke came through his pipe in burning whiffs. He shook it bowl
+downwards. Ashes and sparks fell in a shower. The pipe was done.
+
+_Whoop! forrard!_ The game was afoot.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A moon as clear as that which shone when Bill stole to Herons' Holt to
+woo his blessed damosel, gave a clear light to George as now he
+approached the house. He took his way across the fields, and his
+progression was that of no stealthy-footed conspirator. Two miles of
+downward-sloping land lay between the stile whereon he had brooded and
+the home that his plottings were to disturb. In buoyant spirits--for
+this was action, and action makes lusty appeal to youth--he trotted or
+galloped as the descent was easy or sharply inclined; the low hedges
+he took in great sprawling jumps, the ditches in vast giant strides--
+arms working as balance-pole, humming as he ran.
+
+Upon the lawn he became more cautious. But the moon showed Herons'
+Holt sleepy-eyed-blinds drawn.
+
+The cats' parlour, back of the house, gave upon a little strip of turf
+that kept away the kitchen garden. George drew his knife; approached
+the window. Now he was a criminal indeed.
+
+To slip the catch was easy work; between upper and lower sash there
+was clear space. George inserted his pen-knife. Tip of blade grated
+against catch; a little pressure--an answering movement; a little
+more--and, _click_, the trick was done!
+
+Now he raised the sash, and now he is in the room. Glimmer of a match
+shows him the sleeping-baskets; its steadier flame discloses the Rose,
+snugly curled, a little free of her silken coverlet.
+
+Wake, now, Rose--as an older school of novelists would have addressed
+you. Wake, Rose! Wake, pretty Rose! Queenly Rose, awake! Wake
+precious, virgin Rose! Squeal! scratch! bite! Claw those wicked hands
+descending into your pure bed! Spring like spotless maiden aroused to
+find ravisher at her couch! Spring, Rose, spring! Squawking news of
+outrage to all the house, bound wildly, Rose, about this room that
+else you shall not see until through searing perils you have passed!
+Spring! Rose, spring!
+
+Not Rose!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+The ravisher's hands descended upon her person--she only purred. They
+passed about her warm and exquisite form--she purred the more. They
+tickled her as they laid hold--she stretched a leg; purred with fuller
+note. Perchance this virgin cat dreamed of some gallant young Tom
+wooing her bed; perchance these ticklings had their deliciously
+transfigured place in her visions; perchance--she only purred.
+
+Now George tucked her beneath his arm. Legs dangled wretchedly;
+gallant young Tom leapt from her dreams and she awoke. She stirred.
+George had a foot upon the window-sill, and the night air ruffled her
+downy coat. She was pressed against bony ribs; a rough arm squeezed
+her wretchedly; long, poky fingers tortured her flank; her legs
+draggled dismally. She voiced protest in a plaintive, piercing, long-
+drawn _"Mi-aow!"_
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Ah, Rose! Pretty, foolish Rose--as our older school again would have
+written--why did you entertain sensuous dreams when you should have
+been stirring?
+
+_"Mi-aow!"_
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Too late, Rose! Too late! That beauteous head--that prize-winning
+head which from kittenhood upwards has known none other than caress,
+is now a mark for battering bumps if you do but open those perfect
+jaws--those prize-winning jaws. Too late, Rose! Too late! Do not cry
+now, Rose! The ravisher has you. His blood congeals in terror at your
+plaintive cry. In his brutish panic he will answer it with thuds. Too
+late, Rose! Too late!
+
+"_Mi-aow!_"
+
+_Clout!_
+
+Ah, Rose, Rose!
+
+He is outside now. "Shut up, you fat idiot!" he hisses. Squeezing her
+yet more villainously with one arm, with the other he draws down the
+sash. Through the gate, into the lane, over the stream, down the ride,
+into the copse--up to the hut.
+
+The outer door hangs grinningly upon its hinges. The door going to the
+inner room has a working latch; George kicks it open; elbows it to
+behind him; drops the Rose with jarring plump; strikes a match. There
+is the dusty pile of Old Tom bottles, there the little heap of bracken
+upon which Mrs. Major doubtless had reclined while with Old Tom she
+talked. Excellent!
+
+The match goes out. He lights another. The Rose is standing forlornly
+at his feet. While the match lasts he lifts her to the bracken bed;
+presses her down; backs out; closes the door.
+
+His watch, put beneath the moon, tells him it is upon one o'clock. He
+pulls to the outer door; wedges beneath it a stump of wood that keeps
+it firmly shut; makes for home.
+
+In an hour he is sleeping the dreamless, childlike slumber that comes
+to those who, setting their hand to the plough, have manfully laboured
+a full day's work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Horror At Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Sleep does not necessarily shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton
+mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether
+vice or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated,
+seductive when least desired.
+
+George, steeped in crime, snuggled warmly to her until aroused by a
+rude shaking.
+
+Night-capped and dressing-gowned, white-faced and trembling, awful in
+grief Mr. Marrapit stood near him.
+
+"Get up! The Rose of Sharon is lost."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"I tell you it is so. Up!"
+
+George pushed a shaking leg out of bed. He was had unawares. As a
+sleeper pitched sleeping into the sea, so from unconsciousness he was
+hurled plump into the whirlpool of events. And as the sleeper thus
+immersed would gulp and sink and kick, so now he blinked, shivered,
+and gasped.
+
+He repeated: "Impossible!"
+
+"I tell you it is so. I have eyes; I have been to her room." Mr.
+Marrapit's voice rose in a wailing cry. "I have been to her room.
+Gone! Gone!"
+
+George put out the other leg--crime-steeped legs that quivered. He had
+looked for a space between awaking and meeting his uncle in which to
+prepare his plans, rehearse his words. This abrupt rousing stampeded
+his senses. He quavered "Wher--where can she be?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit flung up his arms. "Oh, my God! If I knew that would I be
+here? Up! Up! Join the searchers in the garden."
+
+George pushed a criminal leg into his trousers. Conscience made thumbs
+of his fingers, trembled his joints. He hopped frantically, thrusting
+with the other foot.
+
+"Dance!" Mr. Marrapit moaned bitterly. "Dance! That is right! Why do
+you not sing also? This is nothing to you! Dance on! Dance on!"
+
+George cannoned the wash-stand. "It _is_ something to me. I can hardly
+believe it!"
+
+"Is sorrow expressed in a gavotte? Grief in a hornpipe?"
+
+"I'm not dancing. My damned bags are stuck!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit wrung his hands. "Discard them! Discard them! Must
+decency imperil the Rose?"
+
+With a tremendous kick George thrust in past the obstruction.
+
+"They're on now--my slippers--coat--what shall I do?"
+
+"Join the searchers. Scour the grounds. Search every shrub. Climb
+every tree."
+
+The agonised man led downstairs. "I found the window open," he moaned.
+"Night by night, year in year out, I have shut it. Impossible that I
+forgot. If I forgot, the Rose is in the garden or in the vicinity. If
+I did not forget, the window was forced--the Rose was stolen. A
+detective shall decide."
+
+George grew quite cold. Employment of a detective had not occurred to
+him. They were at the front door. He put a hand on Mr. Marrapit's arm.
+"Oh, not a detective. Don't get a detective."
+
+"If need be I will get forty detectives. I will blacken the
+countryside with detectives."
+
+George grew quite hot. "Uncle, let us keep this private. Leave it with
+me. Rely on me. I will find your cat."
+
+"Into the garden," cried Mr. Marrapit. "Join the searchers. They have
+failed once. Lead, animate, encourage."
+
+"And you won't get a detective?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not reply. He had opened the hall door; Mr. Fletcher
+in the middle distance approached moodily.
+
+Mr. Marrapit thrust out a hand. "Back! Back!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+Wearily Mr. Fletcher gave answer. "It's no use, Mr. Marrapit. It's no
+good saying 'back.' I've been back. I've been back and I've been front
+and I've been both sides. I've looked here, I've looked there; I've
+looked up, I've looked down. I'm giddy with looking." He approached;
+stood before them. Woe heavily draped herself about this man.
+
+"Oh, easily discouraged!" Mr. Marrapit cried.
+
+"Oh, infirm of purpose! Back, faint-heart! Do not say die."
+
+Faint-heart mopped a streaming brow. "But I do say die. I do say die,
+Mr. Marrapit, and I damn well shall die if I go creepin' and crawlin'
+and hissin' much longer. It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am;
+not a cobra."
+
+Mr. Marrapit slammed the door. George hurried out of sight; in the
+kitchen garden sat down to think. He was frightened. Thus far the plot
+had not worked well. Detectives!
+
+He gave an hour to the search he was ostensibly conducting; when he
+again entered the house was more easy-minded. Employed in meditation
+that hour gave him back his coolness of the night. Rudely awakened,
+given no time in which firmly to plant his feet, securely to get a
+purchase with his hands before the storm burst, he had been whirled
+along helpless and bewildered before Mr. Marrapit's gusty agony.
+Instead of resisting the torrent, directing its course, he had been
+caught where it surged fiercest, hurled down-stream. In the vulgar
+simile of his reflections he was rotting the whole show.
+
+But now he had steadied himself. He girded his loins against the part
+he had to play; with new determination and confidence entered the
+house.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+There was no breakfast at Herons' Holt that morning. When George,
+dressed, bathed and shaved, sought out his uncle, it was to find Mr.
+Marrapit in the study.
+
+The distracted man was pacing the floor, a closely written sheet of
+paper in his hands. He turned upon George.
+
+"In the hour of my travail I am also beneath the burden of earlier
+griefs. Yesterday a disastrous scene took place between us. Oaths
+rasped from your lips."
+
+"Forget that, sir. Forget it."
+
+"That is my desire. Misery wails through the corridors. In her
+presence let us bury private differences. In this appalling
+catastrophe every help is required. You have youth, manhood; you
+should be invaluable."
+
+George declared: "I mean to be. I will not rest until the Rose is
+restored."
+
+This was perfectly true, as he was to discover.
+
+"Commendable," Mr. Marrapit pronounced. Now that this volunteer was
+enlisted, Mr. Marrapit discarded supplication, resumed mastery. "While
+you have searched," he said, "I have schemed." He indicated the paper
+he carried. "These are my plans. Peruse them."
+
+George read; returned the paper. "If these arrangements do not restore
+the Rose," he declared, "nothing will. I see you do not mention my
+name. I fear you doubted my assistance. I think I will join the--the--
+--"--he glanced at the paper--"the _extra-mural_ searchers. I know the
+countryside well. I can go far and fast."
+
+Mr. Marrapit agreed. "Summon the household," he commanded.
+
+George called Margaret; the two carried out the order.
+
+In a semicircle the household grouped about their master; from Mrs.
+Armitage at the one horn to George at the other they took their
+places--Mrs. Armitage, Clara, Ada, Mr. Fletcher, Frederick, Mary,
+Margaret, George.
+
+Paper in hand Mr. Marrapit regarded them. He pointed at Frederick.
+
+"That boy is sucking a disgusting peppermint. Disgorge."
+
+Glad of relief, all eyes went upon the infamous youth. He purpled,
+struggled, gulped, swallowed--from his eyes tears streamed.
+
+"Stiffneck!" Mr. Marrapit thundered. "Disgorge, I said. You are
+controlled by appetite; your belly is your god."
+
+"Well, I ain't 'ad no breakfast," Stiffneck answered fiercely. Like
+Miss Porter upon a similar occasion this boy was in great pain.
+
+"And no breakfast shall you have until the Rose is restored.
+Heartless! How can you eat while she, perhaps, does starve?" The angry
+man addressed the group. "These are the plans for her recovery. Give
+ear. You, vile boy, will rush to the dairy and order to be sent at
+once as much milk as Mrs. Armitage will command you. Mrs. Armitage,
+you with your maids--Fletcher, you with that boy, are the _intramural_
+workers, the workers within the walls. George, Margaret, Miss Humfray-
+-_extra-mural_. Mrs. Armitage, with milk let every bowl and saucer be
+filled. Fletcher, at intervals of thirty feet along the wall let these
+be placed. If our wanderer is near she will be attracted. Margaret,
+with Miss Humfray to the village. Collect an army of village boys.
+Describe our Rose. Set them to scour the countryside for her.
+Yourselves join that search. Let the call of 'Rose! Rose!' echo
+through every lane. George, you also will scour far and wide. Upon
+your way despatch to me a cab from the station. I drive to the post-
+office to telephone for a detective. I have not yet decided which
+detective. It is a momentous matter." He flung out both hands. "To your
+tasks! Let zeal, let love for our lost one spur each to outvie the
+efforts of another. Fletcher, raise the window. That pungent boy has
+poisoned the air."
+
+They trooped from him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A Detective At Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Bolt Buildings, Westminster, is a colossal red structure reared upon
+the site of frightened-looking little houses which fell beneath the
+breaker's hammer coincident with the falling in of their lease. Here
+you may have a complete floor of rooms at from three to five hundred a
+year; or, high under the roof, you may rent a single room for forty-
+five pounds.
+
+Mr. David Brunger, Private Detective and Confidential Inquiry Agent,
+appeared on the books of the Bolt Buildings management as lessee of
+one of these single rooms. The appearance of his quarters as presented
+to the visitor had, however, a more pretentious aspect.
+
+Shot to the topmost floor in the electric lift, passing to the left
+and up five stairs in accordance with the lift boy's instructions, the
+intending client would be faced by three doors. Upon the first was
+inscribed:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks).
+
+Upon the middle door:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Private).
+
+And upon the third:
+
+  DAVID BRUNGER (Office).
+
+These signs of large staff and flourishing business were in keeping
+with the telling advertisements which Mr. David Brunger from time to
+time caused to appear in the Press.
+
+"Watch your wife," said these advertisements, adding in smaller type
+that had the appearance of a whisper: "David Brunger will watch her."
+"What keeps your husband late at office?" they continued. "David
+Brunger will find out. Confidential inquiry of every description
+promptly and cheaply carried out by David Brunger's large staff of
+skilled detectives (male and female). David Brunger has never failed.
+David Brunger has restored thousands of pounds' worth of stolen
+property, countless missing relatives. David Brunger, 7 Bolt
+Buildings, Strange Street, S.W. Tel. 0000 West."
+
+In London, with its myriad little eddies of crime and matrimonial
+infelicity, there is a neat sum to be made out of detective work.
+Scotland Yard wolfs the greater part of these opportunities; there are
+established names that absorb much of the remainder. In the surplus,
+however, there is still a livelihood for the David Brungers. For if
+the Brungers do not go nosing after silken petticoats covering
+aristocratic but wanton legs; if the Brungers do not go flying across
+the Continent, nose to ground, notebook in hand, after the fine linen
+worn by my lord who is making holiday with something fair and frail
+under the quiet name of Mr. and Mrs. Brown; if the Brungers are not
+employed to draggle silken petticoats and fine linen through the
+Divorce Court, there is work for them among humbler washing baskets.
+Jealous little shop-keepers have erring little wives, and common
+little wives have naughty little husbands: these come to your
+Brungers. And if, again, the Brungers do not dog the footsteps of your
+fifty-thousand-pound men, your embezzlement-over-a-period-of-ten-years
+men, your cheque-forging men--if the Brungers are invited to do no
+dogging after these, there are pickings for them in less flashy
+crimes. Hiding in cupboard work while the sweated little shop-
+assistant slips a marked shilling from the till, hiding in basement
+work while a trembling little figure creeps down and pilfers the
+stock--these are the pranks that come to your Brungers.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+While Mr. Marrapit at Herons' Holt was addressing to his household
+grouped about him his orders relative to the search for the Rose of
+Sharon, Mr. David Brunger at Bolt Buildings was entering the door
+marked "DAVID BRUNGER (Private)."
+
+A telephone, a gas stove, a roll-top desk, an office chair, an
+armchair, a tiny deal table and a wooden-seated chair comprised the
+furniture of the apartment.
+
+"For myself, I like severity and simplicity of surroundings," Mr.
+David Brunger in the office chair would tell a client in the armchair.
+"For _myself_--" and he would waggle his head towards the side walls
+with an air that seemed to imply prodigal luxury in the fittings of
+"(Clerks)" and "(Office)."
+
+Entering the room Mr. Brunger unlocked the roll-top desk; discovered
+the stump of a half-smoked cigarette; lit it and began to compare the
+day's racing selections of "Head Lad," who imparted stable secrets to
+one tipster's organ, with those of "Trainer," who from the knowledge
+of his position very kindly gave one horse snips to another.
+
+At ten o'clock the large staff of trained detectives (male and
+female), mentioned in Mr. Brunger's advertisements, came pouring up
+the stairs, knocked at the door and filed into the room. Its name was
+Issy Jago, a Jewish young gentleman aged seventeen, whose appearance
+testified in the highest manner to the considerable thrift he
+exercised in the matter of hair-dressers and toilet soap.
+
+Mr. Issy Jago sat himself on the wooden-seated chair before the small
+deal table; got to work upon his finger-nails with the corner of an
+omnibus ticket; proceeded to study the police court reports in the
+_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+It was his duty, whenever he noted plaintiffs or defendants to whom
+Mr. David Brunger's services might be of benefit, to post to them Mr.
+David Brunger's card together with a selection of entirely unsolicited
+testimonials composed and dictated by Mr. Brunger for the occasion.
+
+Also his duty to receive clients.
+
+When a knock was heard at "DAVID BRUNGER (Clerks)" Mr. Issy Jago would
+slip through from "DAVID BRUNGER (Private)" to the tiny closet
+containing the cistern into which the door marked "DAVID BRUNGER
+(Clerks)" opened. Sliding through this door in such a manner as to
+give the client no glimpse of the interior, he would inform the
+visitor, with a confidential wink, "Fact is we have a client in there
+--a very well-known personage who does not wish it to be known that he
+is consulting us." The impressed caller would then be conducted into
+"DAVID BEUNGER (Private)."
+
+Between "DAVID BRUNGER (Private)" and "DAVID BRUNGER (Office)," on the
+other hand, there was no communication. Indeed there was no room
+behind "(Office)": the door gave on to the roof. When, therefore, a
+hesitating client chose to knock at "(Office)" Mr. Issy Jago, emerging
+from "(Private)," would give the whispered information: "Fact is
+there's a very important private consultation going on in there--
+Scotland Yard consulting us." And the impressed client would forthwith
+be led into "DAVID BRUNGER (Private)."
+
+In either event, the client trapped, Mr. Issy Jago would skip into
+"(Clerks)" and sit on the cistern till Mr. Brunger's bell summoned
+him.
+
+For the privilege of adding to the dignity of his single apartment by
+having his name inscribed upon the cistern cupboard and upon the
+emergency exit to the roof, Mr. Brunger paid thirty shillings extra
+per annum.
+
+III.
+
+By half-past ten Mr. Brunger was occupied in composing an unsolicited
+testimonial to be sent to the wife of a green-grocer in the Borough
+who, on the previous day, had summoned her husband for assault at
+Lambeth Police-Court.
+
+"I had suspicions but no proof of my 'usband's infidelity," dictated
+Mr. Brunger, pacing the floor, "until I enlisted your services. I must
+say--"
+
+At that moment the telephone bell rang. Mr. Brunger ceased dictation;
+took up the receiver.
+
+"Are you David Brunger, the private detective?" a voice asked.
+
+"We are," replied Mr. Brunger in the thin treble he used on first
+answering a call. "Who are you, please?"
+
+"I am Mr. Christopher Marrapit of Herons' Holt, Paltley Hill, Surrey.
+I--"
+
+"One moment," piped Mr. Brunger. "Is it confidential business?"
+
+"It is most urgent business. I--"
+
+"One moment, please. In that case the private secretary must take your
+message."
+
+Mr. Brunger laid down the receiver; took a turn across the room;
+approached the telephone; in a very deep bass asked, "Are you there?"
+
+The frantic narrative that was poured into his ears he punctuated with
+heavy, guttural "Certainly's," "Yes's," "We comprehend's," "We follow
+you's." Then: "Mr. David Brunger himself? I'm afraid that is
+impossible, sir. Mr. Brunger has his hands very full just now. He is
+closeted with Scotland Yard. At this moment, sir, the Yard is
+consulting him ...'m...'m. Well, I'll see, sir, I'll see. I doubt it.
+I very much doubt it. But hold the line a minute, sir."
+
+In his capacity of Mr. David Brunger's private secretary, Mr. David
+Brunger drank from the carafe of water on the mantelpiece to clear his
+tortured throat.
+
+In his capacity of the great detective and confidential inquiry agent
+himself, he then stepped to the telephone and, after exhibiting a
+power of invention relative to startling crimes in hand that won even
+the admiration of Mr. Issy Jago, announced that he would be with Mr.
+Marrapit at three o'clock.
+
+"It may be a big job, Issy," he remarked, relighting the stump of
+cigarette, "or it may be a little job. But what I say and what I do
+is, _impress your client. Impress your client,_ Issy. Let that be your
+maxim through life. And if I catch you again takin' a draw at my
+cigarette when my back's turned, as I see you just now, I'll damn well
+turn you inside out and chuck you through that door. So you watch it.
+You've made this smoke taste 'orrid-'orrid. No sauce, now; no sauce."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+By two o'clock the results of Mr. Marrapit's colossal scheme began to
+pour in.
+
+The bowls of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every
+stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a
+clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the immediate
+generalship of Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Throughout the morning cats bounded, flickered and disappeared upon
+the wall. Fat cats, thin cats; tom cats, tabby cats; white cats, black
+cats, yellow cats, and grey cats; young cats and old cats. As each
+appeared, Mr. Marrapit, first expectant then moaning, would wave his
+assistants to the assault. Up would go the clothes-prop of Mr.
+Fletcher or Frederick; down would go the stranger cat. It was
+exhausting work.
+
+At two-thirty the village boys who had been searching were mustered at
+the gate. Each bore a cat. Some carried two. Leaving his clothes-prop
+lancers, Mr. Marrapit hurried down the drive to hold review.
+
+"Pass," he commanded, "in single file before me."
+
+They passed. "Dolt! Dolt!" groaned Mr. Marrapit, writhing in the
+bitterness of crushed hope as each cat was held towards him. "Dolt and
+pumpkin-head! How could that wretched creature be my Rose?"
+
+How, indeed, when at that moment the Rose of Sharon in the ruined hut
+was lapping milk taken her by George in a lemonade bottle, her
+infamous captor smoking on the threshold?
+
+Precisely at three o'clock Mr. David Brunger arrived. Conducted to the
+room whence the Rose had disappeared, the astute inquiry agent was
+there closeted with Mr. Marrapit for half an hour. At the end of that
+time Mr. Marrapit appeared on the lawn. His face was white, his voice,
+when he spoke, hollow and trembling. He called to the clothes-prop
+lancers:
+
+"Cease. Cease. Withdraw the milk. The Rose of Sharon is not strayed.
+She is stolen!"
+
+"Thenk Gord!" said Frederick. "Thenk Gord! I've pretty well busted
+myself over this game."
+
+Mr. Fletcher said nothing; drew his snail from his pocket; plunged
+head downwards in a bush. Woe sat heavy upon him; beneath the
+indignity and labour of thrusting at stranger cats with a clothes-prop
+this man had grievously suffered.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The Rose was stolen. That was Mr. Brunger's discovery after
+examination of the window-latch where George's knife had marked it,
+the sill where George's boots had scratched it. Outside the great
+detective searched for footmarks--they had been obliterated by heavy
+rainfall between the doing of the hideous deed and its discovery. Upon
+the principle of impressing his client, however, Mr. Brunger grovelled
+on the path with tape measure and note-book; measured every pair of
+boots in the house; measured the window; measured the room; in neat
+little packets tied up specimens of the gravel, specimens of the turf,
+specimens of hair from the Rose of Sharon's coat, picked from her bed.
+
+It was six o'clock when he had concluded. By then George had returned;
+the three held council in the study. Addressing Mr. Marrapit, Mr.
+Brunger tapped his note-book and his little packages. "We shall track
+the culprit, never fear, Mr. Marrapit," he said. "My impression is
+that this is the work of a gang--a _gang_."
+
+"Precisely my impression," George agreed.
+
+Mr. Brunger took the interruption with the gracious bow of one who
+condescends to accept a pat on the back from an inferior. Mr. Marrapit
+twisted his fingers in his thin hair; groaned aloud.
+
+"A _gang,_" repeated Mr. Brunger, immensely relishing the word. "We
+detectives do not like to speak with certainty until we have clapped
+our hands upon our men; we leave that for the amateurs, the bunglers--
+the _quacks_ of our profession." The famous confidential inquiry agent
+tapped the table with his forefinger and proceeded impressively. "But
+I will say this much. Not only a gang, but a desperate gang, a
+dangerous, stick-at-nothing gang."
+
+Mr. Marrapit writhed. The detective continued: "What are our grounds
+for this belief?" he asked. "What are our _data_?"
+
+He looked at George. George shook his head. Easy enough, and useful,
+to acquiesce in the idea of a gang, but uncommonly hard to support the
+belief. He shook his head.
+
+Mr. Brunger was disappointed; a little at sea, he would have clutched
+eagerly at any aid. However, "impress your client." He continued:
+"These are our data. We have a valuable cat--a cat, sir, upon which
+the eyes of cat-breeders are enviously fixed. Take America--you have
+had surprising offers from America for this cat, sir, so you told me?"
+
+"Eight hundred pounds," Mr. Marrapit groaned.
+
+"Precisely. Observe how our data accumulate. We have dissatisfaction
+among breeders at home because you will not employ this cat as, in
+their opinion, for the good of the breed, she should be employed."
+
+Mr. Marrapit moaned: "Polygamy is abhorrent to me."
+
+"Precisely. Our data positively pile about us. We have a thousand
+enthusiasts yearning for this cat. We have your refusal to sell or to--
+to--" Mr. Brunger allowed a hiatus delicately to express his meaning.
+"Then depend upon it, sir, we have a determination to secure this cat
+by foul means since fair will not avail. We have a conspiracy among
+unscrupulous breeders to obtain this valuable cat, and hence, sir, we
+have a gang--a _gang_."
+
+Mr. Marrapit put his anguish of mind into two very deep groans.
+
+"Keep calm, my dear sir," Mr. Brunger soothed. "We shall return your
+cat. We have our data." He continued: "Now, sir, there are two ways of
+dealing with a _gang_. We can capture the _gang_ or we can seduce the
+_gang_--by offering a reward."
+
+George jumped in his chair. "Anything wrong?" Mr. Brunger inquired.
+
+"Your--your extraordinary grasp of the case astonishes me," George
+exclaimed.
+
+"Experience, sir, experience," said Mr. Brunger airily. Addressing Mr.
+Marrapit, "We must put both methods to work," he continued. "I shall
+now go to town, look up the chief breeders and set members of my
+trained staff to track them. Also I must advertise this reward. With a
+cat of such value we cannot use half measures. Shall we say one
+hundred pounds to start with?"
+
+"Barley water!" gasped Mr. Marrapit. "Barley water!"
+
+George sprang to the sideboard where always stood a jug of Mr.
+Marrapit's favourite refreshment. Mr. Marrapit drank, agitation
+rattling the glass against his teeth.
+
+"Think what it means to you, sir," persuaded Mr. Brunger, a little
+alarmed at the effects of his proposal.
+
+The detective's tone had a very earnest note, for he was thinking with
+considerable gratification what the hundred pounds would mean to
+himself. On previous occasions he had urged rewards from his clients,
+put Mr. Issy Jago in the way of securing them, and paid that gentleman
+a percentage.
+
+"Think what it means to you," he repeated. "What is a hundred pounds
+or thrice that sum against the restoration of your cat? Come, what is
+it, sir?"
+
+"Ruin," answered Mr. Marrapit, gulping barley water. "Ruin."
+
+Mr. Brunger urged gravely: "Oh, don't say that, sir. Think what our
+dumb pets are to us. I've got a blood-'ound at home myself that I'd
+give my life for if I lost--gladly. Surely they're more to us, our
+faithful friends, than mere--mere--"
+
+"Pelf," supplied George, on a thin squeak that was shot out by the
+excitement of seeing events so lustily playing his hand.
+
+"Mere pelf," adopted Mr. Brunger.
+
+Mr. Marrapit gulped heavily at the barley water; set his gaze upon a
+life-size portrait in oils of his darling Rose; with fine calm
+announced: "If it must be, it must be."
+
+With masterly celerity Mr. Brunger drew forward pen and paper;
+scribbled; in three minutes had Mr. Marrapit's signed authority to
+offer one hundred pounds reward.
+
+He put the document in his pocket; took up his hat. "To-morrow," he
+said after farewells, "I or one of my staff will return to scour the
+immediate neighbourhood. It has been done, you tell me, but only by
+amateurs. The skilled detective, sir, will see a needle where the
+amateur cannot discern a haystack."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+He was gone. His last words had considerably alarmed George. No time
+was to be lost. All was working with a magic expediency, but the Rose
+must not be risked in the vicinity of one of these needle-observing
+detectives. She must be hurried away.
+
+"Uncle," George said, "I did not say it while the detective was here--
+I do not wish to raise your hopes; but I believe I have a clue. Do not
+question me," he added, raising a hand in terror lest Mr. Marrapit
+should begin examination. "I promise nothing. My ideas may be wholly
+imaginary. But I believe--I believe--oh, I believe I have a clue."
+
+Mr. Marrapit rushed for the bell. "Recall the detective! You should
+have spoken. I will send Fletcher in pursuit."
+
+George seized his uncle's arm. "On no account. That is why I did not
+speak before. I am convinced I can do better alone."
+
+"You do not convince me. You are an amateur. We must have the skilled
+mind. Let me ring."
+
+George was in terror. "No, no; do you not see it may be waste of time?
+Let me at least make sure, then I will tell the detective. Meanwhile
+let him pursue other clues. Why send the trained mind on what may be a
+goose-chase?"
+
+The argument had effect. Mr. Marrapit dropped into a chair.
+
+George explained. To follow the clue necessitated, he said, instant
+departure--by train. He would write fullest details; would wire from
+time to time if necessary. His uncle must trust him implicitly. The
+detective must not be told until he gave the word.
+
+Eager to clutch at any hope, Mr. Marrapit clutched at this. George was
+given money for expenses; at eight o'clock left the house. There had
+been no opportunity for words with his Mary. She did not even know
+that Mr. Marrapit had refused the money that was to mean marriage and
+Runnygate; she had not even danced with her George upon his success in
+his examination. Leaving the household upon his desperate clue, George
+could do no more than before them all bid her formal farewell. At
+half-past eight he is cramming the peerless Rose of Sharon into a
+basket taken from Mr. Fletcher's outhouses; at nine the villain is
+tramping the railway platform, in agony lest his burden shall mi-aow;
+at ten the monster is at Dippleford Admiral; at eleven the traitor is
+asleep in the bedroom of an inn, the agitated Rose uneasily slumbering
+upon his bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Terror At Dippleford Admiral.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"Impress your client," was the maxim of Mr. David Brunger. "Make a
+splash and keep splashing," was that of Mr. Henry T. Bitt, editor of
+Fleet Street's new organ, the _Daily_.
+
+Muddy pools were Mr. Bitt's speciality. His idea of the greatest
+possible splash was some stream, pure and beautiful to the casual eye,
+into which he could force his young men and set them trampling the
+bottom till the thick, unpleasant mud came clouding up whence it had
+long lain unsuspected. There was his splash, and then he would start
+to keep splashing. By every art and device the pool would be flogged
+till the muddy water went flying broadcast, staining this, that, and
+the other fair name to the nasty delight of Mr. Bitt's readers.
+Scandal was Mr. Bitt's chief quest. Army scandal, navy scandal,
+political scandal, social scandal--these were the courses that Mr.
+Bitt continuously strove to serve up to his readers. Failing them--if
+disappointingly in evidence on every side was the integrity and the
+honour for which Mr. Bitt raved and bawled when in the thick of
+splashing a muddy pool,--then, argued Mr. Bitt, catch hold of
+something trivial and splash it, flog it, placard it, into a
+sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set the halfpennies
+rising like trout in an evening stream.
+
+Bringing these principles-indeed they won him his appointment--to the
+editorship of the _Daily_, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by the
+fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue
+of the paper.
+
+But while preparing for press upon the second night the chance came.
+There was no scandal, no effective news; but there was matter for a
+sensational, semi-mysterious "leading story" in a tiny little scrap of
+news dictated by Mr. David Brunger, laboriously copied out a dozen
+times by Mr. Issy Jago and left by that gentleman at the offices of as
+many newspapers.
+
+Seven sub-editors "spiked" it, three made of it a "fill-par.," one
+gave it a headline and sent it up as an eight-line "news-par."; one,
+in the offices of the _Daily_, read it, laughed; spoke to the
+news-editor; finally carried it up to Mr. Bitt.
+
+Mr. Bitt's journalistic nose gave one sniff. The thing was done. Some
+old idiot was actually offering the ridiculously large sum of one
+hundred pounds for the recovery of a cat. Here, out of the barren,
+un-newsy world, suddenly had sprung a seed that should grow to a forest.
+The very thing. The _Daily_ was saved.
+
+Away sped a reporter; and upon the following morning, bawling from the
+leading position of the principal page of the _Daily_, introducing a
+column and a quarter of leaded type, these headlines appeared:
+
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  VALUABLE CAT STOLEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+  HUGE REWARD.
+
+  CHANCE FOR AMATEUR DETECTIVES.
+
+All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+
+_Daily_ readers revelled in it. It appeared that a gang of between
+five and a dozen men had surrounded the lonely but picturesque and
+beautiful country residence of Mr. Christopher Marrapit at Herons'
+Holt, Paltley Hill, Surrey. Mr. Marrapit was an immensely wealthy
+retired merchant now leading a secluded life in the evening of his
+days. First among the costly art and other treasures of his house he
+placed a magnificent orange cat, "The Rose of Sharon," a winner
+whenever exhibited. The gang, bursting their way into the house, had
+stolen this cat, despite Mr. Marrapit's heroic defence, leaving the
+unfortunate gentleman senseless and bleeding on the hearth-rug. Mr.
+Marrapit had offered 100 pounds reward for the recovery of his pet;
+and the _Daily_, under the heading "Catchy Clues," proceeded to tell
+its readers all over the country how best they might win this sum.
+
+All out of Mr. Issy Jago's tiny little paragraph.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+_Daily_ readers revelled in it. Upon three of their number it had a
+particular effect.
+
+Bill Wyvern had not been at the _Daily_ office that night. Employed
+during the day, he had finished his work at six; after a gloomy meal
+had gone gloomily to bed. This man was on probation. His appointment
+to a permanent post depended upon his in some way distinguishing
+himself; and thus far, as, miserable, he reflected, he utterly had
+failed. The "copy" he had done for the first issue of the _Daily_ had
+not been used; on this day he had been sent upon an interview and had
+obtained from his subject a wretched dozen words. These he had taken
+to the news-editor; and the news-editor had treated them and him with
+contempt.
+
+"But that's all he would say," poor Bill had expostulated.
+
+"All he would say!" the news-editor sneered. "Here, Mathers, take this
+stuff and make a quarter-col. interview out of it."
+
+Thus it was in depressed mood that Bill on the following morning
+opened his _Daily._
+
+The flaring "Country House Outrage" hit his eye; he read; in two
+minutes his mood was changed. A sensation at Paltley Hill! At Mr.
+Marrapit's! Here was his chance! Who better fitted than he to work up
+this story? Fortunately he knew Mr. Henry T. Bitt's private address;
+had the good sense to go straight to his chief.
+
+A cab took him to the editor's flat in Victoria Street. Mr. Bitt was
+equally enthusiastic.
+
+"Hot stuff," said Mr. Bitt. "You've got your chance; make a splash. Go
+to the office and tell Lang I've put you on to it. Cut away down to
+the scene of the outrage and stay there as our Special Commissioner
+till I wire you back. Serve it up hot. Make clues if you can't find
+'em. Hot, mind. H-O-T."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Professor Wyvern was the second reader upon whom the sensational story
+had particular effect.
+
+Through breakfast the Professor eyed with loving eagerness the copy of
+the _Daily_ that lay folded beside his plate.
+
+At intervals, "I have made a very good breakfast, now," he would say.
+"Now I will try to find what Bill has written in this terrible paper."
+
+But thrice Mrs. Wyvern lovingly checked him. "Dear William, no. You
+have hardly touched your sole. You must finish it, dear, every scrap,
+before you look at the paper. You have been eating such good
+breakfasts lately. Now, please, William, finish it first."
+
+"It is as big as a shark," the Professor grumbles, making shots with
+his trembling fork.
+
+"Dear William, it is a very small sole."
+
+At last he has finished. A line catches his eye as he unfolds the
+_Daily_, and he chuckles: "Oh, dear! This is a very horrible paper.
+'Actress and Stockbroker--Piccadilly by night.'"
+
+"Dear William, we only want to read what Bill has written. An
+interview, he tells us, with--"
+
+Dear William waggles his naughty old head over the actress and the
+stockbroker; shaky fingers unfold the centre pages; nose runs up one
+column and down another, then suddenly starts back burnt by the
+flaring "Country House Outrage."
+
+"Dearest! Dearest! Whatever is the matter?"
+
+But dearest is speechless. Dearest can only cough and choke and
+splutter in convulsions of mirth over some terrific joke of which he
+will tell Mrs. Wyvern no more than: "He has done it. Oh, dear! oh,
+dear! He has done it. Oh, dear! This will be very funny indeed!"
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It will be seen that two out of the three readers particularly
+interested in Mr. Bitt's splash were agreeably interested. Upon the
+third the effect was different.
+
+It was George's first morning in the little inn at Dippleford Admiral.
+An unaccustomed weight upon his legs, at which thrice he sleepily
+kicked without ridding himself of it, at length awoke him.
+
+He found the morning well advanced; the disturbing weight that had
+oppressed him he saw to be a hairy object, orange of hue. Immediately
+his drowsy senses awoke; took grip of events; sleep fled. This object
+was the Rose of Sharon, and at once George became actively astir to
+the surgings of yesterday, the mysteries of the future.
+
+Pondering upon them, he was disturbed by a knock that heralded a
+voice: "The paper you ordered, mister; and when'll you be ready for
+breakfast?"
+
+"Twenty minutes," George replied; remembered the landlady had
+overnight told him she was a little deaf; on a louder note bawled:
+"Twenty minutes, Mrs. Pinner!"
+
+Mrs. Pinner, after hesitation, remarked: "Ready now? Very well,
+mister"; pushed a newspaper beneath the door; shuffled down the
+stairs.
+
+In the course of his brief negotiations with Mrs. Pinner upon the
+previous evening, George, in response to the proud information that
+the paper-boy arrived at nine o'clock every morning on a motor
+bicycle, had bellowed that he would have the _Daily_. For old Bill's
+sake he had ordered it; with friendly curiosity to see Bill's new
+associations he now withdrew his legs from beneath the Rose of Sharon;
+hopped out of bed; opened the paper.
+
+Upon "Country House Outrage" George alighted plump; with goggle eyes,
+scalp creeping, blood freezing, read through to the last "Catchy
+Clue"; aghast sank upon his bed.
+
+It had got into the papers! Among all difficult eventualities against
+which he had made plans this had never found place. It had got into
+the papers! The cat's abduction was, or soon would be, in the
+knowledge of everyone. This infernal reward which with huge joy he had
+heard offered, was now become the goad that would prick into active
+search for the Rose every man, woman, or child who read the story. It
+had got into the papers! He was a felon now; fleeing justice; every
+hand against him. Discovery looked certain, and what did discovery
+mean? Discovery meant not only loss of the enormous stake for which he
+was playing--his darling Mary,--but it meant--"Good God!" groaned
+my miserable George, "it means ruin; it means imprisonment."
+
+Melancholy pictures went galloping like wild nightmares through this
+young man's mind. He saw himself in the dock, addressed in awful words
+by the judge who points out the despicable character of his crime; he
+saw himself in hideous garb labouring in a convict prison; he saw
+himself struck off the roll at the College of Surgeons; he saw
+himself--"Oh, Lord!" he groaned, "I'm fairly in the cart!"
+
+Very slowly, very abject, he peeled off his pyjamas; slid a white and
+trembling leg into his bath.
+
+But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed
+away the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from
+George's brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a
+tingling glow braced also his mind against the pummellings of his
+position. Drying, he caught himself whistling; catching himself in
+such an act he laughed ruefully to think how little ground he had for
+good spirits.
+
+But the whistling prevailed. This ridiculous buoyancy of youth! What
+luckless pigs are we who moon and fret and grow besodden with the
+waters of our misfortunes! This cheeky corkiness of youth! Shove it
+under the fretted sea of trouble, and free it will twist, up it will
+bob. Weight it and drop it into the deepest pool; just when it should
+be drowned, pop! and it is again merrily bobbing upon the surface.
+
+It is a sight to make us solemn-souled folk disgustingly irritated. We
+are the Marthas--trudging our daily rounds, oppressed with sense of
+the duties that must be done, with the righteous feeling of the
+hardness of our lot; and these light-hearts, these trouble-shirkers,
+this corkiness of youth, exasperate us enormously. But the grin is on
+their side.
+
+The whistling prevailed. By the time George was dressed he had put his
+position into these words--these feather-brained, corky, preposterous
+words: "By gum!" said George, brushing his hair, "by gum! I'm in a
+devil of a hole!"
+
+The decision summed up a cogitation that showed him to be in a hole
+indeed, but not in so fearsome a pit as he had at first imagined. He
+had at first supposed that within a few minutes the earth would be
+shovelled in on him and he buried. Review of events showed the danger
+not to be so acute. On arrival the previous night, after brief parley
+with Mrs. Pinner he had gone straight to his room, bearing the Rose
+tight hid in her basket. No reason, then, for suspicion yet to have
+fallen upon him. He must continue to keep the Rose hid. It would be
+difficult, infernally difficult; but so long as he could effect it he
+might remain here secure. The beastly cat must of course be let out
+for a run. That was a chief difficulty. Well, he must think out some
+fearful story that would give him escape with the basket every
+morning.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Breakfast was laid in a little sitting-room over the porch, adjoining
+his bedroom. George pressed the poor Rose into her basket; carried it
+in.
+
+Mrs. Pinner was setting flowers on the table. George carried the
+basket to the window; placed it on a chair; sat upon it. With his
+right hand he drummed upon the lid. It was his purpose to inspire the
+Rose with a timid wonder at this drubbing that should prevent her
+voicing a protest against cramped limbs.
+
+"Some nice tea and a bit of fish I'm going to bring you up, mister,"
+Mrs. Pinner told him.
+
+Recollecting her deafness, and in fear lest she should approach the
+basket, George from the window bellowed: "Thank you, Mrs. Pinner. But
+I won't have tea, if you please. Won't have tea. I drink milk--
+_milk_. A lot of milk. I'm a great milk-drinker."
+
+The Rose wriggled. George thumped the basket. "As soon as you like,
+Mrs. Pinner. As quick as you like!"
+
+Mrs. Pinner closed the door; the Rose advertised her feelings in a
+long, penetrating mi-aow. In an agony of strained listening George
+held his breath. But Mrs. Pinner heard nothing; moved steadily
+downstairs. He wiped his brow. This was the beginning of it.
+
+When Mrs. Pinner reappeared, jug of milk and covered dish on a tray,
+George's plan, after desperate searchings, had come to him.
+
+He gave it speech. "I want to arrange, Mrs. Pinner--"
+
+"If you wait till I've settled the tray, mister, I'll come close to
+you. I'm that hard of hearing you wouldn't believe."
+
+George sprang from the basket; approached the table. His life depended
+upon keeping a distance between basket and Pinner.
+
+"I want to arrange to have this room as a private sitting-room."
+
+It had never been so used before, but it could be arranged, Mrs.
+Pinner told him. She would speak to her 'usband about terms.
+
+"And I want to keep it very private indeed, I don't want anyone to
+enter it unless I am here." George mounted his lie and galloped it,
+blushing for shame of his steed. "The fact is, Mrs. Pinner, I'm an
+inventor. Yes, an inventor. Oh, yes, an inventor." The wretched steed
+was stumbling, but he clung on; spurred afresh. "An inventor. And I
+have to leave things lying about--delicate instruments that mustn't be
+disturbed. Awfully delicate. I shall be out all day. I shall be taking
+my invention into the open air to experiment with it. My invention--"
+He waved his hand at the basket.
+
+Mrs. Pinner quite understood; was impressed. "Oh, dear, yes, mister.
+To be sure. An inventor; fancy that, now!" She gazed at the basket.
+"And the invention is in there?"
+
+"Right in there," George assured her.
+
+"You'll parding my asking, mister; but your saying you have to take it
+in the open hair--is it one of them hairships, mister?"
+
+"Well, it _is,_" George said frankly. This was a useful idea and he
+approved it. "It _is._ It's an airship."
+
+"Well, I never did!" Mrs. Pinner admired, gazing at the basket. "A
+hairship in there!"
+
+"_Mi-aow!_" spoke the Rose--penetrating, piercing.
+
+Mrs. Pinner cocked her head on one side; looked under the table. "I
+declare I thought I heard a cat," she puzzled. "In this very room."
+
+George felt perfectly certain that his hair was standing bolt upright
+on the top of his head, thrusting at right angles to the sides. He
+forced his alarmed face to smile: "A cock crowing in the yard, I
+think, Mrs. Pinner."
+
+Mrs. Pinner took the explanation with an apologetic laugh. "I'm that
+hard o' hearing you never would believe. But I could ha' sworn. Ill
+not keep you chattering, sir." She raised the dish cover.
+
+A haddock was revealed. A fine, large, solid haddock from which a
+cloud of strongly savoured vapour arose.
+
+George foresaw disaster. That smell! that hungry cat! Almost he pushed
+Mrs. Pinner to the door. "That you, thank you. I have everything now.
+I will ring if--"
+
+"_Mi-aow!_"
+
+"Bless my soul!" Mrs. Pinner exclaimed. "There is a cat"; dropped on
+hands and knees; pushed her head beneath the sofa.
+
+George rushed for the basket. Wreaking his craven alarm upon the
+hapless prisoner, he shook it; with a horrible bump slammed it upon
+the floor; placed his foot upon it.
+
+Mrs. Pinner drew up, panting laboriously. "Didn't you hear a cat,
+mister?"
+
+George grappled the crisis. "I did not hear a cat. If there were a cat
+I should have heard it. I should have felt it. I abominate cats. I can
+always tell when a cat is near me. There is no cat. Kindly leave me to
+my breakfast."
+
+Poor Mrs. Pinner was ashamed. "I'm sure I do beg you parding, mister.
+The fact is we've all got cats fair on the brain this morning. In this
+here new paper, mister, as perhaps you've seen, and they're giving us
+a free copy every day for a week, there's a cat been stole, mister. A
+hundred pounds reward, and as the paper says, the cat may be under
+your very nose. We're all a 'unting for it, mister."
+
+She withdrew. George crossed the room; pressed his head, against the
+cold marble of the mantelpiece. His brows were burning; in the pit of
+his stomach a sinking sensation gave him pain. "All a 'unting for it!
+all a 'unting for it!"
+
+When the Rose had bulged her flanks with the complete haddock, when,
+responsive to a "Stuff your head in that, you brute," the patient
+creature had lapped a slop-bowl full of milk, George again imprisoned
+her; rushed, basket under arm, for open country.
+
+Mr. Pinner in the bar-parlour, as George fled through, was reading
+from a paper to a stable hand, a servant girl, and a small red-headed
+Pinner boy: "It may be in John o' Groats," he read, "or it may be in
+Land's End." He thumped the bar. "'Ear that! Well, it may be in
+Dippleford Admiral."
+
+It was precisely because it was in Dippleford Admiral that his young
+inventor lodger fled through the bar without so much as a civil "good
+morning."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the post-office, keeping a drumming foot on the terrified Rose,
+George sent a telegram to Mr. Marrapit.
+
+_"Think on track. Must be cautious. Don't tell Brunger."_
+
+He flung down eightpence halfpenny; fled in the direction of a wood
+that plumed a distant hill. Fear had this man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Panic At Dippleford Admiral.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George left Dippleford Admiral that night.
+
+He left at great speed. There was no sadness of farewell. There was no
+farewell.
+
+Returning at seven o'clock to his sitting-room at the inn, melancholy
+beneath a hungry and brooding day in the woods with the Rose tethered
+to a tree by the length of two handkerchiefs, he ordered supper--
+milk, fish, and chops.
+
+Mrs. Pinner asked him if that would be all. She and 'usband were going
+to a chapel meeting; the servant girl was out; there would only be a
+young man in the bar.
+
+George took the news gratefully. His nerves had been upon the stretch
+all day. It was comforting to think that for a few hours he and this
+vile cat would have the house to themselves.
+
+Immediately Mrs. Pinner left the room he greedily fell to upon the
+chops. All day he had eaten nothing: the Rose must wait. Three parts
+of a tankard of ale was sliding at a long and delectable draught down
+upon his meal when the slam of a door, footsteps and a bawling voice
+in the yard told him that Mrs. Pinner and 'usband had started,
+chatting pleasantly, for their chapel meeting.
+
+The dish cleared, George arranged his prisoner's supper; stepped to
+the basket to fetch her to it. As he lifted her splendid form there
+came from behind him an exclamation, an agitated scuffling.
+
+In heart-stopping panic George dropped the cat, jumped around. The
+red-headed Pinner boy, whom that morning he had seen in the bar-parlour,
+was scrambling from beneath the sofa, arms and legs thrusting his
+flaming pate at full-speed for the door.
+
+"Stop!" George cried, rooted in alarm.
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy got to Ms feet, hurled himself at the door
+handle.
+
+"Stop!" roared George, struggling with the stupefaction that gripped
+him. "Stop, you young devil!"
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy twisted the handle; was half through the
+door as George bounded for him.
+
+"Par-par!" screamed the flaming head, travelling at immense speed down
+the passage. "Par-par! It ain't a hairship. It's a cat!"
+
+George dashed.
+
+"Par-par! Par-par! It's a cat!" The redheaded Pinner boy took the
+first short flight of stairs in a jump; rounded for the second.
+
+George lunged over the banisters; gripped close in the flaming hair;
+held fast.
+
+For a full minute in silence they poised--red-headed Pinner boy, on
+tip-toe as much as possible to ease the pain, in acute agony and great
+fear; George wildly seeking the plan that must be followed when he
+should release this fateful head.
+
+Presently, with a backward pull that most horribly twisted the
+red-headed face: "If you speak a word I'll pull your head off,"
+George said. "Come up here."
+
+The pitiful procession reached the sitting-room. "Sit down there,"
+George commanded. "If you make a sound I shall probably cut your head
+clean off. What do you mean by hiding in my room?"
+
+Between gusty pain and terror: "I thought it was a hairship."
+
+"Oh!" George paced the room. What did the vile boy think now? "Oh,
+well, what do you think it is now?"
+
+"I believe it's the cat wot's in the piper."
+
+"Oh, you do, do you?" Yes, this was a very horrible position indeed.
+"Oh, you do, do you? Now, you listen to me, my lad: unless you want
+your head cut right off you sit still without a sound."
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy sat quite still; wept softly. Life, at the
+moment, was a bitter affair for this boy.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+George paced. The hideous nightmares of the morning had returned now--
+snorting, neighing, trampling iron-shod; stampeding in hideous
+irresistible rushes. This was the beginning of the end. He was
+discovered--his' secret out.
+
+Flight--immediate flight--that was the essential course. Par-par,
+thanks to sweet heaven, was at a chapel meeting. The thing could be
+done. A timetable upon the mantelpiece told him that a down-train left
+the station at 8.35. It was now eight. Better a down-train than an up.
+The further from London the less chance of this infernal _Daily_ with
+its Country House Outrage. Examining the time-table he determined upon
+Temple Colney--an hour's run. He had been there once with Bill.
+
+But what of this infernal red-headed Pinner boy? In agony wrestling
+with the question, George every way ran into the brick wall fact that
+there was no method of stopping the vile boy's mouth. The red head
+must be left behind to shriek its discovery to par-par. All that could
+be done was to delay that shriek as long as possible.
+
+George packed his small hand-bag; placed upon the table money to pay
+his bill; lifted the crime-stained basket; addressed the red-headed
+Pinner boy:
+
+"Stop that sniffling. Take that bag. You are to come with me. If you
+make a sound or try to run away you know what will happen to you. What
+did I tell you would happen?"
+
+"Cut me 'ead off."
+
+"Right off. Right off--_slish_! Give me your hand; come on."
+
+Through a side door, avoiding the bar, they passed into the street.
+Kind night gave them cloaks of invisibility; no one was about. In a
+few minutes they had left the bold village street, were in timid lanes
+that turned and twisted hurrying through the high hedges.
+
+Half a mile upon the further side of the station George that morning
+had passed a line of haystacks. Now he made for it, skirting the
+railway by a considerable distance.
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy, exhausted by the pace of their walk, not
+unnaturally nervous, spoke for the first time: "Ain't you going to the
+station, mister?"
+
+"Station? Certainly not. Do you think I am running away?"
+
+The red-headed Pinner boy did not answer. This boy was recalling in
+every detail the gruesome story, read in a paper, of a bright young
+lad who had been foully done to death in a wood.
+
+George continued: "I shall be back with you at the inn this evening,
+and I shall ask your father to give you a good thrashing for hiding in
+my room."
+
+In an earnest prayer the red-headed Pinner boy besought God that he
+might indeed be spared to receive that thrashing.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They reached the haystack. George struck a match; looked at his watch.
+In seven minutes the train was due.
+
+The ladder George had noticed that morning was lying along the foot of
+a stack. Uprearing it against one partially demolished, "Put down that
+bag," he commanded. "Up with you!"
+
+Gustily sniffing in the huge sighs that advertised his terror, the
+red-headed Pinner boy obeyed. George drew down the ladder. "Stop up
+there; I shall be back in five minutes. If you move before then--"
+
+He left the trembling boy out of his own agitated fear to fill the
+unspoken doom. He walked slowly away in the direction opposite from
+the station until the haystack was merged and lost in the blackness
+that surrounded it. Then, doubling back, he made for the road; pounded
+along it at desperate speed.
+
+Most satisfactorily did that bounding, lurching, stumbling run along
+the dark, uneven lane punish this crime-steeped George. Well he
+realised, before he had sped a hundred yards, that guilt lashes with a
+double thong. She had scourged him mentally; now with scorpions she
+physically lashed him. As it had been racked throbbed that left arm
+encircling the basket wherein in wild fear the Rose clung to ease the
+dreadful bruisings that each oscillation gave her; as it were a
+ton-weight did that hand-bag drag his right arm, thud his thigh;
+as he were breathing fire did his tearing respirations sear his throat;
+as a great piston were driving in his skull did the blood hammer
+his temples.
+
+Topping a low rise he sighted the station lights below.
+Simultaneously, from behind a distant whistle there sprang to his ears
+the low rumble of the coming train.
+
+This history is not to be soiled with what George said at the sound.
+With the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination
+leapt from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red-
+headed Pinner boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack--from the
+roughness of the lane that laboured his passage to the speed of the
+oncoming train that hammered at his fate.
+
+He hurled himself down the rise; with his last breath gasped for a
+ticket; upon a final effort projected himself into the train; went
+prone upon a seat. He was away!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was when George was some fifteen minutes from Temple Colney that
+the red-headed Pinner boy, bolstered up with prayer, commended his
+soul to God; slipped with painful thud from the haystack; pelted for
+Par-par.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Disaster At Temple Colney.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Three days have passed.
+
+That somewhat pale and haggard-looking young man striding, a basket
+beneath his arm, up the main street of Temple Colney is George. The
+villagers stop to stare after him; grin, and nudge into one another
+responsive grins, at his curious mannerisms. He walks in the exact
+centre of the roadway, as far as he can keep from passers-by on either
+side. Approached by anyone, he takes a wide circle to avoid that
+person. Sometimes a spasm as of fear will cross his face and he will
+violently shake the basket he carries. Always he walks with giant
+strides. Every morning he shoots out of the inn where he is staying as
+though sped on the blast of some ghostly current of air; every
+evening, returning, he gives the impression of gathering himself
+together on the threshold, then goes bolting in at whirlwind speed. He
+is a somewhat pale and haggard young man.
+
+The villagers know him well. He is the young hairship inventor who has
+a private sitting-room at the Colney Arms. Certain of them, agog to
+pry his secret, followed him as he set out one day. They discovered
+nothing. For hours they followed; but he, glancing ever over his
+shoulder, pounded steadily on, mile upon mile--field, lane, high road,
+hill and dale. He never shook them off though he ran; they never
+brought him to standstill though indomitably they pursued. Towards
+evening the exhausted procession came thundering up the village
+street.
+
+It was a very pale and haggard young man that bolted into the Colney
+Arms that night.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Three days had passed.
+
+If George had the _Daily_ to curse for the miserable life of secrecy
+and constant agony of discovery that he was compelled to lead, he had
+it also to bless that his discovery by the red-headed Pinner boy had
+not long ago led to his being run to earth. In its anxiety to cap the
+satisfactory splash it was making over this Country House Outrage, the
+_Daily_ had overstepped itself and militated against itself. Those
+"Catchy Clues" were responsible. So cunningly did they inspire the
+taste for amateur detective work, so easy did they make such work
+appear, that Mr. Pinner, having thrashed silence into his red-headed
+son, kept that son's discovery to himself. As he argued it--
+laboriously pencilling down "data" in accordance with the "Catchy
+Clue" directions,--as he argued it--if he communicated his knowledge
+to the _Daily_ or to the local police, if he put them--(the word does
+not print nicely) on the scent, ten to one they would capture the
+thief and secure the reward. No, Mr. Pinner intended to have the
+reward himself. Therefore he hoarded his secret; brooded upon it;
+dashed off hither and thither as the day's news brought him a Catchy
+Clue that seemed to fit his data.
+
+But of this George knew nothing. Steeped in crime this miserable young
+man dragged out his awful life at Temple Colney: nightmares by night,
+horrors by day.
+
+Every morning with trembling fingers he opened his _Daily_; every
+morning was shot dead by these lines or their equivalent:
+
+  COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
+
+  FRESH CLUE.
+
+  CAT SEEN.
+
+  SENSATIONAL STORY.
+
+After much groaning and agony George would force himself to know the
+worst; after swearing furiously through the paragraphs of stuffing
+with which Mr. Bitt's cunning young man skilfully evaded the point,
+would come at last upon the "fresh clue" and read with a groan of
+relief that, so far as the truth were concerned, it was no clue at
+all.
+
+But the strain was horrible. All Temple Colney read the _Daily_;
+eagerly debated its "Catchy Clues."
+
+Yet George could not see, he told himself, that he would better his
+plight by seeking fresh retreat. If the _Daily_ were to be believed,
+all the United Kingdom read it and discussed its Catchy Clues. He
+decided it were wiser to remain racked at Temple Colney rather than
+try his luck, and perhaps be torn to death, elsewhere.
+
+Twice he had been moved to abandon his awful enterprise--in the train
+fleeing from the red-headed Pinner boy; pounding across country
+pursued by curious inhabitants of Temple Colney. On these occasions
+this miserable George had been minded to cry defeated to the
+circumstances that struck at him, to return to Herons' Holt with the
+cat whilst yet he might do so without gyves on his wrists.
+
+But thought of his dear Mary hunted thought of this craven ending.
+"I'll hang on!" he had cried, thumping the carriage seat: "I'll hang
+on! I'll hang on! I'll hang on!" he had thumped into the table upon
+his weary return to the inn on the day he had been followed.
+
+He had cause for hope. When, on his second morning at Temple Colney,
+the _Daily_ had struck him to white agony by its newest headlines;
+cooling, he was able to find comfort in the news it gave to the world.
+"On the advice of the eminent detective, Mr. David Brunger, who has
+the case in hand, the reward has been raised to 125 pounds."
+
+"Whoop!" cried George, spirits returning.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Three days had passed.
+
+Rain began to fall heavily on this afternoon. Usually--even had there
+been floods--George did not return to the inn until seven o'clock. The
+less he was near the abode of man the safer was his vile secret. But
+to-day, when the clouds told him a steady downpour had set in, he put
+out for his lodging before three. He was in high spirits. Success was
+making him very bold. At Temple Colney, thus far, no breath of
+suspicion had paled his cheek; at Herons' Holt events were galloping
+to the end he would have them go. That morning the _Daily_ had
+announced the raising of the reward to 150 pounds. True, the _Daily_
+added that Mr. Marrapit had declared, absolutely and finally, that he
+would not go one penny beyond this figure. George laughed as he read.
+In four days his uncle had raised the offer by fifty pounds; at this
+rate--and the rate would increase as Mr. Marrapit's anguish augmented
+--the 500 pounds would soon be reached. And then! And then!
+
+Through the pouring rain George whistled up the village street,
+whistled up the stairs, whistled into the sitting--room. Then stopped
+his tune. The buoyant notes of triumph dwindled to a tuneless squeak,
+to a noiseless breathing--Bill Wyvern, seated at a table, sprung to
+meet him.
+
+"What ho!" cried Bill. "They told me you wouldn't be in before seven!
+What ho! Isn't this splendid?"
+
+George said in very hollow voice: "Splendid!" He put the basket on a
+chair; sat on it; gave Bill an answering, "What ho!" that was cheerful
+as rap upon a coffin lid.
+
+"Well, how goes it?" Bill asked eagerly.
+
+George put out a hand. "Don't come over here, dear old fellow. I'm
+streaming wet. Sit down there. How goes what?"
+
+"Why, the clue--your clue to this cat?"
+
+"Oh, the clue--the clue. Yes, I'll tell you all about that. Just wait
+here a moment." He rose with the basket; moved to the door.
+
+"What on earth have you got in that basket?" Bill asked.
+
+"Eggs," George told him impressively. "Eggs for my uncle."
+
+"You must have a thundering lot in a basket that size."
+
+"Three or four hundred," George said. "Three or four hundred eggs."
+
+He spoke in the passionless voice of one in a dream. Indeed he was in
+a dream. This horrible contingency had so set him whirling that of
+clear thought he was incapable. Moving to his bedroom he thrust the
+basket beneath the bed; came out; locked the door; took the key;
+returned to Bill.
+
+Bill came over and slapped him on the back. "Expect you're surprised
+to see me?" he cried. "Isn't this ripping, old man?"
+
+"Stunning!" said George. "Absolutely stunning." He sank on a chair.
+
+Bill was perplexed. "You don't look best pleased, old man. What's up?"
+
+This was precisely what George wished to know. Terror of hearing some
+hideous calamity stayed him from putting the question. He gave a
+pained smile. "Oh, I'm all right. I'm a bit fagged, that's all. The
+strain of this search, you know, the--"
+
+"I know!" cried Bill enthusiastically. "I _know_. You've been
+splendid, old man. Finding out a clue like this and pluckily carrying
+it through all by yourself. By Jove, it's splendid of you!--especially
+when you've no reason to do much for your uncle after the way in which
+he's treated you. I admire you, George. By Gad, I _do_ admire you!"
+
+"Not at all!" George advised him. "By no means, old fellow." He wiped
+his brow; his mental suffering was considerable.
+
+"I say, I can see you're pretty bad, old man," Bill continued. "Never
+mind, I'm here to help you now. That's what I've come for."
+
+George felt that something very dreadful indeed was at hand. "How did
+you find out where I was?" he asked.
+
+"From old Marrapit."
+
+"Marrapit? Why, but my uncle won't let you come within a mile of him."
+
+"Ah! that's all over now." A very beautiful look came into Bill's
+eyes; tenderness shaded his voice: "George, old man, if I can track
+down the hound who has stolen this cat your uncle has practically said
+that he will agree to my engagement with Margaret."
+
+George tottered across the room; pressed his head against the cold
+window-pane. Here was the calamity. He had thought of taking Bill into
+his confidence--how do so now?
+
+"I say, you do look bad, old man," Bill told him.
+
+"I'm all right. Tell me all about it."
+
+"Well, it's too good--too wonderful to be true. Everything is going
+simply splendidly with me. I'm running this cat business for the
+_Daily_--my paper, you know. It's made a most frightful splash and the
+editor is awfully bucked up with me. I'm on the permanent staff, six
+quid a week--eight quid a week if I find this cat. I'm working it from
+Herons' Holt, you know. I'm--"
+
+George turned upon him. "Are you 'Our Special Commissioner at Paltley
+Hill'?"
+
+"Rather! Have you been reading it? Pretty hot stuff, isn't it? I say,
+George, wasn't it lucky I chucked medicine! I told you I was cut out
+for this kind of thing if only I could get my chance. Well, I've got
+my chance; and by Gad, old man, if I don't track down this swine who's
+got the cat, or help to get him tracked down, I'll--I'll--" The
+enthusiastic young man broke off--"Isn't it great, George?"
+
+My miserable George paced the room. "Great!" he forced out. "Great!"
+This was the infernal Special Commissioner whom daily he had yearned
+to strangle. "Great! By Gad, there are no words for it!"
+
+"I knew you'd be pleased. Thanks awfully--_awfully_. Well, I was
+telling you. Being down there for the paper I simply had to interview
+Marrapit. I plucked up courage and bearded him. He's half crazy about
+this wretched cat. I found him as meek as a lamb. Bit snarly at first,
+but when he found how keen I was, quite affectingly pleasant. I've
+seen him every day for the last four days, and yesterday he said what
+I told you--I came out with all about Margaret and about my splendid
+prospects, and, as I say, he practically said that if I could find the
+cat he'd be willing to think of our engagement."
+
+"But about finding out where I was? How did you discover that?"
+
+"Well, he told me. Told me this morning." Bill shuffled his legs
+uncomfortably for a moment, then plunged ahead. "Fact is, old man,
+he's a bit sick with you. Said he'd only had one telegram from you
+from Dippleford Admiral and one letter from here. Said it was
+unsatisfactory--that it was clear you were incapable of following up
+this clue of yours by yourself. You don't mind my telling you this, do
+you, old man? You know what he is."
+
+George gave the bitter laugh of one who is misunderstood,
+unappreciated. "Go on," he said, "go on." He was trembling to see the
+precipice over which the end of Bill's story would hurl him.
+
+"Well, as I said--that it was clear you could not carry through your
+clue by yourself. So I was to come down and help you. That was about
+ten o'clock, and I caught the mid-day train--I've been here since two.
+Well, Brunger--the detective chap, you know--Marrapit was going to
+send him on here at once--"
+
+This was the precipice. George went hurtling over the edge with
+whirling brain: "Brunger coming down here?" he cried.
+
+"Rather! Now, we three together, old man--"
+
+"When's he coming?" George asked. He could not hear his own voice--the
+old nightmares danced before his eyes, roared their horrors in his
+ears.
+
+Bill looked at the clock. "He ought to be here by now. He ought to
+have arrived--"
+
+The roaring confusion in George's brain went to a tingling silence;
+through it there came footsteps and a man's voice upon the stairs.
+
+As the tracked criminal who hears his pursuer upon the threshold, as
+the fugitive from justice who feels upon his shoulder the sudden hand
+of arrest, as the poor wretch in the condemned cell when the hangman
+enters--as the feelings of these, so, at this sound, the emotions of
+my miserable George.
+
+A dash must be made to flatten this hideous doom. Upon a sudden
+impulse he started forward. "Bill! Bill, old man, I want to tell you
+something. You don't know what the finding of this cat means to me.
+It--"
+
+"I do know, old man," Bill earnestly assured him. "You're splendid,
+old man, splendid. I never dreamt you were so fond of your uncle. Old
+man, it means even more to me--it means Margaret and success. Here's
+Brunger. We three together, George. Nothing shall stop us."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The sagacious detective entered. George gave him a limp, damp hand.
+
+"You don't look well," Mr. Brunger told him, after greetings.
+
+"Just what I was saying," Bill joined.
+
+Indeed, George looked far from well. Round-shouldered he sat upon the
+sofa, head in hands--a pallid face beneath a beaded brow staring out
+between them.
+
+"It's the strain of this clue, Mr. Brunger," Bill continued. "He's on
+the track!"
+
+"You are?" cried the detective.
+
+"Right on," George said dully. "Right on the track."
+
+"Is it a gang?"
+
+"Two," George answered in the same voice. "Two gangs."
+
+The sagacious detective thumped the table. "I said so. I knew it. I
+told you so, Mr. Wyvern. But _two_, eh? _Two_ gangs. That's tough. One
+got the cat and the other after it, I presume?"
+
+"No," said George. He was wildly thinking; to the conversation paying
+no attention.
+
+"No? But, my dear sir, one of 'em _must_ have the cat?"
+
+George started to the necessities of the immediate situation; wondered
+what he had said; caught at Mr. Brunger's last word. "The cat? Another
+gang has got the cat."
+
+"What, three gangs!" the detective cried.
+
+"Three gangs," George affirmed.
+
+"Two gangs you said at first," Mr. Brunger sharply reminded him.
+
+My miserable George dug his fingers into his hair. "I meant three--I'd
+forgotten the other."
+
+"Don't see how a man can forget a whole _gang_," objected the
+detective. He stared at George; frowned; produced his note-book. "Let
+us have the facts, sir."
+
+As if drawn by the glare fixed upon him, George moved from the sofa to
+the table.
+
+"Now, the facts," Mr. Brunger repeated. "Let's get these gangs settled
+first."
+
+George took a chair. He had no plan. He plunged wildly. "Gang A, gang
+B, gang C, gang D--"
+
+Mr. Brunger stopped short in the midst of his note.
+
+"Why, that's _four_ gangs!"
+
+The twisting of George's legs beneath the table was sympathetic with
+the struggles of his bewildered mind. He said desperately, "Well,
+there _are_ four gangs."
+
+The detective threw down his pencil. "You're making a fool of me!" he
+cried. "First you said two gangs, then three gangs--"
+
+"You're making a fool of yourself," George answered hotly. "If you
+knew anything about gangs you'd know they're always breaking up--
+quarrelling, and then rejoining, and then splitting again. If you
+can't follow, don't follow. Find the damned gangs yourself. You're a
+detective--I'm not. At least you say you are. You're a precious poor
+one, seems to me. You've not done much."
+
+In his bewilderment and fear my unfortunate George had unwittingly hit
+upon an admirable policy. Since first Mr. Marrapit had called Mr.
+Brunger it had sunk in upon the Confidential Inquiry Agent that indeed
+he was a precious poor detective. In the five days that had passed he
+had not struck upon the glimmer of a notion regarding the whereabouts
+of the missing cat. This was no hiding in cupboard work, no marked
+coin work, no following the skittish wife of a greengrocer work. It
+was the real thing--real detective work, and it had found Mr. Brunger
+most lamentably wanting. Till now, however, none had suspected his
+perplexity. He had impressed his client--had bounced, noted, cross-
+examined, measured; and during every bounce, note, cross-examination
+and measurement fervently had prayed that luck--or the reward--would
+help him stumble upon something he could claim as outcome of his
+skill. George's violent attack alarmed him; he drew in his horns.
+
+"Ah! don't be 'ot," he protested. "Don't be 'ot. Little
+misunderstanding, that's all. I follow you completely. Four gangs--
+_I_ see. _Four_ gangs. Now, sir."
+
+It was George's turn for fear. "Four gangs--quite so. Well, what do
+you want me to tell you?"
+
+"Start from the beginning, sir."
+
+George started--plunged head-first. For five minutes he desperately
+gabbled while Mr. Brunger's pencil bounded along behind his
+splashing; words. Every time the pencil seemed to slacken, away again
+George would fly and away in pursuit the pencil would laboriously
+toil.
+
+"Four gangs," George plunged along. "Gang A, gang B, gang C, gang D.
+Gang A breaks into the house and steals the cat. Gang B finds it gone
+and tracks down gang C."
+
+"Tracks gang A, surely," panted Mr. Brunger. "Gang A had the cat."
+
+"Gang B didn't know that. I tell you this is a devil of a complicated
+affair. Gang B tracks down gang C and finds gang D. They join. Call
+'em gang B-D. Gang A loses the cat and gang C finds it. Gang C sells
+it to gang B-D, which is run by an American, as I said."
+
+"Did you?" gasped Mr. Brunger without looking up.
+
+"Certainly. Gang B-D hands it over to gang A by mistake, and gang A
+makes off with it. Gang C, very furious because it is gang A's great
+rival, starts in pursuit and gets it back again. Then gang B-D demands
+it, but gang A refuses to give it up."
+
+"Gang C!" Mr. Brunger panted. "Gang C had got it from gang A."
+
+"Yes, but gang A got it back again. Gang B-D--Look here," George
+broke off, "that's perfectly clear about the gangs, isn't it?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Mr. Brunger, feeling that his reputation was gone
+unless he said so. "Wants a little studying, that's all. Most
+extraordinary story I ever heard of."
+
+"I'm dashed if I understand a word of it," Bill put in. "Who
+_are_ these gangs?"
+
+George rose: "Bill, old man, I'll explain that another time. The fact
+is, we're wasting time by sitting here. I was very near the end when
+you two arrived. The cat is here--quite near here."
+
+The detective and Bill sprang to their feet. George continued: "It's
+going to change hands either tonight or to-morrow. If you two will do
+just as I tell you and leave the rest to me, we shall bring off a
+capture. To-morrow evening I will explain everything."
+
+The detective asked eagerly; "Is it a certainty?"
+
+"Almost. It will be touch and go; but if we miss it this time it is a
+certainty for the immediate future. I swear this, that if you keep in
+touch with me you will be nearer the cat than you will ever get by
+yourselves."
+
+Sincerity shone in his eyes from these words. The detective and Bill
+were fired with zeal.
+
+"Take command, sir!" said Mr. Brunger.
+
+"All right. Come with me. I will post you for the night. We have some
+distance to go. Don't question me. I must think."
+
+"Not a question," said the detective: he was, indeed, too utterly
+bewildered.
+
+George murmured "Thank heaven!"; took his hat; led the way into the
+street. In dogged silence the three tramped through the rain.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+George led for the Clifford Arms, some two miles distant. For the
+present he had but one object in view. He must get rid of Bill and
+this infernal detective; then he must speed the cat from Temple
+Colney.
+
+As he walked he pushed out beyond the primary object of ridding
+himself of his companions; sought the future. In the first half-mile
+he decided that the game was up. He must deliver the Rose to his uncle
+immediately without waiting for the reward to be further raised. To
+hang on for the shadow would be, he felt, to lose the substance that
+would stand represented by Mr. Marrapit's gratitude.
+
+But this preposterous buoyancy of youth! The rain that beat upon his
+face cooled his brow; seemed to cool his brain. Before the first mile
+was crossed he had vacillated from his purpose. When he said to his
+followers "Only another half-mile," his purpose was changed.
+
+This preposterous corkiness of youth! It had lifted him up from the
+sea of misfortune in which he had nigh been drowned, and now he was
+assuring himself that, given he could hide the Rose where a sudden
+glimmering idea suggested, he would be safer than ever before. The two
+men who were most dangerous to him--the detective and the _Daily's_
+Special Commissioner at Paltley Hill, now slushing through the mud
+behind--were beneath his thumb. If he could keep them goose-chasing
+for a few days or so--!
+
+The turn of a corner brought them in view of the Clifford Arms. George
+pointed: "I want you to spend the night there and to stay there till I
+come to-morrow. A man is there whom you must watch--the landlord."
+
+"One of the gangs?" Mr. Brunger asked, hoarse excitement in his voice.
+
+"Gang B--leader. Don't let him suspect you. Just watch him."
+
+"Has he got the cat?"
+
+With great impressiveness George looked at the detective, looked at
+Bill. Volumes of meaning in his tone: "_Not yet!_" he said.
+
+Bill cried: "By Gad!" The detective rubbed his hands in keen
+anticipation.
+
+They entered the inn. Bill gave a story of belated tourists. A room
+was engaged. In a quarter of an hour George was speeding back to
+Temple Colney.
+
+At the post-office he stopped; purchased a letter-card; held his pen a
+while as he polished the glimmering idea that now had taken form; then
+wrote to his Mary:--
+
+"My dearest girl in all the world,--You've never had a line from me
+all this time, but you can guess what a time I've been having. Dearest
+darling, listen and attend. This is most important. Our future depends
+upon it. Meet me to-morrow at 12.0 at that tumbled-down hut in the
+copse on the Shipley Road where we went that day just before my exam.
+Make any excuse to get away. You must be there. And don't tell a soul.
+
+"Till to-morrow, my darling little Mary.--G."
+
+He posted the card.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+Of Paradise Lost and Found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Mrs. Major Bids For Paradise.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples from the lightest
+action that we may toss into the sea of life.
+
+Life is a game of consequences. A throws a stone, and the widening
+ripples wreck the little boats of X and Y and Z who never have even
+heard of A. Every day and every night, every hour of every day and
+night, ripples from unknown splashes are setting towards us--perhaps
+to swamp us, perhaps to bear us into some pleasant stream. One calls
+it luck, another fate. "This is my just punishment," cries one. "By my
+good works I have merited this," exclaims another; but it is merely
+the ripple from some distant splash--merely consequences.
+Consequences.
+
+A sleepy maid in Mr. City Merchant's suburban mansion leaves the
+dust-pan on the stairs after sweeping. That is the little action she
+has tossed into the sea of life, and the ripples will wreck a boat or
+two now snug and safe in a cheap and happy home many miles away.
+Mr. City Merchant trips over the dustpan, starts for office fuming
+with rage, vents his spleen upon Mr. City Clerk--dismisses him.
+
+Mr. City Clerk seeks work in vain; the cheap but happy home he shares
+with pretty little Mrs. City Clerk and plump young Master City Clerk
+is abandoned for a dingy lodging. Grade by grade the lodging they must
+seek grows dingier. Now there is no food. Now they are getting
+desperate. Now pneumonia lays erstwhile plump Master City Clerk by the
+heels and carries him off--consequences, consequences; that is one
+boat wrecked. Now Mr. City Clerk is growing mad with despair; Mrs.
+City Clerk is well upon the road that Master City Clerk has followed.
+Mr. City Clerk steals, is caught, is imprisoned--consequences,
+consequences; another boat wrecked. Mrs. City Clerk does not hold out
+long, follows Master City Clerk--consequences, consequences. Three
+innocent craft smashed up because the housemaid left the dustpan on
+the stairs.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will speed the ripples from the lightest
+action that we may toss into the sea of life. Solely and wholly
+because George abducted the Rose of Sharon, Miss Pridham, who keeps
+the general drapery in Angel Street, Marylebone Road, sold a pair of
+green knitted slippers, each decorated with a red knitted blob, that
+had gazed melancholy from her shop window for close upon two years.
+
+It was Mrs. Major who purchased them.
+
+Since that terrible morning on which, throat and mouth parched, head
+painfully throbbing through the overnight entertainment of Old Tom,
+Mrs. Major had been driven from Mr. Marrapit's door, this doubly
+distressed gentlewoman had lived in retirement in a bed-sitting-room
+in Angel Street. She did not purpose immediately taking another
+situation. This woman had sipped the delights of Herons' Holt; her
+heart was there, and for a month or two, as, sighing over her lot, she
+determined, she would brood in solitude upon the paradise she had lost
+before challenging new fortunes.
+
+The ripples of the abduction of the Rose reached her. This was a
+masterly woman, and instanter she took the tide upon the flood.
+
+Mrs. Major was not a newspaper reader. The most important sheet of the
+_Daily_, however, she one day carried into her bed-sitting-room
+wrapped about a quartern of Old Tom. It was the day when first
+"Country House Outrage" shouted from the _Daily's_ columns.
+
+Idly scanning the report her eye chanced upon familiar names. A common
+mind would have been struck astonished and for some hours been left
+fluttering. Your masterly mind grasps at once and together a solution
+and its possibilities. Without pause for thought, without even sniff
+of the new quartern of Old Tom, Mrs. Major sought pen and paper; wrote
+with inspired pen to Mr. Marrapit:
+
+"I do not even dare begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the
+right even to address you; but in the moment of your great tribulation
+something stronger than myself makes me take up my pen--"
+
+Here Mrs. Major paused; read what she had written; without so much as
+a sigh tore the sheet and started afresh. That "something stronger
+than myself makes me" she felt to be a mistake. Something decidedly
+stronger than herself sat in the quartern bottle a few inches from her
+nose, and it occurred to her that a cruel mind might thus interpret
+her meaning. She tore the sheet. This was a masterly woman.
+
+"I dare not even begin 'Dear Mr. Marrapit.' I have forfeited the right
+even to address you; but in the moment of your tribulation I feel that
+I must come forward with my sympathy. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, may I say with
+my aid? I feel I could help you if only I might come to dear, dear
+Herons' Holt. When I think of my angel darling Rose of Sharon straying
+far from the fold my heart bleeds. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I cannot rest, I
+cannot live, while my darling is wandering on the hillside, or is
+stolen, and I am unable to search for her. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, think of
+me, I implore you, not as Mrs. Major, but as one whom your sweet
+darling Rose loved. If the Rose is anywhere near Herons' Holt, she
+would come to me if I called her, I feel sure, more readily than she
+would come to anyone else except yourself, and you are not strong
+enough to search as I would search. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to
+Herons' Holt in this terrible hour. Do not speak to me, do not look at
+me, Mr. Marrapit. I do not ask that. I only beg on my bended knees
+that you will let me lay myself at night even in the gardener's shed,
+so that I may be there to tend my lamb when she is found, and by day
+will be able to search for her. That is all I ask.
+
+"Of myself I will say nothing. I will not force upon you the
+explanations of that dreadful night which you would not take from my
+trembling lips. I will not tell you that, maddened by the toothache, I
+was advised to hold a little drop of spirit in the tooth, and that,
+never having touched anything but water since I and my dear little
+brother promised my dying mother we would not, the spirit went to my
+head and made me as you saw me. I will not write any of those things,
+Mr. Marrapit; only, oh, Mr. Marrapit, I implore you to let me come and
+look for my Rose. Nor will I tell you how fondly, since I left you, I
+have thought of all your nobility of character and of your goodness to
+me, Mr. Marrapit. Wronged, I bear no resentment. I have received too
+much kindness at your hands. Ever since I left you I have thought of
+none but the Rose and you. Shall I prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit--"
+
+Here again Mrs. Major paused; thoughtfully scratched her head with her
+penholder. Like authors more experienced, her emotions had driven her
+pen to a point demanding a special solution which was not immediately
+forthcoming. She had galloped into a wood. How to get out of it?
+
+Mrs. Major scratched thoughtfully; gazed at Old Tom; gazed round the
+room; on a happy inspiration gazed from the window. Miss Pridham's
+general drapery was immediately opposite. A bright patch of green in
+the window caught Mrs. Major's eye. She recognised it as the knitted
+slippers she had once or twice noticed in passing.
+
+The very thing! Laying down her pen the masterly woman popped across
+to Miss Pridham's; in two minutes, leaving that lady delighted and
+one-and-eleven-three the richer, was back with the green knitted
+slippers with the red knitted blobs.
+
+She took up her pen and continued:
+
+"Ever since I left I have thought of none but the Rose and you. Shall
+I prove that? I will, Mr. Marrapit. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, I make so bold
+as to send you in a little parcel a pair of woollen slippers that I
+have knitted for you."
+
+Mrs. Major examined them. Such sun as creeps into Angel Street,
+Marylebone Road, jealous of rival brightness had filched their first
+delicate tint of green, had stolen the first passionate scarlet of the
+red blobs. She continued:
+
+"They are a little faded because on every stitch a bitter tear has
+fallen. Yes, Mr. Marrapit, my tears of sorrow have rained upon these
+slippers as I worked. Oh, Mr. Marrapit, they are not damp, however.
+Every evening since they were finished I have had my little fire
+lighted and have stood the slippers up against the fender; and then,
+sitting on the opposite side of the hearth, just as I used to sit for
+a few minutes with you after we had brought in the darling cats, I
+have imagined that your feet were in the slippers and have imagined
+that I am back where I have left my bleeding heart. I never meant to
+dare send them to you, Mr. Marrapit, but in this moment of your
+tribulation I make bold to do so. Do not open the parcel, Mr.
+Marrapit, if you would rather not. Hurl it on the fire and let the
+burning fiery furnace consume them, tears and all. But I feel I must
+send them, whatever their fate.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Marrapit, let me come to Herons' Holt to find my darling
+Rose!--then without a word I will creep away and die.--LUCY MAJOR."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Upon the following morning there sped to Mrs. Major from Herons' Holt
+a telegram bearing the message "Come."
+
+Frantic to clutch at any straw that might bring to him this Rose, Mr.
+Marrapit eagerly clutched at Mrs. Major. He felt there to be much
+truth, in her contention that his Rose, if secreted near by, would
+come quicker at her call than at the call of another. His Rose had
+known and loved her for a full year. His Rose, refined cat, did not
+take quickly to strangers, and had not--he had noticed it--given
+herself to Miss Humfray. Therefore Mr. Marrapit eagerly clutched at
+Mrs. Major.
+
+As to the remainder of her letter--it considerably perturbed him. Had
+he misjudged this woman, whom once he had held estimable? All the
+delectable peace of his household during her reign, as contrasted with
+the turmoil that now had taken its place, came back to him and smote
+his heart. He opened the slippers, noted the tear-stains. Had he
+misjudged her? What more likely than her story of the racking tooth
+that must be lulled with a little drop of spirit? Had he misjudged
+her? But as against that little drop of spirit, how account for the
+vast and empty bottle of Old Tom found in her room? Had he misjudged
+her?
+
+In much conflict of mind this man paced the breakfast room, a green
+knitted slipper with red knitted blob in either hand.
+
+It was thus that Margaret, entering, found him.
+
+With a soft little laugh, "Oh, father!" she cried, "what have you got
+there?"
+
+Mr. Marrapit raised the green knitted slippers with the red knitted
+blobs. "A contrite heart," he answered. "A stricken and a contrite
+heart."
+
+He resumed his pacing. Margaret squeezed round the door which happily
+she had left ajar; fled breakfastless. Quick at poetic image though
+she was, the symbol of a contrite heart in a pair of green knitted
+slippers with red knitted blobs was not clear to this girl. In her
+father it alarmed her. This great sorrow was perchance turning his
+brain.
+
+Mr. Marrapit laid the slippers upon his dressing-table; that
+afternoon greeted Mrs. Major with a circumspect reserve. Combining the
+vast and empty bottle of Old Tom with the fact that never had his
+judgment of man or matter failed him, he determined that Mrs. Major
+was guilty. But not wilfully guilty. Tempted to drown pain, she had
+succumbed; but the slippers were the sign of a contrite heart.
+
+The masterly possessor of the contrite heart betrayed no signs of its
+flutterings and its exultant boundings at being once more in paradise.
+This was a masterly woman, and, masterly, she grasped at once her
+position--without hesitation started to play her part.
+
+In Mr. Marrapit's study she stood humbly before him with bowed head;
+did not speak. Her only sounds were those of repressed emotion as Mr.
+Marrapit recited the history of the abduction. The white handkerchief
+she kept pressed against her chin punctuated the story with sudden
+little dabs first to one eye then the other. Little sniffs escaped
+her; little catches of the breath; tiny little moans.
+
+She choked when he had finished: "Let me see--my darling's--bed."
+
+Mr Marrapit led the way. Above the silk-lined box whence George had
+snatched the Rose, the masterly woman knelt. She fondled the silken
+coverlet; her lips moved. Suddenly she dashed her handkerchief to her
+eyes; with beautiful moans fled hurriedly to the bedroom that had been
+allotted her.
+
+It was an exquisitely touching sight. Mr. Marrapit, greatly moved,
+went to his room; took out the green knitted slippers with the red
+knitted blobs. Had he misjudged this woman?
+
+Ten minutes later he again encountered Mrs. Major. Now she was girt
+against the weather and against exercise. Beneath her chin were firmly
+knotted the strings of her sober bonnet; a short skirt hid nothing of
+the stout boots she had donned; her hand grasped the knob of a
+bludgeon-like umbrella.
+
+The masterly woman had removed all traces of her emotion. In a voice
+humble yet strong, "I start to search, Mr. Marrapit," she said. "I
+will find the Rose if she is to be found."
+
+So deep sincerity was in her speech, so strong she seemed, so restful
+in this crisis, that Mr. Marrapit, watching her stride the drive,
+again fell to pacing and cogitation--had he misjudged her? Almost
+unconsciously he moved upstairs to his room; drew those green slippers
+with red blobs from their drawer.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Had Mr. Marrapit doubted the sincerity of Mrs. Major's search,
+assuredly he would have misjudged her. In her diary that night the
+masterly woman inscribed:
+
+"_Am here; must stick_."
+
+Her best chance of sticking, as well she knew, lay in finding the
+Rose. Could she but place that creature's exquisite form in Mr.
+Marrapit's arms, she felt that her reward would be to win back to the
+paradise from which Old Tom had driven her.
+
+Therefore most strenuously she scoured the countryside; pried into
+houses; popped her head into stable doors. This woman nothing spared
+herself; in the result, at the end of two days, was considerably
+dejected. For it was clear to her that the Rose had not strayed, but
+had been stolen; was not concealed in the vicinity of Herons' Holt,
+but had been spirited to the safety of many miles. She was driven to
+accept Mr. Brunger's opinion--the Rose had been stolen by some eager
+and unscrupulous breeder to be used for gross purposes.
+
+It was upon the evening of the second day in paradise that this woman
+settled upon this gloomy conclusion. Gloomy it was, and desperately,
+sitting in her bedroom that night, the masterly woman battled for some
+way to circumvent it. To that entry made in her diary on the night of
+her arrival she had added two further sentences:
+
+_"Hate that baby-faced Humfray chit."
+
+"Certain cannot stick unless find cat."_
+
+Opening her diary now she gazed upon these entries; chewed them. They
+were bitter to the taste. To agony at what she had lost was added
+mortification at seeing another in her place; and rankling in this
+huge wound was the poison of the knowledge that she could not win
+back. Circumstances were too strong. The cat was not to be found,
+and--stabbing thought--"certain cannot stick unless find cat."
+
+This way and that the masterly woman twisted in search of a means to
+circumvent her position. It might be done by accomplishing the
+overthrow of this baby-faced chit. If the baby-faced chit could be
+made to displease Mr. Marrapit and be turned out, it would surely be
+possible, being ready at hand, to take her place. But how could the
+baby-faced chit be made to err?
+
+This way and that Mrs. Major twisted and could find no means. Always
+she was forced back to the brick-wall fact--salvation lay only in
+finding the cat. That would accomplish everything. She would have
+succeeded where the baby-faced chit had failed; she would have proved
+her devotion; she, would have earned, not a doubt of it, the reward of
+re-entry into paradise that Mr. Marrapit in his gratitude would more
+than offer--would press upon her.
+
+But the cat was not to be found.
+
+Beating up against the desperate barrier of that thought, Mrs. Major
+groaned aloud as she paced the room, threw up her arms in her despair.
+The action caused her to swerve; with hideous violence she crashed her
+stockinged foot against the leg of the wash-stand.
+
+Impossible to tell how far will spread the ripples of the lightest
+action we may toss upon the sea of life. The stunning agony in this
+woman's toes, as, hopping to the bed, she sat and nursed them, with
+the swiftness of thought presented to her a solution of her difficulty
+that struck her staring with excitement.
+
+Her first thought in her throbbing pain was of remedy for the bruise.
+"Bruise" brought involuntarily to her mind the picture of a chemist's
+shop in the Edgware Road, not far from Angel Street, whose window she
+had seen filled with little boxes of "Bruisine," the newest specific
+for abrasions. Thence her thoughts, by direct passage, jumped to the
+time when last she had noticed the shop--she had been returning from a
+stroll by way of Sussex Gardens. And it was while mentally retracing
+that walk down Sussex Gardens that Mrs. Major lit plump upon the
+solution of her difficulty. She had noticed, let out for a run from
+No. 506, an orange cat that was so precisely the image of the Rose of
+Sharon that she had stopped to stroke it for dear memory's sake. Often
+since then she had spoken to it; every time had been the more struck
+by its extraordinary resemblance to the Rose. She had reflected that,
+seen together, she could not have told them apart.
+
+Mrs. Major forgot the throbbing of her abrased toes. Her brows knitted
+by concentration of thought, very slowly the masterly woman concluded
+her disrobing. Each private garment that she stripped and laid aside
+marked a forward step in the indomitable purpose she had conceived. As
+her fingers drew the most private from her person, leaving it naked,
+so from her plan did her masterly mind draw the last veil that filmed
+it, leaving it clear. When the Jaeger nightdress fell comfortably
+about her, her purpose too was presentable and warm.
+
+Every day and every night, every hour of every day and night, ripples
+from unknown splashes are setting towards us. From this masterly
+woman, in process of toilet, ripples were setting towards a modest and
+unsuspecting cat lying in sweet slumber at 506 Sussex Gardens, off the
+Edgware Road.
+
+For the masterly woman had thus determined--she would have that cat
+that was the Rose's second self. The Rose was in the hands of some
+villain breeder and would never be returned; small fear of discovery
+under that head. This cat was the Rose's second self; differences that
+Mr. Marrapit might discover, lack of affection that he might notice,
+could be attributed to the adventures through which the Rose had
+passed since her abduction. Under this head, indeed, Mrs. Major did
+not anticipate great difficulty. Similar cats are more similar than
+similar dogs. They have not, as dogs have, the distinguishing marks of
+character and demonstrativeness. In any event, as the masterly woman
+assured herself, she ran no peril even if her plot failed. She would
+say she had found the cat, and if Mr. Marrapit were convinced it was
+not his Rose--well, she had made a mistake, that was all.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Upon the morrow, playing her hand with masterly skill, Mrs. Major
+sought interview with Mr. Marrapit. With telling dabs of her pocket
+handkerchief at her eyes, with telling sniffs of her masterly nose,
+she expressed the fear that she had outstayed his kindness in
+receiving her. He had granted her request--he had let her come to
+Herons' Holt; but two days had passed and she had not found his Rose.
+True, if she had longer she could more thoroughly search; but as an
+honest woman she must admit that she had been given her chance, had
+failed.
+
+Upon a wailing note she ended: "I must go."
+
+"Cancel that intention," Mr. Marrapit told her. Her honesty smote this
+man. Had he misjudged her?
+
+She smothered a sniff in her handkerchief: "I must go. I must go. I
+have seen that you regard me with suspicion. Oh, you have reason, I
+know; but I cannot bear it."
+
+"Remove that impression," spoke Mr. Marrapit. He _had_ misjudged this
+woman; he was convinced of it.
+
+Mrs. Major gave her answer in the form of two smothered sniffs and a
+third that, eluding her handkerchief, escaped free and loud--a telling
+sniff that advertised her distress; wrung Mr. Marrapit's emotions.
+
+He continued: "Mrs. Major, at a future time we will discuss the
+painful affair to which you make reference. At present I am too
+preoccupied by the calamity that has desolated my hearth. Meanwhile, I
+suspend judgment. I place suspicion behind me. I regard you only as
+she whom my Rose loved."
+
+"Do you wish me to stay a little longer?" asked Mrs. Major, trembling.
+
+"That is my wish. Continue to prosecute your search."
+
+Trembling yet more violently Mrs. Major said: "I will stay. I had not
+dared to suppose I might stop more than two days. I brought nothing
+with me. May I go to London to get clothes? I will return to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Why not to-night?"
+
+"Early to-morrow would be more convenient. I have other things to do
+in London."
+
+"To-morrow, then," Mr. Marrapit agreed.
+
+At the door Mrs. Major turned. Her great success at this interview
+emboldened her to a second stroke. "There is one other thing I would
+like to say, if I dared."
+
+"Be fearless."
+
+She plunged. "If Heaven should grant that I may find the Rose, I
+implore you not to distress me by offering me the reward you are
+holding out. I could not take it. I know you can ill afford it.
+Further than that, to have the joy of giving you back your Rose would
+be reward enough for me. And to know that she was safe with you,
+though I--I should never see her again, that would make me happy till
+the end of my days."
+
+Her nobility smote Mr. Marrapit. Cruelly, shamefully, he _had_
+misjudged her. Her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, very gently Mrs.
+Major closed the door; very soberly mounted the stairs.
+
+Out of earshot, she walked briskly to her room; drew forth her diary;
+in a bold hand inscribed:
+
+"_Absolutely certain shall stick._"
+
+The masterly woman lunched in town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Mrs. Major Finds The Lock.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+By six o'clock Mrs. Major had all ready for her adventure. In the
+little room at Angel Street she deposited a newly purchased basket; at
+eight o'clock started for Sussex Gardens.
+
+Twice, while passing down the terrace at about nine, she had seen the
+cat she now pursued let out for what was doubtless its nightly run.
+
+On each occasion she had observed the same order of events, and she
+judged them to be of regular occurrence. Out from No. 506 had stepped
+a tall man, long-haired, soft-hatted, poetically bearded. Behind him
+had followed the cat. The cat had trotted across the road to the
+gardens; the tall man had walked slowly round the enclosure.
+Returning, he had called. The cat had walked soberly forth from the
+railings and the pair had re-entered the house.
+
+II.
+
+Matters fell this night precisely as the sapient woman had
+conjectured. Shortly before nine she took up position against the
+railings in a dark patch that marked the middle point between two
+lamps, some doors above 506. No tremor agitated her form; in action
+this woman was most masterly.
+
+A church clock struck a full clear note, another and another. The
+after-humming of the ninth had scarcely died when the blackness that
+lay beneath the fanlight of 506 was split by a thin rod of yellow
+light. Instantly this widened, served for a moment to silhouette a
+tall figure, then vanished as the door slammed. The tall figure
+stepped on to the pavement; a cat at its feet trod sedately across the
+road. The tall figure turned; in a moment was meditatively pacing the
+pavement opposite where Mrs. Major stood.
+
+Mrs. Major gave him twenty yards. Then she hurried along the railings
+to where the cat had tripped. Six feet inwards, delicately scratching
+the soil beneath a bush, she espied it.
+
+The masterly woman pressed her face between the rails; stretched a
+snapping finger and thumb; in an intense voice murmured, "Tweetikins
+puss!"
+
+Tweetikins puss continued thoughtfully to turn the soil. This was a
+nicely mannered cat.
+
+"Tweety little puss!" cooed Mrs. Major. "Tweety pussikins! puss,
+puss!"
+
+Tweety pussikins turned to regard her. Mrs. Major moistened her finger
+and thumb; snapped frantically. "Puss, puss--tweety pussy!"
+
+Tweety pussy advanced till the snapping fingers were within an inch of
+its nose.
+
+"Pussikins, pussikins!" implored Mrs. Major.
+
+Pussikins very deliberately seated itself; coiled its fine tail about
+its feet; regarded Mrs. Major with a sphinx-like air.
+
+Mrs. Major pressed till the iron railings cut her shoulders. She
+stretched the forefinger of her extended arm; at great peril of
+slipping forward and rasping her nose along the rails effected to
+scratch the top of the sphinx's head.
+
+"Puss, puss! Tweety, _tweety_ puss!"
+
+By not so much as a blink did tweety puss stir a muscle.
+
+Mrs. Major was in considerable pain. Her bent legs were cramped; the
+railings bit her shoulder; her neck ached: "Tweety little puss! Tweety
+puss! Puss! _Drat_ the beast!"
+
+In great physical agony and in heightening mental distress--since time
+was fleeting and the cat as statuesque as ever,--Mrs. Major again
+dratted it twice with marked sincerity and a third time as a sharp
+sound advertised the splitting of a secret portion of her wear against
+the tremendous strain her unnatural position placed upon it. Unable
+longer to endure the pain of her outstretched arm, she dropped her
+hand to earth; with a masterly effort resumed her smiling face and
+silky tone. Repeating her endearing cooings, she scratched the soil,
+enticing to some hidden mystery.
+
+The demon of curiosity impelled this cat's doom. For a moment it eyed
+the scratching fingers; then stretched forward its head to
+investigation.
+
+The time for gentle methods was gone. Mrs. Major gripped the downy
+scruff of the doomed creature's neck; dragged the surprised animal
+forward; rudely urged it through the railings; tucked it beneath her
+cloak; sped down the road in the same direction that the tall figure
+had taken.
+
+But where the tall figure had turned round the gardens Mrs. Major kept
+straight. Along a main street, into a by-street, round a turning,
+across a square, up a terrace, over the Edgware Road--so into the
+bed-sitting-room at Angel Street.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Speeding by train to Herons' Holt upon the following morning, beside
+her the basket wherein lay the key that was to open paradise, Mrs.
+Major slightly altered her plans. It had been her intention at once to
+burst upon Mr. Marrapit with her prize--at once to put to desperate
+test whether or no he would accept it as the Rose. But before Paltley
+Hill was reached the masterly woman had modified this order. The cat
+she had abducted was so much the facsimile of the Rose that for the
+first time it occurred to her that, like the Rose, it might be
+valuable, and that a noisy hue and cry might be raised upon its loss.
+
+If this so happened, and especially if Mr. Marrapit were doubtful that
+the cat was his Rose, it would be dangerous to let him know that she
+had made her discovery in London. Supposing he heard that a London
+cat, similar to the Rose in appearance, were missing, and remembered
+that this cat--of which from the first he had had doubts--was filched
+from London? That might turn success into failure. The chances of such
+events were remote, but the masterly woman determined to run no risks.
+She decided that on arrival at
+
+Paltley Hill she would conceal her cat; on the morrow, starting out
+from Herons' Hill to renew her search, would find it and with it come
+bounding to the house.
+
+As to where she should hide it she had no difficulty in determining.
+She knew of but one place, and she was convinced she could not have
+known a better. The ruined hut in the copse off the Shipley Road,
+whither in the dear, dead days beyond recall she had stolen for Old
+Tommish purposes, was in every way safe and suitable. None visited
+there at ordinary times; now that the country-side was no longer being
+searched for the Rose save by herself, it was as safe as ever. She
+would leave her cat there this day and night.
+
+Upon this determination the remarkable woman acted; before proceeding
+to Herons' Holt secured her cat in that inner room of the hut where,
+but a few days previously, the Rose herself had lain.
+
+When she reached the house a maid told her that Mr. Marrapit was
+closeted with young Mr. Wyvern.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+During the afternoon Mrs. Major visited her cat, taking it milk. That
+evening, Mary and Margaret being elsewhere together, she was able to
+enjoy a quiet hour with Mr. Marrapit.
+
+He was heavily depressed: "A week has passed, Mrs. Major. Something
+tells me I never again will see my Rose. This day I have sent young
+Mr. Wyvern and Mr. Brunger after my nephew George. The clue he claims
+to know is my last chance. I have no faith in it. Put not your
+trust--" Mr. Marrapit allowed a melancholy sigh to conclude his sentence.
+This man had suffered much.
+
+Mrs. Major clasped her hands. "Oh, do not give up hope, Mr. Marrapit.
+Something tells me you _will_ see her--soon, very soon."
+
+Mr. Marrapit sighed. "You are always encouraging, Mrs. Major."
+
+"Something tells me that I have reason to be, Mr. Marrapit. Last night
+I dreamed that the Rose was found." The encouraging woman leaned
+forward; said impressively, "I dreamed that I found her."
+
+Mr. Marrapit did not respond to her tone. Melancholy had this man in
+leaden grip. "I lose hope," he said. "Man is born unto trouble as the
+sparks fly upward. Do not trust in dreams."
+
+"Oh, but I _do_!" Mrs. Major said with girlish impulsiveness. "I _do_.
+I always have. My dreams so often come true. Do not lose hope, Mr.
+Marrapit." She continued with a beautiful air of timidity: "Oh, Mr.
+Marrapit, I know I am only here on sufferance, but your careworn air
+emboldens me to suggest--it might keep your poor mind from thinking--a
+game of backgammon such as we used to play before--" She sighed.
+
+"I should like it," Mr. Marrapit answered.
+
+Mrs. Major arranged the board; drew Mr. Marrapit's favourite chair to
+the table; rattled the dice. After a few moves, "Oh, you're not
+beating me as you used to," she said archly.
+
+"I am out of practice," Mr. Marrapit confessed.
+
+Mrs. Major paused in the act of throwing her dice. "Out of practice!
+But surely Miss Humfray plays with you?"
+
+"She does not."
+
+Mrs. Major gave a sigh that suggested more than she dared say.
+
+She sighed again when the game was concluded. Mr. Marrapit sat on.
+"Quite like old times," Mrs. Major murmured. "Good night, Mr.
+Marrapit; and don't lose hope. Remember my dream."
+
+"Quite like old times," Mr. Marrapit murmured.
+
+The masterly woman ascended the stairs rubbing her hands.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Mrs. Major ate an excellent breakfast upon the following morning. She
+was upon the very threshold of winning into paradise, but not a tremor
+of nervousness did she betray or feel. This was a superb woman.
+
+At eleven she left the house and took a walk--rehearsing the manner in
+which she had arranged to burst in upon Mr. Marrapit with the cat,
+checking again the arguments with which she would counter and lull any
+doubts he might raise.
+
+At twelve she entered the hut.
+
+Mrs. Major was in the very act of leaving the building, the cat
+beneath her arm, when a sound of voices and footsteps held her upon
+the threshold. She listened; the sounds drew near. She closed the
+door; the sounds, now loud, approached the hut. She ran to the inner
+room; a hand was laid upon the outer latch. She closed the door;
+applied her eye to a crack; George and Mary entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Mrs. Major Gets The Key.
+
+
+George carried a basket. He laid it upon the floor. Then he turned and
+kissed his Mary. He put his arms about her; held her to him for a
+moment in a tremendous hug; pressed his lips to hers; held her away,
+drinking love from her pretty eyes; again kissed her and again hugged.
+
+She gasped: "I shall crack in half in a minute if you will be so
+ridiculous."
+
+He laughed; let her free. He led to the tottering bench that stood
+across the room, sat her there, and taking her little gloved hand
+patted it between his.
+
+"Fine, Mary," he said, "to see you again! Fine! It seems months!"
+
+"Years," Mary whispered, giving one of the patting hands a little
+squeeze. "Years. And you never sent me a line. I've not had a word
+with you since you came up on the lawn that day and said you had
+passed your exam. You simply _bolted_ off, you know."
+
+"You got my letter, though, this morning?" George said. He dropped her
+hand; fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. He was becoming a little
+nervous at the matter before him.
+
+Mary told him: "Well, that was _nothing_. It was such a _frantic_
+letter! What is all the mystery about?"
+
+"I'll tell you the whole story." George got from the bench and began
+to pace, filling his pipe.
+
+With a tender little smile Mary watched her George's dear face. Then,
+as he still paced, lit his pipe, gustily puffed, but did not speak, a
+tiny troubled pucker came between her eyes. There was a suspicion of a
+silly little tremor in her voice when at last she asked: "Anything
+wrong, old man?"
+
+George inhaled a vast breath of smoke; let it go in a misty cloud.
+With a quick action he laid his pipe upon the table; sprang to her
+side. His right arm he put about her, in his left hand he clasped both
+hers. "Nothing wrong," he cried brightly; "not a bit wrong. Mary, it's
+a game, a plot, a dickens of a game."
+
+"Well, tell me," she said, beaming.
+
+"It wants your help."
+
+"Well, tell me, tell me, stupid."
+
+"You will help?"
+
+"Of course, if I can. Oh, do tell me, Georgie!"
+
+"I'll show you, that's quicker."
+
+He sprang to the basket; unstrapped the lid; threw it back. A most
+exquisite orange head upreared. A queenly back arched. A beautiful
+figure stepped forth.
+
+"_George!_" Mary cried. "George! _The Rose!_ You've found her!"
+
+George gave a nervous little crack of laughter. "I never lost her."
+
+"Never lost her! No, but she's been--"
+
+"I've had her all the time!"
+
+"_All the_--"
+
+"I took her!"
+
+"You _took_ her! _You_--took her! Oh, George, speak sense! Whatever
+can you mean?" Mary had jumped to her feet when first the Rose stepped
+forth; now was close to her George--face a little white, perplexed;
+hands clasped.
+
+He cried: "Sweetest dove of a Mary, don't talk like that. Sit down and
+I'll tell you."
+
+"But what have you done?--what have you _done?_"
+
+The true woman was in that question. How they jostle us, these women,
+with their timid little flutterings when we are trying to put a case
+before them in our manlike way!--first spoiling their palate with all
+the sugar, so that they may not taste the powder.
+
+"I'll tell you what I've done if you'll only sit down."
+
+She went to the seat.
+
+"Now laugh, Mary. You simply must laugh. I can't tell you while you
+look like that. Laugh, or I shall tickle you."
+
+She laughed merrily--over her first bewilderment. "But, Georgie, it's
+something fearful that you've done, isn't it?"
+
+He sat beside her; took her hands. "It's terrific. Look here. From the
+beginning. When I told old Marrapit I'd passed my exam. I asked for
+that 500 pounds--you know--to start us."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"He refused. He got in an awful state at the bare idea. I asked him to
+lend it--he got worse. Mary, he simply would not give or advance a
+penny: you know what that meant?"
+
+The dejected droop of her mouth gave answer.
+
+"Well, then, I concocted a plot. Old Wyvern helped me--Professor
+Wyvern, you know. I thought that if I took his cat, his beloved Rose,
+and lay low with her for a bit, he would--"
+
+"Oh, _George!_"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Nothing--finish."
+
+"--He would be certain to offer a reward. And I guessed he wouldn't
+mind what he paid. So I thought I'd take the cat and hang on till he
+offered L500, or till I thought he'd be so glad to get the Rose back
+that he'd do what I want out of pure gratitude. Then I'd bring it back
+and get the money--say I'd found it, you see, and--and--wait a bit--
+for heaven's sake don't speak yet." George saw his Mary was bursting
+with words; as he judged the look in her eyes they were words he had
+reason to fear. Shirking their hurt, he hurried along. "Don't speak
+yet. Get the money, and then we'd save up and pay him back and then
+tell him. There!"
+
+She burst out: "But, George--how _could_ you? Oh, it's wrong--it's
+_awful!_ Why, do you know what people would call you? They'd say
+you're a--yes, they'd say you're a--"
+
+He snatched the terrible word from her lips with a kiss.
+
+"They'd say I was a fool if I let Marrapit do me out of what is my
+own. That's the point, Mary. It's my money. I'm only trying to get
+what is my own. I felt all along you would see that; otherwise--" He
+hesitated. He was in difficulties. Manlike, he suddenly essayed to
+shoot the responsibility upon the woman. "--Otherwise I wouldn't have
+done it," he ended.
+
+His Mary had the wit to slip from the net, to dig him a vital thrust
+with the trident: "If you thought that, why didn't you tell me?"
+
+The thrust staggered him; set him blustering: "Tell you! Tell you! How
+could I tell you? I did it on the spur of the moment."
+
+"You could have written. Oh, Georgie, it's wrong. It _is_ wrong."
+
+He took up the famous sex attack. "Wrong! Wrong! That's just like a
+woman to say that! You won't listen to reason. You jump at a thing and
+shut your eyes and your ears."
+
+"I _will_ listen to reason. But you haven't _got_ any reason. If you
+had, why didn't you tell me before you did it?"
+
+He continued the sex assault; flung out a declamatory hand. "There you
+go! Why didn't I tell you? I've told you why. I tell you I did it on
+the spur of the moment--"
+
+But she still struggled. "Yes, that's just it. You didn't think. Now
+that you are thinking you must see it in its proper light. You _must_
+see it's wrong."
+
+"I don't. I don't in the least."
+
+"Well, why are you getting in such a state about it?"
+
+"I'm not getting in a state!"
+
+"You are." His Mary fumbled at her waist-belt. "You are. You're--
+saying--all sorts--of--things. You--said--I--was--just--like--a--
+woman." Out came this preposterous Mary's pocket handkerchief; into it
+went Mary's little nose.
+
+George sprang to her. "Oh, Mary! Oh, I say, don't cry, old girl!"
+
+The nose came out for a minute, a very shiny little nose. "I can't
+help crying. This is an--an _awful_ business." The shiny little nose
+disappeared again.
+
+George tried to pull away the handkerchief, tried to put his face
+against hers. A bony little shoulder poked obstinately up and
+prevented him. He burst out desperately. "Oh, damn! Oh, what a beast I
+am! I'm always making you cry. Oh, damn! Oh, Mary! I can't do anything
+right. I've had an awful time these days--and I was longing to see
+you,--and now I've called you names and been a brute."
+
+His Mary gulped the tears that were making the shiny little nose every
+minute more shiny. Never could she bear to hear her George accuse
+himself. Upon a tremendous sniff, "You haven't been a brute," she
+said, "--a bit. It's my--my fault for annoying you when I don't
+properly understand. Perhaps I don't understand."
+
+He put an arm about her. "You don't, Mary. Really and truly you don't.
+Let me tell you. Don't say a word till I've done. I'll tell you first
+why I've brought the Rose here. You see, I can't keep her anywhere
+else. I'm being chased about all over England. Bill and that infernal
+detective are after me now, and I simply must hide the beastly cat
+where it will be safe. Well, it's safest here--here, right under their
+noses, where nobody will ever look because everyone thinks it miles
+away by now. I can't stop near it, because I must be away on this clue
+they think I've got--especially now I've got mixed up with the
+detectives: see? So I want you just to come up from the house every
+day and feed the cat. You'll be perfectly safe, and it can't be for
+very long. You would do that, wouldn't you? Oh, Mary, think what it
+means to us!"
+
+She polished the shiny little nose: "I'd do anything that would help
+you. But, Georgie, it's not _right_; it's _wrong_. Oh, it is wrong! I
+don't care _what_ you say."
+
+"But you haven't heard what I've got to say."
+
+"I have. I've been listening for hours."
+
+"No, no, Mary. No, I haven't explained yet. You're too serious about
+it. It isn't a bit serious. It's only a frightful rag. And nobody will
+suffer, because he'll get his money back. And, think--think what it
+means. Now, do listen!"
+
+She listened, and her George poured forth a flood of arguments that
+were all mixed and tangled with love. She could not separate the two.
+This argument that he was right was delectably sugared with the
+knowledge that the thing was done for her; that delicious picture of
+the future, when it was swallowed, proved to be an argument in favour
+of his purpose. Love and argument, argument and love--she could not
+separate them, and they combined into a most exquisite sweetmeat. The
+arm her George had about her was a base advantage over her. How doubt
+her George was right when against her she could feel his heart! How be
+wiser than he when both her hands were in that dear brown fist?
+
+She was almost won when with a "So there you are!" he concluded. She
+had been won if she had much longer remained beneath the drug of his
+dear, gay, earnest words.
+
+But when he ceased she came to. The little awakening sigh she gave was
+the little fluttering sigh of a patient when the anesthetic leaves the
+senses clear.
+
+She looked at her George. Horrible to dim the sparkling in those dear
+eyes, radiant with excitement, with love. Yet she did it. The goody-
+goody little soul of her put its hands about the little weakness of
+her and held it tight.
+
+She said: "I do, _do_ see what you mean, Georgie. But I do, _do_ think
+it's wrong."
+
+And then the little hands and the brown fist changed places. For she
+put one hand below the fist, and with the other patted as she gave her
+little homily--goody-goody little arguments, Sunday-school little
+arguments, mother-and-child little arguments. And very timidly she
+concluded: "You are not angry, Georgie, are you?"
+
+This splendid George of hers gave her a tremendous kiss. "You're a
+little saint; you're a little idiot; you're a little angel; you're a
+little goose," he told her. "But I love you all the more for it,
+although I'd like to shake you. I _would_ like to shake you, Mary.
+You're ruining the finest joke that ever was tried; and you're ruining
+our only chance of marrying; and goodness only knows what's going to
+happen now."
+
+She laughed ever so happily. It was intoxicating to bend this dear
+George; intoxicating to have the love that came of bending him.
+
+"But I _am_ right, am I not?" she asked.
+
+George said: "Look here, saint and goose. I'm simply not going to
+chuck the thing and all our happiness like this. I'll make a bargain.
+Saint and goose, we'll say you are right, but you shall have one night
+to think over it. One night. And this afternoon you will go to
+Professor Wyvern and tell him everything and hear what he thinks about
+it--what an outsider thinks: see? Yes, that's it. Don't even spend a
+night over it. Have a talk with Professor Wyvern, and if you still
+think I ought to chuck it, write to me at once, and to-morrow I'll
+come down and creep in unto my uncle with the cat, and say: 'Uncle, I
+have sinned.' There, Mary, that's agreed, isn't it?"
+
+"That's agreed," she joined. "Yes, that's fair."
+
+He looked at his watch. "I must cut. I must catch the one-thirty
+train. I must calm Bill and the 'tec. in case you--Mary, _do_ weigh
+whatever Wyvern says, won't you?"
+
+She promised; gave her George her hope that the Professor would make
+her see differently.
+
+"That's splendid of you!" George cried. "Saint and goose, that's sweet
+of you. Mary, I'm sure he will. Look here, I must fly; come half-way
+to the station. The cat's all right here. Pop up and feed her this
+afternoon."
+
+They pressed the door behind them; hurried down the path.
+
+It was precisely as they turned from the lane into the high-road, that
+Mrs. Major, a cat beneath her arm, went bounding wildly through the
+copse towards Herons' Holt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+George Has A Shot At Paradise.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two hours after George, leaving his Mary near Paltley Hill railway
+station, had got back to his inn at Temple Colney, a very agitated
+young man booked from Temple Colney to Paltley Hill and was now
+speeding between them in the train.
+
+He had the carriage to himself. Sometimes he sat, hands deep in
+pockets, legs thrust before him, staring with wide and frightened eyes
+at the opposite seat. Sometimes he paced wildly from door to door,
+chin sunk on breast, in his eyes still that look of frantic
+apprehension. Sometimes he would snatch from his pocket a telegram;
+glare at it; pucker his brows over it; groan over it.
+
+George was this feverish young man.
+
+On his table in his room at the inn he had found this telegram
+awaiting him. He had broken the envelope, had read, and immediately a
+tickling feeling over his scalp had sent a dreadful shiver through his
+frame:
+
+"_Return at once. Cat found.--Marrapit._"
+
+He had plumped into a chair.
+
+For a space the capacity for thought was gone. In his brain was only a
+heavy drumming that numbed. Beneath the window a laden cart went
+thumping by--thump, thump; thump, thump--cat found; cat found. The
+cart drubbed away and was lost. Then the heavy ticking of the clock
+edged into his senses--tick, tock; tick, tock--cat found; cat found.
+
+Then thought came.
+
+Cat found!--then all was lost. Cat found!--then some damned prowling
+idiot had chanced upon the hut.
+
+This miserable George had felt certain that Professor Wyvern's
+arguments would overcome his Mary's scruples. That little meeting with
+his Mary had made him the more desperately anxious for success so that
+he might win her and have her. And now--cat found!--all over. Cat
+found! His pains for nothing!
+
+Then came the support of a hope, and to this, hurrying back to the
+station, speeding now in the train, most desperately he clung. The
+Rose, he struggled to assure himself, had not been found at all. It
+was impossible that anyone had been to the hut. Some idiot had found a
+cat that answered to the Rose's description, and had telegraphed the
+discovery to his uncle; or someone had brought a cat to his uncle and
+his uncle was himself temporarily deluded.
+
+Wildly praying that this might be so, George leaped from the train at
+Paltley Hill; went rushing to the hut. Outside, for full ten minutes
+he dared not push the door. What if he saw no Rose? What if all were
+indeed lost?
+
+He braced himself; pushed; entered.
+
+At once he gave a whoop, and another whoop, and a third. He snapped
+his fingers; cavorted through the steps of a wild dance that
+considerably alarmed the noble cat that watched him.
+
+For there was the Rose!
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When George had indulged his transports till he was calmer, he took a
+moment's swift thought to decide his action.
+
+Since someone was bouncing a spurious Rose on his uncle, he must
+delay, he decided, no longer--must dash in with the true Rose at once.
+Surely his uncle's delight would be sufficient to arouse in him the
+gratitude that would produce the sum necessary for Runnygate!
+
+Previously, when he had reflected upon the plan he should follow on
+restoring the cat, he had been a little alarmed at the difficulties he
+foresaw. Chief among them was the fact that his uncle, and the
+detective, and heaven knew who else besides, would require a plausible
+and circumstantial story of how the Rose had been found--might wish to
+prosecute the thief. How to invent this story had caused George
+enormous anxiety. He shuddered whenever he thought upon it; had
+steadily put it behind him till the matter must be faced.
+
+But this and all other difficulties he now sent flying. The relief of
+freedom from the badgering he had endured since he abducted the Rose;
+the enormous relief of finding that the Rose was not, after all, gone
+from the hut; the tearing excitement of the thought that he had his
+very fingers upon success--these combined to make him reckless of
+truth and blind to doubts. He relied upon his uncle's transports of
+delight on recovering the Rose--he felt that in the delirious
+excitement of that joy everything must go well and unquestioned with
+him who had brought it about. As to his Mary's scruples--time enough
+for them when the matter was done.
+
+This was George's feeling at the end of his rapid cogitation. A
+heartless chuckle he gave as he thought of Bill and Mr. Brunger at the
+inn, closely dogging the landlord; then he seized the cat and in a
+second was bounding through the copse to Herons' Holt as Mrs. Major, a
+short space ago, had bounded before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Of Twin Cats: Of Ananias And Of Sapphira.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The maid who opened the door told George that the master awaited him
+in the study.
+
+Nothing of George's excitement had left him during the rush down to
+the house. His right arm tucked about the cat he carried, with his
+left hand impulsively he pushed open the door; with a spring eagerly
+entered.
+
+Even as he stepped over the threshold the bubbling words that filled
+his mouth melted; did not shape. In the atmosphere of the apartment
+there was that sinister element of some unseen force which we detect
+by medium of the almost atrophied sense that in dogs we call instinct.
+As dogs will check and grow suspicious in the presence of death that
+they cannot see, but feel, so my George checked and was struck
+apprehensive by the sudden sensation of an invisible calamity.
+
+The quick glance he gave increased the sudden chill of his spirits. He
+saw Mr. Marrapit standing against the mantelshelf--dressing-gowned,
+hands behind back, face most intensely grim; his glance shifted and he
+froze, for it rested upon Mrs. Major--hidden by a table from the waist
+downwards, prim, bolt upright in a chair, face most intensely grim;
+his eyes passed her and now goggled in new bewilderment, for they took
+in his Mary--seated upon the extreme edge of the sofa, a white tooth
+upon lower lip, face most intensely woebegone.
+
+George stood perfectly still.
+
+Like the full, deep note of a huge bell, Mr. Marrapit's voice came
+booming through the fearful atmosphere.
+
+"Well?" boomed Mr. Marrapit.
+
+The cat beneath George's arm wriggled.
+
+Boom and wriggle touched George back to action from the fear into
+which the invisible something and the fearful panorama of faces had
+struck him.
+
+After all--let have happened what might have happened--he had the cat!
+
+He swung the creature round into his hands; outstretched it. He took a
+step forward. "Uncle!" he cried, "uncle, I have found the Rose!"
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major on a short jerk.
+
+From Mary there came a violent double sniff.
+
+George stood perfectly still; the unseen horror he felt to be rushing
+upon him, but it remained invisible. With considerably less confidence
+he repeated:
+
+"The Rose, uncle."
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major on a yet shorter jerk; from Mary a double sniff
+yet more violent.
+
+Mr. Marrapit raised a white hand.
+
+"Hark!" said Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Alarmed, his nerves unstrung, with straining ears George listened. The
+tense atmosphere made him ajump for outward sounds.
+
+"Hark!" boomed Mr. Marrapit; lowered the warning hand; at George
+directed a long finger. "Are you not afraid that you will hear upon
+the threshold the footsteps of the young men who will come in, wind
+you up, and carry you out?"
+
+"What on earth--?" George asked.
+
+Mr. Marrapit poked the extended finger towards him. "Ananias!" he
+boomed. He poked at my quivering Mary. "Sapphira!"
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major. "Hem!"
+
+George recovered. "Is this a joke?" he asked. "I tell you--look for
+yourself--I have found the Rose."
+
+Mr. Marrapit stooped to Mrs. Major's lap, hidden by the table. With a
+most queenly creature in his arms he stood upright. "Here is the
+Rose," said he.
+
+Instantly George forgot all that had immediately passed. Instantly he
+remembered that a bogus Rose was what he fully expected to see.
+Instantly fear fled. Instantly assurance returned.
+
+In a full and confident note, "Uncle," he said, "you have been
+deceived!"
+
+His words let loose a torrent upon him.
+
+Mr. Marrapit with one arm clasped to his breast the cat he had raised
+from Mrs. Major's lap. Alternately raising and lowering the other
+hand, his white hair seeming to stream, his eyes flashing, he took on,
+to George's eyes, the appearance of an enraged prophet bellowing over
+the cities of the Plain.
+
+"I _have_ been deceived!" he cried. "You are right. Though you have
+the forked tongue of an adder, yet you speak truly. I have been
+deceived. Woe is me for I have been most wickedly deceived by those
+who eat of my bread, who lie beneath my roof. I have cherished vipers
+in my bosom, and they have stung me. Bitterly have I been deceived."
+
+He paused. A low moan from Mrs. Major, handkerchief to eyes, voiced
+the effect of his speech upon her; in racking sniffs Mary's emotion
+found vent. But upon George the outburst had a cooling result--he was
+certain of his ground.
+
+He said solidly: "That's all rot."
+
+"Rot!" cried Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"Yes, rot. You work yourself up into such a state when you get like
+this, that you don't know what you're talking about--vipers and all
+that kind of thing. When you've calmed down and understand things,
+perhaps you'll be sorry. I tell you you've been deceived. That's not
+the Rose you've got hold of. This is the Rose. Someone has made a fool
+of you. Someone--"
+
+Between two violent sniffs, "Oh, George, don't, don't!" came from his
+Mary.
+
+Startled, George checked.
+
+"Monster, be careful," said Mr. Marrapit. "Beware how much deeper you
+enmire yourself in the morass of your evil. Put down that miserable
+creature you hold. I place Mrs. Major's Rose beside it. Look upon
+them."
+
+George looked. With staring eyes he gazed upon the two cats. With
+arched tails they advanced to exchange compliments, and the nearer
+they stood together the less Rose-like became the cat he had brought
+into the room. For the cat that Mr. Marrapit had produced--Mrs.
+Major's cat, as he called it--was the Rose herself; could be none
+other, and none other (when thus placed alongside) could be she.
+
+Struck unconscious to his surroundings by this appalling spectacle,
+George slowly stooped towards the cats as though hypnotised by the
+orange coats. His eyes goggled further from his head; the blood went
+thumping in his temples. He was aghast and horror-struck with the
+stupefaction that comes of effort to disbelieve the eyes. But he did
+disbelieve his eyes. How possibly trust them when from the Rose's very
+bed he had taken the Rose herself and held her till now when he
+produced her? He did disbelieve his eyes.
+
+He gave Mrs. Major's cat a careless pat. By an effort throwing a
+careless tone into his voice, "A very good imitation," he said. "Not
+at all unlike the Rose!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit became an alarming sight. He intook an enormous breath
+that swelled him dangerously. He opened his lips and the air rushed
+out with roaring sound. Again he inspired, raised his clenched hands
+above his head, stood like some great tottering image upon the brink
+of internal explosion.
+
+As upon a sudden thought, he checked the bursting words that
+threatened from his lips; allowed his pent-up breath to escape
+inarticulate; to his normal size and appearance shrank back when it
+was gone.
+
+With an air of ebbing doubt, "Not at all unlike?" he questioned.
+
+George replied briskly. He forced himself to take confidence, though
+every moment made yet more difficult the struggle to disbelieve what
+his eyes told him. "Not at all unlike," he affirmed. "Very similar, in
+fact. Yes, I should say very similar indeed."
+
+Still in the same tone of one who is being reluctantly convinced, Mr.
+Marrapit again played Echo's part: "Very similar indeed? You grant
+that?"
+
+"Certainly," George admitted frankly. "Certainly. I do not wonder you
+were mistaken."
+
+"Nor I," Mr. Marrapit smoothly replied. "Indeed, in Mrs. Major's cat I
+detect certain signs which my Rose has long borne but which she has no
+longer, if the cat you bring is she?"
+
+"Eh?" said George.
+
+"Certain signs," Mr. Marrapit repeated, with the smoothness of flowing
+oil, "which I recollect in my Rose. The mark, for example, where her
+left ear was abrased by Mr. Wyvern's blood-thirsty bull-terrier."
+
+George stooped to the cats. Pointing, he cried triumphantly: "Yes, and
+there is the mark!"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Marrapit pronounced mildly. "Yes, but you are now looking
+at Mrs. Major's cat."
+
+"Hem!" said Mrs. Major. "Hem!"
+
+Like one who has stepped upon hot iron George started back, stared
+aghast. A further "hem," with which a chuckle was mixed, came from
+Mrs. Major; from my collapsed Mary upon the edge of the sofa a sniff
+that was mingled groan and sob.
+
+George put a hand to his head. This young man's senses were ajostle
+and awhirl. Well he remembered that mark which by disastrous blunder
+he had indicated on Mrs, Major's cat; vainly he sought it on his own.
+Yet his was the Rose. Was this a nightmare, then, and no true thing?
+He put his hand to his head.
+
+"Looking at Mrs. Major's cat," repeated Mr. Marrapit, his tone smooth
+as the trickle of oil.
+
+George fought on. "Quite so. Quite so. I know that. That is what makes
+it so extraordinary--that this cat which you call Mrs. Major's and
+think is the Rose should have the very mark that our Rose had."
+
+"But our Rose has not--if that is she."
+
+"Ah! not now," George said impressively. "Not now. It healed. Healed
+months ago. Don't you remember my saying one morning, 'The Rose's ear
+is quite healed now'?"
+
+"I do not, sir," snapped Mr. Marrapit, with alarming sharpness.
+
+"Oh!" said George. "Oh!"
+
+"Hem!" fired Mrs. Major. "Hem! Hem!"
+
+"That tail," spoke Mr. Marrapit, a sinister hardness now behind the
+oiliness. "Mark those tails."
+
+George marked. To this young man's disordered mind the room took on
+the appearance of a forest of waving tails.
+
+"Well?" rapped Mr. Marrapit. "You note those tails? Mrs. Major's cat
+has a verdant tail, a bush-like tail. Yours has a rat tail. Do you
+recollect my pride in the luxuriousness of the Rose's tail?"
+
+George blundered along the path he had chosen. "Formerly," he said,
+"not latterly. Latterly, if you remember, there was a remarkable
+falling off in the Rose's tail. Her tail moulted. It shed hairs. I
+remember worrying over it. I remember--"
+
+A voice from the sofa froze him. "Oh, George, don't, don't!" moaned
+his Mary.
+
+Recovering his horror, he turned stiffly upon her. "If you mean me,
+Miss Humfray, you forget yourself. I do not understand you. Kindly
+recollect that I have another name."
+
+The hideous frown he bent upon his Mary might well have advertised the
+sincerity of his rebuke. He faced Mr. Marrapit, blundered on. "I
+remember noticing how thin the Rose's tail was getting." He gathered
+confidence, pushed ahead. "You have forgotten those little points,
+sir. Upset by your loss you have jumped at the first cat like the Rose
+that you have seen." He took new courage, became impressive. "You are
+making a fearful mistake, sir--an awful mistake. A mistake at which
+you will shudder when you look back--"
+
+"Incredible!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit, swelling as a few moments earlier he had swollen, this
+time burst to speech. He raised his clenched fists; in immense volume
+of sound exploded. "Incredible!"
+
+George misinterpreted; was shaken, but hurried on. "It is. I admit it.
+It is an incredible likeness. But look again, sir."
+
+Mr. Marrapit gave instead a confused scream.
+
+Alarmed, George made as if to plunge on with further protests.
+"George! George!" from his Mary checked him. Furious, he turned upon
+her; and in that moment Mr. Marrapit, recovering words, turned to Mrs.
+Major.
+
+"As you have restored my treasure to my house, Mrs. Major, so now
+silence this iniquitous man by telling him what you have told me. I
+implore speed. Silence him. Utterly confound him. Stop him from
+further perjury before an outraged Creator rains thunderbolts upon
+this roof."
+
+With a telling "Hem!" the masterly woman cleared for action. "I will,
+Mr. Marrapit," she bowed. She murmured "Rosie, Rosie, ickle Rosie!"
+The cat Mr. Marrapit had lifted from her lap sprang back to that
+enticing cushion.
+
+Gently stroking its queenly back, to the soft accompaniment of its
+majestic purr, in acid-tipped accents she began to speak.
+
+She pointed at the cat that now sat at George's crime-steeped boots.
+"When I was out this morning I found that cat in a little copse on the
+Shipley Road. At first I thought it was our darling Rose. Suddenly I
+heard voices. I did not wish to be seen, because, dear Mr. Marrapit,
+if it was the Rose I had found, I wanted to bring it to you alone--to
+be the first to make you happy. So I slipped into a disused hut that
+stands there. Footsteps approached the door and I went into an inner
+room."
+
+Mrs. Major paused; shot a stabbing smile at George.
+
+And now my miserable George realised. Now, visible at last, there
+rushed upon him, grappled him, strangled him, the sinister something
+whose presence he had scented on entering the apartment. No sound came
+from this stricken man. He could not speak, nor move, nor think.
+Rooted he remained; dully gazed at the thin lips whence poured the
+flood that engulfed and that was utterly to wreck him.
+
+The masterly woman continued. She indicated the rooted figure in the
+middle of the room, the collapsed heap upon the sofa's edge. "Those
+two entered. He had a basket. Oh, what were my feelings when out of it
+he took our darling Rose!"
+
+For the space of two minutes the masterly woman advertised the
+emotions she had suffered by burying her face in the Rose's coat;
+rocking gently.
+
+Emerging, she gulped her agitation; proceeded. "I need not repeat
+again all the dreadful story I heard, Mr. Marrapit? Surely I need
+not?"
+
+"You need not," Mr. Marrapit told her. "You need not."
+
+With a masterly half-smile, expressive of gratitude through great
+suffering, Mrs. Major thanked him. "Indeed," she went on, "I did not
+hear the whole of it. It was so dreadful, I was so horrified, that I
+think I fainted. Yes, I fainted. But I heard them discuss how he had
+stolen the Rose so they might marry on the reward when it was big
+enough. He had kept the darling till then; now it was her turn to take
+charge of it--"
+
+Mrs. Major ceased with a jerk, drew in her legs preparatory to flight.
+
+For the rooted figure had sprung alarmingly to life. George would not
+have his darling Mary blackened. He took a stride to Mrs. Major; his
+pose threatened her. "That's untrue!" he thundered.
+
+"Ho!" exclaimed Mrs. Major. "Ho! A liar to my face! Ho!"
+
+"And you are a liar," George stormed, "when you say--"
+
+"Silence!" commanded Mr. Marrapit. "Do not anger heaven yet further.
+Can you still deny--?"
+
+"No!" George said very loudly. "No! No! I deny nothing. But that
+woman's a liar when she says Miss Humfray discussed the business with
+me, or that it was Miss Humfray's turn to take the damned cat. Miss
+Humfray knew nothing about it till I told her. When she heard she said
+it was wrong and tried to make me take the cat back to you."
+
+In his wrath George had advanced close to Mrs. Major. He stretched a
+violent finger to an inch from her nose. "That's true, isn't it? Have
+the grace to admit that."
+
+Indomitable of purpose, the masterly woman pressed back her head as
+far as the chair would allow, tightened her lips.
+
+The violent finger followed. "Say it's true!" George boiled.
+
+His Mary implored: "Oh, George, don't, don't!"
+
+The furious young man flamed on to her. "Be quiet!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit began a sound. The furious young man flamed to him: "You
+be quiet, too!" He thrust the dreadful finger at Mrs. Major. "Now
+speak the truth. Had Miss Humfray anything to do with it?"
+
+This tremendous George had temporary command of the room. The masterly
+woman for once quailed. "I didn't hear that part," she said.
+
+George drew in the fearful finger. "That's as good as the truth--from
+you." He rounded upon Mr. Marrapit. "You understand that. This has
+been my show."
+
+"A blackguard show," pronounced Mr. Marrapit. "A monstrous and an
+impious show. A--"
+
+"I don't want to hear that. Whatever it is you are the cause of it. If
+you had done your duty with my mother's money--"
+
+A figure passed the open French windows along the path. Mr. Marrapit
+shouted "Fletcher!" The gardener entered.
+
+"But you've betrayed your trust," George shouted. He liked the fine
+phrase and repeated it. "You've betrayed your trust!"
+
+Mr. Marrapit assumed his most collected air. "Silence. Silence, man of
+sin. Leave the house. Return thanks where thanks are due if I do not
+hound the law upon you. Take that girl. That miserable cat take.
+Hence!"
+
+Mary got to her feet, put a hand on her George's arm. "Do come, dear."
+
+The wild young man shook her off. "I'll go when it pleases me!" he
+shouted at Mr. Marrapit.
+
+"You shall be arrested," Mr. Marrapit returned. He addressed Mary.
+"Place that cat in that basket Carry it away."
+
+George stood, heaving, panting, boiling for effective words, while his
+Mary did as bade. Awful visions of her George, fettered between
+policemen, trembled her pretty fingers. At last she had the basket
+strapped, raised it.
+
+"Come, George," she said; and to Mr. Marrapit, "I'm so sorry, Mr.
+Marrapit. I--"
+
+It gave her furious George a vent. "Sorry! What are you sorry about?
+What have you done?" He roared over to Mrs. Major: "What other lies
+have you been telling?" He lashed himself at Mr. Marrapit. "Set the
+law on me? I jolly well hope you will. It will all come out then how
+you've behaved--how you've treated me. How you've betrayed--"
+
+"Fletcher," Mr. Marrapit interrupted, "remove that man. Take him out.
+Thrust him from the house."
+
+"Me?" said Mr. Fletcher. "Me thrust him? I'm a gardener, I am; not a--"
+
+"Duty or dismissal," pronounced Mr. Marrapit. "Take choice." He turned
+to the window. "Come, Mrs. Major."
+
+George dashed for him. "You're not going till I've done with you!"
+
+Violence was in his tone, passion in his face.
+
+Alarmed, "Beware how you touch me!" called Mr. Marrapit; caught Mr.
+Fletcher, thrust him forward. "Grapple him!" cried Mr. Marrapit.
+
+Mr. Fletcher was violently impelled against George; to save a fall
+clutched him. "Don't make a scene, Mr. George," he implored.
+
+George pushed him away. Mr. Fletcher trod back heavily upon Mr.
+Marrapit's foot. Mr. Marrapit screamed shrilly, plunged backwards into
+a cabinet, overturned it, sat heavily upon its debris.
+
+A laugh overcame George's fury. He swung on his heel; called "Come" to
+his Mary; stalked from the house.
+
+As they passed through the gate, "Oh, Georgie!" his Mary breathed.
+"Oh, Georgie!"
+
+He raged on to her: "What on earth made you say you were sorry? You've
+no spirit, Mary! No spirit!"
+
+The tremendous young man stalked ahead with huge strides.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In deep melancholy, sore beneath the correction Mr. Marrapit had
+heaped upon him, Mr. Fletcher wandered from the study; turned as he
+reached the path. "Me grapple him!" said Mr. Fletcher. "Me a craven!
+Me thrust him from the house! It's 'ard--damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I
+am; not a Ju-jitsu."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Agony In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Silent, gloom-ridden, my sniffing Mary, my black-browed George
+laboured to the station. Silent they sat upon a bench waiting the
+London train.
+
+George bought his Mary a piece of chocolate from the automatic
+machine; she was a forlorn picture as with tiny nibbles she ate it,
+tears in her pretty eyes. In the restaurant George bought himself a
+huge cigar. This man was a desperate spectacle as with huge puffs he
+smoked, hands deep in pockets, legs thrust straight, brows horribly
+knitted.
+
+They had no words.
+
+The train came in. George found an empty compartment; helped his poor
+Mary to a corner; roughly dumped the cat-basket upon the rack; moodily
+plumped opposite his Mary.
+
+They had no words.
+
+It was as the train moved from the third stop that Mary, putting a
+giant sniff upon her emotions, asked her George: "Wher--where are we
+going, dear?"
+
+It was not until the fifth stop that George made answer. "Those
+Battersea digs," he told her.
+
+They had no words.
+
+At Queen's Road station gloomily they alighted; silently laboured to
+the house of Mrs. Pinking.
+
+George answered her surprise. "Miss Humfray will have these rooms
+again, Mrs. Pinking, if you will be so kind; and I--" He checked.
+"Could you let us have some tea, Mrs. Pinking? Afterwards I'll have a
+talk with you. We've got into a--We're very tired. If you could just
+let us have some tea, then I'll explain."
+
+In silence they ate and drank. George was half turned from the table,
+gloomily gazing from the window. Tiny sniffs came from his Mary; he
+had no words for her; looked away.
+
+But presently there was a most dreadful choking sound. He sprang
+around. Most painfully his Mary was spluttering over a cup of tea.
+With trembling hands she put down the cup; her face was red,
+convulsively working.
+
+George half rose to her. "Don't cry, darling Mary-kins. Don't cry."
+
+She set down the cup; swallowed; gasped, "I'm not crying--I'm la-
+laughing," and into a pipe of gayest mirth she went.
+
+Gloom gathered its sackcloth skirts; scuttled from the room.
+
+George roared with laughter; rocked and roared again. When he could
+get a catch upon his mirth there was the clear pipe of his Mary's
+glee, clear, compelling, setting him off again. When she would gasp
+for breath there was her dear George, head in those brown hands,
+shaking with tremendous laughter--and she must start again.
+
+She gasped: "George! If you could have seen yourself standing there
+telling those awful stories--!"
+
+He gasped: "When I mistook the cats--!"
+
+She gasped: "Mr. Marrapit's face--!"
+
+He gasped: "Mrs. Major's--!"
+
+The exhaustion of their mirth gave them pause at last. George wiped
+his running eyes; Mary tremendously blew her little nose, patted her
+gold hair where it eagerly straggled.
+
+"I feel better after that," George said.
+
+She told him, "So do I--heaps. It's no good being miserable over what
+is past, is it, dear?"
+
+"Not a bit; not the slightest. Come and sit on the sofa and let's see
+where we are." She put that golden head upon his manly shoulder; he
+fetched his right arm about her; she nursed her hands upon the brown
+fist that came into her lap; that other brown hand he set upon the
+three.
+
+Together they viewed their prospects--gloomy pictures.
+
+"But we're fairly in the cart," George summed up. "We are, you know."
+
+His ridiculous Mary gave him that lovers' ridiculous specific. "We've
+got each other," she told him, snuggling to him.
+
+George kissed her. He fumbled in his pockets. "I've got just about
+three pounds--over from what Marrapit gave me for the clue-hunting. I
+say, Mary, it's pretty awful."
+
+She snuggled the closer.
+
+Early evening, tip-toeing through the window, was drawing her dusky
+hangings about the room when at length George withdrew the brown
+hands; stirred.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Upon a little sigh Mary let go the string that held the dreams she had
+been dreaming. Like a great gay bundle of many-coloured toy balloons
+suddenly released, they soared away. She came to the desperate
+present; noted her George filling his pipe.
+
+He got upon his legs; paced the floor, puffing.
+
+It was his characteristic pose when he was most tremendous. She
+watched this tremendous fellow adoringly.
+
+He told her: "I've settled it all, Marykins. I've fixed it all up.
+We'll pull through right as rain." He caught the admiring glance in
+his Mary's eye; inhaled and gusted forth a huge breath of smoke;
+repeated the fine sentence. "We'll pull through right as rain."
+
+"Dear George!" she softly applauded.
+
+He pushed ahead. "There's this locum tenens I was going to take up in
+the North. I haven't offed that yet--haven't refused it, I mean. Well,
+I shall take it. The screw's pretty rotten, but up in the North--in
+the North, you know--well, it's not like London. It's cheap--
+frightfully cheap. You can live on next to nothing--"
+
+She pushed out the irritating, practical, womanish side of her.
+"_Can_ you? How do you _know_, Georgie?"
+
+We men hate these pokes at our knowledge; women will not understand
+generalisations. George jerked back: "How do I _know_? Oh, don't
+interrupt like that, Mary. Everybody knows that living is cheap in the
+North--in the _North_."
+
+"Of course," she excused herself. "Of course, dear, I see."
+
+"Well, where was I? Frightfully cheap, so the screw won't matter. I'll
+take the job, dearest. I'll take it for next month. And--listen--we'll
+marry and go up there together and live in some ripping little rooms.
+There!"
+
+She was flaming pink; could only breathe: "Georgie, _dear!_"
+
+He stopped his pacing to give her a squeezing hug, a kiss upon the top
+of the gold hair. Then he went through the steps of a wild dance.
+"Marry!" he cried. "Marry, old girl, and let everybody go hang! We'll
+have to work it through a registrar. I'm not quite sure how it's done,
+but I'll find out tomorrow. I know you both have to have been resident
+in the place for a week or so--I'll fix all that. Then we'll peg along
+up in the North; and we'll look out for whatever turns up, and we'll
+save, and in time we'll buy a practice just like Runnygate."
+
+Now he sat beside his Mary again; with a tremendous brush painted in
+more details of this entrancing picture. Every doubt, every difficulty
+he threw to tomorrow--that glad sea in which youth casts its every
+trouble. Was he sure he still had the refusal of this locum?--rather!
+but he would make certain, tomorrow. Was he sure they both could live
+upon the salary?-rather! he would prove it to-morrow. Could they
+really get married at a registrar's within a few days?-rather! he'd
+fix that up to-morrow. As to the money necessary for the marriage,
+necessary to tide over the days till the locum was taken up, why, he
+knew he could borrow that--from the Dean or from Professor Wyvern--to-
+morrow.
+
+They were upon the very crest and flood of their delight when George
+noted the gathering dusk.
+
+"I say, it's getting late!" he exclaimed. "I must fix it up with Mrs.
+Pinking. We've made no arrangement with her yet."
+
+Mary agreed: "Yes, dear." She went on, pretty eyes shining, face
+aglow: "Oh, Georgie, think of the last time you brought me here! I had
+nothing to expect but going out to work again; and you weren't
+qualified. And now--now, although we've lost our little Runnygate
+home" (she could not stop a tiny sigh), "we're actually going to be
+married in a few days! Georgie, I shan't sleep for hoping everything
+will turn out all right to-morrow."
+
+"It will," George told her. "It will. Right as rain, old girl."
+
+Her great sigh of contentment advertised the drink she took of that
+sparkling future. "Think of us being together always in a week or so--
+belonging! Where will you stay till then? Quite close. Get a room
+quite close, Georgie?"
+
+He stared at her. "Why, you old goose, I'm not going."
+
+She echoed him: "Not going?"
+
+"Of course not. I'm going to get a bedroom here, and we'll have all
+our meals and everything in here. We're not going to part again,
+Marykins. Not much!"
+
+That maddening handicap beneath which the sweetest women trudge
+shackled Mary, deluged this joy.
+
+"Oh, Georgie!" she said; and again trembled, "Oh, Georgie!"
+
+My impulsive George scented the damp. "Well?" he asked. "Well?
+Whatever's--?"
+
+"Oh, Georgie, you can't have a room here. We can't have all our meals
+together here?"
+
+He realised the trouble. He broke out: "Why ever not? Why ever--?"
+
+"It wouldn't be _right_! Georgie, it _wouldn't_ be right!"
+
+Her impulsive George choked for words. "Not right! 'Pon my soul, Mary,
+I simply don't understand you sometimes. Not _right! Why_ isn't it
+right?"
+
+It was so difficult to tell. "You don't understand, dear--"
+
+"No, I'm damned if I do. I'm sorry, Mary, but you are so funny, you
+women. It's so exasperating after the--the devil of a day I've had.
+Just when I've fixed up everything you turn round and"--he threw out
+an angry hand--"_Why_ isn't it right?"
+
+This poor little Mary clung to her little principles. "Don't you see?
+we're engaged, dear; and being engaged, we oughtn't to live alone like
+this. People would--"
+
+He began to rave. Certainly he had had a devil of a day; and this was
+a maddening buffet.
+
+"People!" he cried. "People! People! You're always thinking of people,
+you women! Who's to know? Who on earth's to know?"
+
+The instinct of generations of training gave her the instinctive reply
+in the instinctive sweet little tone: "We should know, Georgie," she
+said.
+
+He flung up his arms: "Oh, good God!"
+
+He swallowed his boiling irritation; laughed 'spite himself; went to
+his Mary. "Mary, don't be such an utter, utter goose. It's too, too
+ridiculous."
+
+She took his kiss; but she held her stupid little ground.
+
+"It wouldn't be right, Georgie, _really_!"
+
+Her George clanged the bell with a furious stroke that brought Mrs.
+Pinking in panic up the stairs. Holding himself very straight,
+speaking in sentences short and hard, paying to his Mary no smallest
+attention, he made the arrangements. Miss Humfray would take on her
+bedroom again. By the week. If Mrs. Pinking would be so kind as to
+allow them the same terms. He thanked her. That was settled, then. He
+would look in in the morning. He would say good night, Mrs. Pinking.
+
+Mrs. Pinking gave him good night; busied herself with the tea-things.
+
+Her presence enabled this brutal George to preserve his stony bearing;
+denied his pretty Mary opportunity to melt him with her tears.
+
+Hard as flint, "Well, good night," he said to her. "I'll look in to-
+morrow morning."
+
+Upon a little sniff, "Good night," she whispered; strangled an "Oh,
+George! George!"
+
+She followed him to the door. He was down the stairs before she could
+command her voice for: "Where shall you go, George?"
+
+With the reckless fury of one who sets forth to plunge into the river,
+he called back, "I? I? Oh, _anywhere--anywhere_. Who cares where _I_
+go?"
+
+The hall door slammed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late into that night while a young woman sobbed her pretty eyes out
+upon a pillow in a back room of Meath Street, Battersea, a young man,
+who furiously had been pacing London, paced and repaced the street
+from end to end, gazing the windows of the house where she lay. This
+young man muttered, gesticulated, groaned. "Oh, damn!" was his song.
+"Oh, Mary! Oh, what a cursed brute I am!"
+
+It was a bitter ending to a fearful day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Mr. William Wyvern In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+George spent the night--such of it as remained after his bitter
+moanings outside his Mary's lodging--with the Mr. Franklyn who had
+accompanied him on that little "stroll up west" that had terminated in
+the cab adventure nearly three months before. Of all his student
+friends who would give him a bed, Mr. Franklyn, because in a way
+associated with his Mary, had come most prominently into his mind.
+That same association gave him a lead from which to pour out his reply
+to Mr. Franklyn's rallying, as they sat at supper, upon his gloom.
+
+"You remember that day after the July exam, when we went up west
+together?" he began.
+
+Mr. Franklyn remembered; in some gloom shook his head over the
+recollection. "That waitress you left me with in the shop," said Mr.
+Franklyn sadly, "she--"
+
+"Oh, hang the waitress! Listen, Franklyn, After I left you I turned up
+past the Marble Arch--" He proceeded with some account of the love
+between him and his Mary; skipped all details relating to the cat;
+came to the impending marriage; sought advice upon the prospects of a
+man marrying on a locum's earnings.
+
+Mr. Franklyn listened with great sympathy. "It's a rum thing you
+should be placed like that, George," he said. "I'm in just the same
+position."
+
+George exclaimed eagerly--in love, youth warms to a companion--"You
+are!"
+
+"Well, not exactly," Mr. Franklyn admitted. "Very nearly. I've got
+myself into a brute of a fix over a girl in the lager-beer garden at
+Earl's Court. She--"
+
+George bounced from the table, seized his hat. "Who cares a damn about
+your lager-beer girls?" he shouted; slammed from the house.
+
+It was then, while Mr. Franklyn laboriously indited a letter in reply
+to one received from the lager-beer girl's mother, that George paced
+Meath Street.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+At breakfast with Mr. Franklyn upon the following morning, he was in
+brighter trim--apologised for his over-night abruptness; apologised
+for the hasty meal he was making; announced that he was off to see his
+Mary.
+
+As he lit his pipe, "I'll see you at hospital this morning some time,
+old chap," he said. "I shall dash in to fix up with the Dean about
+taking Bingham's place in that practice up in Yorkshire."
+
+Mr. Franklyn prodded for another slice of bacon. "You can't, old
+chap," he remarked. "That's filled."
+
+George shouted: "Filled! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, taken--gone. Simpson's got it--ten days ago."
+
+An icy chill smote my poor George. After the dreadful loss of
+Runnygate everything had depended upon this appointment with its
+salary considerably above the average.
+
+"Simpson! Simmy got it!" he shouted. "What the blazes does Simmy mean
+by taking it? He knew I was after it."
+
+"My good lad, you never came near the place after you'd qualified. If
+Simmy hadn't taken it someone else would. Bingham was in a hurry."
+
+Blankly George stared before him. At length, "I suppose there are
+several other jobs going?" he asked.
+
+"None on the Dean's list," said Mr. Franklyn. "I was looking at it
+last night."
+
+Beneath this new distress George postponed the burning desire to clasp
+his Mary in his arms and beg forgiveness. He hurried to hospital; made
+for the Dean's office. Here disaster was confirmed. Simpson had
+already taken the Yorkshire place; the Dean had no other posts on his
+lists. "Only this Runnygate practice," he said. "I haven't seen you
+since you qualified. Can you raise the price?"
+
+George, rising and making for the door, could only shake his head.
+There was something at his throat that forbade speech. Runnygate and
+all that Runnygate meant--the dear little home, the tight little
+practice, the tremendous future--was a bitter picture now that it was
+so utterly lost; now that even this place in Yorkshire was also gone.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Great pity!" the Dean told him. "I've kept it for you. Lawrence, the
+man who's leaving it, is coming to see me at five this evening. I
+shall have to help him find another purchaser."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The infernal something in George's throat gripped the harder as he
+took his way to his Mary. He cursed himself for that hideous cat
+enterprise. Had he never undertaken it, had he continued instead to
+entreat and implore, there was always the chance that his uncle would
+have relented and advanced the money sufficient for Runnygate.
+
+As things were, he stood for ever damned in his uncle's eyes; further,
+by his folly he had encompassed his darling Mary's ejection from a
+home where she might comfortably have stayed till he was in position
+to marry her; further, he had just missed the assistantship which, to
+his present frame of mind, seemed the sole post in the world that
+would give him sufficient upon which to call his Mary wife.
+
+The desperate thoughts augmented his fearful remorse at his treatment
+of her overnight. Arrived at Meath Street, admitted by Mrs. Pinking,
+he bounded up the stairs, tremendous in his agony of love.
+
+His Mary had her pretty nose pressed flat against the window. With dim
+eyes she had been gazing for her George in the opposite direction from
+that he had approached.
+
+He closed the door behind him.
+
+"Mary!" he called, arms outstretched.
+
+Into them she flung herself.
+
+They locked in a hug so desperate as only love itself could have
+borne.
+
+He poured out his remorse; beside him on the sofa she patted those
+brown hands. He told his gloomy tale; she patted the more lovingly--
+assured him that, if the Yorkshire place had failed, something equally
+good would turn up.
+
+But he was in desperate despondency. "It's all that infernal cat,
+Mary," he groaned; she kissed that knotted forehead.
+
+He asked her: "By the way, where's that other brute?--the beast we
+brought here with us?"
+
+She peered low. "I've just fed the poor thing."
+
+Attracted by her movement, that orange cat which had wrought the
+fearful disaster came forth from beneath the table.
+
+"G-r-r-r!" George growled; stamped his foot.
+
+The orange cat again took shelter.
+
+"Ah, don't frighten it, dear," Mary told him. "It's done no harm."
+
+George rose. He was too tremendously moved to contain himself while
+seated. "Done no harm!" he cried. He took a step to the window. "Done
+no--" He stopped short. "Oh, Lord! I say, Mary! Oh, Lord! here's
+Bill!"
+
+Mary fluttered to his side; saw Bill Wyvern disappear beneath the
+porch of the door.
+
+A knock; shuffling in the passage; footsteps up the stairs.
+
+"By Gad! I'd forgotten all about old Bill," George said.
+
+Then Bill entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Abishag The Shunamite In Meath Street.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The most tremendous crises between man and man commonly begin with
+exchange of the customary banalities. Charlotte Corday gave Marat
+_"Bonsoir, citoyen,"_ ere she drove her knife. This was no cloak
+to hide her purpose. We are so much creatures of convention that the
+man who sets out, hell in breast, to avenge himself upon another,
+cannot forbear to give him greeting before ever he comes upon the
+matter between them.
+
+George, involuntarily straightening his back as he remembered how
+desperately he had hoodwinked this Bill, had upon a fool's errand
+packed him to that inn, as involuntarily passed him the customary
+words.
+
+"Hullo, Bill!" he said. "How on earth did you know I was here?"
+
+He awaited the burst of reproach; the torrent of fury.
+
+These did not come. About Bill's mouth, as from George to Mary he
+glanced, there were the lines of amusement; no menace lay in his clear
+blue eyes.
+
+"Went to look for you at the hospital," Bill replied. "Met that man
+Franklyn, and he told me you very probably were here."
+
+George pushed ahead with the banalities. "Surprised to see Miss
+Humfray here?" he asked. "You met her, of course, at my uncle's while-
+-while"--this was dangerous ground, and he hurried over it--"while I
+was away," he said quickly; blew his nose.
+
+Bill told him: "Yes. Not a bit surprised." The creases of amusement
+became more evident. He shook Mary's hand.
+
+"Ah!" George said. "Um! Quite so. Sit down, Bill."
+
+They took seats. Constraint was upon these people; each sat upon the
+extreme edge of the chair selected.
+
+After a pause, "You've been to Herons' Holt, then?" George remarked.
+
+"Yesterday. Yesterday night."
+
+"Ah! Yesterday. Thursday, so to speak. Um! Margaret quite well?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+The deadly pause came on again. Mary looked appealing to her George.
+George, his right boot in a patch of sunlight, earnestly was watching
+it as, twisting it this way and that, the polish caught the rays.
+
+It lay with herself to make a thrust through this fearful silence.
+Upon a timid little squeak she shot out: "Mr. Marrapit quite well?"
+
+"Quite," Bill told her. "Quite. A little bit--" He checked; again the
+silence fell.
+
+Mary no longer could endure it. Impulsively leaning forward, arms
+outstretched, hands clasped, "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!" she cried. "You're
+_not_ angry with George, _are_ you? He _couldn't_ help sending you to
+that inn, _could_ he?"
+
+Constraint fled. "Of course I'm not," Bill declared. "Not a bit. I've
+come here to congratulate you both. I--"
+
+George sprang forward; grasped Bill's hand. "Good old buck!" he cried.
+"Good old Bill! I'm awfully sorry, Bill. You're a stunner, Bill. Isn't
+he a stunner, Mary?"
+
+"He _is_ a stunner," Mary agreed.
+
+The stunner, red beneath this praise, warmly returned George's grip.
+When they released, "I say, George, you _are_ an ass, you know," he
+said. "Why on earth didn't you tell me what you were up to?"
+
+"You weren't there, old man, when it began. You were in London. How on
+earth was I to know your paper would come plunging into the business?"
+The memory of the pains that paper had caused him swept all else from
+George's mind. Indignation seized him. "It was a scandalous bit of
+work, Bill. 'Pon my soul it's simply shameful that a newspaper can go
+and interfere in a purely private matter like that. Yes, it is, Mary.
+Don't you interrupt. Bill understands. I don't blame you, Bill; you
+were doing your duty. I blame the editor. What did he want to push
+into it for? I tell you that paper drove me up and down the country
+till I was pretty well dead. It's all very well for you to grin,
+Bill."
+
+"I'm not grinning."
+
+"You are grinning." George threw a bitter note into his declamations.
+"Of course, you can afford to grin. What was agony to me was hot stuff
+for you. I expect you've made your reputation over this show. Everything's
+turned out all right for you--"
+
+Bill took that bitter note. "Rather!" he broke in. "Rather! I pulled
+it off, didn't I? I found the rotten cat, didn't I? I wasn't made a
+fool of for two days in a country inn, was I? I've not got the sack
+all through you, have I?"
+
+George instantly forgot his personal sorrows. "Oh, I say, Bill, you
+haven't, have you?"
+
+Bill, not expecting the interruption, confessed a little lamely: "No,
+I haven't. I _haven't_--as it turns out. But I might have--if it
+wasn't for--" He paused a moment; sadly said, "Anyway, just as I
+thought I'd got her, I've lost Margaret again."
+
+In those fierce days when her Bill was the Daily Special Commissioner,
+Margaret had confided in Mary the promise Mr. Marrapit had made should
+Bill find the cat. Now Mary was filled with sympathy. "Oh, Mr.
+Wyvern!" she cried, "I _am_ sorry! What has happened? How do you
+know? Do tell us everything of when you went to Herons' Holt last
+night."
+
+Bill took a chair. He said gloomily: "There's not much to tell. I felt
+I couldn't wait at that infernal inn any longer, so I left the
+detective in charge, went to the inn where we'd found George, didn't
+see him, and came back to Herons' Holt. I saw old Marrapit for about
+two minutes in the hall. He foamed at me all about George, foamed out
+that I was one of George's friends, and foamed me out of the door
+before I could get in a word. Said I never was to come near the place
+again. I asked him about Margaret, and he had a kind of fit--a kind of
+fit."
+
+George said softly: "I know what you mean, old man."
+
+"A kind of fit," Bill gloomily repeated. Then he struck one clenched
+fist into the palm of the other hand. "And hang it!" he cried, "I've
+won her! According to the bargain old Marrapit made with me, I've won
+her. If it had not been for me you wouldn't have taken the cat to that
+hut in the wood, and if you hadn't taken it there Marrapit wouldn't
+have it _now_. It's through me he got it, isn't it?"
+
+"Bill," George told him, "it is. You rotted my show all right. No
+mistake about that."
+
+It was a fearful situation as between these two young men. In silence,
+in gloom, they gazed each upon the ground.
+
+Bill took a glance at George's face; turned hurriedly from the despair
+there stamped; set his eyes upon my pretty Mary. He gave a sigh.
+
+"But, George, old man, you've come out of it the better," he said.
+"You've lost the money you wanted, but you've got your--you've got
+Miss Humfray. I've lost my--I've lost Margaret."
+
+In great melancholy George rose; crossed to his Mary; sat upon the arm
+of her chair; caressed her pretty shoulders.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about, Bill. Bill, we're in a most
+fearful hole. We haven't got a sou, and I've got no work. You're doing
+well. You're making money. You're bound to get Margaret in time. As
+for us--"
+
+Bill was deeply stirred. "I say, I am sorry," he told them. He sat up
+very straight. "Look here, don't get down on your luck. Come out and
+have lunch with me and tell me just how you're fixed. If a small loan
+will do you any good I'm certain my guv'nor will stand it. He likes
+you awfully, George. Come on. I shan't see you again otherwise for
+some time. I'm off on another Special Commissioner job for the
+_Daily_, you know."
+
+George gave a slight shudder. "Oh? Thank goodness, I'm not the object
+of it this time. What is it?"
+
+"What is it? Why, you've seen the _Daily_ this morning, haven't you?"
+
+"I'll never open the infernal thing again."
+
+Bill did not heed the aspersion. "It's really rather funny, you know,"
+he went on. "Look here." He tugged at his pocket; produced a _Daily_.
+
+A pencil dislodged by the paper fell to the ground; rolled beneath the
+table.
+
+Bill stooped after it. The cat that lay there, disturbed, walked
+forth--arching its proud orange back.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+With eyes that goggled tremendously Bill stared at it; with a finger
+that shook he pointed at it; turned his head to George. "George," he
+asked, "whose cat is that?"
+
+George looked at Mary; gave a bitter little laugh. "I suppose it's
+ours," he replied. "Eh, Mary?"
+
+A sad little smile his Mary gave, "I suppose it is," she agreed.
+
+From one to the other Bill looked, suspicion in those goggling eyes.
+
+"You _suppose_ it is?" he emphasised. Again he swiftly looked from
+George to Mary; again stared at the splendid orange form. "George," he
+said sharply--"George, what is that cat's name?"
+
+George regarded him with a whimsical smile. "Bill, you old duffer, you
+don't think it's the Rose, do you?"
+
+Yet more sharply than before Bill spoke. "George, is that cat's name
+Abishag?"
+
+"_Abishag?_ What an awful--"
+
+Bill turned from him with an impatient gesture. He called to the cat,
+"Abishag! Abishag!"
+
+With upreared tail the fine creature trotted to him.
+
+"Good Lord!" George broke out. "Is that _your_ cat, Bill?"
+
+Bill turned upon him. "_My_ cat! You know thundering well it's
+not my cat."
+
+"But it knows you, Mr. Wyvern," Mary told him wonderingly.
+
+There was sorrow, a look of pity in this young man's eyes as
+reproachfully he regarded my Mary.
+
+He swung round upon George. "George, you've made a fool of me once--"
+
+"I don't know what on earth's the matter with you," George told him.
+
+With knitted brows Bill for a moment searched his face. "I ask you
+point-blank," he said slowly. "Did you steal this cat, George?"
+
+George struck the stern young man upon the back. "Is _that_ what
+you're driving at, you old ass? Stole it! D'you suppose I'll ever
+_touch_ a cat again? That's the infernal cat Mrs. Major left in that
+hut when she hooked off the Rose. Marrapit told you, didn't he?"
+
+Into a chair Bill collapsed--legs thrust straight before him, head
+against the cushioned back. He gasped. "George, this is a licker, a
+fair licker." Enormously this staggered man swelled as he inhaled a
+tremendous breath; upon a vast sigh he let it go. "That cat--" he
+said. He got to his legs and paced the room; astonished, Mary and
+George regarded him. "That cat--I'll bet my life that's the cat!"
+
+
+
+III.
+
+My Mary was trembling before this fearful agitation. For support she
+took her George's hand. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!" she cried, "whatever is it?
+Have we got into another awful trouble through those dreadful,
+_dreadful_ cats?"
+
+"Look at the _Daily_," Bill said. "Look at the _Daily_. George, give
+me a cigarette. I must smoke. This is an absolute licker."
+
+My frightened Mary jumped for the paper where it had fallen; spread it
+upon the table; opened it. "Oh, George!" she cried. "Oh, George!";
+pressed a pretty finger upon these flaming words:
+
+  ANOTHER CAT OUTRAGE.
+
+  AMAZING STORY.
+
+  MR. VIVIAN HOWARD'S FAMOUS PET
+
+  STOLEN WHILE BACK TURNED.
+
+  "DAILY" OFFER.
+
+  500 POUNDS FOR OUR READERS.
+
+My Mary's golden head, my George's head of brown, pressed and nudged
+as with bulging eyes they read the crisp, telling paragraphs that
+followed in a column of leaded type.
+
+Readers of the _Daily_, it appeared, would be astonished to learn that
+the abduction of Mr. Marrapit's famous cat, the Rose of Sharon--
+concerning the recovery of which all hope had now been abandoned--had
+been followed by a similar outrage of a nature even more sensational,
+more daring.
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard, the famous author and dramatist, whose new novel,
+"Amy Martin," _Daily_ readers need not be reminded, was to start in
+the _Daily_ as a feuilleton on Monday week, had been robbed of his
+famous cat "Abishag the Shunamite."
+
+The whole reading public were well aware of Mr. Howard's devotion to
+this valuable pet. Scarcely a portrait of Mr. Howard was extant that
+did not show Abishag the Shunamite by his side.
+
+It was a melancholy coincidence that in the interview granted to the
+_Daily_ by Mr. Howard last Saturday he had told that Abishag had sat
+upon his table while every single word of the manuscript of "Amy
+Martin" was penned. He had admitted that she was his mascot. Without
+her presence he could not compose a line. _Daily_ readers would
+imagine, then, Mr. Howard's prostration at his appalling loss.
+
+The occurrence had taken place on Monday night. As _Daily_ readers
+were well aware, Mr. Howard had for some weeks been staying at the
+house of his widowed mother in Sussex Gardens. Nightly at nine it had
+been his custom to stroll round the gardens before settling down for
+three hours' work upon "Amy Martin." During his stroll Abishag would
+slip into the gardens, meeting her master upon his completion of the
+circuit.
+
+According to this practice, Mr. Howard, on Monday night, had followed
+his usual custom. He believed he might possibly have walked a little
+slower than usual as he was pondering deeply over his final revise of
+the proof of "Amy Martin." Otherwise his programme was identical with
+its usual performance. But upon his return the cat was not to be
+found.
+
+Theories, suggestions, investigations that had already been made,
+followed. The _Daily_ abundantly proved that the cat had not strayed
+but had been deliberately stolen by someone well acquainted with Mr.
+Howard's nightly promenade; pointed out that this second outrage
+showed that no one possessing a valuable cat was safe from the
+machinations of a desperate gang; asked, Where are the police? and
+concluded with the pica sub-head:
+
+  "DAILY" OFFER.
+
+The _Daily,_ it appeared, on behalf of the whole reading public of
+Great Britain, the Colonies, America, and the many Continental
+countries into whose tongues Mr. Howard's novels had been translated,
+offered 500 pounds to the person who would return, or secure the
+return of, Abishag the Shunamite, and thus restore peace to the heart
+of England's premier novelist, whose new story, "Amy Martin," would
+start in the _Daily_ on Monday week.
+
+A sketch-map of Sussex Gardens, entitled "Scene of the Outrage,"
+showed, by means of dotted lines, (A) Route taken by Mr. Vivian
+Howard; (B) Route into Gardens taken by cat; (C) Supposed route taken
+by thief.
+
+Mr. Henry T. Bitt had achieved a mammoth splash.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The golden head and the head of brown lifted simultaneously from the
+paper; stared towards Bill, pacing, smoking.
+
+Tremendous possibilities flickered in George's mind; made his voice
+husky. "Bill," he asked, "do you believe that cat is this Abishag--
+Vivian Howard's Abishag?"
+
+Bill nodded absently. This man's thoughts were afar--revolving this
+situation he had named "licker." "Look at the description," he said.
+"Look at the cat. It knows its name, doesn't it? I've seen a life-size
+painting of Abishag. It's a cert."
+
+George dropped upon the sofa; his thoughts, too, rushed afar.
+
+Tremendous possibilities danced a wild jig in his Mary's pretty head;
+trembled her voice. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern!" she appealed, "what does it
+mean? What does it mean--for us?"
+
+"It's a licker," Bill told her. "It's a fair licker."
+
+Mary dropped by her George's side; to his her thoughts rushed.
+
+Presently Bill threw away his cigarette; faced George. He said slowly:
+"Mrs. Major must have stolen this cat, George. But how did she get it?
+She's been at Herons' Holt the last week."
+
+Mary gave a little jump. "Oh, Mr. Wyvern, she went up to town on
+Monday till Tuesday."
+
+Bill struck a hand upon the table. "That fixes it. By gum, that fixes
+it! I tell you what it is, George. I tell you what it is. I believe--
+yes, I believe she'd seen this cat before, knew it was like the Rose,
+and meant to have palmed it off on old Marrapit herself so as to get
+him to take her back. Margaret told me all about her getting the sack.
+I bet my life that's it. By gum, _what_ a splash for the _Daily!_" And
+upon this fine thought the young man stood with sparkling eyes.
+
+George timidly touched the castles he had been building: "Bill, where
+do I--where do Mary and I come in?"
+
+Bill clapped his hands together. "Why, my good old buck, don't you
+see?-don't you realise?-you get this L500. Just do you, eh?"
+
+_"Runnygate!"_ George burst out with a violent jerk; clasped his Mary
+in an immense hug.
+
+_"Runnygate!"_ came thickly from his Mary, face squashed against this
+splendid fellow.
+
+When they unlocked my blushing Mary suddenly paled: "Oh, but you, Mr.
+Wyvern--you found it really."
+
+"Not much," Bill declared. "Not likely. You found it. I couldn't have
+the reward, anyway. I'm one of the staff." He repeated the fine words:
+"One of the _staff_."
+
+She made to thank him. "Besides," he interrupted her, "I'll make a lot
+out of it. I'm doing awfully well. The chief was awfully pleased with
+the way I ran that Rose of Sharon job. Of course this is twice as big
+a splash, because Vivian Howard's mixed up in it. Look what a boost it
+is for our new serial--look what a tremendous ad. it is for the
+paper! Directly Howard came to us the editor dropped the Rose like a
+hot coal; plumped for this and put me in charge. Now I've pulled it
+off, just think how bucked up he'll be! It's a licker, George--a
+licker all round."
+
+"Bill," George said, "I can't speak about it. My head's whirling. I
+believe it's a dream."
+
+Indeed this George had rushed through so much in the past hours, was
+now suddenly come upon so much, that the excitement, as he attempted
+realisation, was of stunning effect. He sat white, head in hands.
+
+"Jolly soon show you!" Bill cried. "Come to the office straight away.
+Bring the cat. I was to meet the chief and Vivian Howard there at
+twelve."
+
+George sprang to his feet; ruddy again of face. "Come on!" he cried.
+"Bill, if it isn't his Abishag, if there's any hitch, I'll--I'll--oh,
+Mary, don't build too highly on this, old girl!"
+
+"Shall I come, Georgie?"
+
+George hesitated. "Better not. Better not, if you don't mind. I
+couldn't bear to see your face if Vivian Howard says it isn't the
+cat."
+
+White-faced, between tears and smiles, his Mary waved from the window
+as George, cat under arm, turned the corner with Bill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Excursions In A Newspaper Office.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Silent, white and stern of face, occupied with immense thoughts, the
+young men sat as the cab they had found outside Battersea Park station
+sped them towards Fleet Street.
+
+They were upon the Embankment, rattling beneath Hungerford Bridge,
+when from the tangle of his plans Bill at last drew a thread; weaved
+it to words. "George, we mustn't tell the chief anything about your
+being mixed up with the other cat outrage--the Rose. It might be
+awkward."
+
+George shifted the hand that firmly held Abishag on the seat between
+them; squeezed that fine creature's head to him with his arm; with his
+handkerchief wiped his sweating palms.
+
+"It's _going_ to be awkward," he said--"damned awkward! I see that.
+Oh, Bill!"
+
+He groaned. This young man was in desperate agitation.
+
+"Buck up," Bill told him. "This is a cert. Safe as houses."
+
+"All very well for you, Bill. I seem to have been living one gigantic
+lie all the past week."
+
+"Well, you have, you know," Bill granted. "By gum, you have! But you
+aren't now. You didn't steal _this_ cat. You found it just as anyone
+else might have found it. All I tell you is: Don't say anything about
+the Rose. Don't open your mouth, in fact. Leave the gassing to me."
+
+It was upon this repeated injunction that my poor George tottered up
+the stairs of the _Daily_ office, cat in arm, in Bill's wake.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Bill rapped upon Mr. Bitt's door; poked in his head at the answering
+call; motioned my trembling George to wait; stepped over the
+threshold.
+
+Mr. Bitt sat behind a broad table; before him, deep in an armchair,
+smoking a cigarette, lay Mr. Vivian Howard.
+
+"Ah! Wyvern," spoke Mr. Bitt. "Mr. Howard, this is Mr. Wyvern, one of
+my brightest young men. From to-day he takes in hand this business."
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard did not rise; stretched a white hand to Bill. This
+man had an appreciation of the position he had won. This man stood for
+English literature. Within a wide estimate of public opinion, and
+within that immense estimate of him that was his own, this man stood
+for literature. In a manner worthy of his proud standing this man
+comported himself. The talents that were his belonged to the nation,
+and very freely he gave them to the people. This man did not deny
+himself to the crowd as another might have denied himself. Of him it
+never could be said that he missed opportunity to let the public feed
+upon him. This man made such opportunities. Where excitement was,
+there this man, pausing between his novels, would step in. If a
+murder-trial had the public attention this man would write upon that
+trial; if interest were fixed upon a trade dispute this man would by
+some means draw that interest upon himself. Nothing was too small for
+this man. Walking the public places he did not shrink from
+recognition; he gladly permitted it. Not once but many times, coming
+upon a stranger reading one of his novels, he had announced himself;
+autographed the copy. This man's character was wholly in keeping with
+his gifts.
+
+Yet beautifully he could preserve the dignity that was his right.
+Preserving it now, he gave his hand to Bill but did not move his
+position.
+
+"It is a great pleasure to me to meet you, sir," Bill told him.
+
+"You have only lately joined the ranks of journalism, Mr. Bitt tells
+me," Mr. Vivian Howard graciously replied. "It is the stepping-stone
+to literature. Never forget that. Never lose sight of that. I shall
+watch your career with the greatest interest."
+
+Mr. Bitt broke in a trifle impatiently: "Well, well, we must keep to
+business just now. Mr. Howard will kindly give us a daily interview,
+Wyvern, until the feuilleton starts, or until the cat is found. You'd
+better--"
+
+Bill took a pace back; faced them both. "No need," he cried in
+bursting words. "The cat is found!"
+
+The cigarette dropped from Mr. Vivian Howard's lip to his waistcoat.
+He brushed at it violently; burnt his fingers; brushed again; swore
+with a ferocity that would have astonished his admirers; sprang to his
+feet amid a little shower of sparks and cloud of ash. "Found!" he
+exclaimed; jabbed a burnt finger in his mouth and thickly repeated,
+"Found!"
+
+Mr. Bitt simultaneously rose. "Found?" cried Mr. Bitt. "What the--"
+
+"I have the finder here," Bill told them; stepped to the door.
+
+On legs that shook my agitated George advanced.
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard drew forth his suffering finger with a loud pop;
+made three hasty strides to George; took the cat. "Abishag!" he cried
+in ecstasy, "Abishag!"
+
+In very gloomy tones Mr. Bitt announced that he was bust. "Well, I'm
+bust!" he said. "I'm bust. It _is_ your cat, eh?"
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard nodded the head he was bending over his Abishag.
+
+Bill signalled to George a swift wink. George drew a handkerchief;
+wiped from his face the beaded agony.
+
+Mr. Bitt dropped heavily into his seat. "Of course I'm very glad, Mr.
+Howard," he announced stonily. "_Very_ glad. At the same time--at the
+same _time_--" He turned upon George with a note that was almost
+savage. "You, sir!" he cried.
+
+George started painfully.
+
+"How the--How did you come to find this cat?"
+
+George forced his pocket handkerchief into his trousers pocket; rammed
+it down; cleared his throat; ran a finger round the inside of his
+collar; cleared again; said nothing.
+
+Bill hurried to the rescue. "Like this, sir. Let me tell you. This
+gentleman was at Paltley Hill, a place on the South-Western. He used
+to live there. He found the cat in a deserted kind of hut, took charge
+of it. I happened to meet him and brought him along. By Jove, sir,
+only published this morning and found within a few hours! It's pretty
+good, isn't it?"
+
+Mr. Bitt spoke with great disgust. "Pretty _good!_" he cried bitterly.
+"Pretty _good!_" He had no fit words in which to express his feeling.
+"Kindly step in there a moment," he addressed George.
+
+George trembled into the adjoining room indicated; closed the door.
+
+Mr. Bitt turned to Mr. Vivian Howard. "It will always be a great
+pleasure to me," he told the great novelist, "to think that the
+_Daily_ was the means of restoring your cat."
+
+"I never shall forget it," Mr. Vivian Howard assured him. The famous
+author placed himself upon the couch, caressed Abishag the Shunamite
+upon his lap. "Never shall forget it. It was more than good of you,
+Mr. Bitt, to take up the matter and offer so handsome a reward. It was
+public-spirited."
+
+Mr. Bitt's deprecatory little laugh had a rueful note.
+
+He nerved himself to step upon the delicate ground that lay between
+him and his purpose. This man had not known Mr. Vivian Howard
+sufficiently long to put to him directly that the reward was offered,
+and gladly agreed to by Mr. Howard, for purposes of respective self-
+advertisement agreeable at once to the paper and to the man who stood
+for English literature. He nerved himself:
+
+"When you say public-spirited, Mr. Howard, you use the right term. I
+do not attempt to deny that I fully appreciated that this reward for
+your cat, and the interview you agreed to give us, would greatly
+benefit our paper. Why should I deny it? We editors must be business
+men first, nowadays; journalists afterwards. But I do ask you to
+believe me, Mr. Howard, that in offering this reward, in arousing this
+interest, I had in view also a matter that has been my aim since I was
+at College."
+
+Mr. Bitt's college was Rosa Glen College, 156 Farmer Road, Peckham;
+but he preferred the briefer designation.
+
+"The aim," he continued, gathering courage as he detected in Mr.
+Vivian Howard's face a look which seemed to show that the famous
+author was advancing upon the delicate ground to meet him, "the aim of
+attracting the people to good literature."
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard, as standing for that literature, took the implied
+compliment with a bow. "I congratulate you, Mr. Bitt."
+
+"Now, the _Daily_ is young," Mr. Bitt earnestly continued. "The
+_Daily_ has yet to make its way. If your 'Amy Martin' starts in normal
+circumstances a week hence, it will mean that this contribution to our
+highest literature will fall only to a comparatively small circle of
+people. But if--but if, as I had hoped, we had morning by morning
+attracted more and more readers by the great interest taken in your
+loss, 'Amy Martin' would then have introduced our best fiction to a
+public twice or thrice as large as our present circulation
+represents."
+
+"You mean--?" the great author inquired.
+
+"I mean," Mr. Bitt told him, "that for this reason I cannot but regret
+that the excitement aroused should disappear with our issue of to-
+morrow. I mean, Mr. Howard, that for the reason I have named I do
+think it is almost our _duty_--our _duty_, for the reason I have
+named--to conceal the cat's recovery for--er--for a day or so."
+
+Mr. Bitt blew his nose violently to conceal his agitation. This man
+was now in the precise centre of the delicate ground; was in
+considerable fear that it might open and swallow him.
+
+But Mr. Vivian Howard's reply made that ground of rock-like solidity.
+
+"As you put the matter, Mr. Bitt, I must say I agree. It would be
+false modesty on my part to pretend I do not recognise the worth of
+'Amy Martin,' and the desirability of introducing it as widely as
+possible. Certainly that could best have been accomplished by Abishag
+not having been recovered so soon. But as it is--I do not see what can
+be done. You do not, of course, suggest deliberate deception of the
+public?"
+
+"Certainly _not!_" cried Mr. Bitt with virtuous warmth. Since this was
+precisely what he did suggest and most earnestly desired, he repeated
+his denial: "Certainly _not_! At the same time--"
+
+"One moment," Mr. Vivian Howard interrupted. "This cat was obviously
+stolen by someone and placed in the hut where it was found. Very well.
+We prosecute. We prosecute, and I could give you every morning my
+views on the guilt or otherwise--"
+
+Mr. Bitt shook his head. "I had thought of that. It won't do. It won't
+do, Mr. Howard. For one thing, a rigorous prosecution and sentence
+might create bad feeling against the paper. You have no idea how
+curious the public is in that way. For another, you, as the injured
+party, ought not to comment; and certainly I could not publish your
+views. The matter would be _sub judice_ directly arrest was made; and
+I once got into very serious trouble over a _sub judice_ matter--very
+serious trouble indeed. I shall not touch the law, Mr. Howard. It is
+unwise. At the same time, I think the thief should be made to suffer--
+be given a thorough fright. Now, if we inform the public that
+practically our Special Commissioner has his hand on the cat--which
+will be perfectly true--and is almost certain as to the identity of
+the thief--if we keep this up for the few days necessary for the
+publication of those magnificent articles of yours on 'What my Loss
+means to Me,' we shall be accomplishing three excellent objects. We
+shall be terrifying an evil-doer--we may take it for granted he reads
+the _Daily_; we shall be giving the public those articles which most
+certainly ought not to be lost to literature; and we shall be widening
+the sphere of influence of 'Amy Martin.'"
+
+Mr. Vivian Howard did not hesitate. "It is impossible to override your
+arguments, Mr. Bitt. I think we shall be doing _right_."
+
+Mr. Bitt concealed his immense joy. "I am convinced of it, Mr.
+Howard," he said. "_Convinced_. The modern editor and the man of
+letters of your standing have enormous responsibilities."
+
+Impelled by the virtuous public duty they were performing, the two men
+silently grasped hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A Perfectly Splendid Chapter.
+
+
+Mr. Bitt turned to Bill; indicated the door behind which my poor
+George was wrestling in prayer. "The only difficulty is with that chap
+in there. He knows the cat is found! How can we--"
+
+"If you will leave that to me, sir," Bill told him, "I think I can
+arrange it without difficulty."
+
+"Or danger?" added Mr. Vivian Howard, who, standing for English
+literature, would not lightly imperil his integrity.
+
+"Or the least danger," Bill affirmed. "He's a kind of friend of mine--
+did I mention that, sir? I'll fix it up in a minute."
+
+He stepped briskly to George; closed the door behind him.
+
+George said faintly: "Say it quick, Bill. Quick."
+
+"You've got it, old man. Got it."
+
+George rose to his feet; stretched his arms aloft; wildly waved them.
+The tremendous shout for which he opened his mouth was stayed upon his
+lips by Bill's warning finger. He hurled himself on a couch; rolled in
+ecstasy.
+
+Rapidly Bill outlined the proposals. Then he struck a heavy hand upon
+George's shoulder. "And I've got it too!" he cried in an exultant
+whisper. "I've got it too! I've got Margaret!"
+
+"Margaret! However--?"
+
+"Like this. Plain as a fiddle-stick. To-morrow, when we get out this
+story about practically having our hand on the thief, I shall go bang
+down to Marrapit with the paper and tell him I know it was Mrs. Major
+who took the cat. You can imagine the state that'll put 'em both in.
+Then--then, my boy, I shall say 'Let Margy and me carry on and fix it
+up forthwith, and I'll promise Mrs. Major shall never hear a word more
+about the matter.' He'll agree like a shot. The chief's not going to
+prosecute, you see; so neither Mrs. Major nor you ever will hear a
+word more. George, we've done it! Done it! You've got your Mary and
+I've got my Margy!"
+
+With swelling bosoms, staring eyes, upon this tremendous happening the
+two young men clasped hands; stood heavily breathing. These men were
+glimpsing heaven.
+
+When they unlocked, George said: "There's one thing, Bill. Go in and
+tell that precious pair they can hold over the discovery till they
+please and that I shall never breathe a word. But tell 'em this: I
+don't agree unless I have my cheque right away."
+
+Bill advised no stipulations.
+
+George stood firm: "I don't care a snap, Bill. I will have it now.
+I've been badgered about quite enough. I want to feel safe. I'll
+either lose it all or have it all. No more uncertainty. Anything might
+happen during the week, for all I know."
+
+Bill took the message.
+
+Upon immediate payment Mr. Bitt at first stuck. "He might turn back on
+us, or start blackmailing us. He may have stolen the cat himself for
+all we know."
+
+"All the more likely, in that case, to keep his mouth shut," commented
+Mr. Vivian Howard. Despite he stood for literature, this man had
+strong business instincts.
+
+Bill urged compliance. He knew this finder of the cat; would speak for
+him as for himself.
+
+Mr. Bitt put a quill into his inkstand; took George's name; wrote a
+slip; handed it to Bill. "Take that to the cashier, Wyvern. He'll give
+you the cheque. Clear your friend out. Eh? No--no need for me to see
+him again. Of course you must get his story of how he found the cat,
+to use when the 'What my Loss means to Me' articles run out. Then come
+back and we'll fix up to-morrow's account."
+
+A cabman drove to St. Peter's Hospital a seemingly insane young man,
+who bounded into the cab with a piece of paper in his hand; who sang
+and rattled his heels upon the foot-board, shouted to passers-by; who
+paid with two half-crowns; who bounded, paper still fluttering in
+hand, up the steps of the Dean's entrance with a wild and tremendous
+whoop.
+
+George had scarcely explained to the Dean an incoherent story of L500
+won through a newspaper competition, when the Mr. Lawrence, M.R.C.S.,
+L.R.C.P., whose practice was at Runnygate, arrived.
+
+Informally the purchase was at once arranged; a further meeting
+settled. George bolted to another cab; drove to Meath Street by way of
+the florist near Victoria Station; took aboard an immense basket of
+flowers.
+
+At the house he gathered the flowers beneath his arm; on the way
+upstairs shifted them to his hands; flung wide the door.
+
+His Mary, white, a tooth on a trembling lip, her pretty hands clasped,
+was before him. In a great whirling shower he flung the blossoms about
+her; then took her in his arms.
+
+"Runnygate, Mary! Darling old girl, Runnygate!"
+
+He kissed his Mary.
+
+Last Shots from the Bridge.
+
+If you had patience for another peep from the bridge that I can build,
+you might catch a glimpse or so.
+
+Bending over you might see Bill seated at the editor's table of the
+editor's room of a monstrously successful monthly magazine of most
+monstrous fiction that Mr. Bitt's directors have started; Margaret,
+that sentimental young woman, by her husband's side is correcting the
+proofs of a poem signed "Margaret Wyvern." It is of the most exquisite
+melancholy.
+
+Bending over you might see George upon one of the summer evenings
+when, his duties through, he is taking his Mary for a drive in the
+country behind that rising seaside resort Runnygate. They are plunging
+along in a tremendous dogcart drawn by an immense horse. George is
+fully occupied with his steed; Mary, peeping at constant intervals
+through the veil that hides the clear blue eyes and the ridiculous
+little turned-up nose of her baby, at every corner says: "Oh, George!
+Georgie, do be careful! We were on _one_ wheel then, I _know_ we
+were!" But along the level the wind riots at her pretty curls as she
+sits up very straight and very proud, smiling at this splendid fellow
+beside her.
+
+Bending over you might see the garden of Herons' Holt, Mr. Fletcher
+leading from the house the fat white pony and tubby wide car which
+Mrs. Marrapit, formerly Mrs. Major, has prevailed upon her husband to
+buy. The pony has all the docile qualities of a blind sheep, but Mr.
+Fletcher is in great terror of it. When, while being groomed, it
+suddenly lifts its head, Mr. Fletcher drops his curry-comb and retires
+from the stall at great speed. "It's 'ard," says Mr. Fletcher--"damn
+'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a 'orse-breaker."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Once Aboard The Lugger
+by Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
+
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