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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of This Freedom, by A. S. M. Hutchinson
+#2 in our series by A. S. M. Hutchinson
+
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: This Freedom
+
+Author: A. S. M. Hutchinson
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6415]
+[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 THIS FREEDOM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Carrie Fellman and Charles Aldarondo
+
+
+
+
+THIS FREEDOM
+
+BY
+
+A. S. M. HUTCHINSON
+
+"With a great sum obtained I this freedom."--ACTS xxii, 28.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN
+
+PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN
+
+PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN
+
+PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+
+
+Rosalie's earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious
+and extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father
+and that entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her
+father, all males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion
+over it; no females owned any part of the world or could do anything
+with it. All the males in this world--her father, and Robert and
+Harold her brothers, and all the other boys and men one sometimes
+saw--did mysterious and extraordinary things; and all the females
+in this world--her mother, and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters,
+and Ellen the cook and Gertrude the maid--did ordinary and unexciting
+and generally rather tiresome things. All the males were like story
+books to Rosalie: you never knew what they were going to do next;
+and all the females were like lesson books: they just went on and
+on and on.
+
+Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them. Extraordinary and
+wonderful creatures who could do what they liked and were always
+doing mysterious and wonderful things, especially and above all
+her father.
+
+Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching
+a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do
+next. Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of
+being startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing
+her father did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising
+in the sense of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even
+better than reading when she first began to read, and far better
+than anything in the world before the mysteries in books were
+discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit and stare at her father and
+think how wonderful he was and wonder what extraordinary thing he
+would do next. Everything belonged to him. The whole of life was
+ordered with a view to what he would think about it. The whole
+of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled into
+the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most
+wonderful man.
+
+Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull
+after him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him!
+That showed you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first
+time (as it were) flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a
+field towards her with a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her
+mother ever rush along in front of a bull? Never. Was it possible
+to imagine any of the women she knew rushing before a bull? It
+was not possible. To see a woman rushing before a bull would have
+alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was unnatural; but for
+her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a bull seemed
+to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the least
+alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.
+
+Her father, while Rosalie watched him, was not in great danger. He
+came ballooning along towards Rosalie, not running as ordinarily
+fit and efficient men run, but progressing by a series of enormous
+leaps and bounds, arms and legs spread-eagling, and at each leap
+and bound always seeming to Rosalie to spring as high in the air
+as he sprung forward over the ground. It would not have surprised
+Rosalie, who was then about four, to see one of these stupendous
+leaps continue in a whirling flight through mid-air and her father
+come hurtling over the gate and drop with an enormous plunk at
+her feet like a huge dead bird, as a partridge once had come plunk
+over the hedge and out of the sky when she was in a lane adjacent
+to a shooting party. It would not have surprised her in the least.
+Nothing her father did ever surprised Rosalie. The world was his
+and the fulness thereof, and he did what he liked with it.
+
+Arrived, however, from the bull, not as a ballooning bird out of the
+sky, but as a headlong avalanche over the gate, Rosalie's father
+tottered to a felled tree trunk, and sat there heaving, and groaned
+aloud, "Infernal parish; hateful parish; forsaken parish!"
+
+Rosalie, wonderingly regarding him, said, "Mother says dinner is
+waiting for you, father."
+
+Her mother and her sisters and the servants and the entire female
+establishment of the universe seemed to Rosalie always to be
+waiting for something from her father, or for her father himself,
+or waiting for or upon some male other than her father. That was
+another of the leading principles that Rosalie first came to know
+in her world. Not only were the males, paramountly her father, able
+to do what they liked and always doing wonderful and mysterious
+things, but everything that the females did either had some relation
+to a male or was directly for, about, or on behalf of a male.
+
+Getting Robert off to school in the morning, for instance. That
+was another early picture.
+
+There would be Robert, eating; and there was the entire female
+population of the rectory feverishly attending upon Robert while
+he ate. Six females, intensely and as if their lives depended upon
+it, occupied with one male. Three girls--Anna about sixteen, Flora
+fourteen, Hilda twelve--and three grown women, all exhaustingly
+occupied in pushing out of the house one heavy and obstinate male
+aged about ten! Rosalie used to stand and watch entranced. How
+wonderful he was! Where did he go to when at last he was pushed
+off? What happened to him? What did he do?
+
+There he is, eating; there they are, ministering. Entrancing and
+mysterious spectacle!
+
+Robert, very solid and heavy and very heated and agitated, would
+be seated at the table shoving porridge into himself against the
+clock. One of his legs, unnaturally flexed backward and outward, is
+in the possession of Rosalie's mother who is on her knees mending
+a hole in his stocking. The other leg, similarly contorted, is on
+the lap of Ellen the cook, who with very violent tugs, as if she
+were lashing a box, is lacing a boot on to it. Behind Robert is
+Anna, who is pressing his head down with one hand and washing the
+back of his neck with the other. In front of him across the table
+is Hilda, staring before her with bemused eyes and moving lips and
+rapidly counting on drumming fingers. Hilda is doing his sums for
+him. Beside him on his right side, apparently engaged in throttling
+him, is Gertrude the maid. Gertrude the maid is trying to tear off
+him a grimed collar and put on him a clean collar. Facing Gertrude
+on his other side is Flora. Flora is bawling his history in his
+ear.
+
+Everybody is working for Robert; everybody is working at top speed
+for him, and everybody is loudly soliciting his attention.
+
+"Oh, do give over wriggling, master Robert!" (The boot-fastener.)
+
+"'Simon de Montford, Hubert de Burgh, and Peter de Roche.' Well,
+say it then, you dreadful little idiot!" (The history crammer.)
+
+"Oh, master Robert, do please keep up!" (The collar fastener.)
+
+"Keep down, will you!" (The neck washer.)
+
+"Four sixes are twenty-four and six you carried thirty!" (The
+arithmetician.)
+
+"Robert, you must turn your foot further round!" (The stocking-darner.)
+
+"'The Barons were now incensed. The Barons were now incensed. The
+Barons were now incensed.' Say it, you ghastly little stupid!"
+
+"Do they make you do these by fractions or by decimals?... Well,
+what do you know, then?"
+
+Entrancing spectacle!
+
+Now the discovery is by everybody simultaneously made and
+simultaneously announced that Robert is already later in starting
+than he has ever been (he always was) and immediately Rosalie
+would become witness of the last and most violent skirmish in this
+devoted attendance. Everybody rushes around hunting for things and
+pushing them on to Robert and pushing Robert, festooned with them,
+towards the door. Where was his cap? Where was his satchel? Where
+was his lunch? Where were his books? Who had seen his atlas? Who
+had seen his pencil box? Who had seen his gymnasium belt? Was his
+bicycle ready? Was his coat on his bicycle? Was that button on his
+coat?
+
+With these alarums at their height and the excursions attendant on
+them at their busiest, another splendid male would enter the room
+and immediately there was, as Rosalie always saw, a transference
+of attendance to him and a violent altercation between him and
+the first splendid male. This new splendid male is Rosalie's other
+brother, Harold. Harold was eighteen and him also the entire female
+population of the rectory combined to push out of the rectory every
+morning. Harold was due to be pushed off half an hour later than
+Robert, and as he was a greater and more splendid male than Robert
+(though infinitely lesser than her father) so the place to which
+he was pushed off was far more mysterious and enthralling than the
+place to which Robert was pushed off. A school Rosalie could dimly
+understand. But a bank! Why Harold should go to sit on a bank all
+day, and why he should ride on a bicycle to Ashborough to find a
+bank when there were banks all around the rectory, and even in the
+garden itself, Rosalie never could imagine. Mysterious Harold! Anna
+had told her that men kept money in banks; but Rosalie had never
+found money in a bank though she had looked; yet banks--of all
+extraordinary places--were where men chose to put their money!
+Mysterious men! And Harold could find these banks and find this money
+though he never took a trowel or a spade and was always shiningly
+clean with a very high collar and very long cuffs. Wonderful,
+wonderful Harold!
+
+Robert was due to be pushed off half an hour before Harold was
+due to be pushed off, but he never was; the two splendid creatures
+always clashed and there was always between them, because they
+clashed, a violent scene which Rosalie would not have missed for
+worlds. A meeting of two males, so utterly unlike a meeting of two
+females, was invariably of the most entrancingly noisy or violent
+description. When ladies came to the rectory to see her mother they
+sat in the drawing-room and sipped tea and spoke in thin voices;
+but when men came to see her father and went into the study, there
+was very loud talking and often a row. Yes, and once in the village
+street, Rosalie had seen two men stand up and thump one another
+with their fists and fall down and get up and thump again. When
+two women, her sisters or others, quarrelled, they only shrilled,
+and went on and on shrilling. It was impossible to imagine the
+collision of two women producing anything so exciting and splendid
+as invariably was produced by the collision of two males.
+
+As now----
+
+In comes Harold in great heat and hurry (as men always were) with
+his splendid button boots in one hand and an immense pair of shining
+cuffs in the other hand.
+
+"Haven't you gone yet, you lazy young brute?"
+
+"No, I haven't, you lazy old brute!"
+
+Agitated feminine cries of "Robert! Robert! You are not to speak
+to Harold like that."
+
+"Well, he spoke to me like that."
+
+"Yes, and I'll do a jolly sight more than speak to you in a minute
+if you don't get out of it. Get out of it, do you hear?"
+
+"Shan't!"
+
+"Robert! Robert! Harold! Harold!"
+
+"Well, get him out of it, or he'll be sorry for it. Why is he always
+here when I'm supposed to be having my breakfast? Not a thing ready,
+as usual. Look here, where I'm supposed to sit--flannel and soap!
+That's washing his filthy neck, I suppose. Filthy young brute! Why
+don't you wash your neck, pig?"
+
+"Why do you wear girl's boots with buttons, pig?"
+
+Commotion. Enthralling commotion. Half the female assemblage hustle
+the splendid creature Robert out of the door and down the hall and
+on to his bicycle; half the female assemblage cover his retreat
+and block the dash after him of the still more splendid Harold;
+all the female assemblage, battle having been prevented and one
+splendid male despatched, combine to minister to the requirements
+of the second splendid male now demanding attention.
+
+Busy scene. Enthralling spectacle. There he is, eating; shoving
+sausages into himself against the clock just as Robert had shovelled
+porridge into himself against the clock. One ministrant is sewing
+a button on to his boot, another with blotting paper and hot iron
+is removing a stain from his coat, divested for the purpose; one
+is pouring out his coffee, another is cutting his bread, a third is
+watching for his newspaper by the postman. And suddenly he whirls
+everything into a whirlpool just as men, if Rosalie watches them
+long enough, always whirl everything into a whirlpool.
+
+"Oh, my goodness, the pump!"
+
+Chorus, "The pump?"
+
+"The bicycle pump! Has that young brute taken the bicycle pump?"
+
+"Yes, he took it. I saw it."
+
+Commotion.
+
+"Catch him across the field! Catch him across the field! Where
+are my boots? Where the devil are my boots? Well, never mind the
+infernal button. How am I going to get to the bank with a flat tyre?
+Can't some one catch him across the field instead of all standing
+there staring?"
+
+Away they go! Rosalie, seeking a good place for the glorious
+spectacle, is knocked over in the stampede for the door. Nobody
+minds Rosalie. Rosalie doesn't mind--anything to see this entrancing
+sight! Away they go, flying over the meadow, shouting, scrambling,
+falling. Out after them plunges Harold, shirt-sleeved, one boot half
+on, hobbling, leaping, bawling. Glorious to watch him! He outruns
+them all; he outbellows them all. Of course he does. He is a man.
+He is one of those splendid, wonderful, mysterious creatures to
+whom, subject only to Rosalie's father, the entire world belongs.
+Look at him, bounding, bawling! Wonderful, wonderful Harold!
+
+But Robert is wonderful too. If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda
+gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not
+Robert. Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously
+pedalling at incredible speed, is not caught. The hunt dejectedly
+trails back. The business of pushing Harold out of the house is
+devotedly resumed.
+
+And again--enthralling spectacle--just as the reign of Robert was
+terminated by the accession of Harold, so the dominion of Harold
+is overthrown by the accession of father. Harold is crowded about
+with ministrants. Nobody can leave him for a minute. Rosalie's
+father appears. Everybody leaves Harold simultaneously, abruptly,
+and as if by magic. Rosalie's father appears. Everybody disappears.
+Wonderful father! Everybody melts away: but Harold does not melt
+away. Courageous Harold! Everybody melts; only Harold is left,
+and Rosalie watching; and immediately, as always, the magnificent
+males clash with sound and fury.
+
+Rosalie's father scowls upon Harold and delivers his morning
+greeting. No "Good morning, dear," as her mother would have said.
+"Aren't you gone yet?" like a bark from a kennel.
+
+"Just going."
+
+Wonderful father! A moment before there had been not the remotest
+sign of Harold ever going. Now Harold is very anxious to go. He is
+very anxious to go but, like Robert, he will not abandon the field
+without defiance of the authority next above his own. While he
+collects his things he whistles. Rosalie shudders (but deliciously
+as one in old Rome watching the gladiators).
+
+"Do you see the clock, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, quicken yourself, sir. Quicken yourself."
+
+"The clock's fast."
+
+"It is not fast, sir. And let me add that the clock with which you
+could keep time of a morning, or of any hour in the day, would have
+to be an uncommonly slow clock."
+
+Harold with elaborate unconcern adjusts his trouser clips. "I should
+have thought that was more a matter for the Bank to complain of,
+if necessary. I may be wrong, of course----"
+
+"You may be wrong, sir, because in my experience you almost invariably
+are wrong and never more so than when you lad-di-dah that you are
+right. You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may not be.
+You may not be impertinent to me, sir. You may not lad-di-dah me,
+sir."
+
+"Father, I really do not see why at my age I should be hounded out
+of the house like this every morning."
+
+"You are hounded out, as you elegantly express it, because morning
+after morning, owing to your disgustingly slothful habits, you
+clash with me, sir. My breakfast is delayed because you clash with
+me, and the house is delayed because you clash with me, and the
+whole parish is delayed because you clash with me."
+
+"Perhaps you're not aware that Robert clashes with me."
+
+"Dash Robert! Are you going or are you not going?"
+
+He goes.
+
+"Bring back the paper."
+
+He brings it back.
+
+Wonderful father!
+
+Rosalie's father gives a tug at the bell cord that would have
+dislocated the neck of a horse. The cord comes away in his hand.
+He hurls it across the room.
+
+Glorious father!
+
+There was a most frightful storm one night and Rosalie, in Anna's
+bed with Flora crowded in also and Hilda shivering in her nightgown
+beside them, too young to be frightened but with her sister's
+fright beginning to communicate itself to her, said, "Ask father
+to go and stop it."
+
+"Fool!" cried Flora. "How could father stop the storm?"
+
+Why not?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+
+
+Flora's sharp and astounding reply to that question of Rosalie's
+was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt surprise at Flora's sharpness
+and ignorance, when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man
+who could, and actually did, stop a storm. This was a man called
+Prospero in a book called "The Tempest."
+
+She was never--that Rosalie--the conventional wonder-child of
+fiction who reads before ten all that its author probably never
+read before thirty; but she could read when she was six and she
+read widely and curiously, choosing her entertainment, from her
+father's bookshelves, solely by the method of reading every book
+that had pictures.
+
+There was but one picture to "The Tempest," a frontispiece, but it
+sufficed, and at the period when Rosalie believed the ownership of
+the world to be vested in her father and under him in all males,
+"The Tempest," because it reflected that condition, was the greatest
+joy of all the joys the bookshelves discovered to her. She read it
+over and over again. It presented life exactly as life presented
+itself to the round eyes of Rosalie: all males doing always noisy
+and violent and important and enthralling things, with Prospero,
+her father, by far the most important of all; and women scarcely
+appearing and doing only what the men told them to do. Miranda's
+appearances in the story were indifferently skipped by Rosalie;
+the noisy action and language in the wreck, and the noisy action
+and language of the drunkards in the wood were what she liked, and
+all the magic arts of Prospero were what she thoroughly appreciated
+and understood. That was life as she knew it.
+
+Rosalie's father, when Rosalie thought the world belonged to him
+and revolved about him, was tall and cleanshaven and of complexion
+a dark and burning red. When he was excited or angry his face used
+to burn as the embers in the study fire burned when Rosalie pressed
+the bellows against them. He had thick black eyebrows and a most
+powerful nose. His nose jutted from his face like a projection
+from a cliff beneath a clump of bushes. He had been at Cambridge
+and he was most ferociously fond of Cambridge. One of the most
+fearful scenes Rosalie ever witnessed was on one boat-race day when
+Harold appeared with a piece of Oxford ribbon in his buttonhole. It
+was at breakfast, the family for some reason or other most unusually
+all taking breakfast together. Rosalie's father first jocularly
+bantered Harold on his choice of colour, and everybody--anxious as
+always to please and placate the owner of the world--laughed with
+father against Harold. But Harold did not laugh. Harold smouldered
+resentment and defiance, and out of his smouldering began to maintain
+"from what chaps had said" that Oxford was altogether and in every
+way a much better place than Cambridge. In every branch of athletics
+there were better athletes, growled Harold, at Oxford.
+
+Rosalie has been watching the embers in her father's face glowing
+to dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold
+who, though addressing his father, had been mumbling "what chaps
+had said" to his plate.
+
+"Athletes!" cried Rosalie's father suddenly in a very terrible
+voice. "Athletes! And what about scholars, sir?"
+
+Harold informed his plate that he wasn't talking about scholars.
+
+Rosalie's father raised a marmalade jar and thumped it down upon
+the table so that it cracked. "Then what the dickens right have
+you to talk at all, sir? How dare you try to compare Oxford with
+Cambridge when you know no more about either than you know of
+Jupiter or Mars? Athletes!" He went off into record of University
+contests, cricket scores, running times, football scores, as if
+his whole life had been devoted to collecting them. They all showed
+Cambridge first and Oxford beaten and he hurled each one at Harold's
+head with a thundering, "What about that, sir?" after it. He leapt
+to scholarship and reeled off scholarships and scholars and schools,
+and professors and endowments and prize men, as if he had been an
+educational year-book gifted with speech and with particularly loud
+and violent speech. He spoke of the colleges of Cambridge, and with
+every college and every particular glory of every college demanded
+of the unfortunate Harold, "What have you got in Oxford against
+that, sir?"
+
+It was awful. It was far more frightening than the night of the
+storm. Nobody ate. Nobody drank. Everybody shuddered and tried
+by every means to avoid catching father's rolling eye and thereby
+attracting the direct blast of the tempest. Rosalie, who of course,
+being a completely negligible quantity in the rectory, is not
+included in the everybody, simply stared, more awed and enthralled
+than ever before. And with much reason. As he declaimed of the glories
+of the colleges of Cambridge there was perceptible in her father's
+voice a most curious crack or break. It became more noticeable
+and more frequent. He suddenly and most astoundingly cried out,
+"Cambridge! Cambridge!" and threw his arms out before him on the
+table, and buried his head on them, and sobbed out, "Cambridge! My
+youth! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!"
+
+Somehow or other they all slipped out of the room and left him
+there,--all except Rosalie who remained in her high chair staring
+upon her father, and upon his shoulders that heaved up and down,
+and upon the coffee from an overturned cup that oozed slowly along
+the tablecloth.
+
+Extraordinary father!
+
+Rosalie's father had been a wrangler and one of the brilliant men
+of his year at Cambridge. All manner of brilliance was expected
+for him and of him. He unexpectedly went into the Church and as
+unexpectedly married.
+
+His bride was the daughter of a clergyman, a widower, who kept a
+small private school in Devonshire. She helped her father to run
+the school (an impoverished business which, begun exclusively for
+the "sons of gentlemen," had slid down into paying court to tradesmen
+in order to get the sons of tradesmen) and she maintained him in
+the very indifferent health he suffered. Harold Aubyn, the brilliant
+wrangler with the brilliant future, who had begun his brilliance by
+unexpectedly entering the Church, and continued it by unexpectedly
+marrying while on a holiday in the little Devonshire town where he had
+gone to ponder his future (a little unbalanced by the unpremeditated
+plunge into Holy Orders) further continued his brilliance by
+unexpectedly finding himself the assistant master in his father-in-law's
+second-rate and failing school. The daughter would not leave her
+father; the suitor would not leave his darling; the brilliant young
+wrangler who at Cambridge used to dream of waking to find himself
+famous awoke instead to find himself six years buried in a now
+third-rate and moribund school in a moribund Devonshire town. He
+had a father-in-law now permanent invalid, bedridden. He had four
+children and another, Robert, on the way.
+
+It was his father-in-law's death that awoke him; and he awoke
+characteristically. The old man dead! Come, that was one burden
+lifted, one shackle removed! The school finally went smash at the
+same time. Never mind! Another burden gone! Another shackle lifted!
+Dash the school! How he hated the school! How he loathed and
+detested the lumping boys! How he loathed and abominated teaching
+them simple arithmetic (he the wrangler!) and history that was
+a string of dates, and geography that was a string of capes and
+bays, and Latin as far as the conjugations (he the wrangler!) how
+he loathed and abominated it! Now a fresh start! Hurrah!
+
+That was like Rosalie's father--in those days. That way blew the
+cold fit and the hot fit--then.
+
+The magnificent fresh start after the magnificent escape from the
+morass of the moribund father-in-law and the moribund school and
+the moribund Devonshire town proved to be but a stagger down into
+morass heavier and more devastating of ambition. He always jumped
+blindly and wildly into things. Blindly and wildly into the
+Church, blindly and wildly into marriage, blindly and wildly into
+the school, blindly and wildly, one might say, into fatherhood on
+a lavish scale. Blindly and wildly--the magnificent fresh start--into
+the rectory in which Rosalie was born.
+
+It was "a bit in the wilds" (of Suffolk); "a bit of a tight
+fit" (L200 a year) and a bit or two or three other drawbacks; but
+it was thousands of miles from Devonshire and from the school and
+schooling, that was the great thing; and it was a jolly big rectory
+with a ripping big garden; and above all and beyond everything it
+was just going to be a jumping-off place while he looked around for
+something suitable to his talents and while he got in touch again
+with his old friends of the brilliant years.
+
+It was just going to be a jumping-off place, but he never jumped off
+from it; a place from which to look around for something suitable,
+but instead he sunk in it up to his chin; a place from which to
+get in touch again with his friends of the brilliant years, but
+his friends were all doing brilliant things and much too busy at
+their brilliance to open up with one who had missed fire.
+
+The parish of St. Mary's, Ibbotsfield, had an enormous rectory,
+falling to pieces; an enormous church, crumbling away; an enormous
+area, purely agricultural; and a cure of a very few hundred
+agricultural souls, enormously-scattered. Years and years before,
+prior to railways, prior to mechanical reapers and thrashers, and
+prior to everything that took men to cities or whirled them and
+their produce farther in an hour than they ever could have gone in
+a week, Ibbotsfield and its surrounding villages and hamlets were
+a reproach to the moral conditions of the day in that they had no
+sufficiently enormous church. Well-intentioned persons removed this
+reproach, adding in their zeal an enormous rectory; and the time
+they chose for their beneficent and lavish action was precisely
+the time when Ibbotsfield, through its principal land-owners, was
+stoutly rejecting the monstrous idea of encouraging a stinking,
+roaring, dangerous railway in their direction, and combining together
+by all means in their power to keep the roaring, dangerous atrocity
+as far away from them as possible.
+
+It thus, and by like influences, happened that, whereas
+one generation of the devoutly intentioned sat stolidly under the
+reproach of an enormous and thickly populated area without a church,
+later generations with the same stolidity sat under the reproach
+of an enormous church, an enormous rectory and an infinitesimal
+stipend, in an area which a man might walk all day without meeting
+any other man.
+
+But the devout of the day, not having to live in this rectory or
+preach in this church or laboriously trudge about this area, did
+not unduly worry themselves with this reproach.
+
+That was (in his turn) the lookout of the Rev. Harold Aubyn--also
+his outlook.
+
+He is to be imagined, in those days when Rosalie first came to know
+him and to think of him as Prospero, as a terribly lonely man. He
+stalked fatiguingly about the countryside in search of his parishioners,
+and his parishioners were suspicious of him and disliked his fierce,
+thrusting nose, and he returned from them embittered with them and
+hating them. He genuinely longed to be friendly with them and on
+terms of Hail, fellow, well met, with them; but they exasperated him
+because they could not meet him either on his own quick intellectual
+level or upon his own quick and very sensitive emotional level.
+They could not respond to his humour and they could not respond,
+in the way he thought they ought to respond, to his sympathy.
+
+He once found a man--a farm labourer--who in conversation disclosed
+a surprising interest in the traces of early and mediaeval habitation
+of the country. The discovery delighted him. In the catalogue of
+a secondhand bookseller of Ipswich he noticed the "Excursions in
+the County of Suffolk," two volumes for three shillings, and he
+wrote and had them posted to the man. For days he eagerly looked
+in the post for the grateful and delighted letter that in similar
+circumstances he himself would have written. He composed in his mind
+the phrases of the letter and warmed in spirit over anticipation
+of reading them. No letter arrived.
+
+When he came into the rectory from visiting he was always asking,
+"Has that man Bolas from Hailsham called?" Bolas never called. He
+furiously began to loathe Bolas. He was furious with himself for
+having "lowered himself" to Bolas. Bolas in his ignorance no doubt
+thought the books were a cheap charity of cast-off lumber. Uncouth
+clod! Stupid clod! Uncouth parish! Hateful, loathsome parish!
+For weeks he kept away from Hailsham and the possible vicinity of
+Bolas. One day he met him. Bolas passed with no more than a "Good
+day, Mr. Aubyn." He could have killed the man. He swung round and
+pushed his dark face and jutty nose into the face of Bolas. "Did
+you ever get some books I sent you?"
+
+"Ou, ay, to be sure, they books----"
+
+He rushed with savage strides away from the man. All the way home
+he savagely said to himself, aloud, keeping time to it with his
+feet, "Uncouth clod, ill-mannered clod, horrible, hateful place!
+Uncouth clods, hateful clods, horrible, hateful place!"
+
+That was his attitude to his parishioners. They could not come up
+to the level of his sensibilities; he could not get down to the
+level of theirs.
+
+With the few gentle families that composed the society of Ibbotsfield
+he was little better accommodated. They led contented, well-ordered
+lives, busy about their gardens, busy about their duties, busy
+about their amusements. His life was ill-ordered and he was never
+busy about anything: he was always either neglecting what had to
+be done or doing it, late, with a ferocious and exhausting energy
+that caused him to groan over it and detest it while he did it.
+In the general level of his life he was below the standard of his
+neighbours and knew that he was below it; in the sudden bounds and
+flights of his intellect and of his imagination he was immeasurably
+above the intel-lects of his neighbours and knew that he was
+immeasurably above them. Therefore, and in both moods, he commonly
+hated and despised them. "Fools, fools! Unread, pompous, petty!"
+
+At the rectory, among his family, he seemed to himself to be
+surrounded by incompetent women and herds of children.
+
+He was a terribly lonely man when Rosalie first came to know him
+and thought of him as Prospero. He is to be imagined in those days
+as a fierce, flying, futile figure scudding about on the face of
+the parish and in the vast gaunt spaces of the rectory, with his
+burning face and his jutting nose, trying to get away from people,
+hungering to meet sympathetic people; trying to get way from
+himself, hungering after the things that his self had lost. In his
+young manhood he was known for moods of intense reserve alternated
+by fits of tremendous gaiety and boisterous high spirits. ("A
+fresh start! Hurrah!" when release from the school came. "What does
+anything matter? Now we're really off at last! Hurrah! Hurrah!")
+In his set manhood, when Rosalie knew him, there were substituted
+for the fits of boisterous spirits, paroxysms of violent outburst
+against his lot. "Infernal parish! Hateful parish! Forsaken parish!"
+after the ignominy of flight before the bull. "Blow the dinner!
+Dash the dinner! Blow the dinner!" after wrestling a soggy steak
+from his pocket and hurling it half a mile through the air. These
+and that single but terrible occasion of "Cambridge! Cambridge! My
+youth! My God, my God, my youth!"
+
+A terribly lonely man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+
+
+The Aubyn family occupied only a portion of the enormous rectory.
+There was a whole floor upstairs, and there were several rooms on
+the ground and first floors, that were never used, were unfurnished
+except for odds and ends of lumber left behind by the previous
+vicar, and were never entered. Rosalie once explored them all,
+systematically though very fearfully, and also very excitedly. She
+was searching for some one, for two people.
+
+In the household she knew her father and her mother, her brothers
+and sisters and the servants; but there were two mysterious
+inhabitants of whom she often heard but whom she never saw and
+never could find. It used to frighten her sometimes, lying awake at
+night, or creeping about the house of an evening, to think of those
+two mysterious people hidden away somewhere and perhaps likely to
+pounce on her out of the dark. What did they eat? Where did they
+live? What did they do? What were they?
+
+One of these two eerie and invisible people was heard of from
+her father. Several times Rosalie had heard him, when talking to
+persons not of the family, speak of "my wife." The other eerie and
+invisible creature was heard of from her mother: "My husband."
+
+Where were they? Of all the mysterious things which Rosalie used to
+wonder over in those days, this undiscoverable "wife" and "husband"
+were the most mysterious of all, and more mysterious than ever after
+that day on which, walking on tiptoe for fear of coming upon them
+suddenly, holding her breath and pausing in fearful apprehension
+before entering the untenanted rooms upstairs, she explored the
+whole house in search of them. She got to know all sorts of little
+odds and ends about them; that the wife felt the cold very much,
+for instance, for she had heard her father say so; and that the
+husband did not like mutton, for her mother told that to Mr. Grant
+the butcher: and she was often hot on their tracks for she had heard
+her father say, "My wife is upstairs" and had rushed upstairs and
+searched; and her mother say, "My husband is in the garden," and had
+run into the garden and hunted. But all these clues only deepened
+the mystery. They were never to be found.
+
+It was mysterious.
+
+Then one day the wife (she heard) fell ill, and through her great
+concern about that--for she was profoundly interested in these
+people and used to feel awfully sorry for them, hidden away like
+that perhaps with no fire and nothing to eat but mutton--the mystery
+was explained.
+
+With the family she was going towards church one Sunday morning and
+she heard her father tell a lady that "my wife" was not very well
+that morning and couldn't come. Rosalie during the service prayed
+very earnestly for the wife's recovery and took the opportunity of
+praying also that she might be permitted to see the wife "if she
+is not very frightening, O Lord, and the husband too, if possible,
+for Jesus Christ's sake, amen."
+
+And at lunch, having thought of nothing else all the morning, there
+was suddenly shot out of her the question, "Father, is your wife
+any better now?"
+
+Rosalie commonly never spoke at all at meals; and as to speaking
+to her father, though it is obvious she must have had some sort
+of intercourse with him, this famous question (a standing joke in
+the house for years) was the single direct speech of those early
+years she ever could remember. She spoke to her father when she
+was bidden to speak in the form of messages, generally about meals
+being ready, or relative to shopping commissions he had been asked
+to execute; but he was far too wonderful, powerful and mysterious
+for conversation with him on her own initiative. "Father, is your
+wife any better now?" stood out in her later recollection, alone
+and lonelily startling.
+
+There was from all the company an astounded stare and astounded
+gasp; all the table sitting with astounded eyes, forks suspended
+in mid-air, mouths half open in astonishment, and Rosalie sitting
+in her high chair wonderingly regarding their wonderment. What were
+they staring at?
+
+There was then an enormous howl of laughter, led by Rosalie's
+father, and repeated, and louder than before, because it was so
+very unusual for the family to be laughing in accord with father.
+Gertrude, the maid, fled hysterically from the room and laughter
+howled back from the kitchen.
+
+Rosalie's father said, "You'd better go and ask your mother." Her
+mother had stayed in bed that day with a chill.
+
+Robert "undid" Rosalie--a wooden rod with a fixed knob at one
+end went through the arms of her high chair and was fastened by a
+removable knob at the other end--and Rosalie slid down very gravely,
+and with their laughter still echoing trod upstairs to her mother's
+bedside and related what she had been told to ask, and, on inquiry,
+why she had asked it. "I only said 'Father, is your wife any better
+now?'" and on further inquiry explained her long searching after
+the undiscoverable pair.
+
+Rosalie's mother laughed also then, but had a sudden wetness in her
+eyes. She put her arms about Rosalie and pressed her to her bosom
+and cried, "Oh, my poor darling!" and explained the tremendous
+mystery. Wife and husband, Rosalie's mother explained, were the
+names used by other people for her father and her mother. A man
+and a woman loved one another very, very dearly ("as I loved your
+dear father") and then they lived together in a dear house of their
+own and then God gave them dear little children of their own to
+live with them, said Rosalie's mother.
+
+This thoroughly satisfied Rosalie and completely entranced her,
+especially about the presentation of the dear little children. She
+would have supposed that naturally it thoroughly satisfied Anna and
+Harold and Flora and the others; and the point of interest rests
+here, that Rosalie's mother also believed that this explanation
+of marriage and procreation completely satisfied Anna at sixteen
+and Harold in the Bank at eighteen. She never gave them any other
+explanation of the phenomenon of birth; and it is to be supposed
+that, just as she instructed them that God sent the dear little
+children, so she believed that God, at the right time, in some
+mysterious way, communicated the matter to them in greater detail.
+Years and years afterwards, Flora told Rosalie that when Rosalie
+was born all the children were sent away to stay with a neighbour
+and not allowed to return till Rosalie's mother, downstairs, was
+able to show them the dear little sister that God had surprisingly
+delivered at the house, as it were in a parcel.
+
+One is given pain by a state of affairs so monstrous; but one suffers
+that pain proudly because one belongs, proudly, to a day in which
+nothing but stark truth may go from mother to child, not even fairy
+stories, not even Bible stories. Rosalie's mother is gone and her
+kind is no more, and in the graces and the manners of this day's
+generation one perceives, proudly, the inestimable benefits of
+the passing of her kind. Lamentable specimen of her kind, she had
+no interests other than her home and her husband and her children
+and the pleasures and the treasures and the friends of her husband
+and her children. She belonged to that dark age when duty towards
+others was the guiding principle of moral life; she came only to
+the threshold of this enlightened age in which duty to oneself is
+known to be the paramount and first and last consideration of life
+as it should be lived.
+
+Rosalie's mother, whose name had been Anna Escott, kept at the
+bottom of a drawer five most exquisite little miniatures. They were
+in a case of faded blue plush, and they had been in that case and
+at the bottom of one drawer or another ever since the girl Anna
+Escott, aged twenty, had placed them in the case, then exquisitely
+blue and new and soft, and given up painting miniatures forever, in
+order to devote her whole time to looking after her invalid father
+and the failing preparatory school that was his livelihood.
+
+Rosalie was herself nearly thirty when she first saw the miniatures. She
+was come back to the rectory from the pursuits that then occupied
+her to visit, rather impatiently and rather vexedly, her mother
+on what proved to be her death bed. She was tidying her mother's
+drawers, impatient with the amazing collection of rubbish they
+contained and hating herself for being impatient, while her mother,
+on the bed, patiently watched her; and she came upon the case and
+opened it and stared in astonishment and admiration at the beauty
+of the five miniatures.
+
+She asked her mother and her mother told her she had painted them.
+"I used to do that when I was a girl," said Rosalie's mother.
+
+All Rosalie's impatience was drowned and utterly engulfed in a
+most dreadful flood of emotion. She set down the case on the bed
+and flung herself on her knees beside her mother and clasped her
+arms about her.
+
+"Oh, mother, mother! Oh, beloved little mother!" But that is out
+of its place.
+
+Yes, that girl Anna Escott, who had an exquisite talent, and all
+sorts of fond dreams of its development, gave it up wholly and
+entirely and forever when her mother died and her father said, "I
+would like you, Anna dear, to give up your painting and come and
+look after me and the school now."
+
+Anna said, "Of course I will, Papa. It's my duty. Of course I will."
+
+Girls did that, and parents and husbands asked them to do that, in
+the days when Rosalie's mother was a girl.
+
+Rosalie's mother gave away everything, first to her father, then
+to her husband, then to her children. She believed the whole of the
+Bible, literally, as it is written, from the first word of Genesis
+to the last word of Revelations. She taught it as literal, final
+and initial truth to all her children, and one knows how wickedly
+wrong it is now considered to teach children that the Bible-stories
+are true. She taught them the whole of the Bible from books called
+"Line Upon Line," and "The Child's Bible," and in stories of her
+own making, and from the Bible itself. Regrettably, the ignorantly
+imposed-upon children loved it! Till each child was eight she
+taught them everything at her knee. All the nursery rhymes, and
+all the Bible, and reading out of "Step by Step," and then "Reading
+Without Tears," and then, in advancing series, the "Royal Readers,"
+and writing, first holding their hands, and then--first in pencil
+and afterwards with pens having three huge blobs to teach you how
+to place your fingers properly--in copybooks graded from enormous
+lines which had brick-red covers to astoundingly narrow little lines
+enclosing pious and moral maxims which had severe grey covers; and
+the multiplication tables and then simple arithmetic; and General
+Knowledge out of "The Child's Guide to Knowledge," which asked
+you "What is sago?" and required you to reply by heart, "Sago is
+a dried, granulated substance prepared from the pith of several
+different palms." "Where are these palms found?" "These palms are
+found in the East Indies."
+
+Likewise history out of Mrs. Markham and "Little Arthur"; also,
+at a ridiculously early age, how to tell the time and how to know
+the coinage of the realm and its values; also, whether girl or boy,
+the making of kettle-holders by threading brightly coloured wools
+through little squares of canvas; also very many pieces of poetry:
+"Oft had I heard of Lucy Grey," and "It was the Schooner Hesperus"
+and hymns--also learnt by heart and sung while Rosalie's mother
+played the piano--"We are but little children weak," and "Gentle
+Jesus, meek and mild."
+
+All these things were taught at her knee to each child in turn by
+Rosalie's mother, and each was taught out of the self-same books,
+miraculously preserved by Rosalie's mother; the backs of most of
+them carefully stitched and re-stitched, and marked all through
+by the dates of each child's daily lesson, written in pencil by
+Rosalie's mother. The dates ranged from 1869 when Harold was being
+taught and when the books were fresh and clean, and Rosalie's
+mother fresh and ardent with her first-born, to 1884, when Rosalie
+was being taught, and the books very old and thumbed and most
+terribly crowded with pencil marks, and Rosalie's mother no longer
+fresh but rather worn, but teaching as fondly and earnestly as
+ever, because it was her duty. Literally at the knee of Rosalie's
+mother these things were taught. On her knee with one of her arms
+about you for the Bible teaching; and standing at her knee, hands
+behind you, for the teaching of most of the rest. Yes, that was
+the early education, and the manner of the education, of Rosalie
+and of her brothers and sisters, and one perceives with indignation
+the spectacle of a mother wasting her time like that and wasting
+her children's time like that.
+
+Rosalie's mother did everything in the house and she was always
+doing something in the house--for somebody else. She never rested
+and she was always worried. Her brows were always wrinkled with
+the feverish concentration of one anxiously doing one thing while
+anxiously thinking of another thing waiting to be done. She had a
+driven and a hunted look.
+
+Now Rosalie's father had a driving and a hunting look.
+
+Rosalie's father in his youth threw away everything. Rosalie's mother
+throughout the whole of her life gave away everything. Rosalie's
+father was a tragic figure dwelling in a house of bondage; but he
+was at least a tragic king, ruling his house and venting his griefs
+upon his house. Rosalie's mother was a tragic figure and she was a
+tragic slave in the house of bondage. The life of Rosalie's father
+was a tragedy, but a tragedy in some measure relieved because he
+knew it was a tragedy and could wave his arms and shout and smash
+things and hurl beefsteaks through the air because of the tragedy
+of it. But the life of Rosalie's mother was an infinitely deeper
+tragedy because she never knew or suspected that it was a tragedy.
+
+Still, that is so often the difference between the tragedy of a
+woman and the tragedy of a man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+
+
+The very great difference between her father and her mother
+maintained in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of
+her father. She loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding
+her mother there was often flurry and worry and there was nothing
+whatever in her mother to mystify and entrance by sudden and violent
+eruptions of the miraculous. She did not love her father for he
+was entirely too remote and awe-ful for love, but he entranced her
+with his marvellousness. This maintained in her also her perception
+of the altogether greater superiority of all males over all females.
+
+Rosalie came into her family rather like a new little girl first
+entering a boarding school. When she was about four, and first
+beginning to realise herself, the next in age to her was Robert,
+who not only was at the immense distance of ten, but was of the
+male sex and therefore had a controlling interest in the world. Then
+was Hilda who was twelve, then Flora fourteen, then Anna towering
+away in sixteen, and then Harold utterly removed in the enormous
+heights of eighteen, second only to Rosalie's father in ownership
+of the world and often awfully disputing that supreme ownership.
+
+So they were all immeasurably older than Rosalie; and they were
+not only immeasurably older but, which counted for much more, they
+all had their fixed and recognised places in their world just as
+girls of several terms' experience have their recognised places in
+their school, and for Rosalie there seemed to be no place at all,
+just as for new girls there is no place. Her brothers and sisters
+all had their fixed and recognised places, their interests, their
+occupations, their friendships: they all knew their own places and
+each other's places; they had learnt to respect and admit each
+other's places; they knew the weight of one another's hand in
+those places; they were accustomed to one another; they tolerated
+one another.
+
+It was all very strange and wonderful and mysterious to Rosalie.
+
+She was, as it were, pitchforked into this established and regulated
+order and to find a place for her was like trying to fit a new
+spoke into a revolving wheel. It cannot be done; and with Rosalie
+it could not be done. The established wheel went on revolving in
+its established orbit and the new spoke, which was Rosalie, lay
+outside and watched it revolve. Intrusions within the circumference
+of the wheel commonly resulted in a sharp knock from one of the
+spokes. No one was in any degree unkind to Rosalie, but there was
+no proper place for her and everybody's will was in authority over
+her will. She rather got in the way. To be with her was not to
+enjoy her company or to enjoy battle with her and the putting of
+her company to flight. To be with her was to have to look after
+her, and in the community of the rectory, every member, when Rosalie
+came, was fully occupied in look-ing after itself and defending
+itself from the predatory excursions of any other member.
+
+What happened was that in time, just as a slight and negligible
+body cannot be in the sphere of a powerful motion without being
+affected by it, so Rosalie began to move sympathetically to the
+wheel but on her own axis. She moved round with the wheel but she
+was not of the wheel and she never became really incorporated with
+the wheel. The spokes were revolving with incredible rapidity when
+she first, began to notice them and they always remained relatively
+faster. There she was, sitting and watching and wondering; and the
+twig grows as it is bent or as it is left to bend. She looked on
+and absorbed things; and the first and by far the deepest of her
+settled perceptions was that, though she was subject to all powers,
+all girls and women were themselves subject to the power of all
+boys and men.
+
+Up to the age of eighteen, six years represents an enormous gulf in
+the relative ages of brothers and sisters. You have only to figure
+it out in the case of Rosalie to realise how far behind she was
+always left, and why, though one of a family of six, she occupied
+a position outside the group and was a watcher of them rather than
+a sharer with them. She was four when Robert the next above her
+was ten, which is a baby against a sturdy and well-developed giant;
+when she was eight Robert was fourteen, which is a greater gulf
+than the first; when she was twelve Robert was eighteen which,
+from eighteen's point of view, is as the difference between an aged
+man and an infant; and when she was sixteen Robert was twenty-two,
+which is a schoolgirl against one of the oldest and most experienced
+periods of life. She came in as a new little girl in a big school;
+when she had been there eight years--counting from four, when first
+she was conscious of arrival--she was still relatively the same:
+there she was, twelve, with Robert eighteen and the others twenty,
+twenty-two, twenty-four and twenty-six.
+
+But there she is at eight when she had had four years' experience
+from the day of first seeing her father leaping before the bull
+and thinking it was perfectly natural that he should leap before
+the bull. She had learnt a tremendous lot in that second four years.
+She knew at eight that the world did not belong to her father and
+that on that night of the storm Flora was right to call her a fool
+for believing that he could stop the storm. She knew he was not
+nearly so wonderful as she used to think he was; but he was still
+enormously wonderful and, which she thought rather curious, she
+began to see that he rather liked showing her how wonderful he was.
+He could sharpen a pencil wonderfully, and he could eat a herring
+wonderfully. The thing discovered was that he was very proud of
+how wonderfully he could sharpen a pencil or eat a herring. Strange
+father!
+
+"Who sharpened that pencil? Your mother? H'nf! I should think so!
+No woman can sharpen a pencil. Now look at me. Watch. I hold it
+in my left hand, see? Arm supported against my body. Now look how
+I cut at it. Bold, strong strokes, see? No niggling at it as if
+a mouse was nibbling it; long, bold sweeps, slashes. See! Look at
+that. Ah, drat! That's because I was holding it down for you to
+see. Watch again. There! There, that's the way to sharpen a pencil.
+Look at that. Do you see that long, firm point? See how clean and
+long those strokes are? That's the way to sharpen a pencil. Show
+that to your mother."
+
+He was as pleased with himself and as proud as if he had turned
+the pencil into gold.
+
+Funny father!
+
+Or how to eat a herring.
+
+"Herrings! Well, a herring is one of the most delicious fish,
+if it's eaten properly. There's a right way to eat a herring and
+a wrong way. Now watch me and I'll show you how to eat a herring.
+Rosalie, watch."
+
+"Rosalie, dear," (from her mother) "watch while your father shows
+you how to eat a herring."
+
+All eyes on father demonstrating how to eat a herring!
+
+And Rosalie used to notice this about the watching eyes. Her
+mother's eyes--most anxiously and nervously upon the operation, as
+if watching a thing she would soon be called upon to perform and
+would not be able to perform; the eyes of Robert (14) sulkily;
+of Flora (18) admiringly (it was getting to be a complaint in the
+family circle that Flora "sucked up" to father); the eyes of Anna
+(20) wearily; the eyes of Harold (22) contemptuously.
+
+The herrings (a very frequent dish at the rectory, so much cheaper
+than meat) came headless to the table. First father nipped off the
+tail with a firm, neat stroke. Then he deftly slit the herring down
+the stomach. It fell into two exact perfectly divided halves. Then
+he lifted out the backbone, not one scrap of flesh adhering to it,
+and laid it on the side of his plate. Then four firm pressures of
+his knife and the little lateral bones were exactly removed and
+exactly laid on the backbone. Next a precise insertion of his fork
+and out came the silvery strip known to Rosalie as "the swimming
+thing" and was laid in its turn upon the bones, exactly, neatly,
+as if it were a game of spillikins. "Now pepper. Plenty of pepper
+for the roe, you see. There. Now."
+
+And in about six mouthfuls father's plate would be as clean as when
+it was brought in, decorated rather than marred by the exquisitely
+neat pile of the backbone, the tail, the little bones, and the
+silvery swimming thing. "There! Delicious! That's the way to eat
+a herring"; and he would direct a glance at the plate of Rosalie's
+mother. Rosalie's mother made a herring into the most frightful
+mess it was possible to imagine. She spent the whole of her time in
+removing bones from her mouth; and her plate, when she was half-way
+though, looked to contain the mangled remains of about two dozen
+herrings. "Very few women know how to eat a herring," Rosalie's
+father would say.
+
+Wonderful father! How to sharpen a pencil, how to eat a herring,
+how to do up a parcel, how to undo a parcel, how to cut your finger
+nails, how to sit with regard to the light when you wrote or read,
+how to tie a knot, how to untie a knot. Clever father, natty father!
+
+Yes, still enormously wonderful father; but also rather strangely
+proud of being wonderful father. Rosalie now was constantly being
+struck by that. It began to give her rather a funny sensation.
+She couldn't describe the sensation or interpret it, but it was a
+feeling, when father was glowing with pride over one of these things
+he did so wonderfully well--a feeling of being rather uncomfortable,
+shy, ashamed--something like that. She contracted the habit when
+father beamed and glowed and looked around for applause of giving
+a sudden little blink.
+
+And it was the same in regard to Robert and the same in regard to
+Harold. Robert at the height of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness
+caused the funny feeling and the blink in her; and Harold at the
+height of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness caused the funny
+feeling and the blink in her. And the wonderfulness of Robert was
+always being shown off by Robert, and the wonderfulness of Harold
+was always being shown off by Harold. Men liked showing off how
+wonderful they were....
+
+When Rosalie was about nine, she one day was permitted to have
+Lily Waters in to tea with her. Lily Waters was the Doctor's little
+girl, also nine. For a great treat they had tea together out of
+Rosalie's doll's tea service in the room called the schoolroom.
+Robert came home unusually early from school and came into the
+schoolroom and began to do wonderful things before the two little
+girls. He spoke in a very loud voice while he did them. He stood on
+a footstool on his head and clapped his boots together. He held his
+breath for seventy-five seconds by the clock. He took off his coat
+and made Lily and Rosalie tie a piece of string around his biceps
+and then he jerked up his arm and snapped the string. Wonderful
+Robert! Lily screamed with delight and clapped her hands, and the
+more she screamed and clapped, the louder Robert talked. He did
+still more wonderful things. He held a cork to the flame of a match
+and then blacked his nose and blacked a moustache with the cork.
+He did a most frightfully daring and dangerous thing. He produced
+the stump of a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and blew
+smoke through his nose. Wonderful Robert! Lily went into ecstasies
+of delight. Rosalie also went into ecstasies but also strongly
+experienced that funny feeling. While Robert held his breath till
+his eyes bulged and till his face was crimson, and while he danced
+about with his nose blacked, and while he held the cigarette in
+his fingers and puffed smoke through his nose--while he did these
+things Rosalie glanced at Lily (squealing) and felt that funny
+feeling of being rather shy, uncomfortable, ashamed; something like
+that; and blinked. Wonderful though Robert was, she felt somehow
+rather glad when at last he went.
+
+And just the same with Harold. At supper one night, Rosalie's father
+not being present, Harold talked and talked and talked about a call
+he had paid at the house of some ladies in Ashborough. Wonderful
+Harold, to pay a call all by himself! It appeared that he had been
+the only man there, and when Rosalie's mother said, "I wonder you
+didn't feel shy, Harold," he said with a funny sort of "Haw" sound
+in his voice, "Not in the least. Haw! Why on earth should I feel
+shy? Haw." He had evidently very much entertained the party. The
+more he talked about it the more Rosalie noticed the funny "Haw."
+"They must have been very glad you came," Rosalie's mother said.
+
+Harold put the first and second fingers of his right hand on his
+collar and gave it a pull up. "I rather--haw--think they were,"
+Harold said. "Haw."
+
+Rosalie gave that blink.
+
+Years afterwards, when she was grown up, a grown man boastfully
+said something in her presence, and in a flash were recalled father
+dissecting a herring, Robert holding his breath till he nearly burst,
+Harold hitching up his collar and with the "haw" sound saying, "I
+rather think they were." In a flash those childhood scenes, and
+instantly with them interpretation of the funny feeling and the
+blink that they had caused: they had been the rooting in her of a
+new perception added to the impregnably rooted impression of the
+wonder and power of men,--the perception that men knew they were
+wonderful and powerful and liked to show off how wonderful and
+powerful they were.
+
+They were superior creatures but they were apt to be rather
+make-you-blinky creatures; that was the new perception.
+
+On the day after her eighth birthday, the birthday itself being a
+treat and a holiday, Rosalie began to do lessons with Hilda. Hilda,
+at sixteen, had "finished her education" as had Anna and Flora at
+the same age. Harold, who had been a boarder at a Grammar School,
+had stayed there till he was eighteen; and Robert, ultimately,
+continued at Helmsbury Grammar School till he was eighteen. It was
+apparent--and it was another manifestation of the greater importance
+of males--that boys had more education to finish, or were permitted
+longer to finish it, than girls.
+
+The school at which Anna, Flora and Hilda thus in the eight years
+between leaving their mother's knee at eight and completing their
+education at sixteen, learnt everything it was possible to know,
+was kept by two very thin ladies called (ungrammatically) the
+Miss Pockets. The Miss Pockets were daughters of the former vicar
+of St. Mary's and inhabitant of the rectory, and on their father
+dying and Mr. Aubyn coming, they established themselves in a prim
+villa near-by and did what they called "took in pupils." They were
+very thin, they had very long thin noses, they were always very
+cold, and from the sharp end of the long thin nose of the elder Miss
+Pocket there always depended, much fascinating Rosalie, a shining
+bead of moisture.
+
+Rosalie's chief recollection of the Miss Pockets was of being
+constantly met by them as she approached the age of eight, and of
+them always, on these occasions, fondling icy hands about her neck
+and saying to her father or her mother, "And when will our new
+little pupil be coming to us?"
+
+But no direct reply was ever given to this question, either by
+Rosalie's mother, who was always made to look uncomfortable when
+it was asked by the Miss Pockets, or by Rosalie's father who always
+seemed to jut out his nose at it and make the Miss Pockets look
+thinner and colder than ever.
+
+On the morning of her eighth birthday, Rosalie received from the
+Miss Pockets by post an illuminated text provided with a piece of
+red cord for hanging on the wall and inquiring, rather abruptly,
+
+"Who Hath Believed Our Report?"
+
+Rosalie thought at first this was a plaintive question directly
+from the Miss Pockets in their capacity as school-teachers and
+therefore as licensed makers of reports; but immediately afterwards
+saw "Isaiah" printed under it in discreet characters--
+
+"Who Hath Believed our Report?
+
+--Isaiah."
+
+and concluded that it was Isaiah who had believed it. On the back
+was written in the tall, thin handwriting of the Miss Pockets, "To
+our dear little pupil Rosalie, on her eighth birthday, from Agnes
+and Lydia Pocket."
+
+In the afternoon, the Miss Pockets called at the rectory and there
+was evidently some high mystery about their visit. Rosalie was in
+the study looking for a drawing pin wherewith to affix her illuminated
+card to the wall. Hilda ran in. "The Miss Pockets. Where's father?
+Come out," and Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the
+dining-room, leaving the vindication of Isaiah in the matter of
+the report on the table. Opening the door to a chink, Rosalie saw
+the Miss Pockets, shivering, the permanent decoration on the nose
+of the elder Miss Pocket very conspicuous and agitatedly swinging,
+ushered into the study, and presently her father follow his jutty
+nose into the study after them, and very shortly after that the
+Miss Pockets driven out as it were by the jutty nose and looking
+thinner and colder than ever before. Miss Lydia Pocket, who had
+lost the appendage to her nose and looked curiously undressed and
+indelicate without it, was saying feebly, "But it was understood.
+We always thought it was understood."
+
+They shuddered away; and when Rosalie went into the study immediately
+afterwards to recover her card, there was upon the word Isaiah, as
+though somebody had literally thrown doubt upon his belief of the
+report, a large damp spot.
+
+On the following day, Rosalie began lessons with Hilda.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+
+The lessons with Hilda period lasted till Rosalie was twelve. "Take
+her off your mother's hands. That's what you've left school for,"
+was her father's instruction to Hilda; and so there was Rosalie,
+put out from her mother's knee to the schoolroom like a small new
+ship out from the haven to the bay; and there was that small mind
+of hers come in to the company of Hilda and of Flora and of Anna
+with the obsession that men were infinitely more important and
+much more wonderful than women. She knew now that the world did
+not belong to men in the literal sense, but belonged, as her mother
+had instructed her, to God; but she knew with the abundant evidence
+of all that went on about her that everything in the world was done
+for men and that women were largely occupied in doing it; and she
+knew, from the same testimony, that men were much more interesting
+to watch than women, rather in the way that dogs were much more
+interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory:
+that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders
+of the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She
+came to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between
+men and women. And her sisters showed her the difference.
+
+Anna was twenty then. Anna had "finished her education" four years
+ago. She had left school "to help your mother in the house"; and
+when Flora, two years later, finished her education and left school
+for the same purpose, she found Anna grooved in the business of
+helping her mother in the house and she was not in the least anxious
+to help Anna out of the grooves and herself become imbedded in
+them.
+
+This annoyed Anna.
+
+Rosalie used to hear Anna say to Flora a dozen times a day, "I
+really don't see why you should be the one to do nothing but amuse
+yourself all day long. I really don't."
+
+Flora used to say, "Well, you've always done it"--whatever the duty
+in dispute might be--"so why on earth should I?"
+
+Then either Anna's face would give a twitch and she would walk out
+of the room, or her face would get very red and there would be a
+row.
+
+Or sometimes Flora to Anna's "I really don't see why--" would say
+enticingly, "Don't you?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Then ask the Pope," and Flora would give a mocking laugh and run
+away out of the reach of Anna's fury.
+
+The sting in this was that Anna was suspected of having Roman
+Catholic tendencies.
+
+Flora was very pretty and had a gay, bold way. Anna was not
+pretty. She had a great habit of compressing her lips, especially
+in encounters with Flora, and somehow her face gave the impression
+that her lips always were compressed. That was the expression it
+normally had; it was only when Rosalie saw Anna actually compress
+her lips that she realised they had not been compressed before.
+It was as though she was always annoyed about something and then,
+when she compressed her lips, a little more annoyed than usual. She
+had also a permanent affliction which much puzzled Rosalie. Young
+men friends of Harold's frequently called at the rectory, and one
+afternoon, when two of them called, Anna was the only one at home
+to entertain them (except Rosalie). Flora and Hilda rushed into
+the drawing-room, directly they came in, and shortly afterwards
+Rosalie saw Anna come out. Anna stood in the hall quite a long
+time with her lips compressed, and then went into the dining-room
+and sat down, but almost at once got up again and went back into
+the drawing-room, and Rosalie heard Flora call out, "You can't join
+in now, Anna. You can't join in now. We're in the middle of it."
+Shrieks of laughter were going on. When the young men went, Flora
+and Hilda, who had their hats on, walked away with them. Anna was
+left at the door. When the girls came back Anna said to Flora, "I
+do think you might have told me you'd arranged to go with them to
+see it."
+
+Flora said, "Oh, darling, I thought the Pope had told you."
+
+They had the worst row Rosalie had ever heard them have. Anna did
+not come down to supper. After supper, when Rosalie was in the
+room with only Harold and her father and mother, her mother spoke
+of the scene there had been between Anna and Flora and it was
+then that Rosalie heard for the first time of Anna's most strange
+affliction. Harold said, "Of course, the fact of the matter is that
+ever since Flora left school, Anna's had her nose put out of joint."
+
+Rosalie felt most awfully sorry for Anna. Often after that she used
+to stare at Anna's nose and the more so because there was nothing
+visible the matter with it. Anna's nose was a singularly long
+and straight nose; now if it had been Flora's nose that was out
+of joint!--for Flora's nose turned up in a very odd way. Rosalie
+slept in Anna's room and that same night, Anna's disjointed nose
+and every other part of her face and head being covered with the
+clothes when Rosalie went up to bed, Rosalie, unable to sleep for
+curiosity and sympathy, got out of bed and lit the candle and went
+across to look at Anna's nose, and very gently felt it with her
+finger. Absolutely nothing amiss to be seen or felt! But the lashes
+of Anna's eyes were wet and there were stains of tears upon the
+upper side of the mysterious nose. It was true, then, for obviously
+it hurt. And yet no sign!
+
+Rosalie got back into bed feeling of her own nose rather anxiously.
+
+Rosalie used formerly to sleep in Hilda's room and Flora with Anna,
+but she was changed one day by her sisters (without being consulted
+or given any reason) and the new arrangement was continued. Anna
+was very devotional. She used to say enormously long prayers night
+and morning. She prayed in the middle of the night also, Rosalie
+used to think at first, awakened and hearing her voice, but later
+found out that Anna was talking in her sleep, a thing that was
+mysterious to Rosalie and frightening. The room of Flora and Hilda,
+adjoined Anna's and often at night, when Rosalie was awakened by
+Anna undressing and lay watching her at her immense prayers, the
+chattering voices of Flora and Hilda could be heard through the
+wall and shrieks of high laughter. At that, Anna's shoulders used
+to shudder beneath her nightgown and she used to twist herself lower
+on her knees. For some reason this also used rather to frighten
+Rosalie.
+
+Sometimes, but very seldom, Flora and Hilda used to quarrel;
+sometimes, and more often, Hilda and Anna; nearly every day, as it
+seemed to Rosalie, Anna and Flora. Rosalie got to dislike these
+quarrels very much. They went on and on and on; that was the
+disturbing unpleasantness of them. The parties to them would sit
+in a room and simply keep it up forever, not arguing all the time,
+but between long pauses suddenly coming out with things at one
+another; or they wouldn't speak to one another sometimes for days
+together, and all sorts of small enterprises of Rosalie's were
+interfered with by these ruptures of relations. Innumerable things
+in Rosalie's life seemed to her to depend on the mutual good will
+of two quarrellers; many books, some old toys, walks, combined games
+with Carlo who was Anna's and Rover who was Flora's; innumerable
+delights with such seemed to be unexpectedly stopped because of
+"Oh, no, if you prefer to be with Anna you can stay with Anna";
+or, "Oh, no. If you like Flora's paints so much you can use Flora's
+brushes; these are my brushes." A quarrel would in any case produce
+a strained atmosphere in which everything became unnatural and this
+strained atmosphere went on and on and on.
+
+And the thing that Rosalie noticed was the complete difference between
+these quarrels of her sisters and the quarrels between Harold and
+Robert. Robert was rising between the years of fourteen and eighteen
+in those days and Harold between twenty-two and twenty-six. Most
+violent quarrels sometimes sprung up between them but they were
+physically violent, that was the point, and after swift and appalling
+fury, and terrible kicks from Robert and horrifying thumps from Harold
+they were astonishingly soon over and done with and forgotten. On
+one awful day, Rosalie saw Robert and Harold rolling on the floor
+together. Robert bumped Harold's head three most frightful bumps
+on the floor and said between his teeth, "There! There! There!"
+Harold twisted himself up and hurled Robert half across the room
+and then rushed at him and punched him with punches that made Robert
+go, "Ur! Ur! Ur!"
+
+Rosalie, at her age, ought to have cried with grief and dismay or
+to have run away screaming; but instead she only watched with awe.
+With terrified awe, as with the terrified awe that an encounter of
+tigers or of elephants at the Zoo might arouse; but with awe and
+no sort of grief as her sole emotion. Men were different. There it
+was again! They did these fearful things, and these fearful things
+were much more satisfactory to behold, not nearly so disturbing
+and aggravating to watch, as the interminable bickerings of the
+quarrels of her sisters.
+
+Her brothers' quarrels were entirely different in all their aspects.
+In the quarrels of her sisters, one or the other invariably cried
+if the bickering went far enough. These two men, though Robert
+especially might have been excused for bellowing, just solidly and
+only, with fearful gasps, thumped and clutched and strove. Not a
+tear! Her sisters' quarrels were always carried by one or the other
+to her mother or her father. How extraordinarily different Robert
+and Harold! Their sole anxiety was that neither father nor mother
+should be told! If any one threatened to tell, the two, sinking
+their private heat, would immediately band together against
+the talebearer. Extraordinary men! To that particularly ferocious
+struggle that has been described, Anna and Hilda had been attracted
+by the din, when Robert, overpowered, was receiving terrible
+chastisement, and with cries and prayers had somehow separated
+them. Behold, the very first coherent thing these two men did was,
+while they still panted and glared upon one another, to unite in
+a mutual threat.
+
+"And look out you don't go telling father or mother," panted Harold
+to the girls.
+
+"Yes, mind you jolly well don't," panted Robert.
+
+Anna said she certainly would.
+
+Both the extraordinary creatures unitedly rounded on Anna. It might
+have been thought that the battle had been, not between them, but
+between them and the sisters who had saved them one from another.
+Astounding men!
+
+And most astounding of all to Rosalie was that at supper, little
+more than an hour later, Harold and Robert presented themselves as
+on exceptionally good terms of friendship. They talked and laughed
+together. They had a long exchange of views about some football teams.
+Harold laid down the law about the principle of four three-quarters
+in Rugby football instead of three and Robert listened as to an
+oracle. They had not been so friendly for weeks. And an hour before-!
+Yes, men were different.
+
+And Rosalie found that her sisters, too, knew how different and how
+superior men were. Flora and Hilda seemed to Rosalie always to be
+talking about men. Flora used to come into the schoolroom while
+Rosalie was at her lessons and talk to Hilda. Rosalie was very fond
+of her lessons and Hilda was an uncommonly good teacher and took a
+great interest in leading Rosalie along the paths she had herself
+so recently followed. But directly Flora came in, Hilda's interest
+was entirely diverted to what Flora had to say and to what she had
+to say to Flora, and it was always about men,--boys or men. Rosalie
+would at once be put to learning passages or working out exercises
+and Flora and Hilda would go over to the window and talk. They
+talked mostly in whispers with their heads close together; they
+laughed a good deal; they showed one another letters. Often they
+came over to the table and wrote letters. And they used to look up
+from their whisperings and say, "Go on with your lessons, Rosalie."
+
+But it was very difficult to go on while they whispered and laughed
+and it was also very troublesome to have Hilda's most interesting
+explanations suddenly cut short by the entrance of Flora. Rosalie
+began to have the habit of saying "Oh, dear!" and going "Tchk!" with
+her tongue when Flora came in. Also restlessly to say "Oh, dear!"
+and go "Tchk!" when the whisperings and the laughing about men went
+on and distracted her attention while she tried to do her exercises.
+
+A new aspect of men began to grow out of this. Rosalie began to
+feel rather aggrieved against boys and ten. They interfered.
+
+And this went further. Just as boys and men spoilt lessons so they
+began to spoil walks. While Hilda attended the Miss Pockets' school
+and Rosalie was taught by her mother, it was always her mother with
+whom Rosalie took walks. Anna "never cared to go out" and Flora,
+whose position in the house was more like that of Harold and Robert,
+did much as she liked, and "dragging Rosalie about for walks"
+as she expressed it, was not one of the things she liked. Rosalie
+therefore went out with her mother until Hilda took her off her
+mother's hands, when the taking off included not only education but
+exercise. At the beginning, Hilda showed herself as enthusiastic
+and as entertaining a walker as she was teacher. She was ready
+for jolly scrambles through woods and over fields, she was as keen
+as Rosalie on damming little watercourses, and exploring woodland
+tracts, and other similar delights, and she had a most splendid
+knowledge of the names of plants and flowers and birds and insects
+and delighted to tell them to Rosalie. Rosalie had loved the walks
+with her mother, always holding her dear hand, but she loved much
+more, though in a different way, the walks with Hilda.
+
+Then men began, in Rosalie's private phrase, to "ruin" the walks.
+
+First Flora took to joining the walks and she and Hilda talked and
+talked together and always, as it seemed, about men, and Rosalie
+just trailed along with them, their heads miles above hers and their
+conversation equally out of her reach. But even that was not so bad
+as it became. At least there were only her sisters and sometimes
+they did talk to her, or sometimes one or other would break off
+from their chatter and cry "Oh, poor Rosalie! We've not been taking
+the least notice of you, have we? Now, what would you like to do?"
+And perhaps they would run races, or perhaps explore, or perhaps
+tell her a story, and Rosalie's spirits would come bursting out
+from their dulness and all would be splendid.
+
+Not so when on the walks men, from being talked of, began to be
+met.
+
+There were at Robert's Grammar School certain young men who were
+in no way connected with the school but were the "private pupils"
+of the headmaster and were reading for the universities. One day
+Hilda started for the walk in her church hat and Flora also in her
+church hat and her church gloves. They walked very fast; Rosalie
+could hardly keep up. And then at a corner of a lane they suddenly
+started to walk very slowly indeed, and suddenly again at a stile,
+two of these young men were met.
+
+The young men raised their hats much farther than Rosalie had ever
+seen a man raise his hat and one of them said, "Well, you have come
+then?"
+
+Flora said, "Well, we just happened to be strolling along this
+way." Then she said, "You needn't imagine we came to see you!"
+which Rosalie thought very rude; but the young men seemed to like
+it and all of them laughed a great deal.
+
+Presently they all started to walk together, Hilda and Flora in
+the middle and one of the young men on either side. The walk lasted
+much later than the walks usually lasted and the whole way Rosalie
+trailed along behind; and on the whole afternoon the only words
+addressed to Rosalie by her sisters came just as, the young men
+hav-ing taken their leave a mile away, they were turning in at the
+rectory gate. Flora then said, "Rosalie, darling, don't tell mother
+or father or any one that we met any one." And Hilda said, "Yes,
+remember, Rosalie, you're not to say anything about that."
+
+After that, the young men were met, and the four walked, and Rosalie
+trailed, nearly every day.
+
+One of these young men was called Mr. Chalton and the other Mr. Ricks.
+Like all men, and even more so, they were splendid and wonderful.
+They had silver cigarette cases and smoked a lot, and they wore
+most handsome waistcoats and ties, and some of their conversation
+that came back to Rosalie, trailing behind, was of very wonderful
+and exciting things they had done or were going to do. Mr. Holland,
+the headmaster of the Grammar School, was the terror of Robert's
+life, but it appeared that Mr. Chalton and Mr. Ricks were not in
+the least afraid of Mr. Holland, and they talked a great deal of
+what they would do to him if he ever tried to interfere with them
+and a great deal of what they did do in the way of utterly disregarding
+him. They were undeniably splendid and wonderful, but they utterly
+ruined Rosalie's walks and they greatly intensified Rosalie's new
+feelings towards men and boys,--that men and boys were a great
+nuisance and spoilt things.
+
+Time went along. Other young men were met. In the holidays, quite
+a number of young men came for their vacations to their homes in
+Ibbotsfield and the surrounding district. Certain of these, unlike
+the Grammar School private pupils, called openly at the rectory on
+one pretext or another, but they were nevertheless also met secretly
+by Flora and Hilda, ruined the walks precisely as Messrs. Chalton
+and Ricks had first ruined them, and were on no account to be
+mentioned by Rosalie to her father or mother.
+
+The reason for this secrecy was never explained to Rosalie and
+the secrecy oppressed Rosalie. It took not only the form of being
+a thing she was not able to tell to her mother, and Rosalie was in
+the habit of telling everything she did to her mother, but it took
+also the form of mysterious and vaguely alarming perils during the
+walks. An immense watchfulness was kept up against chance encounters
+with people. One of the party would often cry, "Look! Who's this?"
+and the young men would separate from the girls and appear as if
+they were walking by themselves. Sometimes they would break right
+away and run off and not be met again. Very often Rosalie would be
+sent on ahead to a turning and told to come back at once if anybody
+was to be seen and then would be examined as to who the person
+was. Sometimes she was posted to keep watch while the girls and
+the young men slipped off somewhere, over a gate or into a barn.
+She got to know by sometimes rushing in with warnings that Flora
+and Hilda on these occasions smoked the young men's cigarettes.
+Then when they got home, they would rush up to their room and wash
+their teeth and put scent on themselves. And invariably when the
+young men took their leave at the end of a walk there would be long
+and close whisperings in which were always to be heard the words,
+"Well, say you were--" or "Look here, we'll say we were--" and
+generally, "Go away, Rosalie. There's nothing for you to listen
+to."
+
+It all had the effect of making Rosalie feel unhappy and rather
+frightened. She sometimes asked, "Why mustn't I say anything to
+mother?" She was always told, and only told, "Because father doesn't
+like us meeting men."
+
+No reason why father should not like them meeting men was ever
+given, and Rosalie, ceaselessly disturbed by the concealment, could
+never imagine what the reason could be. There could be no reason
+that she could imagine; and she was thus immensely taken aback when
+one evening at supper her father made a most surprising statement:
+"The girls have no chance of ever meeting men in this infernal
+place."
+
+Amazing!
+
+Rosalie's father had been abusing Ibbotsfield and everything that
+pertained to Ibbotsfield. Some question of expenses had started him.
+He was storming in his wild way, addressing himself to Rosalie's
+mother but haranguing at large to all, everybody sitting in
+silence and with oppressed faces, avoiding looking at one another
+and avoiding especially the eyes of father. They were literally
+ground down with poverty, Rosalie's father was saying. He didn't
+know what was going to happen to them all. "It's all this place,
+this infernal, buried-alive place. The girls ought to be moving
+about and seeing people. How can they? Very well. My mind's made up.
+There's my brother Tom in India. He could have one of the girls.
+There's your sister Mrs. Pounce in London. She's Rosalie's godmother.
+What's she ever done for Rosalie? Very well. My mind's made up.
+I shall write to Tom and I shall write to Belle. I shall tell them
+how we are situated. It's humiliating to have to tell them but
+what's humiliation? I'm accustomed to humiliation. Ever since we
+came here, I have eaten the bread and drunk the water of humiliation.
+Now the children are growing up to share it. What can they do in
+this loathsome and forsaken and miserable place? What chance have
+the girls got? Can you tell me that?"
+
+He glared at Rosalie's mother. It was clear that he regarded her
+as to blame. Rosalie thought that her dear mother must be to blame.
+Her mother looked so beaten and frightened. There was glistening in
+her eyes. Rosalie's heart felt utterly desolated for her mother.
+She wished like anything she could say something for her dear
+mother. Then most amazingly the chance to say something came.
+
+"Can you tell me that?" cried Rosalie's father. "What chance have
+the girls of ever meeting men in this infernal place?"
+
+Rosalie burst out, "Oh, but father, nearly every day--"
+
+"Rosalie, don't interrupt!" cried Flora very sharply.
+
+"Rosalie, be quiet!" cried Hilda.
+
+Father glared and then went on and on.
+
+It was the beginning of a chain of most startling upheavals. It was
+also, and the upheavals were also, a new manifestation to Rosalie
+of the all-importance of men. After supper, in the first place, Flora
+and Hilda, taking Rosalie very severely to task for her perilous
+outburst, explained to her that the men they met were not the kind
+of men that father meant they ought to meet. It was necessary,
+it was essential, they explained, for every girl to meet men she
+could marry. That was what every girl had to do. Men--surely you
+understand that, Rosalie--had all the money and everything and met
+girls and asked them to marry. Those men sometimes met on walks,
+you little stupid, were too young and had no money yet. "There,
+that's enough," they explained. "Anyhow, we shan't be meeting them
+much more. One of us is probably going to India; you heard what
+father said, didn't you?... Well, of course you can't understand
+properly. You will when you're grown up. Surely that's quite enough
+for you to understand at present.... How can a woman live if she
+doesn't marry, stupid? She must have money to live and it is men
+who have the money.... Well, of course they do because they earn
+it; look at Harold; and Robert will have money when he's a little
+older.... Well, how can women? Now, I said that's enough and it is
+enough."
+
+It was enough and most satisfactorily enough for one purpose. It
+was the first explanation of men as a race apart from women that
+Rosalie had ever received and it precisely bore out all that she
+had conceived about them. It affirmed her perception of the wonder
+and greatness of men as compared with women. It intensified that
+perception.
+
+Wonderful men! Marvellous and most fortunate men!
+
+And then the chain of most startling upheavals began. Father wrote
+to Uncle Tom in India. Father wrote to Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,
+in London. What he wrote was not to be known by Rosalie, outside
+the rectory wheel. The others knew, for father, with enormous
+pride at his wonderful epistolatory style in his voice, was heard
+reading the letter to them. But the others, of course, knew also
+what Rosalie never realised, the grinding poverty of the rectory.
+She knew no other life than the herrings, the makeshifts, and the
+general shabbiness of the rectory. It was not till long afterwards
+that, looking back, she realised the pinching and the screwing that
+served--almost--to make ends meet.
+
+So father wrote. India was far, London was near. Aunt Belle's reply
+came while the letter to Uncle Tom was still upon the sea. Such a
+reply! Wonderful father to win such a reply from Aunt Belle! "You
+see what it is to be able to write a telling and forceful letter!"
+cried father. Such an exciting reply! Aunt Belle was coming on a
+visit "to talk it over and see what she could do."
+
+Aunt Belle came.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+
+
+Oh, a red carpet, a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,
+to come into the story! And if at the end of the red carpet there
+could be an "At Home" in the splendid drawing-room of Aunt Belle,
+Mrs. Pyke Pounce, at Pilchester Square, Notting Hill, an At Home
+with about sixty-five ladies crammed into it, all of them wives of
+most successful and well-off men, mostly retired from the Indian
+Army and the Indian Civil Service, and all of them chattering
+ecstatically, and nibbling, and pluming themselves, and tinkling
+their teacups, and Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, enthroned in their
+midst, and owning everything and seeming to own her five and sixty
+guests, and chattering and nibbling and pluming and tinkling more
+ecstatically than any; and then if there could come into them
+beautiful cousin Laetitia (when about fifteen) with sleek black
+hair beautifully ribboned behind, and with pale, fine brow, and
+wearing the sweetest white frock, and if she could move delightfully
+about among her mother's guests, and then play the sweetest little
+trifle on the pianoforte to the delighted murmurs of the five and
+sixty guests of her mother ("She's under Pflunk. The great Pflunk!");
+and then if there could come in from the City Uncle Pyke, Colonel
+Pyke Pounce, R.E., (retired) now director of several highly
+important companies, and if Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E.,
+could stand on the hearthrug with his massy jowl and his determined
+stomach, and grunt, and rattle the money in his pockets, and grunt
+again; and if then there could come in the new parlour maid of
+Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, with her tallness and her deftness
+and her slight, very slight, insolence of air, and all the five
+and sixty gazing upon her as haughty but envious patricians gazing
+upon a slave, and when she had gone swishing out if Aunt Belle,
+Mrs. Pyke Pounce, could tell all the sixty and five of her tallness,
+her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of manner----
+
+Oh, if there could be this and these and a fine red carpet, how
+exactly and how fittingly would Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, step
+upon the scene!
+
+"Dear thing!" That was Rosalie's portrait and thought of her in long
+after years. Dear thing! The drawing-room of her crowded triumphs
+is now the shabby drawing-room of a second-rate boarding house;
+the jolly horse bus she used so commandingly to stop in the Holland
+Park Avenue and so regally to enter (whip-waving driver, cap-touching
+conductor) long has given place to a thundering motor saloon that
+stops wheresoever it listeth and wherein Aunt Belles and old-clothes
+women fight to hang by a strap.
+
+Dear thing! Her ownership of five and sixty guests is exchanged
+for ownership of not more than seven and fifty inches of cold earth
+in Brompton Cemetery. She is passed and Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke
+Pounce, R.E., is grunted past to lay himself beside her. They are
+passed. Up-reared upon her and upon him is a stupendous granite
+chunk (in a way not unlike Uncle Pyke on his hearthrug) erected by
+their sorrowing daughter. She is passed; she came into Rosalie's
+life and Rosalie crossed her life and she never forgave Rosalie.
+
+Dear thing! Lie lightly on her, stones!
+
+She came to the rectory "to talk it over and see what can be done"
+for a week's visit, and she stepped out of the cab, all the family
+assembled to greet her, a new and most surprising figure such as
+Rosalie had never seen before. She was dressed in startling fashions
+of a most wonderful richness, and she had immense plumes in her
+hat that nodded when she moved and trembled when she stood still,
+and she was herself either always nodding with glittering animation
+or straightening her back and quivering as if straining at a leash
+and just about to burst it and go off. She was like Rosalie's
+mother and yet not a bit like her. She was older and yet terribly
+brisker and stronger. Those were the days when frosted Christmas
+cards were of the artistic marvels of the age, and Aunt Belle
+beside Rosalie's mother somehow made Rosalie think of a frosted
+card beside one of the plain cards. When Rosalie's mother was in
+a room you often might not know she was there; but when Aunt Belle
+was in a room there seemed to be no one there except Aunt Belle.
+She began to talk, in a voice as high as the house, while she was
+still descending from the cab on her arrival, and the only time
+Rosalie ever saw her not talking was during service in Church on
+Sunday, when she was alternately glittering or whispering or else
+bending down so extraordinarily low that Rosalie thought she was
+going to lie prone upon the floor.
+
+Dear thing! She was so kind to Rosalie and so kind to them all, and
+yet----And yet they all, except Rosalie who was too small (then)
+to appreciate the resented quality in Aunt Belle's kindness, and
+Rosalie's mother who was too gentle to resent anything, and yet
+they all, save Rosalie and her mother, loathed and abominated Aunt
+Belle. It was her way of doing things. She gave kind gifts, but
+it was the way she gave them. She admired everything and everybody
+in the rectory, but it was the way she admired. She said most kind
+and affectionate things, but it was her way of saying them.
+
+"Why, how very nice indeed!" That was her insistent comment
+upon everything in the rectory. But the tone was, "How very nice
+indeed--for you."
+
+That was the trouble. That was what made Harold (who at twenty-six
+was getting very like his father) hurl about a thousand miles over
+the garden wall the three apples Aunt Belle gave him as his share
+of the "very best apples from the Army and Navy Stores" which she
+brought down with other "goodies" for "the dear children"; and
+made, him grit his teeth after she had been in the house two days
+and cry, "Dash her! Poor relations; that's how she treats us! I'm
+dashed if I'm a poor relation. I'm earning three pound ten a week
+at the Bank and I bet that appalling old Uncle Pyke didn't get it
+or anything like it at my age!"
+
+Dear thing! "She meant it kindly." That was the sweet apologetic
+excuse with which Rosalie's mother followed the track of the storms
+Aunt Belle aroused and with which she sought to abate them. "She
+means it kindly. She means it kindly, dear."
+
+It should be Aunt Belle's epitaph. It ought to be graven upon that
+granite chunk in Brompton Cemetery. "She meant it kindly!"
+
+Issuing from the cab, Aunt Belle began by kissing Rosalie's mother
+in a most astonishing series of kisses that whizzed from cheek to
+cheek so that it was a miracle to Rosalie that the two noses did
+not collide and her dear mother's be knocked right off; and then
+most enthusiastically kissed all the family, applying to each
+the phrase with which she began on Harold "Well, well, so this is
+Harold!" (As if it were the most astounding and unexpected thing
+in the world that it was Harold.) "So this is Harold! Why, what a
+great big clever fellow, and what a comfort to your dear mother,
+I am sure!" And then gazed rapturously upon the house and said to
+Rosalie's mother and to them all, "Well, well, what a very, very
+nice house, to be sure!"
+
+("For you!")
+
+She meant it kindly. Her manner of talking about herself and
+about her possessions was not that of bragging or of conscious
+superiority; it was, to the whole rectory family, and to all
+poorer than herself wherever she met them, that of one entertaining
+a party of children--of a kind lady telling stories to a group of
+round-eyed infants. When she first had tea on the afternoon of her
+arrival, she gazed upon the silver teapot as it was carried in
+and exclaimed, "Well, well, what a very, very handsome teapot! And
+hot-water jug to match! How very, very nice! Now how ever do you
+think I keep my water hot at tea? I have a very nice service all
+in silver gilt! It looks just like gold! And there's a kettle to
+match with a spirit flame under it. The maid brings in the kettle
+boiling and we just light the spirit with a match and there it is
+gently boiling all the time!"
+
+Dusk drew in and the lamps were lit. "Lamps!" ecstatically exclaimed
+Aunt Belle! "How nice! And Hilda keeps the lamps clean, does she?
+What a dear, helpful girl and how very, very bright and nice they
+are! Now what do you think? In my house, everywhere, even in the
+kitchen, we've got this new electric light! Your kind uncle Pyke
+had it put in for me. Installed, as they call it. Now, just fancy,
+all you have is a little brass knob by each door, and you just touch
+a little switch, and there's your light! No matches, no trouble,
+just click! and there you are. Of course it was very expensive, but
+your Uncle Pyke insisted upon my having it. He always will insist
+upon my having everything of the best."
+
+Dear thing! The echo of her ceaseless tongue brings her exactly to
+life again--glittering, chattering, pluming, presenting, praising--her
+servants! her house! her parties! her friends! her daughter! her
+husband!--Oh, yes, a red carpet! a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs.
+Pyke Pounce, to come into the story, and so (at the end of her
+visit) into Rosalie's life like this:
+
+"And Rosalie is going away to school! To a boarding school in
+London where there will be ever so many very nice playmates of her
+own age, and such romps, and such good wholesome food, and such
+nice, kind, clever mistresses! Why, what a lucky, lucky girl! There,
+Rosalie, what do you think of that? You are my godchild, and I and
+your kind uncle Pyke are going to send you to school and pay for
+your education because of course we are well off and can afford
+it and your dear mother and father can't. There! Now isn't that
+delightful? Come and give me a nice kiss then. The dear child!"
+
+Tremendous moment! Supernal upheaval! First and greatest upheaval
+of the chain of upheavals! Rosalie was to go away to school!
+
+That was at the rectory breakfast table on the last morning of
+the visit, and that was Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, coming into
+Rosalie's life. "Come and give me a kiss then"; that was kind,
+kind Aunt Belle, inviting acknowledgment of her kindness and the
+kindness of Uncle Pyke (with a cheque) and the kindness of Cousin
+Laetitia (with a box of beautiful cast-off clothes that would do
+beautifully for Rosalie's school outfit). "The dear child!" That
+was Aunt Belle's acknowledgment of Rosalie's most dutiful and most
+affectionate and most delighted kiss. (Most amazed and excited and
+rather fearful Rosalie! Going to school! Going away to a boarding
+school in London!)
+
+"The dear child!" Such a warm and loving kiss from Rosalie! And
+time was to prove it the kiss of Judas! Yes, in a few years, "I've
+done everything for you!" Aunt Belle was to cry. "Everything! And
+this is the return I get!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+
+
+Next, in its turn, and exactly a fortnight before the beginning
+of the term at which Rosalie was to join the boarding school in
+London, came the letter from Uncle Tom in India, and with it the
+beginning of the second upheaval in the chain of upheavals.
+
+All of this upheaval was very bewildering to Rosalie. She never
+understood it properly. At the beginning it had nothing at all to
+do with Anna, and yet Anna from the very first reading of Uncle
+Tom's letter--All that Rosalie understood of it was this.
+
+First the letter came. Tremendous excitement! Father in wild
+excitement, Flora and Hilda in frantic excitement, everyone in
+highest excitement. Father read the letter aloud at breakfast to
+Rosalie's mother and to the girls. Such a splendid letter, said
+father. Really, Tom was a splendid fellow, said father. He had
+wronged Tom. He had thought Tom selfish in his wealthy indifference.
+By Jove, Tom wasn't. "By Jove, the way Tom wrote almost brought
+tears to your eyes. Listen to this. Listen, mother. Listen, you
+girls."
+
+Uncle Tom, said the letter, would by all means, old man, have one
+of the girls. He'd no idea that things were so bad with you. Poor
+old man! Why didn't you tell us before? He was sending home a small
+draft to Field and Company, his bankers, to help towards the girl's
+outfit and her passage money. "'Which girl shall you send?' you
+ask. Well, it's no good asking us, old man. You must decide that
+for yourselves. She'll be abundantly welcome, whichever it is, and
+we can promise her a jolly good time. We are at Simla most of the
+year. If you want my advice which girl to send, send the pretti--"
+
+Father stopped reading.
+
+Rosalie was staring at Anna. Anna's face, which had been pale,
+suddenly went crimson. The suddenness and the violence of it was
+extraordinary. One moment she had been pale. In the next, she was
+burning red. It was exactly as if a crimson paint had suddenly been
+dashed over the whole of her face. It was extraordinary. Whatever
+was it? That nose of hers, perhaps? a sudden frightful twinge like
+Rosalie once had had a sudden most awful jump in a tooth? But Anna
+didn't say anything and no one but Rosalie seemed to notice it. They
+were all intent upon father. So intent! Flora's eyes were simply
+shining!
+
+And Flora's eyes soon after that were shining more than ever. She
+was wild with excitement. Rosalie heard the news just before tea.
+Flora was going to India to Uncle Tom!
+
+"Oh," cried Flora, "I'm so excited I simply don't know what to
+do with myself!" It was all arranged. Father had settled it. She
+was to go in about six weeks' time. Very shortly she was to go up
+to London with father and buy heaps of clothes and all sorts of
+things. They were going to stay at a hotel. "Not with Aunt Belle,
+thank goodness!" said Flora. "At a hotel! Fancy that!" Mother
+wasn't going and Flora was glad mother wasn't going. She would have
+a much better time with father. Father had decided everything. He
+had decided that mother couldn't leave him in the rectory with all
+the housekeeping to look after, and the change would do him good,
+and Aunt Belle would be able to help with the shopping. They were
+going to see some theatres and all kinds of things and were going
+to have a most splendid time and then, soon afterwards--India! "Oh
+I shall go mad with excitement in a minute!" cried Flora.
+
+The next thing was in the evening. Rosalie, searching for her
+mother to ask her something, could not find her. She went into her
+mother's bedroom and there was the most surprising thing. There
+was Anna on her knees by her mother and her head on her mother's
+lap and Anna was sobbing; and she was crying in her sobs, "But it's
+my right! I'm the eldest. It's my right!"
+
+Rosalie stood there, unnoticed, amazed. Whatever was it?
+
+Rosalie's mother stroked Anna's head and spoke very softly, "My
+darling! My darling!" She said, "My darling, your father has decided.
+Your father knows best. Men always know best, my darling."
+
+"It's my right, mother. It's my right. It's always Flora. Oh, why
+should it always be Flora?"
+
+"Dear Anna. Poor Anna. You must be reasonable, dear Anna. We women
+must always be reasonable. Don't you see that your father thinks
+of me? He thinks my eldest girl--my dear eldest girl--ought to stay
+at home to look after her mother. It's on my account, dear Anna.
+He thinks of me."
+
+"Oh, mother, what's the good of telling me that? A lot he thinks
+of you or ever has! Why is he going up to London with Flora when
+it's your place to go? A lot he thinks of you! You say we must
+be reasonable. You can be. You've been unselfish all your life. I
+can't be. Not in this. I've never had a pleasure in my life; I've
+never had a chance; I've never had anything done for me. Ever since
+I can remember it's always been Flora, Flora, Flora. Now there's
+this. I'm getting on, mother. I'm nearly twenty-four. What have I
+got to look forward to? Flora's younger, Flora's different. She'll
+have lots of chances of enjoying herself. This is my right. It's
+my right, mother."
+
+"My dear Anna. My eldest girl. My first dear, sweet girlie. How
+could I do without you? How happy we've been. How happy we will
+be."
+
+Rosalie crept away.
+
+After a time, Flora and her father went away on the great visit
+to London. They were to be away over two Sundays. A clergyman was
+coming from Ashborough to take service at the church. Rosalie's
+father went off in spirits as high and youthful as the spirits
+of Flora. For days before he was quite a different man. Everybody
+was asked to choose a present which he would bring back. Everybody
+chose with much excitement and chaffing except Anna, who said she
+could not think of anything. At meals, father kept on saying how
+he wished he could regularly make a point of getting up to town
+for a bit, it made all the difference being able to get away from
+this infernal place for a bit. When herrings were on the table,
+he actually came round and did her herring for Rosalie's mother
+and Rosalie's mother was able to eat the whole of it and said how
+delicious it was and how clever father was.
+
+It was all splendid. Rosalie had never known such a jolly spirit in
+the house. The only thing that spoilt Rosalie's happiness in the new
+jolly spirit was the nights in Anna's room. Anna was most frightening
+to Rosalie. She prayed now longer than ever, her shoulders moving
+beneath her nightgown as if she was shuddering all the time she
+prayed. And at night she talked more than ever in her sleep; also
+she used to get out of bed at night and walk about the room and
+talk aloud to herself. It was frightening.
+
+Then Flora and father were in London and tremendous long letters
+came from Flora to her mother and to all: they were buying heaps
+of dresses and underclothes and white drill coats and skirts and
+a riding habit and goodness knows what all. "A regular trousseau!"
+wrote Flora with about seventeen marks of exclamation after the
+word. And all they were seeing--they had been to the Lyceum Theatre
+and seen Mr. Henry Irving and Miss Ellen Terry and to the Savoy and
+seen "The Mikado." Every moment of the day was taken up and half
+the night. Oh, this was a change from Ibbotsfield!
+
+Anna would never listen to the letters. When they were read out,
+she either would put her fingers in her ears or go out of the
+room. And yet, curiously, she often later in the day would say in
+a funny constricted voice, "Let me see Flora's letter. Give it to
+me, will you please?" And would take it away and read it by herself.
+
+Anna was stranger and stranger in her manner and in her behaviour
+at night. Rosalie came quite to dread the nights. Anna began to
+pray out loud. She used to pray over and over again the same thing:
+"It's not that I'm jealous, O Lord. O purge my heart of jealousy.
+It is that I see what could be and what ought to be for me and what
+never will be for me. I've nothing to look forward to, nothing,
+nothing, nothing, nothing. It is hard for women. O God, thou knowest
+how hard it is for women."
+
+It was frightening.
+
+Then came the second Sunday of the absence in London. In the night
+of Saturday, Rosalie was again awakened by the sounds of Anna and
+again heard her praying and again heard "It is hard for women. O
+God, thou knowest how hard it is for women."
+
+She had heard it so often! Anna seemed to have stopped praying.
+There was a light in the room and Rosalie saw that Anna, on her
+knees, had her head and arms thrown forward on the bed more as
+if she were asleep than praying. "It is hard for women." Rosalie
+had heard Anna say that so often. And she was going to be a woman
+one day. And she had always known that men were the important and
+wonderful people of the world. Now Anna said that for women it was
+hard and that God knew it was hard. Why? She peered across again.
+Anna certainly had done her prayers. She said, "Anna. Anna. Why is
+it hard for women?"
+
+Anna started to her knees and turned her body round. "Rosalie! Why
+are you awake? You've no right to be awake."
+
+"No, but I am. I woke up. Anna, why is it hard for women?"
+
+"You weren't meant to hear. You couldn't understand."
+
+"But I would like to know, Anna."
+
+Anna got up and came across to Rosalie's bed; and by her manner,
+and by her voice, and by the tall white figure she was, frightened
+Rosalie. She said, "Go to sleep. You can sleep. Why don't you when
+you can? One day perhaps you'll be like me and can't."
+
+It reminded Rosalie of "Sleep on now and take your rest" in the
+Bible, and frightened her. Anna said, "It's hard for women because
+men can do what they like but women can't." She turned away. She
+stood still and said with her back to Rosalie, "I've got a longing
+here." Her hands were clasped and she brought them up and struck
+them against her breast with a thud. "And I always have had and
+I always will have. Here. Burning. Aching. And when you've got a
+longing like that you must--you must--" Then she said very violently,
+"I hate men. I hate them. I hate them." Then she went very quickly
+to the candlestick on the dressing table and fumbled with it to
+blow it out, and it fell on the ground and broke and the room was
+black.
+
+The next day was Sunday. Anna said she would not go to Church as
+she had a headache. Rosalie had been invited to spend the day with
+the little girl of Colonel and Mrs. Measures and she had lunch and
+tea there and then came home. The path from the gate to the house
+was bounded by a thick hedge. On the right was the rectory paddock
+and through the hedge Rosalie saw that something very strange
+was going on in the paddock. Away in the corner where there was a
+little copse with a pond in the middle was a crowd of people, some
+men from the village and her mother and Robert and some others.
+Whatever was it? While she peered, Harold came running out of the
+group towards the house. His coat was off, and his waistcoat; and
+his shirt and trousers looked funny and he ran funnily. He came
+near Rosalie and she saw that he was dripping wet. Had he fallen
+in the pond? Then two men came round from the back of the house
+carrying something, and Harold ran to them and they all ran with
+the thing to the pond. It looked like the door of the shed they
+were carrying. Rosalie scrambled through the hedge and ran towards
+the pond. Some one called out "Here's Rosalie." Hilda came out from
+among the people and waved her arms and called out, "Go back! Go
+back! You're not to come here, Rosalie! You're not to come here!"
+Rosalie stood still.
+
+People were stooping. They had the door on the ground and Harold and
+a man were stooping and walking backwards over the door, carrying
+something. Presently there was more stooping, and then Harold and
+Robert and three men were carrying the door between them and walking
+as if the door were very heavy. Whatever was happening? Hilda came
+running to Rosalie. She was crying. "Rosalie, you're to keep away.
+You're not to come into the house yet. I'll tell you when you can
+come. Go and stay in the garden till I tell you."
+
+Rosalie wandered about by the drive. Whatever was the matter?
+Robert appeared with his bicycle. Harold came out after him. "Go
+to Ashborough station with it, you understand. See the station
+master. Tell him it must be sent off at once. Tell him what has
+happened." Robert was sniffling and nodding. Away went Robert,
+bending over the handle bar of his bicycle, riding furiously.
+
+Evening began to come on. Rosalie was wandering at the back by the
+stables when Hilda came out through the kitchen door. "Rosalie,
+I've been looking for you. Rosalie, Anna is--dead."
+
+They went in through the kitchen. On the big kitchen clothes rail
+before the fire were clothes of Anna's. They were muddy and sopping
+wet and steam was rising off them.
+
+Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.
+
+"Ran to her mother to cry." That's a thing not to pass over without a
+stop. Lucky, lucky Rosalie to have one to whom to take her grief!
+You can imagine her small heart's twistings by those days of
+sorrow, of terrifying and mysterious and dreadful things that the
+child never could clearly have understood; of grief, of mourning;
+of atmosphere most eerie made of whispers, of tiptoe treading, of
+shrouded windows, of conversations, as of conspirators, shut off
+with "Not in front of Rosalie." "Hush, not now. Here's Rosalie."
+
+Yes, twisting stuff that; but in that "ran to her mother to cry"
+something that much more dreadfully twists the heart than those.
+Those were for Rosalie--they are for all--but frets upon the
+sands of time that each most kind expunging day, flowing from dawn
+to sunset like a tide, heals and obliterates. There are no common
+griefs, and death's a common grief, that can be drawn above that
+tide's highwater mark. But there's that sentence: "Rosalie ran to
+her mother to cry." That's of the aching voids of life, deep-seated
+like a cancer, that no tide reaches. That twists the heart to hear
+it because--O happy Rosalie!--the aching thing in life is not having
+where you can take your weariness. Your successes, your triumphs,
+there are a hundred eyes to shine with yours in those. Oh, it is the
+defeats you want where to tell--some one you can take the defeats
+to, the failures, the lost things; the lamps that are gone out, the
+hopes that are ashes, the springs that spring no more, the secret
+sordid things that eat you up, that hedge you all about, that draw
+you down. Those! To have some one to tell those to! Yes, there's
+a thought that comes with living: Let who may receive a man's
+triumphs; to whom a soul can take its defeats, that one has the
+imprint of Godhood. They walk near God.
+
+Awfully frightening days followed for Rosalie. There wasn't a room
+that wasn't dark and frightening with all the blinds down, and
+wasn't a voice that wasn't dark and frightening, all in whispers;
+and then came this that closed them and that was like a finger
+pressed right down on Rosalie.
+
+There was that Rosalie in the church at the funeral service. She
+sat at the inner end of the pew with Hilda beside her. The coffin
+had stood before the altar all night, with the lamps lit all night,
+and Rosalie believed her father had stayed with it all night. He
+was struck right down by what had happened, Rosalie's father. She
+had heard him, when Anna lay on the bed, and he crouched beside
+her, crying out loud, "I hated my lot! O God, I was blind to this
+my child that shared my lot!"
+
+Well, there was that Rosalie in the pew beside Hilda, and while she
+waited for her father to begin (ever and ever so long he was upon
+his knees at the altar, his back to them) while she waited she
+turned back the leaves of her prayer book from the burial service
+and noticed with a curious interest the correctness of the order
+in which the special services came. There, in its order, was the
+complete record of life. Rosalie must have had an imagination and
+she must have had budding then what was a strong characteristic of
+her afterwards,--a very orderly mind. She appreciated the correctness
+of the order of the services and she turned them over one by one
+and could imagine it, like a story: that record of a life. First the
+service of Baptism; you were born and baptised. Then the Catechism;
+you were a child and learnt your catechism. Then the Order of
+Confirmation; you were getting older and were confirmed. Then the
+marriage service; you were married. Then the Order for the Visitation
+of the Sick: you were growing old and you were ill. Then the Burial
+Service; you died. Born, brought up, growing up, married, ill, dead.
+Yes, it was like a story. Rosalie turned on. The next service was
+called The Churching of Women. It was new to Rosalie. She had never
+noticed it before. "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of
+His goodness to give you safe deliverance..." Rosalie had heard the
+word deliverance used in the Bible in connection with death. She
+thought this must be a service special to the burial of a woman--of
+Anna. She read the small print. "The woman at the usual time after
+her delivery shall come into the church decently apparelled...."
+Decently apparelled? Anna was in one of those nightgowns in which
+Rosalie so often had seen her praying. "... and there shall kneel
+down in some convenient place." Kneel down? How could she?...
+
+There came upon the book while Rosalie pondered it the long,
+black-gloved forefinger of Hilda. It turned back the thin leaves
+to the burial service and then pushed over one or two of the thin
+leaves and indicated certain places. Then Hilda's new black hat
+was touching her own new black hat, and Hilda whispered, "Where it
+says 'brother' and 'his' father will say 'sister' and 'her.' It's
+written for men, do you see?"
+
+Always for men! Even in the prayer book!
+
+And it was because of men that Anna had drowned herself in the
+pond. Over and over again Rosalie had thought of that, wondering
+upon it, shuddering at the thought of men because of it. How she
+came to know that Anna had not died as ordinary people die, but had
+drowned herself in the pond she never could remember. No one told
+her. Rosalie was twelve then but the others were all so much older,
+and were so accustomed to treating Rosalie as so very much younger,
+that the pain and mystery of poor Anna's death was outstandingly of
+the class of things that were kept within the established wheel of
+the rectory by "Not in front of Rosalie," or "Hush, here's Rosalie."
+
+The effect was that when Rosalie somehow found out, she felt it to
+be a guilty knowledge. She was not supposed to know and she felt
+she ought not to have known. And sharing, but secretly, the others'
+knowledge that Anna had drowned herself in the pond, she supposed
+that they equally shared with her her knowledge of why poor Anna
+had drowned herself in the pond--because of men. She overheard many
+conversations that assured her in this belief. "Some man we knew
+nothing about," the conversation used to say. "What else could it
+have been? Hush, here's Rosalie." And again, after they had all
+been out of the house to attend what was called the inquest, "You
+heard what the coroner said--that there was almost invariably
+something to do with a man in these cases. Poor Anna! Poor darling
+Anna. If she had only told us. What else could it have been? Harold,
+hush! Not in front of Rosalie!"
+
+Of course it was nothing else. It was that. It was men. Anna had
+said so. "I hate men. I hate them." Yes, men had done this to Anna.
+
+Her mind went violently, as it were with a violent clutch of both
+her hands, as of one in horrible dark, clutching at means of light,
+to the thought that next week she was to be away at school--to be
+right away and in the safe middle of lots and lots of girls, and
+only girls. She had a frightening, a shuddering, at the thought of
+men who caused these terrible things to be done, who mysteriously
+and horribly somehow had done this thing to Anna.
+
+The long, black finger poked at the page again. "There. 'This our
+brother.' Father will say 'This our sister.' Do you see, Rosalie?
+This our sister."
+
+A shower of tears sprang out of Rosalie's eyes and pattered upon
+the page.
+
+She wiped them. She set her teeth. A new and most awful concern
+possessed her. 'This our sister.' Would father remember? When he
+came to brother would he remember to say sister? And when 'his'
+would he remember to say 'her?' She searched for the places. A
+most frightful agitation seized her that father would forget. What
+would happen if he forgot?
+
+And at the very first place father did forget!
+
+They were come from the church to the grave. They were grouped about
+that most terrible and frightening pit. Rosalie was clutching her
+mother's dear hand, and in her other hand held her prayer book.
+There it was, the first place for the change. Brokenly her father's
+voice came out upon the air, and at his very first word--the fatal
+word--Rosalie caught her breath in sharp and agonized dismay.
+
+"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is
+full of misery...."
+
+She called out--she could not help it--"Father!"
+
+Her mother's hand, squeezing hers, restrained her.
+
+The broken voice went on "... cometh up and is cut down like a
+flower."
+
+She heaved relief. No one had noticed it. It was all right. No one
+else had heard the terrible mistake. It was all right. But it was
+very wrong. Above all other places this was the place that should
+have been changed. Woman... that is full of misery. How could it
+ever be Man? Anna, in almost her last words, had said it. "It is
+hard for women" and that God knew it was hard for them--"O God,
+thou knowest how hard it is for women."
+
+In the next week she went away to school.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+
+
+What anybody can have nobody wants; but what only one person can
+have there's a queue to get.
+
+This is an elementary principle of the frailty of human nature,
+and knowledge of it, and experience of its mighty truth, used to
+cause, during the three holiday periods of the year, a standing
+advertisement to appear on the front page of the Morning Post.
+
+"High-class Ladies' School for the Daughters of Gentlemen of the
+Professions has UNEXPECTED VACANCY for ONE ONLY pupil at reduced
+terms--Mrs. Impact, Oakwood House School, St. John's Wood, London."
+
+ONE ONLY pupil! That was the magic touch.
+
+The very first words addressed to Rosalie by a fellow boarder at
+Oakwood House were from a short, sharp-featured girl of her own
+age, which then was twelve, who said to her sharply, "You're a One
+Only. I can see you are. Aren't you a One Only?"
+
+"Well, I'm by myself," said Rosalie, not understanding but most
+anxious to say the right thing.
+
+"Stupid, you're not," said the sharp girl, "because I'm with you.
+Did your mother see the advertisement in the Morning Post? The
+advertisement of this school?"
+
+It happened that Rosalie knew her mother had seen it for Aunt
+Belle had shown it to her and to them all. "One of the very best
+schools," Aunt Belle had said. "You see, it's only quite by chance
+there was a vacancy."
+
+"Yes, she did," said Rosalie.
+
+"She's the cat's grandmother," said the sharp girl. "Never say
+'she' for a person's name. Well, if your mother saw the advertisement
+then you are a One Only at reduced terms, and I knew you were
+directly I saw you. Now, tell me. Don't blink--unless of course
+you're an idiot; all idiots blink. Tell me. Was that dress made
+for you or was it cut down?"
+
+"It was my cousin Laetitia's," said Rosalie.
+
+"Of course it was," returned the sharp girl very triumphantly.
+"Every One Only's clothes are cut down for her. Poopers! Do you
+know what a pooper is? A pooper is half a poop and half a pauper.
+Every One Only's a pooper. Well, now you know what you are. You
+see that girl over there. Do you know what she is?"
+
+Rosalie said she did not.
+
+"She's a Red Indian."
+
+"Is she?" said Rosalie, much surprised, for the girl did not look
+in the least like a Red Indian.
+
+"Ask her," said the sharp girl. "Do you know what I am?"
+
+Rosalie shook her head.
+
+"Answer," said the sharp girl.
+
+"No, I don't," said Rosalie.
+
+"I'm a Sultan," said the sharp girl. "All the nice girls are Sultans
+and the school belongs to them. Do I look nice?"
+
+"Very," said Rosalie, though she did not think so.
+
+"Then why didn't you know I was a Sultan? The school belongs to
+the Sultans. The One Onlys and the Red Indians are interlopers,
+especially the One Onlys. Always shudder when you see a Sultan.
+Shudder now."
+
+Rosalie wriggled her shoulders.
+
+"Again, poop."
+
+Rosalie repeated the wriggle.
+
+"Vanish, poop," said the sharp girl, and herself sprung away with
+mysterious crouching bounds, her head thrust forward, looking very
+like Gagool, the witch, in King Solomon's Mines; and was seen by
+Rosalie to pounce upon another small girl who was probably a One
+Only and, from her forlorn aspect, certainly a sad and desolated
+new.
+
+One Onlys, Red Indians, Sultans. They were the three castes into
+which the girls divided themselves: One Onlys the poopers brought
+by the advertisement; Red Indians the daughters of parents resident
+in India; Sultans the proud creatures who paid full fees and took
+their title from the nickname of the headmistress--the Sultana.
+This Oakwood House School in which Rosalie now found herself was
+one of those very big old houses with a spacious, walled-in garden
+that probably was occupied in the Fifties somewhere, when St.
+John's Wood was out in the country, by a wealthy old City merchant
+who rode in to business two or three times a week, never dreaming
+that one day London was going to stretch miles beyond St. John's
+Wood, and his imposing residence go dropping down the scale of
+fashion eventually to become a school for young ladies who on their
+crocodile walks would huddle, giggling, along the kerbstone while
+the dangerous traffic roared up and down the Maida Vale highway.
+
+Those crocodiles! There was a news agent's shop just opposite
+where the crocodile used to cross when it went out every morning,
+and one of the great excitements of the walk was to get around the
+corner and see what the newspaper bills had to tell. There were
+about forty girls at the school--a crocodile twenty files long--and
+on the days of sensational events the news from the placards used
+to come flashing back in emotional little screams from the head
+of the crocodile, gazing with goggling eyes, to the tail of the
+crocodile pressing deliriously up behind. "The Maybrick Case";
+"Jack the Ripper Again"; "Death of the Duke of Clarence"; "Loss of
+H.M.S. Victoria"; Rosalie never afterwards could hear those terrific
+things referred to without recalling instantly the convulsions of
+the crocodile and experiencing within her own bosom the tumults
+that contributed their share to the convulsions. She was in the
+writhing tail of the crocodile when "Jack the Ripper Again" caused
+it almost to swoon, and she was in its weeping head when "Death
+of the Duke of Clarence" and "Loss of H.M.S. Victoria" struck its
+orderly coils into a tangled and hysterical knot.
+
+Mrs. Impact, who kept this school, was a massive and frightening
+figure of doom who wore always upon her head, and was suspected of
+sleeping in, a strange erection having the appearance of a straw
+beehive. She was called the Sultana and her appearance and her
+habits seemed to Rosalie precisely the appearance and habits that
+would belong to a sultana. The Sultana appeared virtually never
+among the girls. The direction of the discipline and education of
+the pupils was in the hands of the chief of the Sultana's staff of
+badly paid and much intimidated mistresses. This chief of staff, by
+name Miss Ough, but called the Vizier, appeared from and disappeared
+into the quarters occupied by the Sultana, and was popularly supposed
+to be kept there in a dungeon. If you were near the door through
+which the Vizier passed from public gaze there was unquestionably to
+be heard shortly afterwards a metallic clank. This was the portal
+of the Vizier's dungeon being closed upon her and was very shuddering
+to hear. The Vizier, moreover, like one long incarcerated, was
+skeletonized of form, cadaverous and sallow of countenance, and
+grew upon her face, as all right prisoners in royal custody grow,
+a thick covering of greyish down.
+
+A second known inhabitant of the Sultana's quarters was Mr. Ponders,
+her butler, who sometimes slid into the classrooms in a very eerie
+way with messages and whom Rosalie came to know strangely well; a
+third, but he did not exactly live in the awful regions, was the
+Sultana's husband. The Sultana's husband lived in two rooms over
+the stable. From the front classroom windows he was to be seen
+every morning disappearing through the front gates at about eleven
+o'clock; very shiny top hat; very tight tail coat; very tight grey
+trousers; very tight yellow gloves; very tight grey-yellow moustache;
+very tight pasty face; curiously constricted, jerky gait as though
+his boots, too, were very tight. Precisely the sort of chronic,
+half-tipsy hanger-on one used to see in billiard rooms or eating
+cloves in West End bars. By association of ideas with the orientalism
+of Sultana he was called by the girls the Bashibazook.
+
+Junior to Miss Ough, the vizier, were four or five other mistresses,
+all known by nicknames. Children are exactly like savages in their
+horrible sharpness at picking out physical peculiarities and
+labelling by them. One would imagine these governesses, judged
+by their nicknames, a deplorable collection of oddities. Actually
+they must have been a presentable enough and a capable enough set
+of spinsters, though sicklied o'er by the pale cast of indifferent
+personalities, indifferently housed, indifferently fed, indifferently
+paid; all anaemic, all without any prospects whatsoever, all dominated
+by and domineered over by the masterful personality of the Sultana.
+
+Only one of them contributed to the life of Rosalie and this was
+"Keggo," Miss Keggs, who taught mathematics. This Keggo was rather
+like Anna in appearance, Rosalie thought, and was most popular of
+all the mistresses with the girls, partly because of her bright
+moments in which she was a human creature and an entertaining
+creature; partly because of her curiously supine periods in which
+she would be utterly listless, allow her class to do anything they
+liked provided they kept perfectly quiet, and would make no attempt
+whatsoever to correct idleness or to impart the lesson of the hour.
+Miss Keggs had been known to knock over the inkpot on her desk and
+sit and watch the ink dripping in a pool on to the floor without
+making the least attempt even to upstand the vessel. No one knew
+why Keggo had these moods. But it was known that for her to come
+into class looking rather flushed was a sign foreshadowing them.
+
+She appeared to take a fancy to Rosalie from the first, and Rosalie
+to her, probably by reason of the fancied resemblance to Anna. She
+invited Rosalie to her room and Rosalie loved to go there because
+the One Onlys were in a very weak and humble minority in Rosalie's
+first term and were rather hunted by the Sultans who were then
+particularly strong in numbers and rich in apparel, in pocket money,
+and in friends. The poor little One Onlys led rather abashed lives
+and they had no chance at all around the playroom fire where the
+Sultans stretched their elegant legs and warmed their shapely toes.
+
+One evening in her first few weeks Rosalie had to take an exercise
+up to Miss Keggs, and Miss Keggs's room was warm, and Miss Keggs
+like Anna, and Rosalie lingered and was invited to linger; after
+that Rosalie sought and invented reasons for going up to Miss Keggs's
+room and Miss Keggs would nearly always say, "Well, you may stay
+a little, Rosalie, as you're here."
+
+Miss Keggs's room was right at the top of the house where were also
+the servants' room and the room shared by Miss Downer and Miss
+Frost. It was a long, narrow room with sloping ceiling and the
+window high up in the ceiling. In the winter it was warmed with
+a small oil stove which smelt terribly when you first went in but
+to the smell of which you almost at once got accustomed. It was
+curious to Rosalie that even in summer when there was no oil stove
+there was nearly always a very strong smell in Miss Keggs's room.
+Miss Keggs used eau de Cologne for bathing her forehead and temples
+on account of the very bad headaches from which she said she suffered
+and the smell was like eau de Cologne but with an unpleasantly
+harsh strong tang in it, like bad eau de Cologne, Rosalie used to
+think. However, you almost at once got accustomed to that also. These
+headaches of Miss Keggs were a symptom of the very bad health from
+which she suffered, and on the occasions of Rosalie's visits to
+her room Miss Keggs was very communicative about her ill health. It
+was the reason, she told Rosalie, why, alone of all the mistresses,
+she had a room to herself instead of sharing one. The Sultana had
+granted her that privilege, provided she would use this remote and
+rather poky attic, because it was so essential she should be quiet
+and undisturbed.
+
+"Don't you have any medicine, Miss Keggs?" said the small Rosalie,
+in one part genuinely sympathetic and in the other eager to discuss
+anything that would prolong her stay by the warm oil stove.
+
+"Nothing does me any good," said Miss Keggs wearily. After a minute
+she added, "But I really am feeling very bad to-night. Mr. Ponders
+very kindly gives me some medicine that relieves my bad attacks.
+I wonder, Rosalie, if you could find your way down to Mr. Ponders
+and give him this medicine bottle and ask him if he could very
+kindly oblige me with a little of my medicine?"
+
+"Oh, I'm sure I could, Miss Keggs," cried Rosalie, delighted at
+the opportunity of doing a service.
+
+Miss Keggs became extraordinarily animated with the feverish
+animation of one who, having made up her mind after hesitation,
+furiously tramples hesitation under foot.
+
+"Go right downstairs," directed Miss Keggs, "right down below the
+hall into the basement. You know the basement stairs?" She proceeded
+with her directions, detailing them most exactly. She accompanied
+Rosalie to the door and when Rosalie was a little down the passage
+sharply called her back. "And, Rosalie! If you should meet any
+one--if you should meet any one, on no account say where you are
+going or where you have been. On no account. If it should be known
+how ill I continue to be, I might be sent away. They might think
+I am not strong enough to continue my work here. Say you have lost
+your way if you should be met. You are a new little girl and it is
+easy to lose your way in this big, rambling house. Keep the bottle
+in your pocket and remember, Rosalie, on no account to tell. On no
+account." And so dismissed her.
+
+A creepy business, going down to interview Mr. Ponders! The Sultana's
+butler was only seen by the girls on momentous and thrilling
+occasions. He opened the hall door when new little girls arrived
+with their mothers, and he would sometimes appear in a classroom
+and walk thrillingly to the mistress and thrillingly whisper. This
+always meant that for some fortunate girl a parent or an aunt had
+arrived and that the presence of the fortunate girl was desired
+by the Sultana. He was a shortish, dingy man with a considerable
+moustache. As he walked between the desks to deliver his message,
+his eyes were always glancing from side to side as though furtively
+in search of something, and always as he left the room he would
+stand a moment with his hand on the door as though meditating some
+statement and then suddenly de-termining to disappear without making
+it. A rather mysterious and thrilling man.
+
+Come into the basement, Rosalie walked as bid along the passage,
+then to the right and then past two doors to the third, whereon
+she tapped gently, and when a man's voice said "Come in," quaked
+rather, and went in. The walls of Mr. Ponders' room were completely
+surrounded by narrow shelves. Beneath the shelves were the closed
+doors of low cupboards and on the shelves were ranged many glasses,
+china and silverware. At one end beneath the window was a sink with
+two taps, both dripping. On the right-hand side was a fire before
+which in a wicker armchair sat Mr. Ponders smoking a pipe and
+reading a newspaper.
+
+"What do you want?" inquired Mr. Ponders.
+
+Rosalie said, "If you please, Mr. Ponders, Miss Keggs is not feeling
+at all well and would you be so very kind as to give her some of
+her medicine, please?"
+
+Mr. Ponders rose and regarded Rosalie from the hearthrug. "So it's
+going to be you coming for the medicine now, is it?" he said. He
+looked rather a mean little man, standing there; not thrilling as
+when he appeared in the schoolrooms for there was an unpleasing
+familiarity in his air, but still decidedly mysterious, for though
+he smiled and looked snakily at Rosalie, he still glanced from side
+to side as though furtively looking for something and he still,
+before committing himself to an action, paused as though meditating
+a statement and then suddenly performed the action as though he
+had made up his mind not to speak--yet.
+
+"You're Rosalie, aren't you?" inquired Ponders, putting his hands
+in his pockets and stretching out his stomach like one much at his
+ease. "Rosalie Aubyn. You come with your Auntie. What's your Pa?"
+
+"A clergyman, Mr. Ponders."
+
+"Oh, he's a clergyman, is he?" Mr. Ponders's eyes slid from side to
+side, rather as if he had somewhere in the room some confirmation
+or some refutation of Rosalie's statement that he could produce if
+he could catch sight of it, and continued thus to slide with the
+same suggestion while he playfully put Rosalie through a further
+examination relative to her "Auntie," her "Ma" and her brothers
+and sisters. He appeared then to be meditating a question of some
+other order but instead suddenly straightened himself, withdrew
+his hands from his pockets and said, "Well, you'd better be running
+along with the medicine."
+
+He took from Rosalie the bottle Miss Keggs had given her and from
+his pockets a bunch of keys. In the lock of one of his cupboards
+he fitted a key, paused a meditative moment, then with a decisive
+action opened the cupboard and from a tall black bottle very
+carefully and steadily filled the medicine bottle. The medicine was
+dark red. It first ran in a fine dark red cloud around the inner
+shoulders and sides of the bottle and then plunged in a steady
+stream direct from the larger receptacle to the smaller.
+
+Rosalie, watching, was moved to say, "How well you pour it, Mr.
+Ponders."
+
+"I've poured a tidy drop in my time," said Mr. Ponders, completing
+the operation and corking the medicine bottle. He held it towards
+Rosalie, paused in his mysteriously deliberative way, and then
+suddenly handed it to her. "And a tidy fair drop for Miss Keggs
+at that," he added. He went to the door, again paused as though
+uncertain whether to open it, then opened it for Rosalie to pass
+out. "Good night," said Mr. Ponders.
+
+Lucky Mr. Ponders to have for his own a cosy room like that--men,
+always for some reason, with the best of everything again! Unpleasing
+Mr. Ponders to look at you like that and to speak to you like
+that--men, always horrible again! Rosalie, thus thinking, made
+a swift and unobserved climb to the attics. Miss Keggs must have
+heard her coming. The door was pulled sharply from Rosalie's hand
+and there was Miss Keggs and the bottle almost snatched away from
+Rosalie. "How long you've been! But you've got it! And no one saw
+you?" Miss Keggs went very swiftly to the washstand and took up a
+small tumbler. Clear that she wanted her medicine very badly. She
+toppled in the contents of the bottle, its neck clinking against
+the glass, the dark red medicine splashing and some spilling, so
+differently from Mr. Ponders's performance of a far more difficult
+operation, and with the bottle still in her hand held the glass to
+her lips and drank deeply.
+
+Yet there was a funny thing about the draught. It seemed to Rosalie
+that Miss Keggs with that eager draught yet did not swallow at once
+but only filled her mouth to its capacity. She then swallowed very
+slowly and with movements of her cheeks as though she was sucking
+down the medicine and tasting it in every portion of her mouth.
+Colour came into her cheeks. The medicine certainly appeared to do
+her immense good.
+
+Miss Keggs's friendliness towards Rosalie was settled and
+established from that night. Thereafter it became a very regular
+thing for Rosalie to visit the room of Miss Keggs of an evening;
+and at intervals, sometimes twice a week, sometimes not three times
+in a month, to descend to the den of Mr. Ponders for the dark-red
+medicine which did Miss Keggs so much good and which she always
+took in that peculiar sucking way from a full mouth, one would be
+so long sometimes in swallowing a mouthful, beginning a sentence
+and then drinking and then all that time in swallowing before she
+completed the sentence, that she several times, by way of apology,
+ex-plained the reason to Rosalie. "I have to swallow it very slowly
+like that," explained Miss Keggs, "because that's the way for it
+to do me good. It's my doctor's orders."
+
+"It seems a business," was Rosalie's comment.
+
+"Yes, it is a business," Miss Keggs agreed.
+
+Rosalie added, "How very lucky it is, Miss Keggs, that Mr. Ponders
+keeps your medicine."
+
+"Yes, it's certainly very lucky," Miss Keggs agreed.
+
+The effect of her medicine was always to make her very complaisant.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+
+
+One seeks to give only the things in Rosalie's life that contributed
+to her record, as time judges a record. Of her years at Oakwood House,
+so far as Oakwood House itself is concerned, only that friendship
+with Miss Keggs thus contributed. The rest does not matter and
+may be passed. Rosalie was happy there. It naturally was all very
+strange at first but she soon shook down and found her place and
+formed friendships. The thing to notice is this--that even in the
+strangeness of her first few weeks the place was actively felt by
+her to be a haven. There is to be recalled that aching desire of
+hers, when poor Anna lay dead, to get right away from men: men who
+(though still pre-eminently wonderful) caused her by their showing
+off to blink and have a, funny feeling; and by their distasteful
+presence spoilt her walks and her lessons; and by the frightening
+things they did had brought that frightening death to Anna. Thus
+had accumulated that aching desire to get right away from men and
+be only amongst girls; and the feeling remained most lively in
+Rosalie at the Sultana's, and intensified. Those men! She used to
+see the Bashibazook and shudder at him; and Mr. Ponders and shudder
+at him; and sometimes Uncle Pyke, and because of ways he had, feel
+quite sick to be near him. Men still were wonderful. The Bashibazook,
+Mr. Ponders, Uncle Pyke, Uncle Pyke's friends--all were infinitely
+superior and did what they pleased; but, oh, not nice, frightening.
+It was safe and nice to be only with girls. Girls were in heaps
+of ways extraordinarily silly and unsatisfactory. Men though not
+nice, unquestionably did everything better and could do things.
+Unquestionably theirs was the best time in life. Unquestionably
+they were to be envied. But--not nice, frightening.
+
+It was like that that her ideas at Oakwood House were shaping.
+
+And all this time, most important and much contributory to the life
+of Rosalie--Aunt Belle. Tremendous occasions in those years were
+the visits to the Sultana's of Aunt Belle. Frequently on a Saturday,
+kind Aunt Belle used to call at Oakwood House for Rosalie and take
+her to a tea shop for tea. Beautiful cousin Laetitia would accompany
+her, and kind Aunt Belle would always invite Rosalie to bring with
+her another little One Only. Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Aunt Belle
+used to sit by in the tea shop, affectionate and loquacious as
+ever, while the two schoolgirls stuffed themselves with cakes (not
+beautiful Laetitia who just nicely sipped a cup of tea and nicely
+smiled at the two gross appetites) and always kind Aunt Belle
+brought a small hamper of sweets and cake and apples--"The very best
+goodies from the Army and Navy Stores, dear child. They know us so
+well at the Army and Navy Stores. Your Uncle Pyke has a standing
+deposit account there. We can go in without a penny in our pockets
+and buy anything we please. Fancy that, dear child!" And always
+half a crown for Rosalie, as kind Aunt Belle was leaving.
+
+Once in every term, also, Rosalie spent a week-end at the magnificent
+house in Pilchester Square. Such luxuries! Fire in her bedroom and
+palatial late dinner! Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning ("Just
+to let you lie as a little change from school, dear child.") and
+Laetitia's maid to do her hair! Rosalie immensely im-pressed and
+Aunt Belle immensely gratified at Rosalie's awe and appreciation
+and gratitude.
+
+A curious manifestation there was of Aunt Belle's attitude in this
+regard. On that famous visit to the rectory she had treated every
+one like children. Here, in her own house, while Rosalie was still
+a child, twelve, thirteen and fourteen, she was treated by Aunt
+Belle and shown off to by her much as if she were a grown-up woman.
+About her servants, and about prices, and about dress, and about
+her dinner parties, Aunt Belle chattered to Rosalie; and about
+Uncle Pyke, what he liked, and what he didn't like, and what he
+did in the City, and what he did at his club, and about her hosts
+of friends and their matrimonial experiences, Aunt Belle chattered
+to her, confiding in her and telling her all kinds of things she but
+dimly understood precisely as if she were a grown-up young woman.
+
+Then as Rosalie grew older, sixteen, seventeen and getting on for
+eighteen, was reversion by Aunt Belle to the rectory manner. The
+child had been treated as a young woman; the budding maiden was
+treated precisely as if she were a small child or a small savage
+to be entertained by mere sight of the wonders all about her in
+Pilchester Square and by having them explained to her in words of
+one syllable.
+
+"There, Rosalie," (Rosalie at seventeen) "do you know you're eating
+with a solid silver spoon! Feel the weight of it! Balance it in your
+hand, dear child. We usually only use this service for our dinner
+parties and your uncle Pyke keeps it locked up and carries the key
+about with him. Show Rosalie the key, Pyke. But I got it out for
+you to-day because I knew you would like to see real solid silver
+plate. Dear child!"
+
+Dear thing! Lightly on her, you Brompton Cemetery stones!
+
+Uncle Pyke never would produce the key or whatever he might be
+asked to show. Uncle Pyke would grunt and go on with his soup with
+enormous noise as though having a bath in it. Uncle Pyke never spoke
+at all to Rosalie on these week-end visits except, always, to put
+her through examination on what she was learning at school. Rosalie,
+though horribly frightened of Uncle Pyke, always had pretty ready
+answers to the examination--she did uncommonly well at school--but
+there never was from Uncle Pyke any other mark of appreciation
+than a grunt. A grunt! Those Pyke-ish, piggish men! The outstanding
+characteristic Rosalie came to see in Uncle Pyke and in the other
+husbands (his cronies) of Aunt Belle's friends was that they thought
+about nothing else but their food, their wine and their cigars.
+They disliked having about them anybody who interfered with their
+enjoyment of their food, their wine and their cigars. They were
+affectionately regarded by their wives as tame, necessary bears
+to be fed and warmed and used to sit at the head of the table and
+awe the servants. That was what Rosalie saw in them--and shuddered
+at in them. Hogs!
+
+Cousin Laetitia all this time was living at home, attending a very
+exclusive and expensive day school. Only twelve girls at beautiful
+Laetitia's school and more masters and mistresses than pupils--mostly
+"visiting" masters--Italian, French, painting, singing, music,
+dancing. Laetitia was about two years older than Rosalie. Very
+pretty in an elegant, delicate fashion, and growing up decidedly
+beautiful in a sheltered, hothouse, Rossetti type of beauty. Always
+very affectionate to Rosalie and glad to see her; not patronising
+in the way she might have been patronising and yet, as the two grew
+older, patronising in a conscious effort to dissemble a conscious
+superiority.
+
+Rosalie never could remember how early in their acquaintance it
+was she first understood that the great aim of Laetitia's life,
+and the great aim of Aunt Belle's life for Laetitia, was to "make
+a good match"; but she seemed to have known it ever since she first
+heard of Laetitia, certainly at a point of her childhood when too
+young exactly to understand what "good match" meant. Later on,
+when Laetitia had left school and was within sight of putting up
+her hair, "good match" was openly spoken of by Aunt Belle in her
+crowded drawing-room or alone in company of the two girls and Uncle
+Pyke.
+
+"And soon dear Laetitia will be making a good match, a splendid
+match"; and beautiful Laetitia would faintly colour and faintly
+smile.
+
+There began to come to Rosalie, growing older, an acute and an odd
+feeling of the physical and mental difference between herself and
+beautiful Laetitia--a feeling in Laetitia's company that she was a
+boy, a young man, in the company of one most pronouncedly a young
+woman. Rosalie was always very plainly dressed by comparison with
+Laetitia; her voice was much clearer and sharper, her air very
+vigorous against an air very langorous. Her hands used to feel
+extraordinarily big when she sat with Laetitia and her wrists
+extraordinarily bare. She would glance down at her lap sometimes
+and could have felt a sense of surprise not to see trousers on her
+legs.
+
+That was how, as they grew older, Rosalie often felt with Laetitia.
+
+Her last term came. She was nearly eighteen. She was going to earn
+her own living. That was decided. Exactly how was not decided; but
+Rosalie had decided it. There was an idea that she should remain
+at the Sultana's as a junior teacher, but that was not Rosalie's
+idea.
+
+"Oh, don't be a schoolmistress, Rosalie," Keggo had said when
+Rosalie told of the suggestion (propounded, through the Sultana,
+by Miss Ough and warmly endorsed by Aunt Belle and grunted upon by
+Uncle Pyke). "Oh, Rosalie, don't be one of us. Don't you see how
+we are just drifting, drifting? Don't do anything where you'll just
+drift, Rosalie."
+
+"No, I'm not going to drift, Keggo," said Rosalie. (Miss Keggs,
+in the little room, had been "Keggo" a long time then.) "I'm not
+going to drift. I'm going to have a man's career. I'm going into
+business! Keggo, that's the mystery of that book I'm always reading
+that you're always asking me about: 'Lombard Street'--Bagehot's
+'Lombard Street.' Oh, Keggo, thrilling."
+
+She began to tell Keggo her stupendous enterprise....
+
+There is in the study of man nothing more curious or more interesting
+than the natural bent of an individual mind. An arrow shot to the
+north and another from the same bow to the south spring not apart
+more swiftly or more opposedly than the minds of two children
+brought up from one mother in the same nursery. The natural bent
+of each impels it. Art this one, science that; to Joe adventure,
+to Tom a bookish habit. Rosalie's natural bent declared itself in
+"figures"; in the operations, as she discovered them, of commerce;
+in the mysterious powers, as they appealed to her, developed
+in countinghouses and exerted by countinghouses. The romance of
+commerce! A mind double-edged, with inquisitiveness the one edge
+and acquisitiveness the other (as certainly Rosalie's) is a sword
+double-edged that will cut through the tough shell and into the
+lively heart of anything. No more is required than to give the
+young mind a glimpse of the lively heart that is there. Rosalie's
+young mind was already beating with half-fledged wings against the
+shell about that side of life wherein, in her experience, (of her
+brothers, of Uncle Pyke, of Uncle Pyke's friends) men did the things
+that earned them livelihood and gave them independence. Along, by
+happy chance, buried in dust in the rectory study and found one
+holiday, came "Lombard Street" and Bagehot, and that was the book
+and Bagehot was the man to give pinions to those fledgling wings.
+She saw romance, and thrusted for it, in the business of countinghouses.
+It was fascinating to her beyond anything the discovery that money
+was not, as she had always supposed, a thing that you took with
+one hand and paid away, and lost, with the other. Not at all! It
+was a thing that, properly handled, you never lost. Enthralling!
+Thrilling! You invested it and it returned to you; you expended
+it and propped it up with fascinating things called sinking funds,
+and, although you had spent it, there it was coming back to you
+again! It was the most mysterious and wonderful commodity in the
+world. She got hold of that and she went on from that.
+
+The romance of business! That ships should go out across the seas with
+one cargo and sell it, not, in effect, for money, but for another
+and an entirely different cargo; that cheques passing between
+countries, and cheques circulating about the United Kingdom, should
+be traded off one against the other in magic conjuring palaces
+called Clearing Houses with the result that thousands of little
+streams merged into few great rivers and only differences need be
+paid; that money (heart and driving-force of all the mysteries)
+should have within itself the mysterious and astounding quality of
+ceaselessly reduplicating itself--"the only thing in the world,"
+as Rosalie quaintly put it to Miss Keggs--"the only thing m the
+world that people, business people, will take care of for you without
+charging you for storage or for trouble"--that these mysterious and
+extraordinary things should be thrilled Rosalie as the mysterious
+and extraordinary things of science or of nature or the mysterious
+and beautiful things of art or of literature or of music will thrill
+another.
+
+That natural bent of her mind! That Bagehot that ministered to
+her natural bent! Fascinated by Banks, fascinated by the Exchange,
+fascinated by the Pool of London, where, obedient to the behests
+of the counting-houses, floated the wealth that the countinghouses
+made, fascinated by these was Rosalie as maidens of her years
+commonly are fascinated by palaces, by the Tower and by the Abbey.
+Remember, it is not what their eyes see that fascinates these
+romantic young misses. A dolt can see the Tower walls and see no
+more than crumbling bricks and stone. It is what their minds see
+that fascinates the ardent creatures. Well, Rosalie's mind saw
+strange romance in countinghouses.
+
+That Bagehot!
+
+And then must be picked up--and were with time picked up--others
+of the magic man's enchantments. "Literary Studies," but she passed
+over that, the burning subject was not there. "Economic Studies";
+it much was there. "International Coinage." She read that! It approached
+the subject of a Universal Money and her thought was, "Why, what
+a splendid idea to have one coinage that would go everywhere!" And
+then, opening a new field, and yet a connected field and a field
+profoundly engrossing to her, "The English Constitution." How laws
+came; how laws worked; the mysteriousness (her word) within the
+Council chambers that produced governance as the mysteriousness
+within the countinghouses produced wealth! The mysterious quality
+within precedent and necessity and change that reproduced itself
+in laws as the mysterious quality within money caused money to
+reproduce itself in wealth; the romance of governance.
+
+It was like that that her interests were shaping.
+
+It was very easy, it was utterly delightful, to tell all this to
+Keggo. It was not at all easy, it was very terrible, to tell it
+before Uncle Pyke. It was appalling, it was terrific, to break to
+the house in Notting Hill that she desired to earn her living, not
+as a teacher, but in business--like men.
+
+It was at dinner at the glittering table in the splendid dining-room
+of the magnificent house in Notting Hill, Rosalie there on the
+half-term week-end of her last term, that the frightful thing was
+done. At dinner: Uncle Pyke Pounce bathing in his soup; beautiful
+Laetitia elegantly toying with hers; Aunt Belle beaming over her
+solid silver spoon at Rosalie. "Try that soup, dear child. It's
+delicious. My cook makes such delicious soups. Lady Houldsworth
+Hopper--Sir Humbo Houldsworth Hopper, you know he's in the India
+Office, you must have heard of him--was dining with us last week
+and said she had never tasted such delicious soup. It was the same
+as this. I asked cook specially to make it for you. Now next term,
+when you are one of the mistresses at Oakwood House and living at
+their table and you have soup, you'll be able to say--for you must
+speak up when you are with them, dear child, and not be shy--you'll
+be able to tell them what delicious soup you always get at your
+Uncle Colonel Pyke Pounce's. Be sure to mention your Uncle by name,
+Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., not just 'my uncle,' and that he was a
+great deal in India where he was entirely responsible for the laying
+of the Puttapong Railway and received an illuminated address from
+the Rajah of Puttapongpoo, such a fine old fellow, not being allowed
+of course to take a present, which you have seen many times hanging
+in his study in his fine house in Pilchester Square, Notting Hill
+(some of them are sure to have heard of Pilchester Square, though
+never visited there, of course); your uncle will show you the address
+again after dinner; that will be nice, won't it, dear? Won't you,
+Pyke?"
+
+(F-r-r-r-r-r-rup! from the splendid holder of the illuminated
+address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo, bathing in his soup.)
+
+"Be sure to speak up for yourself like that, dear child, and let
+them know who you are and that though you are poor and have to
+earn your living, you have wealthy relations (though of course we
+are only comfortably off and do not pretend to be rich) and are
+not at all like ordinary governesses. Be sure to, dear. There; now
+you've finished that soup and wasn't it delicious, just? You will
+have another helping, I know you will. A second helping of soup
+is not usual, dear, and Laetitia or any one at any of our parties
+would never take it, but it's quite different for you, and I do
+love to see you enjoy the nice food I get for you. More soup for
+Miss Aubyn, Parker."
+
+Now for it!
+
+"Aunt, I won't have any more soup. I won't really. It was delicious.
+Delicious, but really no more. Really. Aunt.... About the governesses
+there and being one of them. I wanted to say... Aunt, I don't want
+to be a pupil-teacher. Aunt..."
+
+Fr-r-r-r-rup! Frr-r-roosh! Woosh! Fr-r-r-roosh!
+
+It is the holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of
+Puttapongpoo most terribly and fear-strikingly struggling up out
+of his soup. "Don't want to be a pupil teacher? Wat d'ye mean? Wat
+d'ye mean?"
+
+"Why, Rosalie, darling!" It is the exquisitely beautiful daughter of
+the holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo.
+
+"Never mind them, Rosalie. The dear child! Why, how crimson she
+is. Let the dear child speak. What is it, dear child?" It is kind
+Aunt Belle.
+
+"Aunt Belle. Aunt Belle, I don't want to earn my living like that.
+I want to earn it like--like a man. I want to--well, it's hard to
+explain--to go to an office like a man--and have my pay every week,
+like a man--and have a chance to get on like men, like a man. I
+want to go into the City if I possibly could, or start in some way
+like going into the City. I know it sounds awful--telling it to
+you--but girls are doing it, a few. They're just secretaries and
+clerks, of course. They're just nothing, of course. But, oh, it's
+something, and I do want it so. To have office hours and a--a
+desk--and a--an employer and be--be like men. I don't mean, I
+don't mean a bit, imitate men like all that talk there is now about
+imitating men. I hate women in stiff collars and shirts and ties
+and mannishness like that; and indeed I hate--I dislike men--I
+can't stand them, not in that way, if you understand what I mean--"
+
+".Rosalie!" (Laetitia.)
+
+"Oh, Laetitia, oh, Aunt Belle, I'm only saying that to show I don't
+mean I want to be--. It is so fearfully difficult to explain, this.
+But Aunt, you do see what I am trying to mean. It's just a man's
+work that I mean because I'd love it and because I don't see why--.
+And it's just that particular kind of work--in the City. Because
+I believe, I do believe, I would be sharp and good at that work.
+Figures and things. I love that. I'm quick at that, very quick.
+And I've read heaps about it--about business I mean--about--"
+
+Uncle Pyke Pounce. Uncle Pyke Pounce, holding his breath because he
+is holding his exasperation as one holds one's breath in performance
+of a delicate task. Uncle Pyke Pounce crimson, purply blotched,
+infuriated, kept from his food, blowing up at last at the parlour-maid:
+"Bring in the next course! Bring in the next course! Watyer staring
+at? Watyer waiting for? Watyer listening to? Rubbish. Pack of
+rubbish."
+
+The parlour-maid flies out on the gust of the explosion. Rosalie
+finishes her sentence while the gust inflates again.
+
+"Read heaps about it--about business--about trade and finance and
+that. It fascinates me."
+
+The gust explodes at her.
+
+"Wat d'yer mean read about it? Read about what?"
+
+"Uncle, about money, about finance and things. I know it's
+extraordinary I should like such things. But I do. I can't tell
+why. It's like--like a romance to me, all about money and how it
+is made and managed. There's a book I found in father's study at
+home. 'Lombard Street' by Bagehot. That's all about it, isn't it?
+I can't tell you how I have read it and reread it."
+
+"Never heard of it. 'Lombard Street?' Bagehot? Who's Bagehot?"
+
+"I think he was a banker, Uncle."
+
+"I think he was a fool!"
+
+It comes out of the red and swollen face of the holder of the
+illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo like a plum-stone
+spat at her across the table. Rosalie blinked. These beastly men!
+Violent, vulgar, fat, rude beasts! Uncle Pyke the worst of them!
+But she came back bravely from her flinch. "If he wasn't a banker,
+he knew all about banking. Oh, that's what I would be more than
+anything--that's what I do want to be--a banker--in a bank!"
+
+The holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo
+as if, having expectorated the plum-stone, he desired to expectorate
+also the taste thereof, spat out an obscene sound of contempt and
+disgust. "Fah! I say the man, whoever he was, was a fool. And I
+say this, Miss. I don't often speak sharply, but I say that I think
+I know another fool--a little fool--at this table. Pah! Enough of
+it! What's this? Trout?"
+
+Aunt Belle to the rescue! If Uncle Pyke and Aunt Belle had kept
+house in Seven Dials instead of Notting Hill, Uncle Pyke would
+have beaten Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle would have taken the blows
+without flinching and then have wheedled Uncle Pyke with drops of
+gin. As it was, Uncle Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage
+towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle's way with him--as with all
+combative men--was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff
+and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs
+fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing
+away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a
+retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, either to eat or sleep.
+
+Aunt Belle had blinked, as Rosalie had blinked, at that horrible
+epithet "Little fool!" across the table. The lips that uttered
+it were immediately stuffed with trout and Aunt Belle immediately
+rushed in in her rallying way to the rescue. "Why, you great, big
+stupid Uncle Pyke!" cried Aunt Belle vivaciously. "It's you who
+don't know what you're talking about, you unkind old thing, you.
+Why, many, many girls, quite nice girls, are going into business
+now and being secretaries and things and doing very, very well
+indeed. Why, I declare it would do you good to have a lady secretary
+yourself in that big, dusty office of yours in the City, never
+dusted from one year's end to another, I'm sure! Laetitia, wouldn't
+it do your father good, the cross, grumpy old thing? Give your
+master some more of the sauce, Parker. Isn't that trout delicate
+and nice, Pyke? Trout for a pike! And I'm sure very like a nasty,
+savage old pike the way you tried to gobble up poor Rosalie, the
+dear child. Now, Rosalie, dear child, I think that's a very, very
+good idea of yours to go into business. I think it's a splendid
+idea, and more and more quite nice girls will soon be doing it. Now
+we'll just see what we can do and we'll make that cross old uncle
+help and ask all his cross old friends in the City, just to punish
+him. A young Lady Clerk, or a young Lady Secretary! Now I think
+that's the very, very thing for you. Just the thing, and a dear,
+clever child to think of it. Yes!"
+
+Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Victory through Aunt Belle! Accomplishment!
+A career like a man! Aunt Belle had said it and Aunt Belle would
+do it! A career like a man! Oh, ecstatic joy! "Lombard Street" had
+been brought with her in her week-end suitcase. Directly she could
+get to bed she rushed up to it and took it out and read, and read.
+It was all underlined. She underlined it more that happy, happy
+night!
+
+Ah, never underline a book till you are forty. Never memorialise
+what you were, your lovely innocence, your generous heart, your
+ardent hopes, lest the memorial be found one day by what you have
+become. Rosalie, finding that "Lombard Street," unearthed from
+lumber, in long after years, turned over the pages and from the
+pages ghosts rushed up and filled the room, and filled the air,
+and filled her heart, and filled her eyes; and she rent the book
+across its perished binding and pushed it from her with both her
+hands on to the fire and on to the flames in the fire.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+
+
+Incredibly soon, so stealthy swift is time, came this last term of
+Rosalie's at the Sultana's. Time does not play an open game. It's
+of the cloak and dagger sort. It stalks and pounces. Rosalie was
+astonished to think she was leaving; and now the time had come she
+was sorry to be going. Not very sorry; very excited; but having
+just enough regret to realise, on looking back, that she had been
+very happy at school and to realise, actively, happiness in this
+last term. One knows what it is. It's always like that. One always
+was happy; one so seldom is. Happiness to be realised needs faint
+perception of sadness as needs the egg the touch of salt to manifest
+its flavour. Flashes of entertainment may enliven the most wretched
+of us; but that's pleasure; that's not happiness. One comes to
+know the only true and ideal happiness is happiness tinctured with
+faintest, vaguest hint of tears. It is peace; and who knows peace
+that has not come to it through storm, or knoweth storm ahead, or
+in storm past hath not lost one that would have shared this peace?
+
+So that girl's last term was (in her words) "tremendously jolly."
+She was just eighteen, and she was leaving, and responsive to this
+the harness of the school was drawn off her as at the paddock gate
+the headstall from a colt. She was out of lessons. She did some
+teaching of the younger girls. She was on terms with the mistresses.
+She had the run of Keggo's room.
+
+Such talks in Keggo's room.... She was out from the cove of
+childhood; she was into the bay of youth; breasting towards the
+sea of womanhood (that sea that's sailed by stars and by no chart);
+and she was encountering tides that come to young mariners to perplex
+them and Keggo could talk about such things with the experience
+that so enraptures young mariners and of which young mariners are
+at the same time so confidently contemptuous, so superiorly sceptical.
+Nearer to press the simile, youth at the feet of experience is as
+one, experienced, climbing a mountain with the young thing panting
+behind. "Go on! Go on!" pants the growing young thing. "This is
+ripping. Go on. Show the way. But I don't want your hand. I can
+do it easily by myself--better." And one evening while Rosalie
+stumblingly explained, and eagerly received, and sceptically doubted,
+"But look here, Keggo," she cried, and stopped and blushed, abashed
+at her use of the nickname.
+
+Miss Keggs laughed. "Don't mind, Rosalie. Call me Keggo. I like
+it. It's much more friendly. I'm very fond of you, Rosalie."
+
+They were by the oil stove, Miss Keggs in her wicker armchair,
+Rosalie on the floor, her back propped against Miss Keggs's knees.
+One of Miss Keggs's hands was on Rosalie's shoulder and she moved
+it to touch the girl's face. "Are you fond of me, Rosalie?"
+
+Rosalie turned towards her and spoke impulsively. "Oh, awfully--Keggo."
+
+The woman stooped and kissed the growing young thing, hugging her
+strongly, pressing her lips upon the lips of Rosalie with a great
+intensity. "Oh, I shall be sorry when you go, Rosalie."
+
+"We can still be friends, Keggo dear."
+
+Miss Keggs shook her head. "Ships that pass in the night."
+
+"O Keggo!"
+
+Miss Keggs smiled, a wintry smile. "O Rosalie!" she mimicked. She
+sighed. "Oh, my dear, it's true--true! Don't you remember how the
+lines go--
+
+
+  'Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
+  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.'
+
+
+Just remember that in a few years. You'll hail again perhaps.
+'O Keggo!' Or I--it is more likely--wilt hail 'O Rosalie!' Just
+remember it then." Her hand came down to Rosalie and Rosalie took
+it. It was so cold; and on her face a strained and beaten look as
+though hand and face belonged to one that stood most chilled and
+storm-beat upon the bridge, peering through the storm. Her fingers
+made no motion responsive to Rosalie's warm touch. She said strangely,
+as though it was to herself she spoke, "Does it mean anything to
+you, Rosalie, a vision like that? Can you see a black and violent
+night and a ship going by full speed, and one labouring, and through
+the wind and the blackness a hail.--and gone, and the wreck left
+foundering?"
+
+Ah, that most generous and quickly moved and loving-Rosalie--then!
+How she twisted to her knees and stretched her arms about that
+poor Keggo, sitting there--so drooped! How readily into her eyes
+her young and warm and ardent sympathies pressed the tears, their
+flowers! How warm her words? How warmly spoken! "O Keggo! Keggo,
+dear! Keggo, why do you talk like that? How can you? After all
+the kindness you've shown me, accusing me that I'll forget and not
+mind. Keggo, you shan't. You mustn't."
+
+Then Keggo responded, catching her arms about Rosalie and straining
+Rosalie to her as though here was some cable to hold against the
+driving sea. "O Rosalie!"
+
+And after a little Rosalie said, "You won't again say I ever shall
+forget, or hail and pass by. Oh, that was cruel, Keggo!"
+
+Keggo was gently crying. "Natural. Natural."
+
+"Unnatural. Horrible. And you? Why do you say such things about
+yourself? You didn't mean it? It's nothing? How can you ever be a
+wreck, foundering?"
+
+Keggo dried her eyes and by her voice seemed to put those things right
+away. "No, nothing. Of course not. Darling girl, only this--you're
+young--young and so of course you are going by full sail as young
+things do. Full sail! O happy ship! Rosalie, go on telling. Go on
+asking. I love it, Rosalie."
+
+She was always "Keggo" after that; and the things that Rosalie told
+and asked!
+
+Such things! It is to be seen that now there were bursting into
+blossom out of bud within that Rosalie those seeds planted in
+her by the extraordinary ideas of her childhood. About men. First
+and always predominating, about men as compared with women--their
+wonder, their power, their importance, their infinite superiority;
+then about men in their relations with women--their rather grand
+and noisy ways that made Rosalie blink; their interfering presence
+that spoilt lessons and spoilt walks; those sinister attributes of
+theirs, arising somehow out of their freedom to do as they liked
+in the world, that somehow left the world very hard for women.
+Grotesque ideas, but masterful ideas, masterfully shaping the child
+mind wherein they germinated; burrowing in clutchy roots; pressing
+up in strong young saplings. Agreed the child is father of the man,
+but much more the girl is mother of the woman. It is the man's part
+to sow and ride away; conception is the woman's office and that
+which she receives she tends to cherish and incorporate within
+her. Of her body that function is her glory; of her mind it is her
+millstone. Man always rides away, a tent dweller and an Arab, with
+a horse and with the plains about him; woman is a dweller in a city
+with a wall, a house dweller, storing her possessions about her in
+her house, abiding with them, not to be sundered from them.
+
+So with that Rosalie. Those childhood ideas of hers were grotesque
+ideas but she had received them into her house and they remained
+with her, shorn of their grotesqueness, as garish furniture may
+be upholstered in a new pattern, but tincturing her life as the
+appointments of a room will influence the mood of one that sits
+therein. Father owned the world--all males had proprietorship in the
+world under father--all men were worshipful and giants and genii.
+That was the established perception and those its earliest images. The
+perception remained, deepening, changing only in hue, as a viscid
+liquid solidifies and darkens in a vessel over the fire. It remained,
+persisted. Time but steadied the focus as the wise oculist, seeking
+for his patient the perfect image, drops lenses in the frame through
+which the vision chart is viewed. In a little the perfect image is
+found. There was that Rosalie, come to maidenhood, come to the dizzy
+edge of leaving school, with the perfect image of her persistent
+obsession; with the belief no longer that men were magicians
+having the world for their washpot and women for their footstool,
+but unquestionably that they "had a better time" than women and
+that they secured this "better time" by virtue of their independence.
+
+"And, Keggo," (she is explaining it) "I'm going to be like that.
+I'm going to be what a man can be. Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't
+a woman?" She paused and then went on. "Why, that's the thing that's
+been with me all my life, ever since I can remember. I've always
+known that men were the creatures. Always. Since I was so high. Oh,
+I used to have the most ridiculous ideas about them. You'd scream,
+Keggo. And I've always had the same attitude towards them--towards
+them as contrasted with women, I mean. First awe, then envy, then,
+since I've been growing up here, just as having a desirable position
+in life, as having the desirable position in life, independence,
+a career, work, freedom, a goal--yes, and a goal that's always
+and always a little bit in front of you, always something better.
+That's the thing. That's the thing, Keggo. Just look at the other
+side. Take a case in point. Take my painful cousin, Laetitia, sweet
+but in lots of ways very painful. What's her goal? A good match!
+A good match! Did you ever hear anything so futile and sickening?
+Sickening in itself, but I'll tell you what's really sickening
+about it--why, that she'll get it--get her goal and then it's done,
+over, finished, won. Settle down then and get fat. Oh, I don't want
+a goal I can win. I want a goal I can't win. One that's always just
+in front."
+
+She suddenly realised the intensity of her voice and laughed and
+shook her head sideways and back. She had just recently put her hair
+up and it still felt funny and tight and the laugh and the shake
+eased away the tightness of voice and of hair. She said thoughtfully,
+"You know, I believe I'm rather like a man in many ways, in points
+of view. It's through always thinking them better, I daresay. The
+ideas I've had about them!" and she laughed again. She said slowly,
+"Though mind you, Keggo, they are better in many ways. They can get
+away from things. They don't stick about on one thing. And they're
+violent, not fussing. When they're angry they bawl and hit and it's
+over and they forget it. They don't just nag on and on. Oh, yes,
+they're better."
+
+She extended her palms to the oil flame, and watching the
+X-ray-like effects of the light and shadow upon her fingers, she
+added indifferently, as one idly letting drop a remark requiring
+no comment, negligently with the voice of one saying "Tomorrow is
+Tuesday," or "It's mutton today,"--"Of course they're beasts," she
+added.
+
+"Of course they're beasts." It was the adjusted image to which she
+had brought that other perception of men which, running parallel
+with the perception of their superior position, had permeated her
+childhood years.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+
+
+She's left the school! She's living in the splendid house in
+Pilchester Square looking for a post!
+
+She's found a post! She's private secretary to Mr. Simcox!
+
+She's left the splendid house in Pilchester Square! She's living an
+independent life! She's going to Mr. Simcox's office, her office,
+every day, just like a man! She's living on her own salary in a
+boarding house in Bayswater!
+
+What jumps! One clutches, as at flying papers in a whirlwind, at
+a stable moment in which to pin her down and describe her as she
+jumps. One can't. The thing's too breathless. It's a maelstrom.
+It's an earthquake. It's a deluge. It's a boiling pot. It's youth.
+What it must be to live it! One thing pouring on to another so that
+it's impossible anywhere to pick hold of a bit that isn't changing
+into something else even as it is examined. That's youth all over.
+Always and all the time all change. What it must be to live it!
+
+What it must be! Why, when youth comes bursting out of tutelage
+there's not a stable thing beneath its feet nor above its head
+a sky that stays the same for two hours together! Every stride's
+a stepping-stone that tilts and throws you; every dawn a sudden
+midnight even while it breaks, and every night a blinding brilliance
+when it's darkest. New faces, new places, new dresses, new dishes;
+new foes, new friends; new tasks, new triumphs; never a pause,
+never a platform; every day a year and every year a day--not life
+on a firm round world but life in the heart of a whirling avalanche.
+How youth can live it! And all the time, all the time while poor,
+dear youth is hurtling through it, there's age, instead of streaming
+sympathy like oil upon those boiling waters, standing in slippered
+safety, in buttoned dignity, in obese repose, bawling at tumbling
+youth, "Why can't you settle down! Why can't you settle down! Why
+do you behave like that? Why can't you do as I do? Why can't you be
+like your wise and sober Uncle Forty? Or like your good and earnest
+Auntie Fifty? Why can't you behave like your pious grandmother?
+Why can't you imitate your noble grandfather? Oh, grrrr-r, why
+can't you, you impious, unnatural, ill-mannered, irresponsive,
+irresponsible exasperating young nuisance, you!" Is it any wonder
+poor youth bawls back, or feels and behaves like bawling back, "How
+to goodness can I behave like my infernal uncle or my maddening
+aunt when I'm whirling along head over heels in the middle of a
+roaring avalanche?"
+
+Oh, poor youth, that all have lived but none remembers!
+
+One clings, faut au mieux, to the intention to tell of her life only
+the things in her life that contributed to her record, as records
+are judged. There shall be enormous omissions. They shall be excused
+by vital insertions.
+
+She shall be glimpsed, first, in the splendid house in Pilchester
+Square, in the desperate business that getting a place for a woman
+in a business house was when women were in business houses far
+more rare than are silk hats in the City in 1922. It was desperate.
+Uncle Pyke and Uncle Pyke's friends were the only channel of
+opportunity; and Uncle Pyke and Uncle Pyke's friends refused to
+be a channel of opportunity. They had never heard of such a thing
+and they desired to bathe in their soup and smack over their wine
+and not be troubled with such a thing.
+
+Aunt Belle rallied them and baited them and told them they were "great
+big grumpy things"; and Aunt Belle, in her crowded drawing-room,
+loved talking about the search for work and did talk about it. "Has
+to earn her own living," Aunt Belle would chatter, "and is going
+into business! Oh, yes, ever so many girls who have to earn their
+own living are going into business now. She'll wear a nice tailormade
+coat and skirt and carry a little satchel and flick about on the
+tops of buses, in the City at nine and out again at six and a nice
+plain wholesome lunch with a glass of milk in a tea shop. Oh, it's
+wonderful what girls who have to earn their own living do nowadays.
+Quite right, you know. Quite right, (for them). Come over here,
+Rosalie. Come over here, dear child, and tell Mrs. Roodle-Hoops
+what you are going to do. The dear child!"
+
+But nothing done.
+
+Just that glimpse and then comes Mr. Simcox.
+
+Mr. Simcox was first met by Rosalie while walking with Aunt Belle
+and beautiful cousin Laetitia in the Cromwell Road. He came along
+carrying a letter in his hand with the obvious air of one who will
+forget to post it if he puts it in his pocket and probably will
+forget to do so in any case. He was as obviously "a man of about
+fifty-six" that curiously precise figure, neither a ten nor a
+five, always used for men who look as Mr. Simcox looked and always
+continued to look while Rosalie knew him, and probably always had
+looked. Men of "about fifty-six"--one never says "about thirty-six"
+or "about sixty-six"; it would be "about thirty-five" or "about
+seventy"--men of "about fifty-six" are almost certainly born at
+that age and with that appearance and they seem to continue in it
+to their graves.
+
+Mr. Simcox was like that, and was short and had two little bunchy
+grey whiskers, and wore always a pepper and salt jacket suit,
+unbuttoned, the pockets of which always bulged and the skirts of
+which, containing the pockets, always swayed and flapped. When he
+talked he was always talking--if that is understood--and when he
+was busy he was always frantically busy and looking at the clock
+or at his watch as if it were going to explode at a certain rapidly
+approaching hour and he must at all costs be through with what he
+was doing before it did explode. He talked in very rapid jerks,
+always seeming to be about to come to rest and then instantaneously
+bounding off again, rather like a man bounding along stepping-stones,
+red-hot stepping-stones that each time burnt his feet and set him
+flying off again.
+
+He had been in the Bombay house of a firm of indigo merchants
+and there had known Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke. He had retired and
+settled in London and he now came very briskly up to Aunt Belle,
+to Rosalie and to beautiful Laetitia, greeting them and bursting
+into full stream of chatter while he was yet some distance away;
+and, having been introduced to Rosalie and snatched at her hand
+precisely as if doing so while shooting in midair between one red-hot
+stepping-stone and the next, whizzed presently to "I really came
+out to post a letter" and flapped the letter in the air as if it
+were a bothersome thing stuck to his fingers and refusing absolutely
+to be stuffed into a post-box.
+
+"Why, there's a pillar-box just there; you've just passed it,"
+cried Rosalie.
+
+"Why, so there is!" exclaimed Mr. Simcox, jumping round to stare
+at the pillar-box as if it had stretched out an arm and given him
+a sudden punch in the back, and then spinning towards Rosalie and
+staring at her rather as if he suspected her of having put the
+pillar-box there while he was not looking; and while Mr. Simcox
+was so exclaiming and so doing Rosalie had said, "Do let me just
+post it for you. Do let me," and had snapped the obstinate letter
+from his fingers, and posted it and was back again smiling at Mr.
+Simcox, whom she rather liked and who reminded her very much of a
+jack-in-the-box.
+
+Indeed with his quick ways, his shortness, his bushy little grey
+whiskers and his pepper and salt suit with its flapping pockets,
+Mr. Simcox was very like one of those funny little jack-in-the-boxes
+they used to sell. He said to her, regarding her with very apparent
+pleasure and esteem, "Well, that's very nice of you. That really
+is very nice of you. And it's most wonderful. It is indeed. Do you
+know, I must have walked more than a mile looking for a letter-box
+and I daresay I should have walked another mile and then forgotten
+it and taken the letter home again." He addressed Aunt Belle: "It's
+a most astonishing thing, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, but I cannot post a
+letter. I positively cannot post a single letter. When I say single,
+I do not mean I can post no letter at all. No, no. Far from it.
+I mean I can post no letter singly, by itself, solus. My daily
+correspondence, my office batch, I take out in a bundle, perhaps in
+a table basket. That is simple. But a single letter--as you see, a
+clever young lady like this has to find a box for me or I might carry
+the thing for days together. Astonishing that, you know. Astonishing,
+annoying, and mind you, sometimes serious and embarrassing."
+
+"Why, you busy, busy person, you!" cried Aunt Belle with her
+customary air towards a man of shaking her finger at him. "You
+very busy person! Fancy a basket full of correspondence! Why what
+a heap you must have!"
+
+Mr. Simcox said he had indeed a heap. "Sometimes I think more than
+I can manage."
+
+"Indeed," agreed Aunt Belle, "you don't seem to have much time to
+spare. Why, I haven't seen you in my drawing-room for quite a month
+("You busy little creature, you," expressed without being stated).
+I expect you're getting very rich and disagreeable." ("You rich
+little rascal, you!")
+
+Mr. Simcox declared that as to that his business wasn't one to get
+rich at. "In no sense. Oh, no, in no sense. It keeps me occupied.
+It gives me an interest. That's all. No more than that." As to Mrs.
+Pyke Pounce's delightful drawing-room, most certainly he had been
+there less than a month ago and most certainly he would present
+himself again on the very next opportunity. To-morrow, was it? He
+would without fail present himself there tomorrow, "and I hope,"
+said Mr. Simcox, taking his leave, "I hope I may have the pleasure
+of seeing my postmistress there again." He smiled very cordially at
+Rosalie and went flapping away up the street at the pace and with
+the air, not of one who had come out to post a letter and had posted
+it, but of one who had come out to post a letter, had dropped it,
+and was flying back to look for it.
+
+"Oh, isn't he an ugly little monster!" cried Aunt Belle, resuming
+the walk.
+
+"But I think he's nice," said Rosalie. "What is his business, Aunt
+Belle?"
+
+Aunt Belle hadn't an idea. "He's an agent," said Aunt Belle, "but
+an agent for what I'm sure I don't know. He's a very mysterious,
+fussy, funny little person. We knew him in Bombay where he had a
+very good position, but he retired and what he does now I'm sure
+I can't say. But he's very busy. You heard him say how busy he is.
+Rosalie, he might know of something for you. We'll ask him, dear
+child. The funny, ugly little monster! We'll ask him. He might
+help."
+
+He did help. A very short while afterwards, Rosalie received the
+appointment of Private Secretary to Mr. Simcox; twenty-five shillings
+a week; one pound five shillings a week! Office hours ten to five!
+Saturdays ten to one! Holiday a fortnight a year! A man's work! A
+man's weekly salary! A man's office hours! The ecstasy of it! The
+ecstasy!
+
+The matter with Mr. Simcox was that, in India a man of affairs,
+in England he found himself a man of no affairs and a man who had
+"lost touch." On a leave from the Bombay house of the indigo firm
+he had been prevailed upon by his mother and his maiden sister
+to remain at home and look after them and he had done it and gone
+on doing it, and they had died and he had never married, and he
+had now no relatives, and by this and by that (as he told Rosalie
+early in her installation) he had dropped out of friendships and,
+as he expressed it "lost touch." He owned and occupied one of those
+enormous houses in Bayswater. It had been his mother's and he lived
+on in it after her death and the death of his sister, alone with a
+housekeeper. The housekeeper resided in the vast catacombs of the
+basement of the enormous house; Mr. Simcox resided in the immense
+reception rooms, miles above, of the first floor; the three suites
+above him, scowling gloomily across a square at the twin mausoleums
+opposite, were unoccupied and un-visited; on the first floor Mr.
+Simcox had his office. The business done in this office, which
+Rosalie was now to assist, and why it was done, was in this wise
+and was thus explained to Rosalie.
+
+Mr. Simcox, more than ever dropped out and more than ever having
+lost touch after the deaths of his sister and mother, found himself
+irked more than anything else by the absence of correspondence.
+He had been accustomed in India to a big receipt of letters--a big
+dhak, as he called it, using the Hindustani word--now he received
+no letters at all; and he told Rosalie that when you are in the
+habit of getting a regular daily post, its gradual falling off and
+then its complete cessation is one of the most melancholy things
+that can befall a man. A nice bunch of letters in the morning, he
+said, is like a cold bath to a young man, a stimulant and an appetiser;
+and a similar packet by the night delivery is an entertainment to
+look forward to from sunset till it arrives and the finest possible
+digestive upon which to go to bed. Mr. Simcox found himself cut off
+from both these necessities of a congenial life and it depressed
+him beyond conception. Dressing in the morning he would hear the
+postman come splendidly rat tatting along the square and would
+hold his breath for that glorious thunder to come echoing up from
+his own front door--and it never did. Only the sound of the footsteps
+came, hurrying past--always.
+
+Set to his solitary dinner in the evening, again would come along
+that glorious, reverberating music, and again Mr. Simcox would
+hold his breath as it approached and again--! Oh, particularly in
+the winter, it was awful, Mr. Simcox told Rosalie. Awful; she wouldn't
+believe how awful it was. In the winter, in the dark nights, there
+is, Mr. Simcox said, about the sound of the postman banging along
+the doors something that is the sheer essence of all the mystery,
+and all the poetry, and all the life, and all the comfort, and all
+the light and all the warmth in the world. Often on winter nights
+Mr. Simcox would get up quickly from the table (He couldn't help
+it) and go tiptoe (Why tiptoe? He didn't know. You had to. It was
+the mystery and the aching atmosphere of the thing) tiptoe across
+the room to the window, and draw an inch of the heavy curtain and
+peer out into the darkness and towards the music. There would be
+the little round gleam of the postman's lantern, bobbing along as
+he hurried. And flick! it was gone into a doorway, and rat-tat,
+flick, and there it was again--coming! Flick, rat-tat! Flick,
+flick, rat-tat! Coming, coming! Growing larger, growing brighter,
+growing louder! Next door now. They always get it next door. Flick,
+rat-tat! What a crasher! You can feel it echo! Flick! Now then!
+Now then! How it gleams! He's stopped! He's looking at his letters!
+He's coming in! He is--ah, he's passed; he's gone; it's over;
+nothing... nothing for here.... Rat-tat! That's next door. The party
+wall shakes. The lustres on the mantelpiece shake. Mr. Simcox's
+hands shake. He sits down, pushes his plate away....
+
+It is absurd; it is ridiculous, of course it is; but it was pathetic,
+it was moving, as it was received from Mr. Simcox by that young
+and most warm-hearted Rosalie. Her eyes positively were caused to
+blink as she listened. She had an exact vision of that funny little
+jack-in-the-box figure up from the table and tiptoeing across the
+enormous dining room in his little pepper and salt suit with the
+pockets swaying, not flapping, as he trod along, and opening that
+inch of the heavy curtain and pressing out his gaze through the
+black window pane, and watching the gleam and the flick and then
+the crash and the gleam again, and then holding his breath and
+hearing his heart go thump, and then dropping the curtain, and
+back again, with his hands shaking a little and hearing the lustres
+tinkle....
+
+Yes, very moving to that Rosalie in her youth and warmth. She had
+actually to touch her nose (high up, between her eyes) with her
+handkerchief and she said, "Oh, Mr. Simcox.... Yes, and then what?"
+
+"Then what? Ah! 'Then what' is this." They were seated in Mr.
+Simcox's great office on the ground floor. The office of a man
+of many affairs. A very large writing table furnished with every
+conceivable facility for writing, not only note papers and envelopes
+racked up in half a dozen sizes, but sealing waxes in several
+hues, labels, string, "In" basket, "Out" basket, "Pending Decision"
+basket, all sorts of pens, all sorts of pencils, wafers, clips,
+scales, letter weights, rulers--the table obviously of a man to
+whom correspondence was a devotional, an engrossing, an exact art,
+and an art practised on an expansive, an impressive, and a lordly
+scale. There were also in the office a very large plain table on
+which were spread newspapers, a basket containing clippings from
+newspapers, an immense blue chalk for marking newspapers and a very
+long, also a very short, pair of scissors for cutting out clippings
+from newspapers. A range of filing cabinets stood against one wall;
+a library of directories and catalogues occupied shelves against
+another wall.
+
+"'Then what' is this," said Mr. Simcox, indicating these impressive
+appointments of the room with a wave of his hand. "You ask me 'then
+what?' 'Then what' is all this. 'Then what' has grown now to be
+you. I'll tell you."
+
+It was this--the oddest, most eccentric notion (not that Rosalie
+it thought so). Mr. Simcox, cut off from letters, had determined
+that he must get letters. He would get letters. If the postman
+would not come of himself (so to speak) then he must be forced to
+come. And Mr. Simcox set about forcing him to come by answering
+advertisements. Not employment advertisements; no; the advertisements
+to which Mr. Simcox re-plied were the advertisements that offered
+to send you something for nothing--that implored you to permit them
+to send you something for nothing. They are common objects of the
+periodical press. Every paper is stuffed with them. "Write for free
+samples." "Catalogues." "Trial packet sent post free on application."
+"Write for our beautifully illustrated art brochure." "Descriptive
+booklet by return." "Write for full particulars." "Free sample bottle
+sufficient for seven days' trial." "Approval gladly. Postpaid."
+"Plans and particulars of the sole agents." "Superbly printed art
+volume on receipt of postcard."
+
+The advertisement columns of every paper are stuffed with them
+and soon the letter-box of Mr. Simcox was stuffed with them. The
+postman who never stopped at Mr. Simcox's house now never missed
+Mr. Simcox's house. He went on a lighter and a brisker man after
+having dealt with Mr. Simcox's house. The agitation with which his
+approach was heard was now exchanged for a superb confidence as his
+approach was heard. The deliveries that for Mr. Simcox had never
+been deliveries were now, not deliveries, but avalanches. They
+roared into the letter-box of Mr. Simcox. They cascaded upon the
+floor of the hall of Mr. Simcox.
+
+A mail thus composed does not perhaps sound interesting. Mr. Simcox,
+once he had got into the full swing of the thing, discovered it to
+be profoundly and exhaustively interesting. It possessed in the highest
+degree the two primary essentials of a really good mail,--surprise
+and variety. There would always be two or three fascinating little
+parcels, there would always be two or three handsome packets, there
+would always be two or three imposing looking letters. No common
+correspondence could possibly have had the number of attractively
+boxed gifts, the amount of handsomely printed literary and il-lustrated
+matter, and certainly not the unfailing persistency of flow, that
+constituted the correspondence of Mr. Simcox.
+
+The mine once discovered proved to be a mine inexhaustible and
+containing lodes or galleries of new and unsuspected wealth. Mr.
+Simcox took in but two daily papers, and two penny weekly papers,
+and they might well have sufficed. But an appetite whetted and an
+eye opened they did not suffice. There thundered from the Bayswater
+free library a positive babel of cries from advertisers in the score
+of journals there displayed, howling for Mr. Simcox graciously to
+permit them to contribute their toll to his letter-box; and there
+were at the news agents periodicals catering for every specialised
+class of the community and falling over themselves to put before
+Mr. Simcox the full range of the mysteries, the luxuries and
+the necessities of every trade and profession and pursuit, from
+shipbuilding to cycling and from ironmongery to the ownership of
+castles, moors, steam yachts and salmon fisheries.
+
+Mr. Simcox, entirely happy, one of the busiest men that might be found
+in the metropolis, struck out new lines. Hitherto he had received
+his correspondence interestedly and pleasurably but passively. He
+began to take it up actively and sharply. He began to write back,
+either graciously approving or very sharply criticising his samples,
+his specimens and his free trials; and the advertisers responded
+voluminously, either abjectly with regret and enclosing further
+samples for Mr. Simcox's esteemed trial, or abjectly with delight
+and soliciting the very great favour of utilising Mr. Simcox's
+esteemed letter for publicity purposes. This, however, Mr. Simcox,
+courteously but firmly, invariably refused to permit.
+
+The engagement of Rosalie was a development of Mr. Simcox's hobby as
+natural as the development of any other hobby from rabbit breeding
+to china collecting. The craze intensifies, the scope is enlarged. To
+have a secretary made Mr. Simcox's mail and the work that produced
+his mail even more real than already it had become to him. Following
+up the personal touch that had been discovered by the criticism of
+samples, Mr. Simcox had opened up a line that produced the personal
+touch in most intimate degree: personal touch with schools and
+with insurance companies. He created for himself sons, daughters,
+nephews, nieces, wards. He endowed them, severally, with ages,
+with backwardness, with brilliancy, with robustness, with delicacy,
+with qualities that were immature and required development, with
+absence of qualities that were desirable and required implanting,
+with unfortunate tendency to qualities that were undesirable and
+needed repression and nipping in the bud. He placed these children,
+thus handicapped or endowed, before the principals of selected
+schools; he desired that terms and full particulars might be placed
+before him to assist him in the anxious task of right selection.
+They were placed before him. "Your backward nephew Robin" (to take
+a single example) engaged the personal attention of preparatory
+schoolmasters from Devonshire to Cumberland and from Norfolk to
+Carnarvon. Similarly with insurance companies. Again dependents and
+friends were created, by the dozen, by Mr. Simcox. Male and female
+created he them, cumbered with all imaginable risks, and darkly
+brooding upon all manner of contingencies; and male and female,
+cumbered and perplexed, they were studied and advised upon by
+insurance companies earnest beyond measure to show Mr. Simcox what
+astounding and unparalleled benefits could be obtained for them.
+
+At the time when Rosalie joined him, Mr. Simcox's attention was in
+much greatest proportion devoted to this development of his pursuit.
+Under the instruction of a friend, long since dropped out and
+lost, who had held a considerable position in a leading assurance
+company, he had acquired a sound working knowledge of the principles
+and mysteries of insurance. The subject had greatly interested
+him. In the phrase he used to Rosalie he had "taken it up"; and in
+the phrase that so often sequels and rounds off a thing suddenly
+"taken up" he had suddenly "dropped it." He now, by way of the new
+development of his correspondence, approached it again. It received
+him as a former habitation receives a returned native. Mr. Simcox
+(if the metaphor may be pursued) roamed all about the familiar
+rooms and corridors of the house of the principles and mysteries
+of insurance. His knowledge of its possibilities enabled him to
+develop an astonishing ingenuity in creating cases ripe and yearning
+for the benefits of provision against contingencies, and as he very
+easily was able to prove to Rosalie, and found immense delight in
+proving, he had under his finger, that is to say in his exquisitely
+arranged filing cabinets, also in his head, a range of insurance
+companies' literature which enabled him to work out for any conceivable
+case the most suitable office or offices and the finest possible
+cover for his risks. "Different companies specialize," said Mr.
+Simcox, "in different classes of risk. A man should no more walk
+into one of the leading offices just because it happens to be one
+of the leading offices and there take out his policy or policies
+than he should walk into and take for occupation the first vacant
+house he sees, merely because it is, as a house, a good house. It
+may be a most excellent house but it may not be in the least the
+house most suitable to his requirements."
+
+Rosalie nodded intelligently. "But how is a man to find out, Mr.
+Simcox?"
+
+"Why, I suppose only by going round to every company and choosing the
+best, just as I make out and send around these cases of mine. But
+of course no one does that--the trouble for one thing, and ignorance
+for another, and inability to realise their real requirements and
+to state them clearly if they do realise them for a third. That's
+what it is."
+
+Rosalie's intelligent nodding had not ceased. She had a trick, when
+Mr. Simcox was explaining things to her, of maintaining, with eyes
+fixed widely upon him, a slow, affirmative movement of her head
+rather as though she were some engine, and her head the dial,
+absorbing power from a flow of energy. The dial never indicated
+repletion. Mr. Simcox delighted to talk to Rosalie, to watch
+that grave movement of her head, and to hear the short occasional
+"Why's?" and comments that came like little spurts or quivers as
+of the engine in initial throbbings pulsing the power it stored.
+
+She was absorbing power. The months were going on. The earlier
+initiation into Mr. Simcox's business might have had a tinge of
+disappointment were it not that, whatever the nature of her work,
+manifestly work it was, paid for, with regular hours, with an office
+to attend, such as a man might do. The tinge of disappointment, if
+she had suffered it, would have stung out of the thought: Where,
+in this manufactured correspondence, in this pretence at a business
+which was in fact no business at all, where in all this was Lombard
+Street? Where the romance and mystery of finance? Where the touch
+with the power that was made in countinghouses and with the exercise
+of the power exerted from those countinghouses?
+
+But it happened for Rosalie, first, that this thought could not
+come because she was too busy with the glorious novelty of being
+in an office and learning office ways; then, when the novelty
+had worn, that it could not come because a new and a real element
+arrived to nullify it. In the early days there was no realisation
+of sham because there was the real business, to herself, of learning
+business methods and the whole theory and practice of office
+routine. She could have had no better instructor than Mr. Simcox,
+she could have had no better training than the handling, the sorting
+and the filing of his curious and various correspondence. She had
+become an efficient and a singularly apt and keen office clerk
+when, more leisured because she had mastered her duties, she might
+first have had time for realisation that Lombard Street was not
+here nor all the romance and mystery with which she had invested
+the power of countinghouses within a thousand miles of this house
+of most elaborate pretence. And then, at once to prevent that
+realisation and to dissipate its cause, came Lombard Street to her
+in Mr. Simcox's new absorption in (to her) the mysteries and the
+romance and the astounding possibilities of the business of insurance.
+How the mammoth companies, whose names soon were as household words
+to Rosalie, accumulated their enormous funds and invested them;
+how, while provisioning for to-day, they must calculate against
+liabilities falling due in a to-morrow generations ahead; how they
+would put their money into property the leases of which would fall
+in and the estate become marketable again perhaps a hundred years
+hence, when officers of the company yet unborn would be looking to
+the prudence of those now reigning to maintain the inflowing tide;
+how risks were calculated and vital statistics and chances and
+averages studied--all this, delightedly and delightfully narrated
+by Mr. Simcox (watching that gravely nodding head and those wide
+intelligent eyes) was sheer fascination to the mind that had found
+romance and mystery in "Lombard Street" as commonly romance and
+mystery are found in poetry and music.
+
+Then one day she took a step towards applying the fascination that
+she found.
+
+It was the day of the conversation that has been recorded. How,
+Rosalie had asked, was the seeker after insurance to find the
+policies best suited to his case? Rosalie had asked; and had been
+told--he must go round but he never does; he must know what there
+is to be had but he never does know; he must realise exactly what
+he really wants but he never does realise it; and if he does realise
+it he must be able to state it clearly but he never can state it
+clearly.
+
+Mr. Simcox, detailing this, permitted himself an amused contempt.
+The public were ignoramuses, mere children; they knew nothing
+whatever about insurance.
+
+Rosalie said in a voice consonant with the grave measure of her
+nods: "Of course, if it was a man, as you said, looking for a house,
+he'd go to an agent. A house agent would tell him of houses best
+suited to his needs that he could choose between. Well, there are
+insurance agents. You've told me about them."
+
+"Ah, but not the same thing, not the same thing," corrected Mr.
+Simcox. "An insurance agent, the ordinary insurance agent, is agent
+for a particular company. He only knows what his own company can
+do and he only wants his own company to do it. That's no good to
+the kind of man in the position we're speaking of. He wants some
+one who can tell him what all the companies will do for him. Some
+one who can hear his case, analyse it, put it before him in the
+right light and advise him the best way of placing it. That's what
+he wants. Exactly the same as these letters I send out--as you and
+I send out, I should say. Why, I've had practical examples of it.
+There was a young fellow I met at your aunt's house. There've been
+three or four cases of it for that matter but this happens to be
+some one you know--"
+
+He proceeded to tell her of a visitor at Aunt Belle's, a young man
+home on leave from the Indian army and recently married, with whom
+he had got into conversation on the subject of insurance and had
+most ably helped. The young man had a certain policy in view. Mr.
+Sim-cox had put an infinitely better before him. "If he had come
+to me before his marriage when he was first taking out a policy in
+his wife's favour, I could have saved him and gained her hundreds,
+literally hundreds," said Mr. Simcox. "He'd made a most awful mess
+of the business. As it was I helped him very considerably. He was
+very grateful, devilish grateful. He went straight to an agent of
+the office I recommended and did it."
+
+"There must be hundreds like him that would be grateful," said
+Rosalie.
+
+"Thousands," said Mr. Simcox. "Tens of thousands. Every single soul
+who insures, you may say."
+
+"Who got the commission?" said Rosalie.
+
+"The agent, of course," said Mr. Simcox.
+
+"Oh," said Rosalie.
+
+"Why?" said Mr. Simcox.
+
+"Nothing," said Rosalie. "Only 'oh '."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+
+There's much virtue in an If, says Touchstone; and there's much
+virtue in an "Oh"--a wise, a thoughtful, a speculative, a discerning
+"Oh" such as that "Oh" pronounced by Rosalie to Mr. Simcox's
+information that agents, and not he, drew the commissions for the
+insurance policies which, out of his knowledge and experience, he
+had advised. There followed from that "Oh" its plain outcome: her
+suggestion to Mr. Simcox of why not make a business, a real business,
+of expert advice upon insurance, and (out of the make-believe
+intercourse with schools) a business, a real business, of expert
+advice upon schools? And there shall follow also from that "Oh" a
+sweeping use of the intention that has been mentioned to tell only
+of her life that which contributed to her life. We'll fix her stage
+from first to last, then see her walk upon it.
+
+This was her stage: Her suggestion was adopted. It has, astonishingly
+soon, astonishing success. Advice upon insurance, advice upon
+schools, commissions from each, are found wonderfully to work in
+together, each bringing clients to the other. Aunt Belle's swarms
+of friends, their swarms of friends, the swarms of friends of
+those swarms of friends, and so on, snowball fashion, are the first
+nucleus of the thing. It succeeds. It grows. Real offices are taken.
+"Simcox's." Advertisements, clerks, banking-accounts. Appearance of
+Mr. Sturgiss, partner in Field and Company--"Field's"--the bankers
+and agents. Field's is a private bank. Its business is principally
+with persons resident in the East, soldiers, civil servants,
+tea planters, East India merchants. Field's is in Lombard Street.
+(Lombard Street!) Later Field's opens a West End office. Field's
+is frequently asked to advise its clients and their wives on all
+manner of domestic matters,--schools for their children, holiday
+homes, homes for clients over on leave, insurance, investment,
+whatnot, a hundred things. Comes to this Sturgiss, partner in
+Field's, an idea of great possibilities in this advisory business
+if developed as might be developed and run as might be run.
+Tremendously attracted by Rosalie as the person for the job. Makes
+her an offer. She declines it. Mr. Simcox's death. Sturgiss comes
+along again. Ends in Rosalie going to Field's. Lombard Street! Room
+of her own in the big offices. Glass partitioned. Huge mahogany
+table. Huge mahogany desk. Field's open the West End office, in
+Pall Mall. More convenient for wives of clients. Rosalie is moved
+there. Manager of her own side of the business. The war comes.
+Sturgiss goes out. Other important officers of the bank go out.
+Her importance increases very much in other sides of the bank's
+business than her own. Press scents her out and writes her up.
+"The only woman banker." "Brilliant woman financier." Contributes
+articles to the reviews. Very much a leading woman of her day. Very
+much a most remarkable woman.
+
+That's her stage. Thus she walked upon it:
+
+The beginning part--that tumult of youth, those dizzy jumps that we
+have seen her in--was frightfully exciting, frightfully absorbing.
+She was so tremendously absorbed, so terrifically intent, so
+tremendously eager, that the transition from the Sultana's to Aunt
+Belle's, and the start with Mr. Simcox, and the transition from
+Aunt Belle's to independence in the boarding house, was done with
+scarcely a visit--and then a rather grudged and rather impatient
+visit--to the rectory home.
+
+No, the absorption was too profound for much of that: indeed, for
+much of home in any form. Letters came from Rosalie's mother three
+and four times a week. In the beginning, when fresh left school
+and at Aunt Belle's, Rosalie always kissed the dear handwriting on
+the envelope, and kissed the dear signature before returning the
+letters to their envelopes; and she would sit up late at night
+writing enormously long and passionately devoted letters in reply.
+But she wasn't going back; she wasn't going down; no, not even for
+a week-end, "my own darling and beloved little mother," until she
+had found an employment and was established on her own feet, "just
+like one of the boys." Then she would come, oh, wouldn't she just!
+She would have an annual holiday, "just as men have," and she would
+come down to the dear, beloved old rectory and she would give her
+own sweet, adored little mother the most wonderful time she ever
+could imagine!
+
+Rosalie would sit up late at night writing these most loving letters,
+pages and pages long; and her mother's letters (which always arrived
+by the first post) she would carry about with her all day and read
+again before answering.
+
+And yet....
+
+The fond intention in thus carrying them on her person instead of
+bestowing them in her writing case was to read them a dozen times
+in the opportunities the day would afford. And yet... Somehow it
+was not done. The day of the receipt of the very first letter was
+generous of such opportunities and at each of them the letter was
+remembered... but not drawn forth. Rosalie did not attempt to analyse
+why not. Her repression, each time, of the suggestion that the
+letter should now be taken out and read again was not a deliberate
+repression. She merely had a negative impulse towards the action and
+accepted it; and so negligible was the transaction in her record
+of her thoughts, so mere a cypher in the petty cash of the day's
+ledger, that in the evening when, gone up to bed, the letter was
+at last drawn out and kissed and read and answered, and then kissed
+and read again, no smallest feeling of remorse was suffered by her
+to reflect that the intended reading in the dozen opportunities of
+the day had not been done.
+
+And yet... Was it, perhaps, this mere acceptance of a negative
+impulse, a cloud no bigger than the size of a man's hand upon the
+horizon of her generous impulses? There is this to be admitted--that
+the letters, accumulating, began to bulk inconveniently in her
+writing case. What a lot dear mother wrote! Room might be made for
+them by removing or destroying the letters from friends who had
+left the Sultana's with her, but about those letters there was
+a peculiar attraction; they were from other emancipated One Onlys
+who watched with admiration the progress in her wonderful adventure
+of brilliant, unconventional Rosalie, and it was nice thus to be
+watched. Or room for her mother's letters might be made by removing
+or destroying letters that began to amass directly touching her
+desire for employment--from city friends of Uncle Pyke, from Mr.
+Simcox. But, no, unutterably precious those! Unutterably precious,
+too, of course, those accumulating bundles of letters from her
+dear mother; but precious on a different plane: they belonged to
+her heart; it was to her head, to the voice in her that cried "Live
+your life--your life--yours!" that these others belonged.
+
+She was tingling to that voice one night, turning over the employment
+letters; and, tingling, put her mother's letters from her case to
+her box.
+
+Yes, upon the horizon of her generous impulses perhaps the tiniest
+possible cloud. And then perhaps enlarging. You see, she was so very
+full of her intentions, of her prospects. She had read somewhere
+that the perfect letter to one absent from home was a letter stuffed
+with home gossip,--who had been seen and who was doing what, and
+what had been had for dinner yesterday and whence obtained. But she
+did not subscribe to that view. She was from home and her mother's
+letters were minutest record of the home life; but she began to
+skip those portions to read "afterwards." One day the usual letter
+was there at breakfast and she put it away unopened so as to have
+"a really good, jolly read" of it "afterwards." In a little after
+that she got the habit of always, and for the same reason (she told
+herself) keeping the letters till the evening. One day she gave the
+slightest possible twitch of her brows at seeing the very, very
+familiar handwriting. She had had a letter only the previous day
+and two running was not expected: more than that, this previous
+letter had slightly vexed her by its iteration of the longing to
+see her and by very many closely written lines of various little
+troubles. She was a little impatient at the idea of a further edition
+of it so soon. She forgot to open it that night. She remembered
+it when she was in bed; but she was in bed then... When, next day,
+she read the letter it was, again, an iteration of the longing to
+see her and, again, more, much more, of the little troubles: the
+residue was of the gossipy gossip that Rosalie already had formed
+the habit of skipping till "afterwards." Altogether a vexatious
+letter.
+
+After that, when the letters were frequent, it was frequent for
+Rosalie to greet the sight of them with just the swiftest, tiniest
+little contraction of her brows. Nothing at all really. Meaning
+virtually nothing and of itself absolutely nothing. Possessing
+a significance only by contrast, as a fine shade in silk or wool
+will not disclose a pronounced hue until contrasted with another.
+The contrast here, to give the thing significance, was between
+that swiftest, tiniest contraction of the brows at the sight of her
+mother's letters and the eager spring to them, the quick snatching
+up, and the impulsive pressing to her lips when first those letters
+began to come. Likewise answering them, that had been an impulsive
+outpouring and brimming over, now was a very slightly laboured
+squeezing. The pen, before, had flooded love upon the page. Now
+the pen halted, paused, and had to think of expressions that would
+give pleasure.
+
+The change did not happen at a blow. If it had, Rosalie would have
+noticed it. It slipped imperceptibly from stage to stage and she
+did not notice it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+
+
+There was a thing she said about men once (in the boarding house
+now) and often repeated. "They're very fond of saying women are
+cats," she once said. "Fools! It's men that are the cat tribe:
+tame cats, tabby cats, wild cats, Cheshire cats, tomcats and stray
+cats! Aren't they just? And look at them--tame cats are miserable
+creatures, tabby cats the sloppy creatures, wild cats ferocious
+creatures, Cheshire cats fool creatures, tomcats disgusting
+creatures, stray cats--on the whole the stray cats are the least
+objectionable, they are bearable: at the right time and for a short
+time."
+
+This characterisation of men as Rosalie, in sequent development of
+her attitude towards men, had come to regard them was delivered to
+the girl with whom (for cheapness) her room in the boarding house
+was shared. Rosalie went from Aunt Belle's to this boarding house
+to assert and to achieve her greater independence. A man, Rosalie
+debated, would have gone into bachelor rooms; but young women did
+not go into bachelor rooms in those days and the singularity of
+Rosalie's attitude towards life is rather well presented in the
+fact that she never set herself against conventions inhibitory of
+her sex merely because they were inhibitory of her sex. When the
+years brought those violent scenes and emotions of what has been
+called the suffragette campaign, Rosalie, who might have been
+expected to be a militant of the militants, took no part nor even
+interest in it whatever. She did not desire the privileges of men
+merely because they were the privileges of men; she desired a status
+which happened to be in the right of men and she went towards it
+without seeking to change the established order of things, just as,
+from one field desiring a flower in another field, she would have
+gone to fetch it without changing her dress.
+
+A man, anxious for full independence, would have gone into bachelor
+rooms; but young women did not go into bachelor rooms. They achieved
+their independence perfectly well, and far more cheaply, by going
+into a boarding house. She therefore, very excitedly, went into a
+boarding house.
+
+There was no difficulty about leaving Aunt Belle's. Once Rosalie was
+established in business with Mr. Simcox, tied to business hours,
+and earning a weekly salary, she no longer occupied in Aunt Belle's
+house the position of dependence which was in Aunt Belle's house
+the first, and indeed the only, qualification for all who occupied
+her house. Aunt Belle's guests had to be guests: wealthy guests who
+could be entertained from early morning tea (beautifully served)
+to bedtime and made graciously to admire; or if poor guests,
+and particularly poor relations, guests who could be even more
+impressed and were naturally much more enthusiastically delighted
+and profoundly admiring. Rosalie, in business, could not be entertained
+and did not sufficiently admire. She had to have a special early
+breakfast; she disappeared; she was not in to lunch or tea; she
+was not sufficiently impressed by what cook had prepared but had
+rather too much to say about what she had been doing, at dinner;
+and she excused herself away to early bed on the ground of fatigue
+or of having certain books to study. Rosalie, in business, was not
+a guest at all in Aunt Belle's sense of the word: indeed there came
+an occasion--Rosalie twice in one week late for dinner--when Aunt
+Belle said awfully, "My house is not a hotel, Rosalie. I cannot
+have my nice house turned into a hotel."
+
+It was the nearest thing to an unkind word ever spoken by Aunt
+Belle to Rosalie, and it was so near that it brought Aunt Belle
+up to Rosalie's bed that night--solicitude in a terrific dressing
+gown of crimson silk--to express the hope that Rosalie was not
+crying (she was not; she had been sound asleep) at anything Aunt
+Belle "might have said." "But you see, dear child, there are the
+servants to consider, all that delicious soup and all that most
+tasty turbot au gratin to be kept warm for you, and there is your
+kind Uncle Pyke to consider; men do not like their meals to be..."
+
+The boarding house, which Rosalie, with qualms as to its reception
+by Aunt Belle, had for some time been secretly meditating, came
+easily after that. The boarding house had moreover for Aunt Belle
+a double attraction. It not only removed Rosalie in her capacity
+of one threatening to turn Aunt Belle's nice house into a hotel;
+it also restored Rosalie in her capacity of overwhelmed, grateful
+and admiring poor relation. Rosalie was now invited from the boarding
+house just as previously she had been invited from the Sultana's;
+the table and the appointments of Aunt Belle's house were now
+lavishly displayed in contrast to the display and the table endured
+by Rosalie at the boarding house; Aunt Belle was again supremely
+happy in Rosalie and abundantly kind; dinner each Saturday night
+was a standing invitation and frequently for these dinners Aunt
+Belle arranged "a little dinner party for you, dear child, just
+one or two really nice people that it is nice for you to meet and
+that you can tell your friends at the boarding house about, dear
+child."
+
+Aunt Belle helped Rosalie to choose the boarding house and saw that
+it was "nice." Nice people went there and the proprietress, Miss
+Kentish, was nice. Miss Kentish had a grey, detachable fringe which
+became, and re-mained, semi-detached immediately after breakfast,
+and a mobile front tooth which came out surprisingly far when she
+talked and went in with a sharp click when she stopped. She had for
+newcomers a single conversational sentence--"My name is Kentish,
+though funnily enough we come from Sussex"--and, for all purposes,
+a single business principle, that of willingness "to come to an
+arrangement." "I am afraid I cannot remedy your water not being hot
+at eight o'clock," she would say to a boarder, "but I will gladly
+come to an arrangement with you. Ten minutes to eight or ten minutes
+past eight" (click). She would come to an arrangement on anything.
+She became very fond of Rosalie in course of time and once told
+her that though her duties never permitted her to attend church
+she had "come to an arrangement" with the vicar and felt that she
+had "come to an arrangement with Our Lord" (click). She came to
+an arrangement with Rosalie in the matter of tariff, receiving her
+and a Miss Salmon, who also sought arrangement, as "two friends
+as one." This was two persons sharing a room at the tariff of a
+person and a half. Living was very cheap in those days. Rosalie,
+at the beginning, with Miss Salmon, paid 18/6 a week, and out of
+the twenty-five shillings paid her, at first, every Friday by Mr.
+Simcox there remained what seemed to Rosalie great wealth.
+
+She set herself to save on it and her first purpose in thus saving
+was to accumulate money on which she could draw so as to be able
+to pay for a room private to herself. That would have taken some
+time. Her successive increases in her earnings, as Mr. Simcox's
+hobby developed into a business, brought privacy, and in time what
+amounted to luxury, by much swifter process. Rosalie was a very
+long time at the boarding house. From being two friends as one she
+passed to a small remote room of her own, then to a larger and more
+accessible room, then to a bed-sitting-room, finally to a very
+delightful arrangement. There was on the second floor a fine roomy
+apartment having a dressing-room opening out of it. Rosalie, by
+then in much favour with Miss Kentish, not only secured the suite
+but "came to an arrangement" with Miss Kentish by which the furniture
+and fittings were removed from the rooms and Rosalie permitted to
+fit, decorate and furnish them herself. Rosalie never knew happier
+hours than in the furnishing of those two rooms into a little
+kingdom of her own: she never in all her life knew days as happy
+as the days there spent.
+
+But at the beginning, two friends as one with Miss Salmon and first
+contact with life from the angle presented by some twenty various
+individuals met at meals and in the public rooms. Miss Salmon was
+a pale, fussy creature with pince-nez in some mysterious way set
+so far from her eyes that she always appeared to be running after
+them as if to keep them balanced. Whenever anything of which she
+did not approve was being said to Miss Salmon or was being done
+before Miss Salmon, she maintained throughout it, moving about in
+pursuit of her pince-nez, a rather loud, constant, tuneless humming.
+When her moment came she would always begin "Well, now" and then
+swallow forcibly as though the swallowing gave her pain. "Well,
+now" (gulp). This introduction was always precedent to speech by
+Miss Salmon, whether after humming or not. Rosalie frequently went
+to Sunday church service with her and there was an occasion in
+the Litany on which Miss Salmon, who either had been wandering or
+sleeping, suddenly came to herself at the correct moment and said:
+"Well, now"--(gulp)--"We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord."
+
+Miss Salmon was employed as a daily nursery governess by a family
+resident across the park who, not hav-ing room for her, had "come
+to an arrangement" with Miss Kentish for her accommodation at
+the boarding house; and with her fussiness, her nose pursuit, her
+humming and her general ineptitude of habit and of thought, she
+was as it were a fated companion for Rosalie; and it was the case
+that all the other inmates of the boarding house were, in regard
+to Rosalie, equally and in the same sense fated. Miss Salmon and
+they were fated, or fatal, to Rosalie, in the sense that it would
+have been well then for Rosalie, as always well for any developing
+young thing, to have been among companions who drew upon her
+sympathies and called for her consideration. The contrary was here
+presented to her. She was ripe to be intolerant for she was very
+full of purpose and purpose is a motive power of much impatience.
+Miss Salmon, who would have made a saint impatient, made Rosalie,
+who was not a saint, very impatient and the virus of this impatience
+was that very soon Rosalie made no attempt to conceal it. It seemed
+to Rosalie that whenever she projected any plan to Miss Salmon--as
+to "do" a pit at a theatre--or any theory--as that men and not women
+were manifestly the cat tribe--it seemed to her that Miss Salmon
+always hummed with the maddening humming denotive of disapproval,
+and always prefaced stupendously stubborn idiocy with the "Well,
+now" and the gulp that alone were sufficient to drive enthusiasm
+crazy.
+
+"Mmmmm--mm. Mmm--mmmm--mm--mm," would go Miss Salmon, following her
+pince-nez up and down the little bedroom. And then, the pince-nez
+poised, "Well, now" (gulp).
+
+And Rosalie came to cry, "Oh, never mind. Never mind, for goodness'
+sake. I know exactly what you're going to say so what is the good
+of saying it?" Miss Salmon nevertheless would say it, in full
+measure, pressed down at intervals in solid lumps with reiterated
+"Well, now" (gulp). And then Rosalie would hum to show she was not
+listening and thus in time to the position that Rosalie, beyond the
+ordinary changes of everyday conversation, took not the slightest
+notice of Miss Salmon but busied herself in their room, or came
+into it or went out of it, precisely as if Miss Salmon, who with
+her gulps, her fussiness and her balancing was very much there,
+was in fact not there at all. When Rosalie for the weekly dinner
+at Aunt Belle's used to dress in the evening frock of Laetitia's
+given her for the purpose by Aunt Belle, she used, at first, to say
+to Miss Salmon, "There, how do I look, Gertrude? Can you see that
+mend in the lace?"
+
+"Well, now--" (gulp).
+
+Very soon she was dressing (at the common dressing table) with no
+more regard for Miss Salmon or for the continuous humming of Miss
+Salmon (signification of Miss Salmon's disapproval of the monopolisation
+of the dressing table) than if Miss Salmon had been an automaton
+wound up to balance a pince-nez around the room, to hum, and at
+intervals to gulp.
+
+This was a small thing, but it was an important small thing. Rosalie
+was entirely insensible to the opinions and the existence of Miss
+Salmon, and it followed that she became entirely insensible to the
+feelings of Miss Salmon. To begin by ignoring a person with whom
+you are in daily contact is certainly to end by not caring at all
+what happens to that person. It was the misfortune of Miss Salmon
+to suffer periodically and acutely from biliousness (which she
+called neuralgia). In an attack, she took instantly to her bed and
+lay there flat on her back, absurdly and unnecessarily poising her
+pince-nez, and looking, unquestionably, very unpleasant. Rosalie,--who
+believed that Miss Salmon on these occasions had overeaten herself,
+the attacks invariably coinciding with pork in winter and with a
+fruit trifle known in the boarding house as "Kentish Delight" in
+the summer, of both of which Miss Salmon was avowedly fond, was
+at first warmly sympathetic and attentive on their occurrence,
+anointing the fevered brows with eau-de-Cologne, nipping the
+unnecessary pince-nez off the pallid nose, darkening the room, and
+stealing about on tiptoe. In time her attitude came to be expressed
+by her reception of the sight of Miss Salmon prone, stricken,
+yellow, pince-nez, poising. "What, again?"
+
+"Well, now----" (Gulp).
+
+But Rosalie would be gone.
+
+And it came to be the same with all the other fellow inmates
+of the boarding house, alike the men and the women. Rosalie, in
+a colloquialism of to-day not then coined, "had no use for them."
+There was in none of them anything that aroused her esteem; there
+was in each of them, in degree greater or less, much that provoked
+her scorn. The result was as resulted from Miss Salmon--she did
+not bother about them; and not bothering about them she suffered
+an inhibition of her sympathies. To repeat the thing said, her
+environment here was, as it were, fated or fatal. In her eagerness
+for her career, her generous emotions were likely to be laid aside
+and to wither; and the environment of the boarding house in no way
+drew upon her sympathies.
+
+This was not good for Rosalie.
+
+Moreover, the community of the boarding house served Rosalie ill
+on another point. She came there with all those grotesque ideas
+of her childhood on the respective positions of men and women
+precipitated through her older years to the perception given
+to Keggo: women were this, women were that; in their commonest
+characteristics they contrasted very badly with men; men did things
+better than women; they had by far the better lot in life than women;
+unquestionably men were the creatures; of course--off-handedly--they
+were beasts. She came to the boarding house with these ideas and
+the boarding house presented these ideas to her in living fact and
+assured her in her ideas. She came there very susceptible to the
+qualities she believed to be rooted with their sex in men and women
+and she saw those qualities there at once. The boarding house might
+have been all her ideas of women and of men taken away by an artist
+and put into an exact picture. It was her words to Keggo in terms of
+actual life. Its population, little varying, was always round about
+twenty; the proportion in sex always in the region of fifteen women
+to five men. The figures were always constant and the characters,
+when they changed, seemed always to Rosalie to be constant; the
+names changed, the personalities did not change. Even the faces did
+not change: there are certain types of faces that either are produced
+by permanent residence in boarding houses or that go instinctively
+to boarding houses for their permanent residence. There is a
+boarding-house mould. There would always be two husbands with wives
+and three men without wives. The men were never spoken to by any
+of the women but with a certain archness which Rosalie detested;
+and they never spoke to the women but with a certain boisterousness,
+a kind of rubbing together of the hands and a "Ha! What miserable
+weather, Mrs. Keeley. How does it suit you? Ha!" which Rosalie
+equally detested. It was as though the women, leading boarding-house
+lives, knew that the men (who were never in to lunch and sometimes
+absent from dinner) did not lead boarding-house lives but secret,
+dashing and mysterious lives; and as though the men knew that they
+lived secret, dashing and mysterious lives but condescended to the
+women who lived only boarding-house lives; and the archness on the
+one side and the boisterousness on the other implied tribute and
+worthiness of tribute. This implication Rosalie also detested.
+
+Men--as she now saw men and women--she dismissed; generally as "of
+course they're beasts," severally and in the groups to which they
+belonged, as cats--of the cat tribe--tame cats, wild cats, Cheshire
+cats, tomcats and stray cats. But she dismissed them. That was
+her attitude, as it developed, towards men. They had been, in her
+regard, owners of the earth, possessing and having dominion over
+the round world and all that therein is, as a stage magician owns
+and dominates his stage; they had next been wonderful things but
+apt to be troublesome and braggart things whose braggadocio caused
+you to blink and have a funny feeling; they had then been sinister
+and frightening things that caused poor Anna to say it was hard for
+women; they became, at last, creatures that had the best of life,
+that is to say the better time in life, not because they merited it,
+but because it was theirs by tradition and they stepped into it, or
+were put into it, as naturally as a man child is put into trousers;
+and they had, when all was reckoned up, the better qualities--largeness,
+tolerance, directness, explosiveness (as opposed to smouldering-ness)--not,
+Rosalie thought, because they were males, but because they had the
+position that males have, just as by the habit of command is given
+to small boys in the Navy and very young men in the Army the air
+and the poise of command.
+
+Yes, certainly men were, as they had always been, the creatures;
+but the eyes that formerly saw them as magicians, as by a savage
+is seen only the mystery of the moving hands, the tick, and the
+strike of a clock, now looked inside the case and saw the works.
+No mystery. No exclusiveness of natural power. Nothing abnormal.
+Men, on their estimable qualities and position, were what they were
+merely because, as the works of a watch, thus and thus the wheels
+were made to go round. Easy. Nothing in it. On the contrary. On
+the contrary, men were the more despicable in that, dowered as by
+tradition they were dowered, they yet were--what they were! The
+eyes that had been caused to blink by Robert blowing smoke through
+his nose and by Harold pulling up his collar and speaking with a
+"haw!" sound, blinked from a contempt yet more profound (because
+now known for contempt) at the exhibition, seen all about her, of
+men's unlovely side. And she dismissed them. They did not attract
+her in the smallest degree. All that they had in them to esteem,
+whether of qualities or of position, they had--here was the parallel--in
+common with drones in a hive. They had the best of everything; they
+were blundering, blustering, noisy, careless, buccaneering owners
+of the world, and to her--as all the roystering swarm to any
+individual worker bee--to her, negligible. She was a worker bee,
+busy, purposeful.
+
+There is a special function belonging to drones in a hive. That
+special function of men in regard to women was repellant to Rosalie.
+All that pertained to it was repulsive to her. She loathed to think
+of men in that capacity and she loathed to see women ensnared in
+that regard by men. Beautiful cousin Laetitia and the "good match"
+that obviously had been found for her: she detested seeing those
+two together: it made her feel sick.
+
+Men! By this and by that in passage of time she was in contact with
+a good number and a good variety of men. There was the frequently
+changing male contribution to the boarding-house community; there
+were clients met in the development of her work at Simcox's;
+there were the men of the circle of Uncle Pyke Pounce; there were
+the men of the circle of cousin Laetitia, brought to the little
+Saturday-dinner parties. A very fair average, a rather wider than
+the normal average of contact with men; and she dismissed them.
+They had not any attraction for her at all. If, rarely, she met
+one whose superficial points were superficially attractive, his
+contribution to her attitude to men was to make her blink (inwardly)
+the more, albeit on a different note. That one so exceptionally
+dowered should find pleasure in, for instance, dalliance of sex!
+Contemptible! Oh, sickening and contemptible! One Harry Occleve, of
+Laetitia's circle, so obviously "the good match," was outstandingly
+such a case. It was thought upon him, scornful and disgusted
+thought, that made her, walking back from one of the Saturday-evening
+parties--he was always there--arrange her experiences with men
+in that analogy between men and cats which, as related, had been
+delivered to Miss Salmon.
+
+Like a tame cat! She never had met a man she despised so much.
+You'd think a man like that couldn't help but be above such things
+as Cousin Laetitia and Aunt Belle made of him. "Occleve." The very
+name that he owned had a nice sound; and he was brilliantly clever
+and looked brilliantly clever. He was a barrister and Aunt Belle,
+who was forever talking about him, had said that evening, just
+before his arrival, that some famous counsel had declared of him
+that he was unquestionably the most brilliant of the young men of
+the day at the Bar. So he was talented, had a great future before
+him, had a strong, most taking presence, a commanding air, a voice
+of uncommon charm--and was in bonds to Laetitia! Looked sickly at
+her! Mouthed fatuous nothings with her! Was obviously marked down
+to be that "good match" that Laetitia was to make, and was content,
+was eager, to be the tame cat of her languishing glances and of
+Aunt Belle's excessive gushings! Was to be seen in a future not
+distant mated with Laetitia and sharing with her an atmosphere of
+milk and silk and babies and kisses! Tame cat! What an end to which
+to bring such qualities! What a desecration of such qualities to
+set them to win such an end! Tame cat!
+
+But they all were cats of one kind or another. Yes, men are of the
+cat tribe! Tabby cats--the soft, fattish kind, without any manlike
+qualities, that seemed to be by far the greater proportion of all
+the men one saw about in buses and in the streets and met in business;
+tabby cats--sloppy, old-womanish creatures. Cheshire cats--the kind
+that grinned out of vacuous minds and that never could speak to a
+woman without grinning; the unattached men at the boarding house
+invariably were of the Cheshire-cat cats. Tomcats--the beastly ones
+with lecherous eyes that looked at you. "Of course they're beasts."
+It had been a large experience of the tomcat cats that had made
+her add that final summary of men to Keggo. The Bashibazook, once
+or twice encountered in her last terms at the Sultana's, though never
+spoken with, had looked at her in a horrible way, not understood,
+but felt to be frightening and horrible; Mr. Ponders, on a dreadful
+occasion after handing over the medicine for Miss Keggs, had horribly
+said, "Well, now, wouldn't a kiss be nice? I think a nice kiss would
+be very nice." She had managed to get away without being touched;
+the nausea in her eyes perhaps had frightened him. It was nausea
+she felt, not fear, a horrible physical sickness; and finally to
+round off the "of course they're beasts" of men as then experienced
+and now to fill up the schedule of tomcat cats the friends of
+Uncle Pyke Pounce's circle and Uncle Pyke Pounce himself and the
+men like the men of his circle--tomcats something past their prime
+as lechers (but at a hint only more lecherous for that) but in the
+full prime of their beastliness as guzzlers, who with guzzle eyes
+eyed their food. She had come across a word in Carlyle's "French
+Revolution" that instantly brought Uncle Pyke Pounce and his friends
+to her mind and that always thereafter she applied to the elderly
+tomcat encountered or passed in the street--"atrabilious." Atrabilious!
+The very word! She looked it up in the dictionary, was disappointed
+to find it did not mean exactly what she thought it meant, but gave
+it her own meaning, and applied it to them. It sounded like them.
+They had small beady eyes, set in yellow; no apparent eyelids either
+above or below, just an unblinking eye set in a puffy face like a
+currant in a slab of cold pudding that gloated or glared at everything
+and everybody as if it was a thing to be devoured; guzzlers who
+gloated upon their food and wallowed in their soup, always with little
+streaks of red veins and blue veins in their faces. Atrabilious!
+Tomcats!
+
+Wild cats--the roamers, the untamed ones, the ones with cruel and
+with wicked faces that made you not sick, but frightened; mostly
+they were dressed in rough clothes, men hanging about the streets
+who patently were thieves or worse, who looked at you and at once
+looked all around as if to see if any were about that might protect
+you; but often dressed in gentle dress and then with the cruel and
+wicked look more cruel and more wicked, to make your shudder to
+think of a woman having to belong to that.
+
+Stray cats--on the whole the only really bearable ones; the lonely
+ones that seemed to have lost something or to be lost, that seemed
+to need looking after, that made you have a funny tender feeling
+towards them, a wanting as it were to pick them up and carry them
+home and be sharp with them because they couldn't take care of
+themselves, and to be kind to them also because they couldn't take
+care of themselves; yes, the only bearable ones: Mr. Simcox was
+precisely one.
+
+All cats, of the cat tribe. There wasn't one you couldn't place.
+There wasn't one, save dear little Mr. Simcox and the stray cat
+ones you sometimes saw, that was not in some trait contemptible.
+The only thing to be said for them was that it was their nature.
+They were created like that. You just shrugged your shoulders at
+them and let them go at that, negligible entities. Active disgust
+was only felt of them when one of their traits was manifested
+directly towards you; or, much more, when the sight was given
+of such a one as this Harry Occleve making such an exhibition of
+himself and enjoying it, delighting in it, asking nothing better
+than to be philandering with Laetitia, or escorting Laetitia, or
+gazing at Laetitia. That did make you angry enough with a man to
+hate a man. It was like seeing a good book--as it might be "Lombard
+Street"--used to prop a table leg; or a jolly dog--as the dearest
+Scotch terrier once brought to the boarding house--led for a walk
+on a leash by an old maiden mistress and wearing a lapdog's flannel
+coat with ribbon bows at the corner. Her aversion to Harry Occleve
+was such that, in their rare passages together, she was almost
+openly rude to him. It seemed there was even no physical quality
+he had but he used it to abase himself or to make an exhibition
+of himself. He had noticeably long, strong-looking arms, but the
+sickening thing to see him once using those arms to hold silk for
+Laetitia while she wound it! He had a striking face that she named,
+from a line in Browning, a "marching" face--"one who never turned
+his back but marched breast forward"--but to see that face bent
+fatuously towards Laetitia! There radiated from the corners of
+his eyes towards his temples those little lines that sailors often
+have, "horizon tracks," she called them; but to see them deeply
+marked while he mouthed earnest nothings with Laetitia! There was
+an odd, nice smell about him, of peat, of tobacco, of soap, of
+heather with the wind across it, of things like that most agreeably
+mixed, and actually she had heard Laetitia say to him in the babyish
+way she spoke to him, "You smoke too much. You do." And he, like
+a moon calf: "Oh, you're not going to ask me to give up smoking,
+are you?" And she with a trailing eye and hint of a blush, "Perhaps
+I shall--some day." And he--a sigh! Positively a love-sick sigh
+straight out of a novel! Ah, positively she could detest the man!
+She came to discover it as an odd thing that, while commonly she
+was entirely indifferent to men, always after a Saturday meeting
+with Laetitia's Harry she had for quite a day or two an active
+detestation of them.
+
+But it was the women at the boarding house--to instance the boarding
+house--the fifteen women, the immense, straggling army of women
+as they looked to be, when they came trooping in to dinner or went
+trailing out again, that had Rosalie's sharpest observation and
+that best pointed her youthful estimates. Unlike men who had fallen
+woefully from her childhood estimate of them, the women maintained
+and intensified her early estimate of women. The women in the boarding
+house showed Rosalie what women come to. A few were emphatically
+old; the rest, with the single exception of Miss Salmon, were
+emphatically not old; on the other hand they were emphatically not
+young. They were at pains to let you see they were not old and the
+pains they were at rather dreadfully (to Rosalie) emphasised the
+fact that they were not young. The thing about them, the warning,
+the proof that they exhibited of all Rosalie's ideas about the inferiority
+of women, was that they were, in her phrase, derelicts--not wanted;
+abandoned; homeless; or they would not be here. Yes, derelict; and
+what was worse, derelict not in the sense of desuetude of powers
+or of powers outworn, but with the suggestion of never having had
+any powers, of having been always the mere vessels of another's
+powers--some man's; and now, with that power withdrawn--the man,
+whether father, brother, lover or husband, gone--derelict as a
+ship, abandoned of crew, rudderless and dismasted, is derelict; as
+an obscure habitation, cold of hearth, crazy of walls, abandoned
+to decay, is derelict. She summed them all up as having arrived at
+what they were precisely because in their earlier years they had
+been what in her childhood she had supposed women to be: inferior
+creatures at the disposal and for the benefit and service of men.
+What a warning never to be that! There they were--manless. And
+therefore derelict. And because derelict for such a reason, therefore
+testimony to a social condition that was abominable, and because
+seen to be abominable never, never herself should enfold. Never!
+Manless. Husbandless. There they were, the straggling mob of
+them,--deserted by husbands, semi-detached from husbands, relict
+of husbands fallen out with a stitch in the side in the race for
+husbands. Urh!
+
+She was very young, Rosalie.
+
+"Despised and rejected of men," she said to Miss Salmon, holding
+forth in their bedroom on her subject. "That's what I call them.
+Despised and rejected of men. Oh, don't hum louder than ever. It's
+not irreverent to say that. It describes a condition, that's all,
+and I'm using it because it describes this condition, their condition,
+exactly. It does. You can hum; but it does. They've never done
+anything, they've never meant to do anything, they've never tried
+to do anything except hang round after some man. That's all. They've
+either caught him and now lost him; or they've missed him and now
+go on missing him. That's their lives. That's nearly any woman's
+life. It's not going to be mine. If anything were wanted to make
+the whole idea of marriage and all that repulsive to me--and nothing
+is wanted--that would. Despised and rejected of men! I used to think
+and to say I intended to be like a man and to do a man's work and
+have a man's share. I tell you that even getting so close to a
+man as that--I mean as close as intentional emulation of him--even
+getting as close as that makes me feel sick now. It's my own life
+I'm going to have, my own place, my own share; not modelled on any
+one else's. If it were conceivable that I ever met a man I cared
+tuppence about--but it isn't conceivable; that's a quality that's
+been left clean out of me, thank goodness--but if it were conceivable,
+what I'd offer would be just to share; to go on living my own way
+and he his--Oh, your humming! I mean after marriage, of course; I
+think this free-love business they talk about is even more detestable
+than the lawful kind--just animalism. That's all I'd do. Me my
+life; he his life; meeting, as equals, when it was convenient to
+meet. I'd like to bring all these poets and people who write about
+love into our dining-room to see those people. That'd teach them!
+
+ Man's love is of his life a thing apart;
+ 'Tis woman's whole existence.
+
+What an existence!"
+
+"Well, now--" (gulp).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+
+
+"You have pretended to dislike and to despise men, but it was a
+pretence to deceive me and you are a liar."
+
+This was the astounding opening of an astounding letter, pages and
+pages, to Rosalie from Miss Salmon. Pages and pages, having the
+appearance, each one, of a battlefield or of a riot: a welter of
+thick, black underscores strewn about like coffins or like corpses,
+and a bristling pin-cushionful (black pins) of notes of exclamation
+leaping about like war-dancing Zulus or staggering about like drunken
+or like wounded men. A welter you had to pick your way through with
+epithets rushing against you at every step like units of a surging
+mob hounding and charging against an unfortunate pedestrian caught
+in the trouble.
+
+Miss Salmon had two months before introduced "a gentleman friend"
+to the boarding house. He was a clerk in some big business firm.
+His name was Upsmith and he bore upon a fattish face a troubled,
+beseeching look, rather as though something internal and not to
+be mentioned was severely incommoding him and might at any moment
+become acute. Miss Salmon called him Boo, which Rosalie considered
+grotesque but not unsuitable, and it was communicated to the boarding
+house that the twain were at a mysterious point of affinity called,
+not an engagement, but an understanding.
+
+Rosalie had by this time taken the second step in her upward
+progression of comfort in the boarding house. She had moved into
+a separate room, leaving Miss Salmon to become half of another two
+friends as one, and she and Miss Salmon therefore saw much less of
+each other. But Rosalie still sat at the same table as Miss Salmon
+at dinner and there Mr. Upsmith joined them.
+
+The thing may be hurried along to its astounding conclusion in
+the astounding letter. It was not in itself an event of any sort
+of moment to Rosalie. She was in no way outraged by being called
+a liar. There is no hurt at all in being called a liar when you
+know you are not a liar. The accusation has sting only if you are
+a liar; and indeed it is comforting evidence of some inner self
+within us that only when we have ourselves debased that inner self
+become we open to wounds from without. That citadel is never taken
+by storm; only by treachery. No, the significance of the astounding
+letter reposed in the fact that her reception of it opened to Rosalie
+a glimpse of a quality rising beneath her to carry her forward as
+a wave beneath a swimmer. It has been perceived in her but Rosalie
+had not perceived it.
+
+A great triumph and a great happiness swelled within Miss Salmon
+with the arrival of Mr. Upsmith and with the circulation about the
+boarding house that there was an understanding between herself and
+Mr. Upsmith. Her humming took on a loud, defiant quality, as of
+triumph; she pursued her pince-nez with a certain eagerness, as of
+confidence of balance and certitude of capture. Her note and her
+air seemed to say that she was Boo's and Boo hers and she gloried
+in it with that exalted and yet something fearful glory that is to
+be seen, pathetically, on the faces of very plain young women, or
+of distinctly ageing young women, who have got a Boo but for whom
+the Boos of this world are elusive to capture and slippery to hold.
+The look is to be seen a dozen times on any Sunday afternoon when
+the young couples are out.
+
+At dinner time Miss Salmon would talk much to Boo in whispers and
+then would look up and hum across at Rosalie in triumph, as of one
+that knew things that Rosalie could not know and that had a thing
+that Rosalie did not possess. Mr. Upsmith looked also much at Rosalie,
+in no triumph, but in an apparent great excess of his unfortunate
+complaint. He stared, troubled and beseeching, at her at meals,
+and he stared, troubled and beseeching, at her when he encountered
+her away from meals. The longer he sojourned in the boarding house
+the more troubled and beseeching, when Rosalie happened to notice
+him, did his fattish countenance appear to become. That was all.
+There scarcely ever was exchanged between them even the courtesies
+customary between dwellers beneath the same roof; they never, that
+Rosalie could remember, were a minute alone together and yet on a
+day in an August, Miss Salmon a week away on a month at the seaside
+with the family to which she was nursery governess, Rosalie was
+being told in the violent opening sentence of one letter that she
+had pretended to despise and dislike men but had only done it to
+deceive Miss Salmon and was a liar; and in the impassioned sentences
+of another which had been enclosed and had fallen and to which
+bewildered she stooped and then read, that the heart of Boo was
+at her feet ("your proud, sweet little feet that I would kiss in
+my adorance") that he had adored her ever since he had first set
+eyes on her, that he treasured "like pearls before swine" every
+encouragement she had given him from her divine eyes and from her
+proud little lips, that he had had no sleep for a fortnight and
+felt he would go mad unless he wrote these few lines (nine pages),
+that he earned "good money," and that he was, in conclusion, to
+which Rosalie amazedly skipped, "ever and ever and imperishably
+always her imperishably adoring Boo."
+
+Two days previously Rosalie had received, but not read, another
+slightly mysterious letter. It had been in her receptacle in the
+letter rack in the hall, addressed to her in an unfamiliar writing
+and deposited by hand, not through the post. It had begun "Dear
+Miss Salmon, re our friendship I have to inform you--" Rosalie
+had turned to the end, "B. Upsmith." She had replaced it in its
+envelope, written upon the envelope, "This is evidently for you,
+but addressed to me, as you see--R." and had placed it in another
+stamped wrapper to be forwarded by Miss Kentish. She had only thought
+of it as in funny style for a love letter, proper no doubt to the
+niceties of an "understanding." And what had happened was that
+the vile, egregious, and infamous Boo, writing to break off one
+understanding and establish another, had placed them in the wrong
+envelopes. The outpourings of his bursting heart to Rosalie had
+been received by Miss Salmon; the information "re our friendship"
+had gone to Rosalie.
+
+Of itself, as has been said, the whole incident was nothing at all
+in the life of Rosalie. It came with the crash, but only startling
+and quite harmless crash, of an unexpected clap of thunder, and it
+passed as completely and as passively, doing no damage, leaving no
+mark. Miss Salmon never returned to the boarding house; the vile,
+egregious and infamous Boo haply incisively informed by Miss Salmon
+of what he had done, incontinently, and without speech to Rosalie,
+fled from the boarding house. They were gone, they were nothing to
+Rosalie; the correspondence was destroyed, it was nothing to Rosalie.
+
+But the significance of the matter was here. There was in Miss
+Salmon's letter to Rosalie one paragraph that Rosalie read a second
+time. She had received the letter when coming in just before dinner.
+Not at all injured nor in any way discommoded by the hurtling
+epithets, the terrific underscores intended to be as bludgeons,
+or the leaping exclamatory notes set there for stabs, she had put
+the thing away in a drawer and gone down to her meal. The passage
+alluded to came more than once into her mind. When she was about
+to get into bed that night she destroyed the letter, first reading
+that paragraph, and only that, again. Sole in the violent welter
+of those sheets it had no underscores nor any exclamations. It was
+added as a postscript. It said:
+
+"Well, now; Boo and I met the first time in a crowd watching a
+horse that had fallen down. It kicked and I stepped back quickly
+and trod on his foot. It made him put his hands on my arms and I
+looked around to apologise and there was his dear face smiling at
+me, although in great pain, for I had trodden on a corn he has;
+and I knew at once it was the face I had looked for and longed for
+all my life and had found at last; and I loved him from the first
+and we went out of the crowd and talked. Well, now; I clung to him
+in all our happy, happy months together, in a way you can never
+understand, because I loved him, and because I am not the sort that
+men like because I am only plain, and I knew that if ever he left
+me I could never get another. Well, now; you have taken him away
+from me. You could get dozens and dozens of men to love you, but
+you have taken mine, and I never, never can get another."
+
+The thoughts of Rosalie, not sequent, but going about and amounting
+thusly, were thus: "That is very pathetic. That is horribly sad
+and pathetic. Coming at the end like that and without any strokes
+and flourishes, it is as if she was exhausted of her hate and
+rage and just put out an utterly tired hand and set this here like
+a sigh. That's pathetic, the mere look of it and that thought of
+it. And then what she says. The dreadfully simple naivete of the
+beginning of it. Staring at a fallen horse in the street. It's just
+where they would be, both of them. They'd stand there for hours
+and just stare and stare. And then she steps back on his foot and
+there's 'his dear face' smiling at her; ah, it's pathetic, it's
+poignant! I can see it absolutely. Yes, I can. As if I were in the
+crowd around the horse, watching them. There they are, the horse
+between us, and all the doltish, staring faces round about; and
+their two dull and stupid faces; and as their eyes meet that sudden
+look upon their foolish faces, as of irradiation out of heaven, that
+would make a clown's face beautiful and cause the hardest heart to
+twist. But it doesn't cause mine to twist. That's the odd thing.
+I remember perfectly when a thing like that would have given me a
+little blinky kind of feeling. I've always been awfully quick to
+notice things like that. I've often seen them. Quite recently, so
+little, I believe, as a year ago, things like that, things like
+this, would have moved me a lot. They somehow do not now. That
+frightful ending of hers: 'You could get dozens and dozens of men
+to love you, but you have taken mine and I can never, never get
+another.' That is most terribly pathetic. I think that is the most
+poignant thing I have ever heard. Well, I can realise its utter
+pathos; I can realise it but I cannot feel it. It does not move
+me. 'And I never, never can get another.' It's frightful. I could
+cry. But I do not a bit want to cry. I must have somehow changed. I
+am not a bit sorry if I have changed. I would be sorry to go back
+and be as, if I have changed, I must have been--sentimental. I have
+changed. I believe I can look back and see it. About the time I
+left the Sultana's, mother's letters, and keeping them and answering
+them, began to be--yes they did begin to be a little, tiny bit of
+a nuisance to me. Yes, it was beginning then, this. And I expect
+earlier, if I worked it out. There's nothing in it to regret. It's
+just a growing out of a thing. It's not, when I see a thing that's
+pathetic, that I've grown blunt or blind and can't see it for
+pathetic. It's just--I know what it is--it's just that it doesn't
+appeal to me in the same way. It's like seeing a dish of most tempting
+food in front of you, not that I ever remember my mouth, as they
+say, watering at anything; but say strawberries and cream--I'm fond
+of strawberries and cream--it's like seeing a dish of strawberries
+and cream in front of you, and knowing it's good and knowing it's
+delicious, and knowing you're awfully fond of it--and just not
+being hungry; turning away and leaving it there, not because it's
+not everything that it ought to be, but just because--you don't
+want it. I should say that's how it is with me about these--these
+pathetic things. I know they're pathetic. I don't want them."
+
+That is how it was, how it had become, with Rosalie. That was just
+her first recognition of it, as the swimmer, intent on his own
+making of his progression, recognises not, till he has been borne
+some distance by it, the current that also is carrying him along.
+
+Visits home to the Rectory were further manifestations to her of
+this arising symptom.
+
+There were appeals that should have arisen to her out of her home;
+and they did arise; and she recognised them; but they did not
+appeal to her--not in the old way. She went home very rarely for
+occasional week-ends, always for her annual holidays, always for
+Christmas; and the discovery she made was that she liked her home
+very much better when she was away from it than when she was in
+it. When a visit was in prospect she desired her home, that is to
+say her mother, most frightfully. But when the visit was in being
+the joy she had promised herself she would spread somehow was not
+at her command; the love she had yearned to show somehow was chilled
+within her and not forthcoming. It was the tempting dish in a new
+illustration--rushing eagerly to it, avid of its delights; coming
+to it and finding, after all, one was not hungry.
+
+Strange!
+
+Her mother was ageing rapidly. She could have wept to see the
+ageing signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved;
+received the impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug
+but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be
+a little impatient. Returned to London and to her engrossing work
+and longed to be back with her mother; came back to her mother--and
+was not hungry.
+
+Strange!
+
+Then she began to analyse the strangeness of it and found it
+was not, after all, so strange; at least it was not a thing to be
+distressed about, nor bearing conviction of unnatural qualities,
+of hardness, of unkindness. There was a line she knew that came in
+a verse:
+
+    There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
+    The earth, and every common thing
+    To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light,
+    The glory and the freshness of a dream.
+    It is not now as it hath been of yore.
+    Turn wheresoe'er I may
+    By night or day,
+    The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
+
+"The things which I have seen I now can see no more." That was the
+line. "The things which used to appeal to me now appeal no more--or
+rather not quite in the same way. I think I used to be very sentimental.
+It is stupid and useless to be sentimental. People must grow old.
+There's nothing sad in that. It is natural. It is life. It is life
+and one must accept life. The unnatural thing, the foolish and wrong
+thing, is to remain a sentimental child for ever, with a child's
+ready foolish tears at what are common, necessary facts of life.
+I can be much kinder, much more really kind, by seeing things
+clearly--and in their right perspective than by occluding them
+with false compassions. I am always my dear, my darling mother's
+devoted daughter, ever at her disposal, and she knows it and loves
+me for it. When I am to her or to any friend but as ships that pass
+in the night--Keggo's phrase--then let me take myself to task."
+
+Keggo's phrase! Keggo was being intermittently seen at this time
+and these thoughts of Rosalie's were very close to the occasion when
+finally she lost sight of Keggo. It could be said like this--that
+Keggo here made a contribution to Rosalie's life that passed Rosalie
+on her way.
+
+They had kept touch for quite a time after their separation as
+governess and pupil. They then lost touch.
+
+"Why, it must be more than a year!" cried Rosalie, suddenly encountering
+Miss Keggs near the Marble Arch one evening and delightedly greeting
+her. It was in the summer and Rosalie had gone out from the boarding
+house after dinner for some fresh air in the park. She was enormously
+glad to see Keggo again and carried her greeting straight on into
+excuses for her share in their long sundering. "More than a year!
+You know, the fact is, Keggo, that when I first left the Sultana's,
+and for quite a time afterwards, I used to gush. I did! I was so
+frightfully full of all I was doing and it was all so new and so
+wonderful and I was so excited about it that it was sheer letting
+off steam--gush--to write you reams and reams of letters about it
+as I used to do. Then it got normal and the--the tumultuousness of
+it wore off and I was just--I am, you know--just absolutely absorbed
+in it and there was no more steam to let off; all the energy went
+into the work, I suppose. So gradually, I suppose, without quite
+realising it, I gave up writing. But, oh, if you knew how glad I
+am to see you now!"
+
+Miss Keggs to all this presented only a fixed smile. A smile
+belongs much more to the eyes than to the lips. The lips, but not
+the eyes, can counterfeit a smile. False coin is "uttered" as they
+say in law; and the lips utter. Not so the eyes. All metal that the
+mouth issues is to be tested there. The expression in Miss Keggs's
+eyes was not at all in consonance with that of her mouth. The
+expression of her eyes was rather oddly vacant as you may see on
+the face of a person who is apparently attending to what you are
+saying but really is listening to another conversation in the same
+room. "Not listening" as it is called. "An absent look" as they
+say.
+
+Nevertheless she joined dove-tailed response to Rosalie's words.
+"To tell you the truth," said Miss Keggs, speaking very slowly
+and repeating the preamble. "To tell you the truth I wouldn't have
+received your letters if you had written them."
+
+"You wouldn't? Why not?"
+
+"To tell you the truth--" there had been a pause before she first
+spoke; a pause again before this reply and then again a beginning
+with this phrase about which there was nothing odd in itself but
+something odd in the manner of its use by Miss Keggs. "To tell you
+the truth, I've left the school."
+
+"Left the Sultana's!"
+
+Miss Keggs nodded with slow inclinations, like grave bows, of her
+head.
+
+"Whatever for? Keggo, when, why?" And then Rosalie, impelled by some
+apprehension that suddenly pressed her, put a quick hand on Keggo's
+arm and cried sharply, "Keggo! There is something very strange
+about you. What has happened to you? Something has happened. You
+can't keep it from me."
+
+But Keggo could. At that quick gesture of suspicion of Rosalie's,
+animation sprung to meet it as a cat, at a sudden start, will leap
+from profound slumber to a place of safety and to arched defence.
+Miss Keggs, in their first exchanges, might have been as one
+drowsily answering questions from a bed. She was suddenly, in her
+instant casting away of her absent air, as that one flinging away
+the bedclothes and leaping upright to the floor. What had she
+been saying? She had been quite lost in something she was thinking
+of when Rosalie came up. She scarcely had recollected her. She
+had been very, very ill with "this influenza" and still was only
+convalescent. Why, how very, very glad she was to see her dear
+Rosalie again! And how Rosalie had developed!
+
+"Why, Rosalie, you are beautiful! You are! And you don't blush or
+simper to hear it! Yes, you are beautiful."
+
+There was a little room in a street somewhere off the Harrow Road
+that Miss Keggs now occupied. It was a forbidding street. It was one
+of those derelict streets frequent in certain quarters of London,
+in Holloway, in Kentish Town, in Kilburn and all over South London,
+all about which life teems and roars but where, along their own
+pavements, no life is. They are most characteristic of themselves,
+these streets, when, as often to be seen, there is no soul along
+them but a sad drab that is an itinerant singer that drifts along
+wailing, at every few paces shuffling her body in complete turns to
+scan the windows she has passed and the immediate windows on either
+hand. She has no home and these are not homes to which she wails.
+There is no flicker of life at any window. She's a sad drab, repulsive
+within; and they are sad drabs, not nice within. At night, but not
+before dusk, forlorn things flicker in and out of them like drab
+ghosts had on the strings of a puppet show. By day there sometimes is
+an old man crawling in or crawling out; sometimes a woman, always
+with a parcel or a net bag, fleeting along, expressionless. The
+high houses, all of one pattern, appear to have no pattern. They
+are like dead walls and the place they enclose like a vault, and
+the itinerant drab like a thing in drab cerements (they trail the
+dust) that ought to be dead wailing for entrance to things, tombed
+in those walls, that are dead. There is no life at all in these
+streets. There is nothing active or positive. There is just passivity
+and negation. There is just nothingness. They are not habitations,
+which connote life; they are repositories, which connote desuetude.
+They are the repositories of creatures, not that have done with
+life, for the sheer fact of living acknowledges service to life,
+but with whom life has done.
+
+These came to be Rosalie's thoughts of this street--Limpen Street--but
+they could not have been hers when she was first going there to
+spend evenings with Miss Keggs, for it was in her earlier visits
+there to Keggo that she cried there. When she could cry for pure
+compassion for another she was still too--too ardent for Limpen
+Street to be seen as it has been presented. From the first it
+affected her disagreeably but she would have felt, then, a sympathy
+for its state, and a belief that it could be aroused out of its
+state, and a wish so to arouse it; and in her earlier visits she had
+ardently this sympathy, but it was raised to a profound compassion;
+this belief, but it was a conviction; and this wish, but it was a
+resolution, in regard to Keggo.
+
+For Keggo was drinking.
+
+Keggo had been drinking for years and years and now Keggo had walled
+herself away in Limpen Street to drink and drink, still secretly
+with the sharp cunning of the secret drinker, but now with cunning
+only necessary when of her own wish she met the world. At the
+Sultana's, (only Mr. Ponders in her secret, and in her pay; "that
+vile man" as, after the revelation, she always spoke of him to
+Rosalie) at the Sultana's and in all her life of that period she
+was, as it were, as one whose life is threatened, dwelling among
+spies; that breastplate of her cunning never could be laid off then;
+now, as one threatened, but secure in a castle, the breastplate
+only was needed when sallies forth were made. There was at the
+Sultana's the need of constant care to inhibit her cravings; there
+now was none to save her--unless Rosalie did.
+
+There is no need at all to tell all this and all that by which
+Rosalie was led to this most terrible discovery and Keggo impelled
+to her most painful revelation. There was deceit and its exposure;
+lies and their crumpling in the hand; mystifications and their
+sinister interpretations; contingencies and their ugly dissolutions.
+These would be all beastly to tell. Beastly is a vile word but this
+is a vile thing. There was about it all, all the time, a tainted
+and unwholesome atmosphere. There was always in the little room in
+Limpen Street that strange disagreeable smell of bad eau-de-Cologne
+that always had hung about the little room at the Sultana's.
+
+Beastly things....
+
+But they were not felt to be beastly by Rosalie, then. They are
+said here to be beastly, for they were beastly, only in excuse for
+Rosalie afterwards. They only were to her, then, intensely sad,
+most deeply pitiful, intensely increasing of her love for Keggo as
+pure love is increased by seeing its object in tortures that may
+not be helped because they will not be confessed. If only Keggo
+would tell her! Once or twice she said to Keggo, speaking with an
+entreaty that must have made obvious to Keggo her knowledge, "Keggo,
+haven't you something to tell me; something that you'd like to tell
+me?" The occasion was always when she was leaving after a visit
+that had found Keggo very unwell, very dejected of spirits, and
+that Keggo had at last terminated by saying, "I think perhaps you
+had better go, Rosalie. I think perhaps I'd be better lying down."
+But Keggo's answer always was, "Something to tell you? No, nothing
+at all! What should I have to tell you?"
+
+And then one day something said brought them very near to the matter
+between them. Miss Keggs came nearer yet. She said, "The fact is,
+Rosalie, I sometimes get so I simply cannot make an effort, the
+smallest effort. I believe when I'm like that if a thousand pounds
+were offered me for the going out and asking of it, and God knows
+I want it badly enough, I simply could not make the effort to do
+it. I'd simply let it pass and know that I was letting it pass and
+not care. That's how it's got with me, how it is sometimes with
+me, Rosalie."
+
+Rosalie said with extraordinary emphasis, leaning forward on the
+chair in which she sat facing Keggo. "Why is it, Keggo?"
+
+If Keggo had answered, the thing would not have happened. Keggo did
+not answer. She was sitting with her hands crossed, one palm upon
+the other, and resting on her lap, her eyes to the ground. Quite
+a long time passed. Rosalie said, "You're drinking, aren't you,
+Keggo?"
+
+"Yes, drinking, Rosalie."
+
+"Oh, Keggo!"
+
+It was then that Rosalie cried.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+
+
+Sne cried. Her sympathies, though drying and slower now to be
+aroused, still then were such that she could weep for pity. It is
+a glimpse of her not to be seen again. There was she on her knees
+by Keggo, and with her arms about Keggo's waist, and with her head
+on Keggo's lap, crying for Keggo; and in the pauses of Keggo's
+unfolding of her story entreating her, as one that cried responses
+to a litany, "Don't mind, Keggo! Keggo, don't mind now! Dear Keggo,
+poor Keggo, it's all right now."
+
+And presently all the tale told: what Mr. Ponders' medicine was;
+and all the humiliation suffered in keeping in with "that vile
+man"; and that vile man's betrayal of her to the Sultana, and her
+dismissal; and all the earlier dreadfulness of her first steps
+down into her dreadful malady; and all the dreadful secrecy of all
+those years; and all the horrible humiliation secretly to get her
+poison; and all the horrible humiliations when her poison got. All
+the dark tale of that presently told; and her head bowed down to
+Rosalie's, and Rosalie's wet face against her face, and her face
+also wet; and just her murmurs, murmured at intervals, as though
+her heart that had discharged its grievous load ran slowly now,
+slowly to rise and then to well with, "God bless you, Rosalie;
+oh, Rosalie, God bless you"; and for a long time just seated thus,
+cheek to cheek, hand to hand, heart to heart; weakness bound about
+with strength, sorrow in pity's arms, travail in sanctuary....
+
+It is desired that one should try to see that picture. Its
+counterpart was not again in the life of Rosalie, hardening.
+
+There were, after that, such happy evenings in Keggo's room. Keggo,
+with one to help her, fighting for herself; Rosalie, with one to
+help, elevated upon that high happiness that comes with fighting for
+another. For a short time there seemed to be no lapses in Keggo's
+struggle. When they came (as Rosalie knew afterwards) the practised
+cunning of years of secrecy had no difficulty in concealing them
+from the unsuspecting eyes of Rosalie. Ill that it was so! Rosalie
+was harder when came the lapse that cunning could not hide. She did
+not cry. Her eyes were hard. She said with thin lips, "Why, even
+all this time you have been deceiving me!" the which egged on, in
+that vile way in which exchanges of a quarrel are as knives sharpening
+one against the other, Keggo's enflamed retort, "The more fool you!
+Little fool!"
+
+But at first, while the lapses were few and the cunning was equal
+to them, only a closer friendship was set afoot between the woman
+that was grown and the woman that was burgeoning, and there were
+such very happy evenings in the room in Limpen Street. Such jolly
+talks.
+
+There was one talk that, forgotten with the very evening of its
+passage, afterwards very strongly returned to Rosalie and abode
+with her. It had in it rather vital things for Rosalie.
+
+She loved to talk about her work with intelligent and sympathetic
+Keggo, and she had been on this occasion expounding to her the
+mysteries and interest of life insurance: in particular explaining
+the "romance" of vital statistics; in particular, again, the curious
+fact that, though women in the United Kingdom largely outnumbered
+men, many more male children were born than female. The disproportion
+"the other way about" in maturity, said Rosalie, was because the death
+rate among men was much higher--due to risks of their occupations.
+"A certain number of house painters," said Rosalie sagely, "fall
+off ladders every year and are killed; women don't paint houses, so
+they don't fall off ladders and get killed. Similarly on railways,
+Keggo. The death rate among railway men is much higher in proportion,
+over an average, than the rate in any other occupation. Porters
+doing shunting, for instance, are always getting killed. Well,
+women don't shunt trains so they don't get killed while shunting
+trains, so there you are again, so to speak. The thing in a nutshell,
+Keggo, is that, by contrast, men lead dangerous lives."
+
+Keggo, who always was very alert in response, was here very long in
+responding. Then she responded an extraordinary thing that Rosalie
+afterwards remembered. She said slowly, "Oh, but Rosalie, it's very
+dangerous to be a woman."
+
+Rosalie questioned her.
+
+Keggo said, "Rosalie, you've great ideas, and I think very shrewd
+and very striking ideas, about the difference between men and women,
+but there's this difference I think you haven't thought of--the
+danger that women carry in themselves; right in them, here"--she
+had a hand against her breast and she pressed it there--"born in
+them, inerradicable, and that men have not. Men go into dangers but
+they come out of them and go home to tea. That's what it is with
+men, Rosalie. They can always get out. They can always come back.
+They never belong to a thing, body and soul and heart and mind.
+Rosalie, women do. That's their danger. That's why it is so very,
+very dangerous being a woman. Women can't come back. They can't,
+Rosalie. Look at me. They take to a thing and it becomes a craze,
+it becomes an obsession, it becomes a drug. Look at me. They take
+to a thing--anything; a poison like mine, or a pursuit like some
+one else's, or an idea like some other's, or a--a career in life
+like, like yours, Rosalie,--they take to it and go deep enough, and
+they're its; they never will get away from it, they never, never
+will be able to come out of it. Never."
+
+She was extraordinarily vehement. It was embarrassing for Rosalie.
+Rosalie desired to contest, as vehemently, these theories. She did
+not believe them a bit. They were founded, she felt, on the tragedy
+of Keggo's own case. Keggo was unfairly, though very naturally,
+arguing from the particular to the general, from the personal to
+the abstract. But how could she reply to Keggo, "Of course you say
+that?"
+
+She was silent; but she betrayed perhaps her thoughts in a gesture,
+her difficulty in some expression of her face.
+
+Keggo said very intensely, "But, Rosalie, if you only knew! With
+me it's drink and you'll say--. But I say to you, Rosalie, never,
+never let anything get the mastery of you. With me it's drink
+and you'll say that is a matter altogether different, with which
+parallels are not to be drawn. Oh, do not believe it, Rosalie. A
+woman should in all things be desperately temperate--watchfully,
+desperately temperate. A man--nearly every man--seems somehow
+to have his life and all his interests in compartments. He can be
+immersed in one while he is in it, and can get out of it and distribute
+himself over his others and close it and forget it. Rosalie, a
+woman can't. Men have hobbies. They don't have attachments; they
+have detachments. They detach themselves and turn to a thing and
+they detach themselves from it and turn back again. Rosalie, women
+don't turn to a thing; they go to it. They don't have hobbies, they
+have obsessions. They don't trifle, they plunge. They cannot sip,
+they drain. It's in their bone. They never would have occupied the
+place they do occupy if it were not that from the beginning they
+have given themselves over, or they were given over, to mastery.
+They are the weaker vessel. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman
+gives herself, forgets moderation and gives herself to anything,
+she is its captive for ever. She may think she can come back, but
+she can't come back. For a woman there is no comeback. They don't
+issue return tickets to women. For women there is only departure;
+there is no return."
+
+Rosalie said, "Keggo, I think I could argue, but I won't. But what
+I can't imagine is the application of it in hundreds of cases--in
+by far the great majority of cases. Take mine. You're not warning
+me, are you? I don't see the possibility--"
+
+Keggo said, "Darling, I'm not warning you and yet I am. I am warning
+you because you are a woman; and because you are a woman you are
+susceptible to danger. It's what I've said; it's what I would have
+you remember for a day perhaps to come, that it is dangerous being
+a woman. I'm not warning you, because there's nothing to--well,
+but isn't there? You've got a theory of life and you are bent upon
+a career in life. There's--"
+
+Rosalie cried, "Well, but there you are, Keggo. No comeback, no
+return tickets--well, I don't want to come back; I don't want a
+return ticket."
+
+"You might. You never know. Suppose you ever did?"
+
+"But you can't suppose it. Why ever should I?"
+
+"Suppose you wanted to marry?"
+
+Rosalie laughed. The thing immediately lost reality. "Well, suppose
+the incredible. Suppose I did. There'd be no comeback wanted there.
+I could perfectly well marry and still keep my theory of life; I
+could perfectly well marry and still keep on in my career--and most
+certainly I would still keep on. Why, that is my theory of life,
+as you call it, or a very outstanding principle of it. There's
+nothing to me more detestable in the whole business than the idea
+that because a woman marries she therefore must give up her work.
+That's what is the reason the boarding house and every boarding
+house and every home and street and city swarms with derelicts--with
+derelict women--just because their lives are all planned as blind
+alley occupations, marriage at the end of the alley, no need to do
+anything, no need to be anything because it's only a blind alley
+you're in. When you reach the end--you reach the end! That's it,
+Keggo. You reach the end. You're a woman, therefore for you--the
+end!"
+
+She laughed again. She was returning Keggo's vehemence without
+embarrassment upon the subject that had made return difficult. She
+cried, "I've got you now, Keggo. I really have. You say they don't
+issue return tickets to women. No. Perhaps they don't; but I'll
+tell you where they book them all to--from the cradle to a terminus."
+
+Keggo smiled and would have spoken. But Rosalie was pleased with
+her adroit turning of metaphors. She repeated "To a terminus. Well,
+I've booked beyond, Keggo." She laughed again. "And then the idea
+of marriage for me! I've granted the preposterous just for the sake
+of the argument and just to floor the argument. But you know, you
+know perfectly well from all our talks, even so far back as at
+the Sultana's, that it's simply too grotesque! Marriage, for me!
+Why, if a million men came to me on their bended knees, each with
+a million pounds on their backs you know perfectly well that I'd
+just feel sick. Tame cats, tabby cats, tomcats, Cheshire cats, wild
+cats, stray cats,--I'm not going to set up a cats' home. No thanks."
+
+So Rosalie had the laugh of that evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+
+
+But this was not to continue. Keggo began to lapse; Rosalie began to
+weary of helping Keggo. She had herself to think of. Those who go
+down in life, whether by age or by misfortune, are prone, engulfed,
+to cry to those ascending, "You could help me!" There is a correct
+answer to this. It is, "I have done (or I do) a great deal for you.
+I cannot do more. It is not fair to ask me to do more. I have a
+duty to myself. I have myself to think of." Our generation endorses
+this.
+
+Rosalie had herself to think of. By stages that need not be
+detailed, they are the common facts of life, the thing passes from
+that picture of those two with Rosalie's strong young arms about
+the other to a new picture, the last, between them.
+
+The stages show Rosalie's enormous, ardent plans for the rescue
+and rehabilitation of Keggo, and they show the projection and
+the failure of the plans. They show work found for Keggo (through
+Simcox's scholastic side) and lost and found again and again lost
+and still again. They show Keggo's remorse and they show Rosalie's
+forgiveness. They show it repeated and repeated. They show by
+degrees the gradual, and then the rapid, staling of Rosalie's fond
+sympathies. They show her finally, immersed in her own purposeful
+interests, discovering to herself feelings in regard to Keggo on a
+plane with feelings discovered to herself in regard to her mother.
+It has been written: "Her mother was ageing rapidly. Rosalie could
+have wept to see the ageing signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not
+weep; was not moved; received the impression but was not sensitive
+to it; felt the tug but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed,
+was apt to be a little impatient." It is not necessary to expand.
+Keggo was fast going downhill. Rosalie could have wept to see the
+downhill signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not
+moved... rather, indeed... impatient. She had herself to think of.
+
+Youth's an excuse for youth as childhood's an excuse for childishness.
+Youth, still, like childhood, but unlike maturity, can be lost
+in its emotions, absorbed in them to the exclusion of all else,
+abandoned to them with all else pitched away as a swimmer discards
+his every stitch and joyously plunges in the stream. Youth is not
+accountable for its actions then: it is too happy or it is too sad.
+One oughtn't to blame youth, immersed.
+
+There was outstandingly one such day of absorption in delight, of
+abandonment to ecstasy for Rosalie, and it was the day on which
+she made her third advance in the social grade of Miss Kentish's
+boarding house and moved into the two rooms en suite, furnished
+and decorated by herself to her own taste. She awoke to this great
+day, long anticipated; and with the vigorous action of throwing
+off the clothes and jumping out of bed, she plunged into it and
+was lost in it. The excitement and the elation of taking possession
+of that enchanting, that significant apartment of her own! She was
+excited; she was elated. Moving in was the cumulative excitement
+of all the long-drawn, anxious excitements of peering round the
+antique dealers and picking up the bits of furniture and of placing
+them and moving them a shade to this side and then a shade to that
+till was found the one and only exact position that suited them
+and that they suited; and the terrible excitements of watching
+the decorators at work, her scheme developing beneath their hands,
+and the awful knowledge that now it was being done it was done for
+good or bad--no altering it now!--and the agonizing excitements of
+putting down the carpets--how can you tell exactly how a carpet is
+going to look until you see it actually down upon its floor and
+between its walls?--and the increasing excitement all the time
+of the knowledge that everything was harmonising and was looking
+just as in dreams of the ideal it had been made to look; and now
+all ready! The bed-sitting-room slept in last night for the last
+time; the two utterly perfect rooms and all that their possession
+connoted, to be occupied that evening for the first time! Yes,
+in all the tumultuous pride and engrossment of that, there was
+no place--how could there be place?--for tiresome things of other
+people's worlds, if such should offer.
+
+And in this tremendous day there was stuff more tremendous yet. This
+also was the day on whose evening was made the tremendous tribute
+to her work and to her talent, the evening of the dazzling offer
+that, like a door swung open on a treasure house, disclosed to her
+new fields to which her career had brought her, new triumphs that
+her career, in its stride, might make her own--the evening when
+Mr. Sturgiss of Field's Bank leant across the dinner table in his
+house (at his request only she and himself left in the room) and
+said in his quiet voice, "Well, look here--to come to the point--the
+reason I've got you up here to-night--it's this: we want you,
+Field and Company, the Bank, we want you to join us. We want you
+in Lombard Street."
+
+Lombard Street!
+
+Cumulative also was this thrill, for it had begun some few
+days previously when Mr. Sturgiss, calling at Simcox's for a chat
+with Mr. Simcox, an old friend, had come into her room and after
+mysteriously fidgetting with business and conversational trifles,
+had issued the invitation to dinner at his house at Cricklewood
+in language mysteriously couched. "My wife would like to meet you,"
+said Mr. Sturgiss. "She's heard a lot from me, and from Field, of what
+an astonishingly clever young person we think you and she'd--she'd
+like to meet you. And more than that." Mr. Sturgiss's halting
+speech suddenly became direct and definitive like a flag that had
+been fluttering suddenly streaming upon the breeze. "And more than
+that. The fact is, there's a proposition I want to put up to you.
+A proposition. We could go into it quietly and discuss it. I rather
+think it would interest you. I'm sure it will. You'll come? Good.
+I'm very glad. Very glad."
+
+A proposition! From Mr. Sturgiss! Of Field and Company! What could
+it be?
+
+But Rosalie was not of the sort to tread the succeeding days on the
+enchanted air of fond surmises. She told herself that the mysterious
+proposition might be everything or might be nothing: the fact that
+outstood was that she had brought her aspirations to this--that
+a partner in a London bank recognised in her stuff sufficient to
+invite her to a confidential meeting, there to go into something
+with her "quietly together," to meet together over something
+and "discuss it." She had determined to establish herself and she
+was establishing herself. And was it not an omen propitious and
+significant that this recognition of her parts was to fall on the
+very day on which the exercise of those parts brought her into the
+dignity and comfort of that delicious, that significant apartment
+of her own?
+
+This solid stuff, and no mere daydreams, was the delight absorbing
+her and the ecstasy to which she was abandoned when that great
+day came. In the morning she put the last of her possessions, the
+equipment of her dressing table, into the new apartment; after the
+day spent at Simcox's, she returned to dress for the first time
+before the noble cheval glass purchased for the bedroom. She decided
+to go up in a hat; it could be removed or not for dinner as Mrs.
+Sturgiss might seem to indicate. She put on an evening bodice of
+black silk and net with a simple skirt in keeping. She gave last
+approving glances about the delightful rooms and set out, immersed
+in eager happiness, for Cricklewood.
+
+One of those old red buses that vied with the white Putney buses
+as being the best horsed on the London routes took her there. Up
+the Edgware Road; past the junction with the Harrow Road that led
+to Keggo's street--she only had for it the thought that it was
+weeks since she had seen Keggo, almost months; along broad Maida
+Vale and past the turning that led to the Sultana's with the corner
+where often the crocodile had huddled--and she was so engrossed
+in her happy achievements that she passed it without thinking of
+it. The bus terminated its journey at the foot of Shoot Up Hill.
+Rosalie, called upon to alight, came out of her thoughts into her
+surroundings. She realised that she must have passed Crocodile
+Corner without noticing and the realisation caused her to give a
+little note of amused indifference. The indifference was not directed
+precisely at the Sultana's; it was at the idea, which came to her,
+that, normally to human predilections, she ought to have given--ought
+now to give--a sentimental thought to memories of the Sultana
+years. Well, she did not. Funny! Yes, it was funny. As she sometimes
+thought of her mother and of all her home ties; of Miss Salmon
+and that cry of hers of never being able to find another lover; of
+Keggo now so seldom seen and known to be going from bad to worse,--so
+with memories of Crocodile Corner and the Sultana's, she could
+see and appreciate the call of all these attachments, but somehow,
+seeing and appreciating, did not respond to them. What a very
+curious attitude! It was not unfeeling for she could feel. It was
+not insensibility for she was sensitive to such things. Sensitive!
+No, a better word than that. She was in such matters sensible. She
+saw, as one should see, these things in their right perspective.
+They were touching (as of her mother) or they were sad (as of Keggo)
+or they were appealing (as the happy schoolgirl memories) but they
+must not touch or sadden or appeal too closely. They must be estimated
+in their degree and in their place; they must not be assumed, be
+shouldered, be permitted to cumber. No good could be done to them
+by encumbrance with them. That was the point. What good could it
+do them? No good. Yes, that was sensible.
+
+She abated, in these thoughts, nothing of the eagerness with which
+she was living this great day--the day whose points of suspension
+(on which it tumultuously revolved) were the taking over of the
+significant apartment from which she had just come and the entering
+upon the significant invitation to which now her feet were taking
+her. These thoughts, this analysis of her attitude to sentimental
+appeals, she tossed upon her eager happiness that was her being as
+an airball tossed upon laughing breath that yet is used, breathing, to
+support life. And she was aware that this was so. And she enjoyed
+a flash of approval of herself that it could be so; it was admirable,
+it was sensible, thus to be able to detach and look upon a portion
+of her mind while her main mind deflected not a shade from its
+occupation with the main chance. That faculty was perhaps the secret
+of her success, the quality, that, in exercise, had brought her to
+the significant apartment and to the significant invitation.
+
+She was at the gate of Mr. Sturgiss's house and she most happily
+passed up the short drive, ascended the steps and rang the bell.
+
+Mr. Sturgiss's house was almost on the summit of Shoot Up Hill.
+It was one of those houses standing a few miles along the main
+thoroughfares out of London that, now in decay or displaced by busy
+shops, packed villas, or monstrous flats, were then the distinctly
+impressive residences of distinctly well-to-do business people. Mr.
+Sturgiss was a distinctly well-to-do business person. The house,
+double-fronted, had that third sitting-room which confers such an
+immense superiority over houses of but two sitting-rooms--"Such a
+convenience in so many ways" as those newly promoted from two to
+three nowadays remark with languid triumph to visitors still immured
+in two. Houses--new, two sitting-roomed houses--extended beyond
+it and around it, and now stretch miles beyond and about, but Mrs.
+Sturgiss told Rosalie that when they first came there they actually
+had cows grazing and horses ploughing in fields adjoining their
+garden.
+
+Mrs. Sturgiss told Rosalie this while personally attending Rosalie's
+removal of her hat (it was "no hat"; Rosalie felt so glad she
+had come dressed for either indication) and Mrs. Sturgiss sighed
+pleasantly as she said it. "Things are going ahead at such a pace
+now!" said Mrs. Sturgiss. "It's all very different from what it used
+to be. Why, the very fact of your coming here, not as my guest but
+as my husband's, 'on business!' The idea of women being in business,
+or even knowing anything about business, when I was a girl, why,
+I can't tell you how, how positively shocking it would have been
+considered."
+
+Rosalie laughed. She liked Mrs. Sturgiss, who was motherly and
+seemed to have her own dear mother's gentle ways--this personally
+attending her in her bedroom, for instance. "Oh, there are getting
+to be heaps of women in business now, Mrs. Sturgiss," she smiled.
+
+Mrs. Sturgiss returned brightly, "Oh, I know it. I know it well."
+She paused and her voice had a thoughtful note. "But even then....
+Use the long mirror, my dear; the light is better. Even then, there
+can be few as,--as much in it as you. You know, my husband has an
+immense idea of your abilities. He has spoken of you so much. Do
+you know, you are a great surprise to me, now I see you. I could
+only imagine from all John's idea of you a rather terrible looking
+blue-stocking, as we used to call the clever women." She came and
+stood by Rosalie, regarding the image in the glass that Rosalie
+regarded. She said simply, "But you are beautiful."
+
+A very odd feeling, akin to tears--but for what on earth
+tears?--quickened in Rosalie. She turned sharply from the mirror.
+"I am quite ready now." She pretended she had not heard.
+
+Mrs. Sturgiss said, "My dear, do you like it, being what you are?"
+
+It was a great rescue for Rosalie to be able to spring away from
+that odd feeling (in her bosom and in her throat) by swift animation.
+"Oh, I love it. I simply love it. It is everything to me, everything
+in the world!"
+
+Mrs. Sturgiss opened the door. "No, you go first, my dear. But if
+I had had a dear girl, such as you, I would have wished her to stay
+with me at home."
+
+She had made with her hand the gesture of her wish that Rosalie
+should precede her from the room. Rosalie impulsively touched the
+extended fingers. "But, Mrs. Sturgiss, don't you see, that's just
+it, the idea there is now. If you had had a daughter and she had
+stayed at home--well, let that go, while you were with her. But
+when you died and left her, what would there be--don't you see
+it?--what would there be for her then?"
+
+Mrs. Sturgiss pressed the warm young hand. "But I would have left
+her married, a dear wife and a dear mother."
+
+"Oh, that!" cried Rosalie and her stronger personality carried off
+the exchanges in a laugh. Mrs. Sturgiss thought the expression and
+the tone meant, happily, that marriage might happen to any one,
+in the market as much as in the home. Rosalie, with all the fierce
+contempt that her "Oh, that!" conveyed to her secret self, was
+ridden strongly away from emotionalism in the conversation. Her
+thought as they went downstairs was, "If I were to instruct her in
+the cat-men! Her horror!"
+
+There was downstairs a surprise that was very annoying, but that
+was made to produce compensations. An unexpected fourth person,
+presuming--so Rosalie was given to understand--on a long standing,
+indefinite invitation, had dropped in to dinner. She recognised him
+directly they entered the drawing-room and could not stop the emblem
+of a swift vexation about her mouth and in her eyes. He caught it,
+she was sure; and she hoped he did. It was Harry Occleve--Laetitia's
+futile slave! He had already informed his host that he knew her.
+She greeted him with a mere touch of her hand, a touch made cold by
+intent, and with "With a free evening off one would have expected
+you would spend it with Laetitia," said disdainfully. It was a rude
+and inept thing to say (in the tone she said it) for the feeble
+creature, as she stigmatised him, had not yet screwed his fatuous
+idolatry to the point of proposal of marriage. But she intended
+it to be rude and to discomfort him and she was glad to see some
+twinge at the flick pass across his face. She hated his presence
+there. The presence of any man, in the capacity of a monkey to
+entertain and to be entertained, was always, not to put too fine a
+point upon it, repulsive to her. This man was of all men obnoxious to
+her. When he approached her for their brief greeting (she turned
+instantly away at its conclusion) she savoured immediately that odd,
+nice smell there was about him, of mingled soap and peat and fresh
+tobacco smoke and tweed; and that annoyed her. It was a reminder,
+emanated from him and therefore not to be escaped, of a distinction
+he had different from, and above common men. She always granted
+him his distinction of looks, of air, of talent. It was why she
+so much disdained him. To be dowered so well and so fatuously to
+betray his dowry! Tame cat!
+
+But she made him, through the meal, pay compensations for
+his presence. At the table of Aunt Belle, in his presence she was
+accustomed to sit largely silent. Beautiful Laetitia was there
+the star; and while he mouthed and languished in that star's rays
+Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke, (stealing about him to capture him as a
+farmer and his wife with mincing steps and tempting morsel towards
+a fatted calf) fawned, flattered and deferred to him, he returning
+it. There was no place for her, and she would have shuddered to
+have held a place, in that society for mutual admiration. She sat
+apart. She was very much the poor relation (Aunt Belle could not
+comprehend her business success and Uncle Pyke would not admit it)
+and especially odious to her was the Occleve's polite interest in
+her direction when Aunt Belle, poor-relationing her, would turn
+to her from coquettish raillery of him with, "Dear child, you're
+eating nothing." He would smile towards her and, fatuously anxious
+to please, offer some remark that might draw her into the conversation.
+She never would be so drawn. She scarcely ever exchanged words
+with him. She made herself to be unconscious of his presence. He
+was so occupied with his adoration of Laetitia that to be insensible
+of his presence was easy. When sometimes she glanced towards him
+it was with the thought, "Fancy being one of the rising young men
+at the Bar, being the rising young man--the Bar, with silk and
+ermine and, why not? the Woolsack before you--and being that, doing
+that! Fatted calf; dilly, dilly, come and be killed, goose; tame
+cat!"
+
+Here, at the table of Mr. Sturgiss, it was very different. Intolerable
+that he should be here, but she was able to make him provide her
+compensation for his presumption. For the first time in her life,
+she found herself with sufficient interest in a man to enjoy, nay,
+to seek, a triumph over him. And she had that triumph. She was
+as certain as that she sat there that Mr. Sturgiss, in the period
+before her arrival in the drawing-room, had been telling him of
+her abilities and of his high regard for her. There was an interest
+in his look at her across the table that assured her he had been
+informed. There was, much more, a conviction within her, from
+Mr. Sturgiss's manner and from his choice of subjects--confined
+almost entirely and to the absolute exclusion of Mrs. Sturgiss to
+the political situation and to markets, exchanges and the general
+tendency in the City--and particularly from the openings in these
+subjects with which continuously he presented her--a conviction arising
+out of these that Mr. Sturgiss, proud of her, of his discovery of
+her, was bent upon showing her off to his second guest, bent upon
+proving to his second guest what unquestionably he had said to him
+about her.
+
+She most admirably responded. If she were indeed the subject of a
+challenge she most admirably flattered her backer. She is not to
+be imagined as a pundit excavating from within herself slabs of
+profound wisdom, nor yet as a pupil astoundingly instructing her
+masters, nor even as one of Mrs. Sturgiss's blue stockings, packed
+with surprising lore. Rosalie was nothing so foolishly impossible,
+but she displayed herself knowledgeable. She was profoundly interested
+in the matters under notice and therefore (for it follows) she was
+interesting in her contributions to them; she was fascinated--the
+old fascination of "Lombard Street" and of "The English Constitution" now
+intensified as desire intensifies by gratification--and therefore
+she fascinated; she was never silly--Rosalie could not be silly--but
+she was frequently in her remarks ingenuous, but her ingenuousness,
+causing Mr. Sturgiss more than once to laugh delightedly (Occleve,
+curiously grave, no doubt because surprised, did not laugh) was
+born out of a shrewd touch towards the heart of the matter, as the
+best schoolboy howlers are never the work of the dullard but of
+him that has perceptions. Of her in her childhood it has been said
+that she was never the wonder-child of fiction who at ten has read
+all that its author probably had not read at thirty. So now of her
+budding maturity she was not the wonder-woman of fiction, causing
+by her brilliance her hearers, like Cortez's men, to stare at each
+other with a wild surmise. No, nothing so unlikely. But she was
+intelligent and she was ardent; and there are not boundaries to the
+distance one may go with that equipment. She was admirable and she
+felt that she was effective. She had a consciousness of confidence
+amounting almost to a feeling of being tuned up and now let go; to
+a feeling of power, as of inspiration. And this strange animation
+that she had, came, she knew, from the triumph over that man, from
+the feeling, stated grimly, that she was giving him one.
+
+It is much more important, all that, than, when it came, the great
+reason of the great invitation that had brought Rosalie to take part
+in it. The great reason already has been disclosed--Mr. Sturgiss,
+bending across the tablecloth, they two left alone, "Well, look
+here--to come to the point--the reason why I've got you up here
+tonight--it's this: we want you--Field and Company, the Bank,--we
+want you to come to us--we want you in Lombard Street."
+
+She was beautiful to see in her proud happiness at that. Startled
+and tremulous, she was; like some lovely fawn burst from thicket
+and at breathless poise upon the crest of unsuspected pastures;
+within her eyes the cloud of dreams passing like veils upon the
+gleam of her first ecstasy; upon her face, shadowed as she sinks
+somewhat back, the tide of colour (her rosy joy) flooding above
+her sudden pallor; her lips slightly parted; her hand that had been
+plucking at the cloth caught to her bosom where her heart had leapt.
+
+It may be left at that. It is enough; too much. What, in the
+reconstruction of a life, are, in retrospect, its triumphs but
+empty shards, drained and discarded, the litter of a picnic party
+that has fed and passed along?
+
+Mr. Sturgiss bent farther across the tablecloth, expanding his
+proposal: She knew, said he, what he represented, what the firm
+was. Field and Company. A private bank. Well, the days of private
+banks were drawing in. These huge joint-stock leviathans swallowing
+them up like pike among the troutlings. But not swallowing up Field
+and Company! Not much! If the old private houses were tumbling into
+the joint-stock maw, the greater the chances for those that stood
+out and remained. The private banks were tumbling in because they
+stood rooted in the old, solid, stolid banking business and the
+leviathans came along and pounced while they dozed. There was no
+dozing at Field's. They were very much awake. They were enterprising.
+
+"Look at this very matter between us. The idea of bringing a woman
+into a bank! Even old Field himself was startled at first. Why?
+In America, women are entering banking seriously and successfully.
+They're going to in England. At Field's. You." He wasn't proposing
+to bring her in for fun or for a chance that might turn up, like
+the man who picked up a dog biscuit from the road on the chance
+that some one would give him a dog before it got mildewed; no, he
+was bringing her in to develop an enterprise that should be the
+parent of other and greater enterprises. Her knowledge of insurance,
+her knowledge of schools, these, with her sex, on the one side of
+the counter and all their clients--the Anglo-Indian crowd who were
+the backbone of the business--on the other side of the counter.
+Field's, for cash, and, while it was drawing, for advice, was
+always the first port of call of the wives and the mothers home
+from India, to say nothing of the husbands and the fathers,--"well,
+Field's, you, shall be the fount of all that domestic advice that
+is just what all those people, cut off from home, are constantly
+and distractingly in need of." She didn't suppose, as it was, that
+Field's did no more, for them than bank their money? Field's were
+their agents. Field's saw that they booked their passages, and that
+their baggage got aboard; and when they arrived this end or the
+other, or when they broke their journeys coming or going, Field's
+representatives were there to meet them and take over all their
+baggage troubles for them. "Very well. Now Field's--you--are going
+to look after their domestic troubles for them--find them rooms,
+find them houses, find them schools for their children. When people
+know what we can do for them, people will come to us to bank with
+us because we can do it. When people come to us to bank with us--we
+go ahead."
+
+Mr. Sturgiss ended and drew back and looked at her. He lit a cigarette
+and took a sip at his coffee. "We thought of offering you three--"
+he set down his cup and looked at her again--"four hundred a year."
+
+She declined the post. She was girlish, and delighted him, in her
+expression of her enormous sense of the compliment he paid her; she
+was a woman of uncommon purposefulness, and increased his admiration
+for her by the directness and decision with which uncompromisingly
+she said him no. She owed a loyalty which she could never fully pay
+to Simcox's, to Mr. Simcox; that was the beginning and the end of
+her refusal. Simcox's was her own, her idea, her child that daily
+she saw growing and that daily absorbed her more: that was the
+material that filled in and stiffened out the joints of her refusal.
+"But if you knew how proud I am, Mr. Sturgiss! You don't mind my
+refusing?"
+
+He laughed and rose to take her to the drawing-room. "I don't mind
+a bit. This is only what they call preliminary overtures. I shall
+ask you again. We mean to have you."
+
+Between the two rooms he said, "Yes, mean to. It's a big thing. I'm
+certain of it. We shall keep it open for you. We shan't fill it."
+He put his hand on the drawing-room door and opened it. "We can't."
+
+She went in radiant.
+
+She was on the red bus again, going home. She had stayed but the
+briefest time after dinner. She was too elevated, too buoyant, too
+possessed possibly to remain in company; excitedly desirous to be
+alone with her excited thoughts,--especially to be alone with them
+in that significant apartment of hers. Significant! Why upon the
+very day of entering it had come this most triumphant sign of its
+significance! Significant!...
+
+She had a front seat on the outside of the omnibus. She gazed
+before her along a path of night that the lamps jewelled in chains
+of gold, and streamed along it her tumultuous thoughts, terrible
+as an army with banners. It was very strange, and it vexed her,
+robbing her of her proud consciousness of them, that there obtruded
+among them, as one plucking at her skirt--as captain of them she
+rode before them--the figure of Laetitia's Harry. Similarly he had
+obtruded and been like to spoil the pleasure of her visit; but he
+had been made to provide compensations and he obtruded now only in
+rebirth of a passage with him that, rehearsed again, much pleased
+her even while, annoyed, she cut him down.
+
+Taking her leave, she had been seen from the threshold by Mr.
+Sturgiss and by Laetitia's Harry. It was pitchy dark, emerging
+from the brightness of the interior, and he had stepped with her
+to conduct her to the gate. "It was an extraordinary coincidence,
+meeting you here," he had said.
+
+She did not reply. His voice was most strangely grave for an observation
+so trite; he might have been speaking some deeply meditated thing,
+profound, heavy with meaning, charged with fate. Fatuous! It was
+extraordinary that there was not an action of his but aroused her
+animosity. This vibrant gravity of tone--an organ used for a jig,
+just as his gifts were used for his Laetitia moon-calfings--caused
+newly a disturbance within her against him. She would have liked to
+whistle or in some equal way to express indifference to his presence.
+
+They were at the gate and he stooped to the latch and appeared to
+have some trouble with it. "Sturgiss has been telling me what a
+wonderful person you are."
+
+Again that immense gravity of tone. She was astonished at the sudden
+surge of her animosity that it caused within her. She had desired
+to express indifference. She desired now to assail. She made a sneer
+of her voice. "I should have thought you had ears for the wonder
+of no one but Laetitia."
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+She felt her lip curl with her malevolence. "To see you raise your
+eyes and hear you breathe 'Ah, Laetitia!'"
+
+He opened the gate and she passed out, tingling.
+
+It astounded her to find herself a hundred yards gone from the house,
+nay, now upon the bus a mile and more away, recalling it, trembling
+and with her breath quickened. It was as if she had been engaged
+in a contest of wills, very fierce; nay, in a contest physical,
+a wrestling. She had not known, she told herself, that it was
+possible to hate so. That man! These men! She put her eye upon the
+bus driver, strapped on his perch so near to her that she could
+have touched him, and absurdly in her repugnance of his sex hated
+him and shrank farther away from him.
+
+It was enormously, sickeningly real to her, her repugnance. Even
+on detached consideration of her ridiculous shrinking from the
+bus driver she could not have laughed at it. People who had an
+uncontrollable antipathy to cats did not laugh at the grotesque
+puerilities to which it carried them. Nor she at her antipathy. "Of
+course they're beasts." Yes, the right word! It was the beastliness
+of sex that bottomed her loathing.
+
+She could not have laughed; but she could and did with a conscious
+intention of her will put that intruder on her animation finally
+out of her mind. This very joyous uplifting of her spirit, was it
+not because, in this world dominated by men, based for its fundamental
+principle upon play of sex as commerce is based upon the principle
+of barter, she was assured of position, of privilege, and of power
+that raised her independent of such conventions and such laws?
+
+She was her own! All her proud joys, her glad imaginings, her
+delighted hopes, arose amain and anew, tuned to this cumulative
+paean as a nourish of trumpets at the climax of a proclamation.
+She was intoxicated on her happiness.
+
+They were come to the lighted shops and the crowded pavements. The
+bus drew up at the thronged corner adjacent to the divigation of
+the Harrow Road and she leaned over and watched the scene, smilingly
+(for sheer happiness) looking down upon it, as smilingly (for her
+triumphant altitude) she felt that she looked down upon the world.
+She would not have changed place with any life living or that could
+be lived; she was so much abandoned to her happiness that she made
+the intention she would sit up in her significant apartment all
+that night, not to lose a moment of it. She grudged that even sleep
+upon her happiness should intrude.
+
+There came one in the traffic beneath her that caught her attention:
+a woman whom people stood aside to let pass and turned to look upon
+with grins; two or three urchins danced about the woman, pointing
+at her and calling at her. Her dress was disordered, muddy all
+up one side as if she had fallen; her face flushed; her hat awry;
+her hair escaped and wisped about her eyes and on her shoulders.
+She was drunk. An obscene and horrible spectacle, the mock of her
+beholders. A horrible woman.
+
+It was Keggo.
+
+Rosalie caught her breath. She made to rise but did not rise. Keggo
+stopped and lifted all around a vacant gaze. Her eyes met Rosalie's
+straight above her. She lurched a step and stopped and swayed and
+looked again, battling perhaps with hints within her fumy brain
+of recognition. Rosalie made again to rise to go to her and again
+did not rise. The bus moved forward. That wretched woman, making
+as if to pursue her aroused be-fuddlement, turned about to follow
+and came a few steps, lurching like a ship that foundered. The light
+blazed down upon her upturned face. She lurched into some shadow
+and, as wreckage swallowed up in the trough of the sea, her face
+was gone.
+
+Lurching... as a ship... that foundered. There was in Rosalie's
+mind some dim memory struggling. Lurching... as a ship... in the
+darkness... in the night. And her face... seen and gone... as a
+ship... labouring... as a ship...
+
+Ah!
+
+Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only
+a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.
+
+It came to Rosalie complete and word for word; and with perfect
+clearness, as though she saw and sensed them, all its attendant
+circumstances: the attic room at the Sultana's, the strange smell
+mingled with the smell of the oil lamp, Keggo in the wicker chair,
+she beside her, her head against Keggo's knee; and Keggo's voice
+reciting the lines and her young, protesting, loving cry, "O Keggo!"
+
+She saw it, sensed it, heard it--and stonily regarded it. A thing
+to weep at, she knew it; but did not weep. A thing to stab her,
+it ought to; but did not stab. What good could she do? Suppose she
+had got up and gone down; suppose she now got up and went down and
+went back? What good? All sentimentality that. Be sensible! If a
+thousand pounds would do Keggo any good, and if she had a thousand
+pounds, freely and gladly she would give the last penny of it. But
+to get down, to have got down, what could she have done? Why should
+she worry about her? Keggo had had her chance. Everybody had their
+chance. She now had hers. Why should she...
+
+She never saw Keggo again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+
+
+She had not good health in the week immediately following that
+great day. She did not feel well. She did not look very well. Mr.
+Simcox, profoundly sympathetic to every mood of her who was at
+once his protege and his support, told her he thought she had been
+overdoing it. She seized upon that excuse and tried to persuade
+herself that perhaps she had; or, which amounted to the same thing,
+that she was suffering from the revulsion of those huge excitements.
+But she did not persuade herself. Her malaise, whatever it was,
+was not of that kind. Its manifestations were not in lassitude or
+sense of disability. They were in a curious dis-ease whose occasion
+was not to be defined; in a consuming restlessness beneath whose
+goad even the significant apartment had not power to charm and hold
+her; in a certain feverishness whose exsiccative heat, leaving her
+palms and temples cool (she sometimes felt them and had surprise)
+caused inwardly a dry burning that made her long for quiet places.
+
+She could not settle to anything. Her limbs, and they had their
+way, desired not to rest; her mind, and it deposed her captaincy,
+would cast no anchor.
+
+Mr. Simcox, as the week drew on, suggested a weekend at home. It had
+occurred to her, very attractively, but she had negatived it. Aunt
+Belle (before the idea had come to her) had written an invitation
+to one of the Saturday dinners in which she had "most particularly,
+my dear child" desired her presence. Something most delightful was
+going to happen and she must be there. She had accepted and she
+later told herself she did not like to refuse. She knew, instantly
+as she read, what was the identity of this delightful thing that
+was to happen and she decided, with a sharp turn within her of some
+emotion, that certainly she would be there. To whet her scorn! She
+was thereafter much aggravated that her drifting mind, against her
+wish, swayed constantly towards it sometimes with that same sharp
+turn of that same emotion (nameless to her and without meaning)
+always with aggravation of her restlessness, of her fever, of her
+dis-ease. When came Mr. Simcox's suggestion of the week-end at
+home she decided, as swiftly as she had first accepted, to revoke
+her acceptance. She would not be there! She would not--waste her
+scorn!
+
+Impatient for movement, she that evening went to the splendid house
+in Pilchester Square to tell her withdrawal. This most exasperating
+dis-ease of hers! Now that she was come to change her mind she
+did not want to change her mind. It was like going to the dentist
+with an aching tooth. On his doorstep the tooth does not ache. Her
+governance of herself was by her malaise so shaken that positively,
+as she came into Aunt Belle's presence, she did not know whether she
+was going to withdraw or to confirm her acceptance of the invitation.
+
+Most comfortingly, Aunt Belle saved her the decision. "My dear
+child! How unexpected! How opportune! I was just writing to you.
+Our little dinner is put off! Sit here while I tell you. Now would
+you like anything, dear child? A piece of cake? Some nice fruit? To
+please me. Really, no? Well, now; our dinner that I so especially
+wanted you for--did you guess?"
+
+She began to tell.
+
+She told what Rosalie had perfectly well known. The delightful
+thing expected to happen was Harry Occleve's proposal of marriage
+to darling Laetitia. There had been certain signs and portents.
+They had come at last. Their meaning was perfectly clear. There
+was not the least doubt that at the next meeting Harry would ask
+Laetitia's hand. Not the shadow of a doubt! Aunt Belle knew all
+the signs! Every woman of Aunt Belle's experience knew them, dear
+child. So Harry had been asked for this dinner; a meaningly written
+letter, dear child, to encourage him, the dear, poor fellow! And
+had accepted, in terms so meaning too, the dear, devoted fellow.
+Then--
+
+"But, Aunt Belle--"
+
+"Listen, dear child. Then he suddenly wrote saying he found he had
+made a mistake--"
+
+"Made a mistake!" The words went out from Rosalie in a small cry.
+
+"Dear child, it is nothing. How sweet to be so concerned! It
+is nothing, it is the best of signs. Made a mistake that he was
+disengaged for Saturday. The dear, devoted fellow was so absurdly
+vague about it. Unavoidable circumstances prevented him; that was
+all; his writing and all the appearance of his letter so delightfully
+distracted! How amused we were, your Uncle Pyke and I! How amused,
+and how we felt for the dear, devoted fellow! Screwing up his
+courage! How we remembered our own courtship! You should hear your
+Uncle Pyke tell how he had to screw up his courage to propose to me
+and how many times it failed him and he fled. Dear, child, you've
+no idea how ridiculous these poor men are in their love! How
+timorous! How they suffer! The dear, poor fellows. Your Uncle Pyke
+wrote him at once a most kind and meaning letter--accepting his
+unforeseen circumstances (he had to, of course) and positively
+fixing him for Monday instead. 'Laetitia is expecting you,' your
+Uncle Pyke wrote. The dear fellow! How happy it will make him! So
+it is Monday, dear child. Monday, instead. We do so want you to
+be there. I do so want you, and so does my darling, to be the first
+to congratulate her. And you shall be a bridesmaid! Won't that be
+nice? Kiss me, dear child. I shall never forget your sweet concern
+before I told you his excuse meant nothing. Dear child, you look
+startled yet."
+
+There was only a faint voice that came to Rosalie's lips. "Really
+nothing, Aunt Belle?"
+
+"Dear child, nothing at all."
+
+She went down to the Rectory on Saturday and found herself more
+glad to be there and to be with her mother than she had ever been.
+When she greeted her mother, "Kiss me again, dear, small mother,"
+she cried and put her cheek against her mother's and held it there
+some moments, rather fiercely and with her eyes closed, as though
+there were in that contact some febrifuge that abated her inward
+fever, some mooring whereto, adrift, her mind made fast.
+
+What beset her? What was the matter with her? What worked within
+her? Feverishly she inquired of herself, seeking to analyse her
+case; but she could by no means inform herself; her case was not
+within what diagnosis she could summon. What? Near as she could
+get she had the feeling, nay, the wild longing, to get out: out
+of what? She did not know. To get away: away from what? She could
+not say.
+
+She found in herself a great and an unusual tenderness towards the
+home life. Only her mother and her father were now at home. Harold
+was at a branch of his bank in Shanghai. Robert was in Canada.
+Flora was in India, married, with two small children. Hilda was in
+Devonshire, married to a doctor. These things had happened, these
+flights been winged, and she had taken but the smallest interest
+in them. She had had her own af-fairs. She had had herself to think
+of. She had lost touch with her brothers and sisters. She scarcely
+ever thought about them. Now she wanted very much to hear about
+them. What news of them was there? How were they getting on? She
+did want--she could fix that much of her state, or it presented
+a relief for her state--she did want to feel that she belonged to
+them and they to her. She noticed with a large whelming of pity how
+very small her mother seemed to have grown She was always small,
+but now--much smaller, fallen in, very fragile. She noticed with
+a quick pang how all her father's violent blackness of hair, and
+violent red of colouring, and violent glint of eye and violent
+energy of gesture were faded, greyed, dimmed, devitalized to a hue
+and to an air that was all one and lustreless, as if he had gone
+in a pond covered, not with duckweed but with lichen, and had come
+out, not dripping, but limp and shrouded head to foot in scaly
+grey. Was it possible that all this had been so when she was last
+here? She had not noticed it. She noticed that both her dear mother
+and her father walked on the flat soles of their feet, and touched
+articles of furniture as they trod, heavily, across the room. A
+most frightful tenderness towards them possessed her. She wanted
+like anything to show them devotion and, most frightfully, to
+receive from them signs of devotion to her--to be able to feel she
+was theirs, and they hers. She wanted it terribly.
+
+But what else did she want? What? They gave her, all the home talk,
+but soon it flagged and whatever in her desired satisfaction still
+gnawed within her and was unsatisfied; she ministered to them and
+they were pleased but they seemed very quickly tired; they had
+their accustomed hours and habits, and whatever it was in her that
+found relief in solicitude still tossed within her and was not
+relieved. What beset her? What?
+
+Monday came. She was at this dinner, this festival for the consummation
+and celebration of the betrothal of beautiful Laetitia and Laetitia's
+darling Harry. That sick dis-ease of hers had wonderfully vanished
+when she came into the house, when she was hugged fit to crack her
+to Aunt Belle's bosom with "Dear child! Dear child! He's just arrived!
+He's with your uncle downstairs. Look at Laetitia! Lovely! Isn't
+she lovely? Kiss me again, again, dear child!" When she was floated
+to by Laetitia, exquisitely arrayed, pink and white, doll-faced,
+doll-headed, squeaking with coquettish glee, "Rosalie! Darling!
+Isn't this awful? Imagine it for me, Rosalie! It oughtn't to have
+been planned like this, ought it? Do tell darling mamma it ought
+not to have been! I'm trembling. Wouldn't you be?"
+
+Yes, gone that sick dis-ease. How at this spectacle suffer dis-ease,
+or any other disturbance of the emotions save only disgust, contempt
+at such a horrid preparation for such a horrid rite. Excited
+responsiveness to their most friendly excitation was not needed in
+her for it was not expected. "The shy, quiet thing you always are,
+dear child," Aunt Belle often used to say to her and said now. (And
+within the week was to beat her breast in that same drawing-room
+and cry with an exceeding bitter cry, "Shy! We thought her shy!
+Sly! Sly! Sly to the tips of her fingers, the wicked girl!")
+
+So she need respond with no more than her normal quiet smile, her
+normal tone, in their presence, of poor-relation deference and
+awe. So behind that mask could curl her lip and shudder in the
+refinements of her views at this most horrid preparation for this
+most horrid rite. And did. That dis-ease strangely fled, there came
+to her the swift belief that here, and she had not known it!--was
+that dis-ease's cause. It was the anticipation of this exhibition
+of all the things she hated most, of the most glaring presentiment
+of outrage of all her strongest principles. This Laetitia, embodiment
+of useless woman-hood, launching herself on that disgusting dependence
+on a man that soon would strand her among the derelicts; and that
+Laetitia's Harry, that might have been a man among men, coming to
+the apotheosis of his languishing to--oh, wreathed, fatted calf
+with gilded horns!
+
+Yes, it was this had vexed her so; and suddenly informed of the
+seat of her injury she turned upon it disgust and scorn such as
+never before had she felt (and she, had felt it always) for the
+whole order of things for which it stood. She felt her very blood
+run acid, causing her to twist, in her acid contempt for the subservience
+of women, and most of all for that Laetitia's subservience, floated
+on that ghastly coquetry like a shifting cargo that in the first
+gale will capsize the ship; she felt her very temples throb, and
+almost thought they must be heard, in her fierce detestation of
+all the masculinity of men and most of all--yes, with a flash of
+eye she could not stay and hoped that he could see--that fatuous
+Harry's masculinity.
+
+He came into the room--looked pale--poor calf!--and went, with a
+nervous halt in his walk--sick fool!--to his Laetitia; and looked
+across at Rosalie and made a half-step to her; and she thought with
+all her force, to send it to him, her last words to him: that most
+malevolent, "to see you raise your eyes and hear you breathe, 'Ah,
+Laetitia'"; and surely sent it, for on that half-step towards her
+he stopped, hesitated, and turned and engaged Laetitia again.
+
+She had told herself, leaving the Sturgiss's house that night a
+week ago, that she had not believed it possible to hate a man so.
+Now! Why that was not hate; that, compared with the inimity that
+now consumed her, was a mere chill indifference. And it had made
+her tremble! She was rigid now. Stiff with hate! He personified
+for her all in life against which she was in rebellion, all in life
+that her soul abhorred; and while, in the moments before dinner,
+grunting Uncle Pyke and rallying Aunt Belle and coquetting Laetitia
+crowded about him, leaving her alone and far apart, she, for the
+reason that it gave to her hate, and for the example that stood
+before her eyes, reviewed again her theories of life and again
+pledged herself in their support....
+
+"Dinner is served." That group went laughing to the door, she
+followed. "No, no, my boy. Don't stand on ceremony. Pass along as
+we come. Why, hang it, man, we regard you as one of the family!
+Ha! ha! haw!" Down the stairs in a body, she following. There is,
+from their conversation, something the wreathed calf is to get from
+his coat to bring to show them, a letter or a token or something.
+The dining-room is to the front on the ground floor. The coats
+hang in the hall, a narrow passage there, that runs back to Uncle
+Pyke's study. They are down. "Shall I get it now?" "Yes, bring it
+along; bring it along, my boy." "And Rosalie" (Aunt Belle), "my
+fan, dear child. Dear child, I left it on the table in Uncle Pyke's
+den. You will? Dear child!"
+
+They pass in. The gilded calf turns from them for what it is he is
+to fetch from his coat; she slips by him to the study and takes up
+the fan and comes with it again.
+
+It is dim in the passage. A condition on which generous Uncle Pyke
+years before installed this wonderful electric light that you flick
+on and flick off as you require it was that it should always be
+flicked off when you did not require it. Now as Rosalie came from
+the study the passage was lit only by the shaft of light that
+gleamed from the dining-room door; its only sound Aunt Belle's
+noisy chatter from the waiting table.
+
+He was fumbling at the coats, standing there sharply outlined against
+the stream of light, his face cut on it in a perfect silhouette.
+She had to pass him. That hateful he. She was seized with a fit of
+that same trembling that had shaken her after the passage between
+them at the gate on Shoot Up Hill. It shook her now, dreadfully.
+Her knees trembled. She felt faint. Awful to hate so! She was
+quite close, almost touching him. It was necessary he should move,
+forward or back, to give her room. But he did not move. His hands,
+outstretched before him on the coats, and sharp against the light,
+appeared to her to be shaking; but that was the hallucination of
+this frightful trembling that possessed her. She tried to say, "If
+you please--," but, dreadfully, had no voice; but made some sound;
+and he, most slowly, drew back. It was before him that she had to
+pass.
+
+She advanced; and felt, as if she saw it, the intensity of the gaze
+of his eyes upon her; and saw, as if the place were light and her
+look not averted, his "marching" face and those lines radiating
+to his temples (horizon tracks) where the faint touch of greyness
+was; and suddenly had upon her senses, with an extraordinary pungency,
+causing them to swim, that odd, nice smell there was about him of
+mingled peat and soap and fresh tobacco, of tweed and heather and
+the sea.
+
+She caught her breath...
+
+The thing's too poignant for the words a man has.
+
+She was caught in his arms, terribly enfolding her. He was crying
+in her ears, passionately, triumphantly, "Rosalie! Rosalie!" She
+was in his arms. Those long, strong arms of his were round her;
+and she was caught against his heart, her face upturned to his,
+his face against her own; and she was swooning, falling through
+incredible spaces, drowning in incredible seas, sinking through
+incredible blackness; and in her ears his voice, coming to her in
+her extremity like the beat of a wing in the night, like the first
+pulsing roll of music enormously remote, "Rosalie! Rosalie!"
+
+The thing's too poignant for the words one has. This girl's extremity
+was very great, not to be set in words. Words cannot bring to earth
+that which, ethereal, defies our comprehension as life and death
+defy it and, like life and death, to our comprehension only sublimely
+IS. Words only can say her spirit, bursting from bondage, streamed
+up to cleave to his; how tell the anguish, how the ecstasy? Words
+only can say her spirit, like a live part of her drawn out of her,
+seemed to be rushing upwards from her body to her lips; words cannot
+tell the anguish that was bliss, the rapture that was pain. Only
+can say that she was in his arms, her heart to his, his lips against
+her own, and cannot tell--
+
+But also it is to be accounted to her for her extremity that herein
+all her life's habit was delivered over by her to betrayal.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+
+
+He was saying, "We must go in. Can you go in?" She breathed, "I
+can."
+
+That dinner! That after-dinner in the drawing-room upstairs! It is
+a nightmare to be imagined, not to be described. Imagine walking
+from the darkness and the frightful secret of the passage into the
+blazing dazzle and the glittering eyes of the resplendent dinner
+party! They, in Harry's absence, have been exchanging the last
+private nods and flashes. "Soon! Soon!" they have been nodding to
+one another. Uncle Pyke, licking his chops anticipatorily of his
+bath in his soup, has been licking them also in relish of working
+off his daughter in this excellent match; Aunt Belle, kind, kind
+Aunt Belle, with a last satisfied eye about the appointments of the
+table, has patted her Laetitia's hand and conveyed to her, "Soon,
+soon, darling; soon, soon!" Beautiful Laetitia has given a gentle,
+glad squeeze to the patting hand and smiled a lovely, happy,
+certain smile. "Soon! Soon!" has gone the jolly signal--and it is
+not going to be soon, nor late; it is never, never going to happen;
+and worse than never happen!
+
+Worse than never happen! That's it. That is the awful knowledge
+of awful guilt with which Rosalie sits there and freezes in guilty
+agony at every pause in the conversation and could scream to
+notice how the pauses grow longer and longer, more frequent and
+more frequent yet. There's a frightful constraint, a chilly, creepy
+dreadfulness steals about the party. They go upstairs--Aunt Belle
+and Rosalie and beautiful Laetitia--and the constraint goes with
+them. They sit and stare and hardly a word said. Something's up!
+What's up? What's the matter with everything? Why is everything
+hanging like this! What's up? And the men come in--Uncle Pyke
+swollen with food, swollen with indigestion, swollen with baffled
+perplexity and ferocious irritation; and Harry--she dare not look
+at Harry--and the thing is worse, the awfulness more awful. Glances
+go shooting round the awful silences--Uncle Pyke's atrabilious eye
+in the burning fiery furnace of his swollen face is a stupendous
+note of interrogation directed upon Aunt Belle; Aunt Belle's
+eyebrows arch to scalp and appear likely to disappear into her
+scalp and remain there in the effort to express, "I don't know! I
+can't imagine!"; Laetitia--Laetitia's eyes upon her mother are as
+a spaniel's upon one devouring meat at table.
+
+Frightfulness more frightful, awfulness more awful; in Rosalie
+almost now beyond control the desire to scream, or to burst into
+tears or wildly into laughter. Then she knows herself upon her feet
+and hears her voice: "Aunt Belle. I must go, I think. I think I am
+very tired to-night."
+
+They suffer her to go.
+
+That's all a nightmare; but, when the door is closed upon them,
+like a nightmare gone. She was alone upon the staircase and then
+down in the hall--by those coats!--and, as though no ghastly interval
+had been, the amazing and beloved moment was returned to her. Out
+of a nightmare into a dream! She stood in her dream a moment--two
+moments--three--by the hall door. Who till that evening never had
+thought of love, astonishingly was invested with all love's darling
+cunning. She felt somehow he would see her again before she left;
+and love's dear cunning told her right. He came swiftly down the
+stairs. She never knew on what pretext he had left the room. He
+came to her. Love loves these snatched moments and always makes
+them snatched to breathlessness. She opened the door and must be
+gone. She said to him, speaking first, "Oh, we were vile in there!
+How vile we were!"
+
+It was, the intimacy and the abruptness of it, the perfect
+comprehension that their thoughts were shared, as if they had known
+and loved for years.
+
+He caught her hand. "My conspirator! My secret-sharer!"
+
+She gave him her heart in her eyes.
+
+He said, "To-morrow, I will come to you."
+
+She disengaged her hand.
+
+He gave a swift look all about and caught her in his arms. "You
+must tell me, my Rosalie. Tell me."
+
+She breathed, "You knew, before I knew, that I loved you."
+
+When she was home and got to her room she undressed, suffering her
+clothes to lie as they slipped from her. She got into bed, moving
+there and then lying there as one in trance.
+
+Cataclysm! All she had been, all she had determined--all, all gone;
+all nothing, surrendered all. At a touch, in a moment, without a
+cry, without a shot, without a stroke, all her life's habit swept
+away. All she had been, all she'd designed, all she had built
+within herself and walled about herself, all she had scorned, all
+that with a violent antipathy she had shuddered from or with curled
+lip spurned away,--all, all betrayed, breached, mined, calamitously
+riven, tumultously sundered, burst away.
+
+She turned her face to the pillow and began to cry--most frightfully.
+
+It was very terrible for Rosalie.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+
+
+There's none so sick as, brought to bed, that robust he that ever
+has scorned sickness; nor any sinner like a saint suddenly gone
+from saintliness to sin; and there can be no love like love suddenly
+leapt from repression into being.
+
+Rosalie, that had abhorred the very name of love, now finding love
+was quite consumed by love. She loved him so! Even to herself she
+never could express how tremendous a thing to her their love was.
+She used deliberately to call it to her mind (as the new, rapt
+possessor of a jewel going specially to the case to peep and gloat
+again) and when she called it up like that, or when, in the midst
+of occupation, her mind secretly opened a door and she turned and
+saw it there, a surge, physically felt, passed through her, and
+she would nearly gasp, her breath taken by this new, this rapturous
+element, as the bather's at his first plunge in the cold, the
+splendid sea.
+
+She loved him so! She looked at him with eyes, not of an inexperienced
+girl blinded by love, but of one cynically familiar with the traits
+of common men, intolerantly prejudiced, sharply susceptible to
+every note or motion of displeasing quality; and her eyes told her
+heart, and what is much more told her mind, that nothing but sheer
+perfection was here. Harry was brilliantly talented, Harry was in
+face and form one that took the eye among a hundred men. But she
+had known all that and freely granted him all that before. What she
+found as she came to know him, and when they were married what she
+continued to find, was simply, that he was perfect. He was perfect
+in every way and there was no way in which, inclining neither to
+the too much nor the too little, he was not perfect.
+
+The labour of a catalogue of her Harry's virtues is thus discounted.
+Name a virtue in a man and it was Harry's. Declare too much perfection
+is as ill to live with as too much fault, and it is precisely just
+before too much is reached that Harry's dowry stopped. Suggest she
+was blind to defects, and it is to be answered that there was no
+man who knew him that ever had a thought against him (except Uncle
+Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., who, justifiably, was warned by
+his physician never to think upon the monster lest apoplexy should
+supervene) nor any fellow man in his profession (and that is
+the supreme test) that ever grudged him his success. Disgruntled
+barristers, morosely brooding upon the fall of plums into other
+mouths than theirs, always said, when it was Harry's mouth: "Ah,
+Occleve; yes, but he's different. No one grudges Harry Occleve what
+he gets."
+
+Different! In Rosalie's fond, fondest love for him she often used
+to hug her love by making that catalogue of all his parts that has
+been shown not to be necessary. And it was the little, tiny things
+wherein he differed from common men that especially she cherished.
+By the deepest part of her nature terribly susceptible to the
+grosser manifestations of the male habit, it was extraordinarily
+wonderful and delicious to her that Harry of these had none. In an age
+much given to easy freedom of language it will not be appreciated,
+it perhaps will cause the pair of them to be sneered at, but
+it demands mention as illuminating a characteristic of hers (and
+of his), that she had, for instance, especial delight in the fact
+that Harry never even swore. The impossible test in the matter of
+self-command is when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. What does
+a bishop say when he does that? But she saw Harry catch his thumb
+a proper crack hanging a picture in the house they took, and, "Mice
+and Mumps!" cried Harry, and dropped the hammer and the picture,
+and jumped off the stepladder, and did a hop, and wrung his hand,
+and laughed at her and wrung his hand and laughed again. "Mice and
+Mumps!"
+
+"Mice and Mumps!" It always seemed to her to characterise and to
+epitomise him, that grotesque expression. It always made her laugh;
+and the more serious the accident or the dilemma that brought it
+to Harry's lips, the more, by pathos, one was forced to laugh and
+the seriousness thereby dissipated into an affair not serious at
+all. Yes, that was the point of it and the reason it epitomised him.
+There was none of life's dilemmas--little dilemmas that irritate
+ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves
+pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting
+and leave them in vacillation and despair--there was none of any
+sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice
+and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance to her
+that, though this was a nuisance, he had metal and to spare to settle
+such; that, though this was a catastrophe, a facer, he'd too much
+courage, too much high, brave spirit for it to discommode him;
+there was no fight in such, he was captain of such, trust him!
+
+"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward."
+
+That was Harry!
+
+"Mice and Mumps!" On the evening of the day following that astounding
+betrothal of theirs, affianced as it were at a blow--a day spent
+together in the park complete, without a break for food or thought
+of occupation--on the evening of that day he must go, he de-clared,
+to the horrific castle in Pilchester Square and break the awful
+news, proclaim his villainy.
+
+She was terrified. "They'll kill you, Harry. Write."
+
+"No, no. I've been a howling cad. It's true, a howling cad, not
+of guile, but of these astounding things that have happened to us
+outside ourselves, but nevertheless a howling cad as such conduct
+is judged, and will be judged. So I must go through it. I must.
+That's certain. I couldn't hide behind a letter. They are entitled
+to tell me to my face what they think of me. They must have their
+right. Oh, yes, I've got to give them that. To-night. Now."
+
+A howling cad, but of forces outside themselves ("Too quick for
+me," he had explained), not of guile.
+
+He had explained, in those enchanted hours in the park, that it was
+really by resolve to do the right thing, and not to do the caddish
+thing, that he had presented himself the howling cad that they would
+hold him. That night at the Sturgiss's at Cricklewood had charged
+him ("Oh, Rosalie, like bursting awake to breathe from suffocation
+in a dream.") what for many days, only looking at her, never speaking
+to her, suffering her not veiled contempt, he had felt as one feels
+a premonition that is insistent but that cannot be defined--that
+night had charged him that he loved her. He was no way definitely
+committed to poor Laetitia. Was he more wrong if, now knowing his
+heart was otherwhere, he maintained and carried to its consummation
+the intimacy between Laetitia and himself, or if he stopped while
+yet he had not gone too far? He had decided to break while yet it
+might, be broken. There was an invitation from Mrs. Pyke Pounce
+he had accepted. He wrote, endeavouring to give a meaning to his
+words, excusing himself from it.
+
+She murmured, "I remember." ("Nothing in it, dear child; nothing
+in it!")
+
+There came back a letter from Colonel Pyke Pounce in which Colonel
+Pyke Pounce also had endeavoured to give a meaning to his words,
+and had succeeded. Now Harry knew his problem of moral conduct in
+a fiercer form; now, resolving to do what he told himself was the
+right thing and not the caddish thing, he took the step that made
+him be the howling cad that they would think him. ("But, Rosalie,
+gave me you!")
+
+He had resolved that he must accept the invitation, present himself
+at the house--and let the hour decide. As the situation revealed
+itself so he would accept it. If it was made clear to him, as the
+Pyke Pounce letter much gave him to believe, that proposal for
+Laetitia's hand was expected of him, he would "do the right thing"
+and stand by what his behaviour apparently had led them to expect;
+if the way still seemed open, the door not shut behind him, he would
+very frankly explain to Laetitia's grisly father that he thought
+it best his visits to the house from now should cease. The hour
+should decide! But there was in the hour, when it came, one terrible,
+one lovely element that he never had expected to be there. In all
+his visits to the house Rosalie never had been met on any other
+day than Saturday. This dinner was on the Monday, and arriving to
+face and carry through his ordeal, he was startled, he was utterly
+shaken to see her there. ("To see my darling there.")
+
+O forces outside themselves! "When you had to pass me in the passage
+nothing mattered then--except I could not let you pass."
+
+So it was that now, the right thing not having been done on that
+night, the right thing in this new position must be done to-day.
+They were entitled to tell him to his face what they thought of
+him and they must have their right. That was his view and he would
+not abate it.
+
+"They'll kill you, Harry."
+
+They had come by this to the corner of Pilchester Square and there
+he bade her wait. She said again, part laughing, most in fear,
+"They'll kill you."
+
+"I've got to give them the chance to do their best."
+
+And off he went, strongly, erect. One who never... but marched
+breast forward.
+
+Waiting for him, she really was terrified for him. Ferocious Uncle
+Pyke! Terrific Aunt Belle! Swollen and infuriated Uncle Pyke! Bitter
+and outraged Aunt Belle!
+
+In twenty minutes came the crash of a slammed front door that clearly
+and terribly was Uncle Pyke Pounce slamming it as if he would hurl
+it through its portals and crash it on to Harry down the steps.
+
+Harry reappeared, uncommonly grave.
+
+She put out a hand to him, dreadfully anxious.
+
+"Mice and Mumps!" said Harry. "Mice and Mumps!"
+
+You couldn't help laughing! But also, squeezing the strong arm
+beneath which he tucked her hand, you felt, with such a thrill,
+from that grotesque expression, and from his face as he said it,
+that this, like every forward thing, had in it nothing that could
+discommode that high, brave spirit: no fight in such; he was captain
+of such, trust him!
+
+Thus also her delight in another form, and yet in the same form,
+in that grotesque expression, when it was ejaculated as his sole
+expletive when he caught his thumb that frightful crack while hanging
+a picture in what was to be his study in their newly taken house.
+
+Any other man in the world, even a bishop, would have sworn; would
+have sworn no doubt harmlessly and with an honest heartiness to
+which the most pious prude could not have taken exception. Agreed!
+But the point was--that Harry didn't!
+
+She loved him so! She insisted she must bind up the thumb with
+her pocket handkerchief, and did, Harry protesting; and for years,
+still loving him with the old, first love, she often would be
+reminded by the picture of the incident and of her joy in it.
+
+Yes, the only expletive she ever heard him use; and, lo, in that
+very room, years on, he seated beneath that very picture, she was
+to come to him with news (and hers the guilt of it) that for the
+first time was to strike him between the joints of his harness,
+visibly ageing him as she spoke, and for the first time cause him
+to groan his pain. She was to glance at the picture as she spoke
+and very terribly its merry association to be recalled to her.
+She was to recall him young, gay, tremendously splendid, wringing
+his damaged hand, laughing, "Mice and Mumps!" She was to see him,
+grey ascendant upon the raven of his hair, shrinking down in his
+seat, wilting as one slowly collapsing after a stunning blow, and
+at her news (and hers the guilt of it) to hear his voice go, not
+exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one dazed, bewildered, in
+a fog, "My God, my God, my God, my God!"
+
+How could one ever have foreseen that?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+
+
+She loved him so! On that first day together in the park she told
+him everything about herself, about all her ideas and theories and
+principles, particularly where these touched his sex, even about
+that terrible fit of crying of hers in bed an hour after she had
+left him. And Harry understood everything and agreed with her in
+everything. O rapturous affinity!
+
+They met early when business London was rushing to business. They
+stayed late, with no thought of food or of their occupations, till
+business London was returning, and night, in lamps below and stars
+above, was setting out its sentinels.
+
+She told him everything; and even if she had wished not to open
+all her heart, there would have been the immense selection of
+everything--every single thing about herself--from which to choose
+to tell him. For there never had been such a betrothal as theirs;
+done at a blow with no single intimate thing ever before passed between
+them! Her very first words to him as they met, her greeting of him
+as they came together, showed how preposterous and never-before-imagined
+was their affiancement. "You know, it's incredible," she greeted
+him. "It's incredible, it's grotesque, it's flatly impossible--I've
+never before seen you except in your dress clothes or at afternoon
+tea!"
+
+Harry took both her hands in his. "But I think I've wanted you,"
+said Harry, "ever since I was in long clothes. I know I've wanted
+you ever since first I saw you."
+
+One knows another, in her place, would have bantered this off in
+that modern attitude towards love which is a horror, boisterously
+expressed, of admitting love as an emotion. Rosalie, that had
+scorned the very name of love, and that, because betrayed by love,
+had turned her face to her pillow and cried most frightfully,
+received it with a sound that was between a sigh and a catching of
+her breath. She loved him so!
+
+And then they talked; and the thing between them, that had come so
+wonderfully, was so wonderful that they were as it were transfigured by
+it, as awe and spirituality and mysticism would fill the dwellers
+in a house visited by a miracle of God. So wonderful, that
+conversation, they would have felt, was not possibly a word for
+all that occupied them in those rapturous hours: not conversation,
+no,--a sublime engagement of their spirits wherein (possessing the
+keys of all the wonders), seas, continents and worlds of thoughts
+were traversed by them, in every clime most exquisite affinity
+discovered.
+
+As at a blow they had become affianced, so, with no stage between,
+but in immediate sequence perfectly natural to them both, the natural
+repercussion of the blow, they talked immediately of betrothal's
+consummation, of marriage, of their marriage.
+
+About marriage Rosalie had immensely much to tell Harry. It was
+what she had principally to say, and this is how and why and what
+she told him.
+
+When from her first terrible dismay--that frightful crying, her
+face turned to the pillow--she had recovered; when to the lovely
+ardour of her love--stealing about her, soothing her, in the night;
+bursting upon her, ravishing her, in the morning--she had passed
+on; she remembered her second line of her defences and she fell
+back upon it. "If ever I fell in love," she had often said, alike
+to Keggo and to Miss Salmon, "if such an impossible thing ever
+were to happen to me, I'd marry as marriage should be. I'd enter a
+partnership. I would live my life; he would live his life; together,
+when we wanted to, when we were off duty, so to speak, we would live
+our life. A partnership, a mutually free and independent partnership."
+
+The second line of her defences! Oh, strong and reassuring thought!
+Of course, of course the first line, breached and swept away, had
+never really mattered. Foolish to have wept for it! It was built
+against love and she knew now, by her darling and her terrible
+experience, that against love----! Nay, in that whelming admission's
+very tide, sweeping upon her from envisagement of Harry and bearing
+her deliciously upon its flood, there had come a thought as strong
+with wine as that was sweet with honey. Built against love! Why,
+in seeking to build against love, to shut away love from her life,
+was she not perpetrating against herself the very act--denial
+of anything a free life might have--that it was her life's first
+principle to oppose? A man's place, a man's part, everything that
+a man by conventional dowry is given, hers should be as freely
+as a man's it is! That was her aim; that at once the basis of her
+standpoint and the target of her shaft; and lo, at the very outset
+of her independence, she had sought to deny herself that which (as
+now she knew) was life's most lovely gift. She was steadfast, and
+she was caparisoned, to obtain and to possess the things that,
+of her sex, commonly a woman might not have, and she was shutting
+herself from that which, if it offers, not all the man-owned world
+can deny the woman lowliest in office, heaviest in chains, deepest
+in servitude!
+
+O senselessness! She could see, as looking upon an individuality
+not her own, that foolish girl that for such had turned her face
+to her pillow and cried out her heart; and at that very moment,
+and no other, of smiling pity for that mistaken grief, there came
+to Rosalie a sudden sense of womanhood attained; of much increase
+of years and wisdom; of growth of stature; of transportation, as
+from one world to another, from the character and the presence that
+had been hers to a personality and a body that looked down upon
+that other as, tenderly, a mother upon the innocence of her small
+child.
+
+That poor, brave, foolish Rosalie that was! Did she protest, that
+foolish girl, that she was right in what had been her attitude
+to love? Did she with would-be bitterness recall those views laid
+down upon the women in the boarding house--that they were derelicts
+precisely through this love business, abandoned of men, relict of
+men, footsore and fallen in pursuit of men?
+
+Ah, small, misguided creature! The principles were right but all
+askew the application. Love! Consider other attributes of life.
+Consider learning; consider food. Learning and food--were they not
+bounties of life's treasure, to be absorbed and used for sustenance
+in order, by their nourishment, to give to live this life more fully?
+Why, so with love! Derelicts, those women, because receiving love
+(that loveliest gift of all!) not as a means but as an end--the end
+of all: that attained, everything attained; that won, all finished.
+That was it! That the misapplication! Learning, or food, or love--the
+same with all! How dead the life that only lived in scholarship;
+how gross the life that only lived to eat; how derelict that she
+that only lived to love, to marry--then ceased to live!
+
+And equally, O small, misguided girl, how starved the life that
+has no books; how weak the frame that has no food; ah, dear (thus
+smiled she to herself), how dead the life that knows not love!
+
+The second line of her defences! Nay, as now through this mature
+and happy cogitation she saw it, the first and last and only line!
+In her aloneness, in that girl's single life, there had been nothing
+against which to defend. She had fought phantoms, that girl; resisted
+shadows. Now was the necessity, now the test; and now, because with
+Harry, because she loved him so, because he was every way and in
+all things perfect, now should be the triumphant exposition.
+
+And she told Harry: marriage that should be a partnership--not an
+absorption by the greater of the less; not one part active and the
+other passive; one giving, the other receiving; one maintaining, the
+other maintained; none of these, but instead a perfect partnering,
+a perfect equality that should be equality of place, equality of
+privilege, equality of duty, equality of freedom. "Harry, each with
+work and with a career. Harry, each living an own life as every man,
+away from home, shutting his front door upon that home and off to
+work, leads an own and separate life. Harry--"
+
+Oh, wonderful beneath this imperturbable sky, amongst these
+common, passive things--these paths, those trees, that grass, this
+bench--within this seclusion of that murmurous investment of this
+city, the ceaseless roar of London, standing like patient walls,
+eternal and indifferent, about her quietudes. Oh, wonderful in these
+accustomed and insensible surroundings thus to be calling "Harry,"
+as he were brother, him that a day and night away virtually was
+unmet; to be exposing, as to a gracious patron, all her mind's
+treasury of thought; to be revealing, as in confessional, her inmost
+places of her heart; to be receiving, as by transfusion, the glow
+of affirmation on her way and in her trust. Oh, wonderful!
+
+Wonderful, because remember for her that she was still beneath the
+shock of her dismay at her betrayal of herself; still breathless at
+that rout from her prepared positions; not yet assured her banners
+were unsullied in their withdrawal to her second line; not yet
+convinced it was no rout but a withdrawal, wise and strategical,
+ranks unbroken, to the true point of her defence.
+
+Do try to imagine her, tremulous in this her vital enterprise,
+tremulous in this wonder that her armies found. It is very desirable
+to remember what can be remembered for that girl.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+
+
+Harry assured her! Harry convinced her! Harry was here upon
+the battlements, come with her in her retirement, joined with her
+as her ally. All her ideas were his ideas. He, too, had these new
+views of marriage. He said they always had been his. He hated, as
+she hated, that old dependence notion: all the privileges the man's,
+the woman's all the duties. That was detestable to him, said Harry.
+Marriage in his view--
+
+"I'll tell you this," was one thing Harry said. "I'll show it to
+you this way, Rosalie. I don't exactly know what a reciprocating
+machine is, but I know what it sounds like, and what it sounds
+like is what a marriage ought to be,--a perfect fitting together,
+a perfect harmonising, a perfect joining of two perfect halves that
+everywhere reciprocate."
+
+The word delighted her. A reciprocating machine! Yes, yes! Each an
+own part; each with own and separate interests; and their parts,
+and the production arising out of their interests--their individual
+selves--approached together, by free will, to join towards a mutual
+benefit, a shared endeavour, a common advancement, a single end.
+
+She was desperately in earnest and so was he. There was a mill near
+his people's home in Sussex, a water mill, and his illustration by
+it of the design they had showed her how earnestly her own ideas
+were his. There were two wheels to this mill, Harry told her,
+one on either side. Each ran in its own stream, each was entirely
+independent of the other; they worked alone, but each helped the
+other's work; the mill joined them and they joined to make the
+mill.
+
+That was it!
+
+And she was not talking any generalities, and Harry was not, either.
+They weren't, either of them, playing with this idea of mutual
+independence. There would "of course" be a business basis to it,
+Rosalie said. She was earning her own income and she would pay her
+half of the upkeep of their home together. It was a stipulation that
+she advanced with a definite fear that here, at last, she might be
+taking Harry from his depth; that by natural instinct of generosity,
+or by instinct of immemorial custom to endow the wife with all the
+husband's worldly goods, he would here reveal a flaw in his till
+now flawless duplication of the views that were her own.
+
+But Harry (the never failing rapture of it!) was every way without
+spot or blemish. He was looking straight and close into her eyes
+while she put forward this, and there moved not the least dissentient
+shade across his own while he received it. She need have had no
+fear. He said, "I agree absolutely with that, Rosalie. There's only
+one point--" and his expansion of this point wholly entranced her
+because it established conditions even more matter-of-fact and
+businesslike than her own broad principle.
+
+"There's only one point," Harry said. "It can't be half and half in
+terms of actual bisection. Look, Rosalie, in this matter of running
+the home we're making a contract between two parties and--don't
+forget I'm a lawyer--it has to be an equable and just contract,
+and to be that it has to be based for each party's liability--Do
+you like me to use the law jargon?"
+
+She nodded. "I do, I do!" This was frightfully, entrancingly serious
+for her. This was a survey of the fortifications of her second line
+of her defences. "I do, I do!"
+
+"Well, has to be based for each party's liability on each party's
+interest, on the extent to which each party is involved. I'm making
+more--an uncommon good bit more--than you are, Rosalie. My interest,
+therefore my liability, that is, my share, has to be allowed to be
+proportionately the more. Put it in another way. We're going to run
+an establishment as an establishment might be run by two or more
+people of different incomes who wish to join forces for mutual
+pleasure, two or three relatives, two or three friends. Well, there's
+a regular principle governing that kind of arrangement. You don't
+all pay the same. If you did, you'd reduce the scale of living to
+the level of what the poorest can afford, and half the idea of the
+combination is to enjoy a very much better scale. No, you run the
+show on the level the wealthiest is willing to go to, and to the
+total charge each one contributes in the proportion of his income.
+If one party has a thousand a year and the other five hundred,
+and the thousand-pounder wants to live at the rate of nine hundred
+a year, he pays six hundred and the other three hundred. Each is
+paying his just share--that's the point. That's how we'd arrange
+it, Rosalie."
+
+She loved him so! If that were said a thousand times (as already
+perhaps too often for the robust) it still would not approach
+the volume of its swelling in the heart of Rosalie, for that was
+ceaseless. His attitude in this matter now between them, as in
+every matter, might have been the perfect agreement with her own
+view that it was and yet might so have been presented as to be
+much antipathetic to her. His attitude might have made her feel she
+ought to say, "Thank you, Harry, for agreeing to that"; it might
+have had the note, "I know exactly how you feel about marriage; I
+want to make every-thing just as you wish." Quicksands! Principles
+to be received as grants, bases of her defences to be accepted as
+concessions! Quicksands! At either attitude, as at a foreign flavour
+in a cup, she would have drawn back, suspicious; at either sense
+within herself, of winning a favour, of accepting a hazard, she
+would have taken alarm, dismayed. But it was why she loved him so
+that here, as everywhere, his standpoint was her standpoint's own
+reflection. She was, as she would have said, deadly in earnest;
+deadly in earnest to a depth that she could let go to absurdity
+and never know it for absurdity; and so was he.
+
+Approving this plan of computation of the share that each would
+pay, "It would have to be done strictly," she said, "as though it
+were strictly business. And--you don't know, perhaps--I'm making,
+or soon shall be, just on five hundred a year."
+
+He smiled the nice smile of his she loved, more with his eyes
+than with his lips. "I'm afraid mine's a good bit more than that.
+Money's rather pushed at you at the Bar once it starts. You'd have
+to put up with that."
+
+Her fondness in her eyes reflected him. "I know how famous you are
+getting. I'd not be stupid about that, Harry. It would be the just
+share, each according to our means; that's understood. Only, for
+me, it would have to be the just share, that's what I'm saying;
+not a matter of form, a strict proportion."
+
+"If you liked," said Harry, "we'd give the figures to the costs
+clerk at my chambers and let him work the contributions out."
+
+"Absurd!" she might have laughed; and as an absurdity he might,
+with a laugh, have presented it. But quite gravely he made the
+suggestion, and quite gravely, after a moment's grave thought, "I
+don't think that would be necessary," she returned.
+
+His earnestness in this thing so vital to her matched her own,
+and therefore she loved him; and he yet could bring to it lightly
+a touch which, though light, yet was profoundly based; and therefore,
+newly, she loved him. She knew she talked with immense profligacy
+of words in her endeavour to make clear the principles this second
+line of her defences must maintain. "Each with work and with
+a career, each with an own and separate life." She kept repeating
+that. "Equal in work and in responsibility, Harry, and therefore
+equal in place, in privilege, in freedom."
+
+And Harry, with a light touch but a grave air, a happy setting for
+a profound meaning, put it in a sentence. "Things which are equal
+to the same thing are equal to one another," said Harry.
+
+She loved him so!
+
+But there ought here to be explained for her what, loving him so
+and he so loving her, she could not have known for herself. This
+plan of maintaining their establishment by contribution of share
+and share was maintained by Rosalie from the beginning--to the end.
+She never had cause to doubt that in all the earnestness of that
+close conversation Harry was utterly sincere. She often recalled
+that steady gaze with no dissentient shade across it with which his
+eyes received her statement of her case and knew that only truth
+was in that gaze. He did believe what she believed. It only was
+afterwards she discovered that also he believed that, both for her
+and him, the thing would mellow down as mellows down the year, her
+heady Aprils burnt in June, her burning Junes assuaging to September;
+that it would pass; that time--
+
+Yes, it must be explained. It was not active in his mind, this
+reservation. It was passive, underlying, subconscious, as beneath
+vigour's incredulity of death lies passively admission of death's
+final certitude. He believed what she believed; but he believed it
+as are believed infinity and eternity: wherein mankind, believing,
+reposes upon that limitation of the human mind which cannot conceive
+infinity but sees ultimately an end, and can pretend eternity through
+myriad years but feels ultimately a termination. Harry believed
+what she believed but only by stabilisation of a man's inherent
+articles of faith. He was of the male kind; and observe, by an
+incident, what inherent processes of thought the male kind has:
+
+When they were looking over the house which ultimately they
+took--an all ways most desirable house in Montpelier Crescent,
+Knightsbridge--Rosalie had only a single objection: it was far too
+big.
+
+"Miles too big," cried Rosalie, coming up to the second floor where
+Harry had preceded her. "What are you doing there, Harry? Miles
+too big, I was saying. It really is. Of course I realise you must
+have a house suitable to your fame but--What are you doing, Harry?"
+
+"Fame, yes," breathed Harry, desperately occupied. "I've turned
+on this tap and I can't turn it off again. Eternal fame. After me
+the deluge!"
+
+She was looking around. "But, Harry, really! Look at this floor.
+Two more huge rooms. What can we--"
+
+"Mice and Mumps!" groaned Harry, straining at the tap. "Mice and
+Mumps!"
+
+He came to her wiping his hands on his handkerchief. "Too big! Look
+here, supposing this house isn't washed away by that tap. Suppose
+it's still standing here tomorrow. Take a broad, courageous view
+of the thing. Suppose this isn't the beginning of the Great Flood
+of London, and that we're going to live in a house and not an ark.
+Well, what you've got to remember is that we're not coming in here
+for a week. We've got to look ahead. Take these two rooms. Why,
+you can see what they're for, what they've been. Opening into one
+another, and those little bars on the windows, and that protected
+fireplace. Nurseries. Day nursery and night nursery."
+
+Rosalie laughed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+
+
+That's all done. The thing traverses the waters of the years, as
+across seas a ship, and makes presently a new shore, a new clime,
+wherein are met occasions new and strange, not anticipated by
+Rosalie.
+
+Here is one.
+
+Habitant in the new continent across these years, she is wife and,
+though she had laughed, is mother, and on a day is with her Harry,
+and Harry is saying, not at all with any hardness in his voice,
+but very gravely:
+
+"I have a right to a home."
+
+She replies, as grave as he, as one debating a matter that is
+weighty but that is before the arbitrament, not of feeling, but of
+reason, "Harry, you have a home."
+
+A gesture of his head, much comprehensive, is made by him: "Is this
+a home?"
+
+"It's where we live."
+
+"Ah, where we live, Rosalie!"
+
+She did not reply to this. Himself, and not she, spoke next; but
+his note was as though she had answered and he were speaking in
+his turn. "I have a right to a home. The children have a right to
+a home."
+
+She said, "Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children a
+home."
+
+He said, "Rosalie, I am a man."
+
+She answered, "Harry, I am a woman."
+
+Harry was smoking and he indrew an inhalation from his pipe with
+a long sibilant sound: her answer was very well understood by him.
+
+No, she never had anticipated this.
+
+Yet might not she have seen? Astounding how in life one's suddenly
+engulfed in depths and never has perceived the shoals from which
+they led; suddenly entombed in night and never has perceived the
+gradual declination of the day! Why, when she looked back, so far
+away as in those days of choosing their house had been in seed this
+thing that now was come to fruit. And she had watched it grow from
+seed to seedling, and on to bud and blossom, and never had suspected.
+
+But had she not? Then it was curious, she knew, that, alone of all
+her thoughts, all her beliefs, all her theories, her observations
+and her deductions from her observations, curious that of them all
+only a certain observation, made when choosing their house, she
+never had told to Harry.
+
+Choosing their house! She had gone back to her rooms from the
+third day of their house-hunting gently amused at an addition to
+her compendium of lore on the male habit. It was in a way like the
+cat idea; at least it was, like that, reversal of a common opinion
+on distinguishing traits as between men and women. It went in her
+mind like this and, because it arose out of Harry, she laughed
+softly to herself as like this she shaped it:
+
+"They say a woman marries for a home. Wrong, wrong! It's man that
+marries for a home--a home that, having got it, superficially he
+cares little enough about, and superficially uses as a good place
+to get away from; but that's just how he uses his business, how he
+uses everything. Oh, he wants it, he wants it, and he marries for
+it far more than a woman wants it or marries for it. How plain
+it is! A man marries to settle down, a woman for just precisely
+the opposite: to break up; to get away from the constraints of
+daughterhood and of Miss-hood, as a schoolgirl, holiday-bound, from
+the constraints of school; to enlarge her life, not to restrict
+it; to aerate her life, not to compose it. Why, it's inherent in a
+man, the desire for a home; it's in his bones. Look at little boys
+playing--it's caves and tents and wigwams they delight to play at;
+a place they can in part discover and in part construct, and then
+arrange their things in, and then go off exploring and then, all
+the time, be coming back to the delicious cave and creep in and
+block up the door! Girls don't play at that; they play at shops and
+being grown up, at nursing dolls and not themselves being nursed.
+But that's your man--a hunter with a cave, and the return to the
+cave the best part of the hunting. That's what he marries for--a
+home; a pitch of his own; a place to bring his things to and wherein
+to keep his things; an establishment; a solid, anchored base; a
+place where he can have his wife and his children and his dogs and
+his books and his servants and his treasures and his slippers and
+his ease, and can feel, comfortably, that she and they and it are
+his,--his mysterious cave with the door blocked up, his base, his
+moorings, his settled and abiding centre. Dear Harry!"
+
+"Dear Harry" because all this had come to her while with secret,
+fond amusement she had watched Harry delightedly and entrancedly
+fussing about the houses they explored. The boy with a cave! The
+man with a home! She liked the idea of a new home, and a home with
+Harry, but, given outstanding features obviously essential, almost
+any home would have satisfied her. She was animated and interested
+in the choosing, but not with Harry's interest and animation. Hers
+were the feelings with which she had established herself in the
+two-room suite at the boarding house. There any two rooms would
+have done; here any pleasant house would do. It was not the rooms;
+it was the significance of her entry into their possession. It
+was not the house; it was the significance of all connoted by the
+house. The rooms had been a stepping-off place to independence
+larger and to triumphs new; the house was a stepping-off place to
+independence, to triumphs, to battle of life and to joy of life,
+lifted upon a plane high above her old world as the stars, as bright
+and keen as they.
+
+But for Harry it was a stepping-in place.
+
+It was Harry that fussed and examined and measured and opened and
+shut and tested and tried and must have this and must have that.
+It was Harry who saw everything with the eye that was going to see
+it and live with it permanently and for all time. It was Harry who
+invested every square yard of every interior with the attributes
+that should be there when they therein were domiciled. Harry who
+said, "This front door! Rosalie, we're going to have a front door
+that will hit you in the eye and make you say 'Mice and Mumps,
+there's a distinguished couple that live behind a door like that!'
+None of your wretched browns and greens and blacks and reds for our
+door, Rosalie! We'll have a yellow front door, gamboge. I've seen
+it on a house in Westminster. I'll take you there. You wait till
+you see it. Imagine it, Rosalie, beneath that lovely old fanlight
+overhead. And then yellow window boxes tinted to match in every
+window and crammed with flowers. It'll be a house you'll run to
+get into directly you catch sight of it. Then inside here, in the
+hall, there'll be the thickest rugs money can buy and the brightest
+light and the warmest stove. You'll step in and shut the yellow
+door and, 'Mice and Mumps,' you'll say, 'this is home!' Now, look
+here; here'll be my study; I'll have bookshelves built in all
+round there and there and there. Pictures there. This nook--I'll
+fix a little cupboard there and keep my tools in. I'll spend half
+my time our first weeks pottering about with a hammer and a pair of
+pliers. This place just here on the landing. Looks like a dungeon.
+We'll knock out a window there and fit it up with hot and cold
+water as a cloak room. Now here's your room, your--"
+
+"My study," she had interpolated, a little apprehensive lest for
+her private room he should use another word.
+
+"Yes, your study, rather. Each of us with our own study! A lark,
+eh? And Rosalie, in mine there'll be a special chair for you and
+in yours a special chair for me. We'll stroll in on each other's
+work--"
+
+She loved him for that. "Like two men in chambers," she said.
+
+His reply was, "We'll rip out this fireplace and put you in one in
+oak; the walls something between gold and brown, eh? Now come into
+the drawing-room. This'll be the room. Let's start with the hearth
+and imagine it's winter. This is where we'll have tea the days when
+I get back in time--"
+
+"And when I get back in time."
+
+"Of course, I'd forgotten that. Why, then whichever of us is back
+first will be all ready with the tea and waiting to welcome the
+other. Can't you see the room? Warm, shadowed, glowing here and
+there, here and there gleaming, and the tea table shining? Won't
+it be a place to rush back to? I say, Rosalie, it's going to be
+rather wonderful, isn't it?"
+
+Dear Harry! Yes, men that married for a home.
+
+So she had known that from the start; and, the significant thing
+(as later perceived) she never had mentioned it to Harry. There
+was not a line of her life, as lived before she knew him, that she
+had not revealed to him; there was not a passage of her life, when
+joined to his, that was not handed to him to write upon; but this,
+that she knew he'd married for a home, was never revealed, never
+inscribed upon the tablets submitted daily for his annotation.
+
+Yes, significant!
+
+But how could its significance have been perceived? Look here, there
+had been a night--a thousand years ago!--when a girl had turned her
+face to her pillow and cried, most frightfully. Significant! Why,
+that girl's world had lain in atoms at the significance of that
+girl's grief. And she that now looked back had been born out of
+those tears, as the first woman drawn from the side of the first
+man, and fondly had chid that child that no significance was there
+at all. There was none. There was nothing to fear. A natural joy
+of life that had been stifled had been embraced, a shattered world
+had been remoulded on foundings firmer and, ah, nearer to the
+heart's desire. Significant! It had been so disproved that not more
+possibly could fears arise from those, her lovely dissipations of
+those fears, than from its watchful mother's reassuring candle and
+her soothing words new terrors to a frightened child at night.
+
+Then how, she used to ask herself, could significance have been
+perceived in not admitting Harry to her smiling thought on men and
+home? Significance--then? Nay, memory bear witness, much, much the
+contrary! Bear witness, memory, it was that very thought of Harry as
+boy with cave, as man with home, had suddenly suffused her with...
+
+"Dear Harry!" she had thought, and with the thought...
+
+Anna! That cry of Anna's upon that frightening night, striking her
+hands against her bosom, "I have a longing--here!" Never till then
+its meaning nor even thought upon its meaning.
+
+Then! Upon that thought--"Dear Harry!"--had come, with a catch at
+the breath as at an obscure twinge of pain, a tremor of the sense
+that was its meaning: thereafter flooding all her being as floods
+a flood a pasture. A longing to be mother, Anna's longing was! A
+longing to be mother, to hold a tiny scrap against her breast; to
+have her heart, bursting for such release, torn out by baby fingers;
+to have her design of God, insufferably overpacked within her by the
+remorseless pressure of instinct through a million ages, relieved,
+discharged, fulfilled by motherhood. Poor Anna! Ah, piteous! "Oh,
+God, thou knowest how hard it is to be a woman." Poor, piteous Anna,
+and poor, piteous every woman that, made vessel of this yearning,
+must have it unfulfilled.
+
+Not she!
+
+The coronet of love, denied poor Anna, was hers. He'd said "These
+rooms--the nurseries"; the crown of love; and she had laughed!
+
+Oh, stubborn still! Oh, still not cognisant of nature's dower to
+her sex. To wear the coronet and to refuse the crown! To be wife
+and not to be mother! To think of baby fingers and to think to put
+away the offer of their baby clutch!
+
+That girl that turned her face to her pillow and began to cry, most
+frightfully, cried next again when she again lay abed and had a tiny
+scrap, an ugly, exquisite, grotesque, miraculous scrap, a baby boy,
+a baby man, along her arm and watched it there. Those had been
+passionate and rending tears; these did not even flow. Those burned
+her eyes; these stood within her eyes a lovely welling up of pride
+and adoration, drawn from her by this newly risen wonder as by the
+sun at his arising moisture in lovely mists is drawn from earth.
+
+Motherhood! When later he was christened, she and Harry named him
+Hugh; but it was a caressing diminutive she made out of his name
+by which he was always known. Her tiny son! His tiny arms hugged
+you as never tiny arms possibly could have hugged before and so
+she called him "Huggo."
+
+"Harry, if you could feel how he's hugging me! It's absurd he can
+have such strength! It's ridiculous he can love me so! And how
+can he possibly know that hugging's a sign of love? Harry, how can
+he? Take him and hold him up like that and see if he hugs you the
+same. He is! He is! Isn't he?"
+
+"Mice and Mumps," said Harry, "he is; he's throttling me, the
+tiger."
+
+"Ah, give him back, I'm jealous. There's never, never been a hugger
+like him since the world began. He's Huggo. That's his name. Creature
+straight out of heaven, you're Huggo."
+
+Her love for infant Huggo so maternal; her unity with Harry so
+exquisitely one; how could she have known were to be met across
+the waters of the years occasions new and strange, as that already
+shown, or, onward yet a further voyage, as this?
+
+The matter between them touched the same as when, "I have a right
+to a home; the children have a right to a home," Harry had said.
+But their tones not the same; in Harry's voice a quality of dulness
+as of one reciting a lesson too often conned yet never understood;
+in hers a certain weariness as with instruction too often given.
+
+They had been talking a very long time. Harry hadn't any arguments.
+He just kept coming back and coming back to the one thing. He said
+again, the twentieth time, in that dull voice, "We are responsible
+for the children. We have a duty towards them."
+
+The twentieth time! She made a gesture, not impatient, just tired,
+that was of repletion with this thing. "Ah, you say 'we' have a
+duty. You say 'we'; but, Harry, you mean me. Why I a duty more than
+you? Why am I the accused?"
+
+Harry's dull note: "Because you are a woman." Ineffable weariness
+was in the murmur that was her reply. "Ah, my God, that reason!"
+No, she had never anticipated this.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+
+How did it happen? Within her face abode the explanation of how it
+happened.
+
+There was a mirage in her face.
+
+If she were taken (for a moment) when she had been married ten years,
+her age thirty-two, and then taken again when she was forty-six,
+when she had done, when, in 1922, she said, "I have done," and her
+story ceases, it is material to a portrait of her that in those
+fourteen years her appearance did not greatly change. Events inscribed
+it; but these writings were in two scripts, rendered in the two
+natures that were hers, and, as it were, a balance was maintained
+between them; there remained constant the aspect that her face
+presented to the world; constant, that is to say, the spirit that
+looked out of her face.
+
+That girl that at the door of the great house in Pilchester Square
+had breathed, "You knew, before I knew, that I loved you," had been
+called beautiful. This woman that now was wife and now was mother
+was beautiful with that girl's beauty and with her own, matured of
+years, set upon it. That girl, shaded in her colouring, commonly
+was sombre in her hue, but with a quick, impetuous spirit beneath
+her flesh that, flashing, somehow lightened all her tints; this
+woman, albeit dark, had somehow about her a deep golden hue as of
+dusk in a deep wood beheld against a sunset. Her face had always had
+a boyish look and still, with years, was boyish. There was a mirage
+in her face. The stranger glanced and saw a mother--extraordinarily
+shielding and maternal and benignant things; and looked again and
+saw a boy--astonishingly reckless and impetuous and rather boyish,
+hard and mutinous things. Or glanced and saw a boy, perhaps laughing
+and eager, perhaps obstinate and petulant; and looked again and
+only much tenderness was there.
+
+There was a mirage in her face; and with its changes her voice
+changed. When she was a boy her voice was April; when she was a
+mother September was her voice.
+
+There were two natures in her and those were their reflections;
+two lodestars set above her that by turns brightened and drew her
+gaze; two lodestones set within her that claimed her banners as
+claim the moon and earth the inconstant sea; one of head, one of
+heart; one of choice, one of dower; one of will, one of nature.
+
+In that tenth year her married life there stood for the mother in
+her face three children: Huggo who then was nine; Dora, whom she
+called Doda because in her first prattle this heart's delight of
+hers-"A baby girl! A beloved one, Harry, to be daughter to me, and
+to be a tiny woman with me as little girls always are, and then
+budding up beside me and being myself to me again, my baby girl, my
+daughter, my woman-bud, my heart's own heart!"--had thus pronounced
+her name, who then was seven; and last Benjamin, then five, whom
+she named Benjamin because, come third, come after cognizance of
+confliction within herself, come after resentment of his coming--called
+Benjamin because, come out of such, there were such happy tears,
+such tender, thank-God, charged with meaning tears to greet him,
+the one the last of three, the little tiny one, so wee beside the
+lusty, toddling others. Benjamin she told Harry he must be named;
+Benji she always called him.
+
+Huggo and Doda and Benji! Her children! Her darling ones, her
+lovely ones! Love's crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons
+of these darling joys of hers (when they were growing up to nine
+and seven and five years old) in signal, almost arrogant in her
+disdain of precedent to the contrary, that woman might be mother
+and yet work freely in the markets of the world precisely as man
+is father but follows a career.
+
+Children! There had been a time when, speaking from the boy that
+would stand mutinous and reckless in her face, and with her April
+voice, she had expressed her view on parentage in terms of the old
+resentment at the old disability, encountered, bedrocked, wherever
+into life she struck a new trail; in terms of the old invertion of
+an old conceit wherever with her principles she touched conventional
+opinion. The catlike attributes, the marriage for a home, here the
+familiar saw on parenthood--
+
+"They talk about hostages to fortune," she had expressed her idea,
+"they talk about a man with young children as having given hostages
+to fortune. You know, it's quite absurd. He doesn't. I don't say a
+man to whom the support of children is a financial anxiety hasn't,
+by begetting them, placed himself in a position of captivity to
+fortune, or to the future, or whatever you like to call it. He very
+much has. He's backed a bill that any day may fall due and find
+him without means to meet it; he's let himself in for blackmail,
+always over him a threat. But I'm talking about men above the
+struggle line. They don't, in their children, give hostages. It's
+the woman does that. Men don't give nor forfeit anything. It's the
+woman gives and forfeits. Why, when his friends meet a man who was
+last met a bachelor a couple or three years ago, what change do
+they see in him? They don't see any change at all. There isn't any
+change to see. He has to tell them; and he always tells them rather
+sheepishly or rather boisterously. 'I'm married, you know,' he
+says. 'Yes, rather. Man alive, I've got two kids!' The other says,
+'My aunt!'--more probably he says 'My God!'--'My God, fancy you!'
+And they both laugh--laugh!
+
+"Hostages to fortune! To a man and amongst men it's just a joke.
+It's no joke to a woman. Do you suppose a married girl, meeting old
+friends, has to tell them she's a mother, or, if she had to tell
+them, would tell them like that? Can't they see it at a glance?
+Isn't she changed? Isn't she, subtly perhaps, but unmistakably,
+altogether different from the unfettered thing she used to be? Of
+course she is. How otherwise? She's given hostages to fortune and
+she's paying; she's being bled. She's giving up things, she's not
+going out so much, she's not reading so much, she's not playing so
+much, she's not interested so much in what used to interest her. How
+can she? There's the children. How can she? She's given hostages to
+fortune. Oh, happy is the man that hath children for they are as
+arrows in the quiver of a giant. But it's the woman is the arrowbearer!
+It's the woman pays."
+
+Lo, there had come to this intolerance the longing--"Here!"--that
+Anna's bosom had, the urge to hold a tiny scrap against her breast,
+to have her heart, bursting for such release, torn out by baby
+fingers. It had o'erborne the other. She had thrown herself upon
+its flood; not yielded to it as one drawn in by rising waters, but
+tempestuously engulfed by it and borne away upon it as swallowed
+up and borne away in Harry's arms when "Rosalie! Rosalie!" he had
+cried to her.
+
+That which the subsidence revealed, adoringly she called her Huggo.
+
+There was a mirage in her face. When, turned again towards the star
+to which she showed her boyish and impetuous look, and, following,
+she felt again the call that set the mother in her face, she this
+time reasoned. That idea that, having children, it was the woman
+who gave hostages to fortune! Deadly and cruelly true it was, but
+only by convention. Why should it be so? Why should motherhood
+that was the crown of love, of woman's life, be paid for in coin
+that no man was called upon to pay? Unjust; and need not be! She
+perfectly well had carried on her work with Huggo. Sleeping was
+the adored creature's chief lot in life. If she had ever thought
+(which she never had) of giving up her work and staying at home
+on his account, what could she have done but twirl her thumbs and
+watch him sleep and in his lovely lively hours superintend the
+nurse who required no superintendence? As it was she was about him
+in the delicious exercises of transporting him from cot through
+toilet and refreshment to readiness to take the air. His lordship was
+off in his lordship's perambulator by nine o'clock every morning.
+She did not herself leave, with Harry, till shortly before ten. There,
+in instance, was an hour at home with not the smallest benefit to
+Huggo. It would have been the same, had she remained at home, with
+three in four of all the other hours. Ridiculous to lay down that
+a mother, having a good nurse and a well-ordered house and a husband
+out all day, must tie herself there, abandoning her own life, to
+attend her children! Children! Darlings of her own! Ease for this
+yearning in her heart, assumption of this lovely glory that was
+her natural right! Yes, she had proved love not to be incompatible
+with her freedom; she would show motherhood as beautifully could
+be joined.
+
+It seemed to her a blessing upon, and an assurance in, her purpose
+that in the precious person of a little daughter came the embodiment
+of this reasoning and of this design. A baby girl! A tiny woman-bud
+to be a woman with her in the house of Harry and of Huggo! A woman
+treasury into which she could pour her woman love! Her self's own
+self, whose earliest speech chose for herself her name--her Doda!
+
+It all worked splendidly. Winged on the eager pinions of their
+individual lives these two nested their joined life in a home that
+for every inmate was a perfect home; perfect for a husband, perfect
+for a wife, perfect for the babies, perfect for the servants. The
+peace of every home in civilized society rests ultimately on the
+kitchen, and the peace of half the homes known to Harry and to
+Rosalie was in constant rupture by upheavals thence. Not so behind
+the gamboge door. Rosalie always granted it to men that, as was
+commonly said, servants worked better for men. Men kept out of the
+irrational creatures' way; that was about it. The conduct of her
+life gave her the like advantage. Giving her orders before she left
+the house, she was out all day and never unexpectedly in. Positively
+the servants welcomed her on her return at five o'clock!
+
+The babies, to whom then she flew, were with a perfect nurse. Harry
+had helped in her appointment. She had come one evening, early in
+the life of Huggo, when a change had to be made from the nurse who
+specialised only up to the point then reached by Huggo, and she
+had presented herself to them, seated together in Harry's study, a
+short body, one shape and a solid shape from her shoulders to her
+shoes, who announced her name as Muffett.
+
+"Miss Muffett, I hope," said Harry gravely.
+
+"Unmarried, sir," said Muffett with equal gravity and with a sudden
+drop and then recovery of her stature as though some one had knocked
+her behind the knees.
+
+"There's nothing to do," said Harry when she had gone, "but to buy
+her a turret and engage her"; and there was nothing to do, when she
+was installed, but enjoy the babies and delight in them just as a
+man enjoys and delights in his tiny ones,--in the early mornings
+before Rosalie left for her work, in the evenings when she returned
+home.
+
+It all worked splendidly. In those early years, when two were in
+the nursery and as yet no third, there wasn't a sign that Harry who
+had married for a home ever could say, "I have a right to a home."
+He had, and he was often saying so, the most perfect home. He came
+not home of a night to a wife peevish with domestic frets and solitary
+confinement and avid he should hear the tale of them, nor yet to
+one that butterflied the day long between idleness and pleasures
+and gave him what was left. He came nightly to a home that his
+wife sought as eagerly as he sought, a place of rest well-earned
+and peace well-earned. That was it! "Things which are equal to the
+same thing are equal to each other." They had discovered and had
+removed the worm of disparity that eats away the heart of countless
+marriages. They not infrequently had friends in to dinner, not
+infrequently dined at the tables of friends, made a point of not
+infrequently attending a theatre or a concert; but however the
+evening had been passed--and the evenings alone were always agreed
+to be the best evenings of all--there was none but they ended
+sitting together, not in the drawing-room, but in Harry's study
+or in hers, just talking happiness. Equal in endeavour, they were
+thereby made equal on every plane and in every taste. A reciprocating
+machine. That was it!
+
+At least that was how, profoundly satisfied with it, she thought
+it was.
+
+Then Benji came.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+
+
+There were attendant upon the expectation and the coming of Benji
+certain processes of mind that had not been with Huggo or with
+Doda. When it was in prospect she had vexation, sometimes a sense
+of injury, that again her work was to be interrupted. It would make
+no difference to Harry. It happened that the days of her trial were
+timed to fall on the date when a criminal prosecution of sensational
+public interest was due for hearing at the Old Bailey. Harry, for
+the defence, had added immensely to his brilliant reputation when
+seeing it through the preliminary stages before the magistrate.
+The Old Bailey proceedings were to be the greatest event, thus far,
+in his career. He had told her--how proud and delighted to hear it
+she had been!--that if he pulled it off (and he had set his heart
+on pulling it off) he would really begin to think about "taking
+silk."
+
+Well, but she also had her heart, in no single or sensational climax
+of her work, but in its every phase and every hour. It absorbed her.
+Two years earlier Mr. Simcox had begun disturbing signs of health
+that, begun, developed rapidly. His brisk activity went out of him.
+His walk had the odd suggestion of one carrying a load. His perky
+air went dull. His mind was like a flagging watch, run down. He
+could not concentrate, he suffered passages of aphasia, he began
+more and more to "give up the office," more and more to leave things
+to her. The agency in both its branches, scholastic and insurance,
+developed well. She was its head and it absorbed her. She had a sense,
+that was like wine to her, of increasing swiftness of decision, of
+power, of judgment, of vision, of resource. She used to hurry to
+her office of a morning as an artist urgent with inspiration will
+hurry to his colours, or a poet to his pen,--avid to exercise that
+which was within her.
+
+Well, it was to be stopped. Childbed. For a month at least, for two
+months more likely, all was to be set aside, to go into abeyance,
+to drift. Whereas Harry's work.... Yes, vexatious! These laws that
+gave men the desirable place in life were not laws but conventions
+and she had proved them such; but with all proved there yet remained
+to the man privileges, to the woman restraints, that were ordinances
+fundamental and not to be escaped. Yes, injurious!
+
+Thus in those weeks of the coming of him that was to be Benji,
+solely the boy of aspect mutinous and impetuous was in her face;
+and when within a month stood her appointed time came an event that
+stiffened there that aspect, turned it, indeed, actively upon the
+child within her waiting deliverance. This event in its momentous
+incidence on her career placed its occasion on parity with Harry's
+anticipations of the Old Bailey trial. Mr. Simcox died.
+
+There's no use labouring why the emotions that at this loss should
+have been hers were not hers. That girl whose eyes had gathered
+tears at the picture of the little figure with flapping jacket
+peering through the curtains at the postman's "rat-tat-flick" was
+not present in the woman whose first thought at the sudden news,
+brought to her seated in her office, was, "At such a time! Just
+when--Now what is to be done?" True for her that there followed
+gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's
+obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed
+he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest
+to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant.
+She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was
+past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man,
+she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his death
+had been, not of him, but of his death's effect upon her work.
+
+And there supervened, immediately, interests that caused the passing
+of Mr. Simcox merely--to have passed.
+
+Mr. Sturgiss, of Field and Company, attending the funeral with her,
+said to her as he was taking his leave, "One would say this isn't
+a moment to be talking of other things, business things, but after
+all--In a way it is the moment. You'll be making new arrangements
+and rearrangements now. Before you start settling anything I want
+you to have in mind the old proposition. You've been loyal to poor
+Simcox to the end. This business is your own now. We want it. We
+want you. We want you in Lombard Street."
+
+This, cut and dried, glowingly enlarged in long interviews with Mr.
+Sturgiss and Mr. Field, succinctly reduced to writing by the firm
+that it might be fairly studied, was before her, not demanding,
+but eagerly absorbing, her most earnest attention when she was
+a fortnight from her trial. This was the event whose momentous
+incidence on her career placed the days then in process and
+immediately in prospect on parity of importance with their meaning
+to Harry, absorbed in preparation for his case. There was so much
+to weigh; and like a threat, a doom, banked her impending banishment
+from affairs, distracting her, haunting her, hurrying her. There
+was so much to do, to settle, to wind up (for she found herself
+arranging for the change even while she debated it); and in the
+midst of it she was to be cut off as by term of imprisonment! There
+was so much to scheme, to plan, to dream (her mind already elevated
+among the high places of her new outlook); and between now and
+action she was to go--out of action.
+
+Whereas Harry.... Whose child it was also to be....
+
+Yes, injurious!
+
+Not injurious as between dear Harry and herself; but injurious as
+between his sex and hers. There were moments of thinking upon the
+difference when she could have conceived a grudge against the child
+she was to bear.
+
+And Harry could not perceive the difference! Immersed in his
+preparations and, when the case opened, lost to all else in his
+case, he presented precisely that faculty (and that permission by
+convention) of complete detachment from his home that long she had
+known to be man's most outstanding and most enviable quality. He
+had no attention to spare for the consideration of her own problem
+and ambition, and she was too honourable to his interests, and too
+devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more
+significantly to her feelings than that, he was also too immersed
+to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the sympathy and
+the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It was there,
+profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came first.
+He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to
+practise detachment, by gift of, nature not inhibited from detachment.
+A man, he could put it beneath the surface. A woman, in conflict
+of her instincts and her ambitions, it was her ambitions that she
+must sink. That was it! Yes, injurious.
+
+And he did not even understand.
+
+On what proved to be the evening before her delivery, and was the
+third day of Harry's case, she was lying, as she had lain some days,
+on the Chesterfield in the drawing-room, loosely robed. Harry had
+thought he could get back to tea, and got back. He came to her with
+tenderest concern, and with immense tenderness at once was talking
+to her. But she could see! The apparent deepening of all the lines
+of his dear, striking face, as of one who for hours has been under
+enormous concentration; the slight huskiness of his voice, from
+hard service; the repressed excitation in his air; the frequent
+glint behind the soft regard of his eyes, as of one that has been
+hunting high and hunting well--she could see; she could tell where
+was his spirit!
+
+Her own went lovingly to meet it where it was. "Ah, never mind all
+that, Harry. Tell me all that's been happening to you. How is it
+going, Harry?"
+
+Dear Harry! Most mannish man! She laughed (and he laughed too, knowing
+perfectly well why she laughed) to note the delight, like a dog
+from chain, with which he bounded off into his mind's absorption. He
+sat upright. He grabbed for a cigarette and inhaled it tremendously.
+"It's going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started
+cross-examining today. I gave him three and a half hours of it,
+straight off the ice, and I'm not through with him yet. Not half.
+If he had as many legs as a centipede he'd still not have one left to
+stand on when I'm through with him. I doubt he'll have his marrow
+bones to crawl out on, the way he's crumpling up. Even old Hounslow
+at his worst can't possibly misdirect the jury, the way I've gummed
+their noses on the trail. I'll tell you--"
+
+He told her.
+
+She had put out both her hands and taken one of his. "It's splendid,
+Harry. It's too splendid. How delighted I am, and proud, proud!
+No one would have imagined it at the beginning. What a triumph it
+will be for you!"
+
+His grasp squeezed hers in fond response. "Why, it won't do me
+any harm," he agreed. His tone was light. He released his hand and
+took up a cup of tea, and his tone went deep. "Mind you, I'm glad
+about it," he said, and stirred the spoon thoughtfully within the
+cup. He had come into the room declaring he was dying for some
+tea, but he had touched none, and he now replaced the cup untasted
+on the table and she saw on his face the deep "inward" look that
+she knew (and loved) for the sign of intense concentration of his
+mind. "Yes, glad," he spoke; his voice, as was its habit when he
+was "inward," sounding as though it was the involuntary, and not
+the intentional, utterance of his thoughts. "I've gone all out over
+this case. I saw, the minute they briefed me, that one tiny flaw,
+his neglect to take up that option--you remember, I told you--right
+down at the bottom of the whole tangle, and I went plumb down for
+it and hung on to it and fought it up like, like a diver coming up
+from fathoms down."
+
+She had a quickness of imagery. It constantly delighted him. "Yes,
+that's good," she declared. "Up like a diver, Harry. Not with
+goggles and a helmet and all that, but shot up like a flash, all
+shining and glistening and triumphant with the jewel aloft. What
+a shout there'd be! Dear Harry! You're splendid!"
+
+He smiled most lovingly. "As a matter of fact, I feel I ought to
+make a mess of it. It'll be the first big case since we've been
+together that, while it's been on, we haven't had talks about.
+You couldn't, of course, with this so near to you. It would be
+significant, and proper, if I drowned in it."
+
+She shook her head. "Absurd! Why, the thing I'm most glad about,
+Harry, is that all this"--she indicated with a gesture her pose,
+her dress, her condition--"that all this hasn't in the least upset
+your work. It might have. It hasn't--and when it happens, it won't,
+will it?"
+
+Harry said, "I'm rather ashamed to say it hasn't, in the least.
+I've thought of you, often, but I've simply put the thought away.
+And when it happens, I shall think of you--terribly--going through
+it; and of the small thing--But we shall be in the crisis of the
+case and I shall have to forget you. I'll have to, Rosalie, as I
+have had to. The work must go on."
+
+She agreed emphatically. "Of course it must." She then said, "Whereas
+mine--"
+
+He did not attend her. The "inward" look was deep upon his face.
+There was the suggestion of a grimmish smile about his mouth. One
+could have guessed that he was rehearsing, with satisfaction, his
+enormous application while the work was going on.
+
+She gave a sound of laughter, and that aroused him. "What's the
+joke?"
+
+"Why, just how this does rather illuminate the point--"
+
+"The point...?"
+
+"Your work and mine--a man's and a woman's."
+
+"Yes, tell me, dear."
+
+"Why, Harry, I do think of it sometimes. We've planned it and
+arranged it and settled it so nicely, these years, and you see the
+big thing in marriage comes along and shatters it to bits. Your
+work goes on precisely as if nothing at all were happening; mine
+has to stand by."
+
+"Ah, but this," Harry said, and in his turn indicated her condition.
+"This--this is different. We agreed, before Huggo, that if we had
+children it need make no difference to you, to your work, in a way.
+And it hasn't, and needn't now--when it's over. But this time, this
+period, why, that's bound to interfere."
+
+"But it doesn't interfere with you. It shows the difference."
+
+"Oh, it shows the difference," he assented.
+
+His tone was conspicuously careless, conceding the difference but
+attaching to it no importance at all; and with it he rose--she had
+instantly the impression of him as it were brushing the difference
+like a crumb from his lap--and announced, "I'm going to my study
+now for a couple of hours before dinner. I must. Our solicitor's
+coming in." He bent over her and kissed her lovingly. "You understand,
+I know."
+
+And he went.
+
+Yes, it showed the difference! And was not seen by him! Yes,
+injurious. Yes, could conceive a grudge....
+
+There was a mirage in her face. Her face, that had been boy's and
+mutinous these weeks, was Mary's and was lovely in maternal love
+when it was turned towards the scrap that on a morning lay against
+her breast; her thoughts, that had been stubborn, hard, resentful
+while her days approached, welled in remorse, compassion, yearning,
+joy, when they were past and this was come. She'd grudged him,
+this littlest one! Grudged his right, put her own right against
+it, this tiny, helpless one! When, added to these thoughts, Huggo
+and Doda, those lovely darlings, were permitted to see him, asleep
+beside her, he was so wee, so almost nothing against their sturdy
+limbs, and had come so unwanted--yes, unwanted, this cherishable
+one of all!--that she knew instantly what name he must be given.
+Her Benjamin!
+
+Lying much alone in the succeeding days, contrite, adoring; with
+frequent happy tears (she was left weak): with tender, thank-God,
+charged with meaning tears, she found a vindication of her
+self-reproach that immensely bound her up, forgave her, gave her
+comfort. She could give up her work! She could leave all and be
+with her darlings! Of course she could! At any time! She had grudged
+the right to come of this defenceless scrap. She had set against
+his right her own right. Ah, dangerous! A long road lay that way!
+In conflict of his coming, with her own rights she had been much
+engaged. Here, on the sheet beside her, and in the nursery, overhead,
+were other rights. Well, when they claimed.... Of course she could!
+She had not thought enough about these things....
+
+There is to be said for her that she thought not very widely nor
+very deeply upon them now. Her resolution that she could, when it
+was necessary, give up her work, scattered them. It came to her
+as comes to a man, beset by poverty, scheming by this way and by
+that to abate it, news of a legacy. He ceases, in his relief, his
+present schemes; he has "no need to worry now." Or came to her as
+comes a sail to one shipwrecked and adrift, painfully calculating
+out his final dregs of food and water. He ceases, at that emblem,
+his desperate plans to stretch his days. He's all right now.
+
+It was like that with Rosalie.
+
+While only she had realised her resentment of this baby's claims,
+and only now her contrite yielding to them; before she had conjectured
+deeply on all the problem thus revealed; there came to her, like
+way of escape to one imprisoned, like instantaneous lifting of a
+fog to one therein occluded, the thought, "I can give up the work."
+
+Of course she could! At any moment; by a word; by the mere formulation
+of the step within her mind, she could abandon her career. Not now.
+It was not necessary now. But if or when--she used that phrase, in
+set terms propounding her resolution to herself--if or when the
+call of her children, of her home, came and was paramount, she
+could give up everything and respond to it. Oh, happy! Oh, glad
+discharge of her remorse! When the children wanted her she could
+just--come back. Field and Company, her career, her successes--what
+of them? She had done well in her career, she still would do well.
+Let the claim of home and children once come into the scale against
+the claim of those ambitions and--she would just come back!
+
+Oh, happy!
+
+"Come back"? Who was it had said something about that, something
+about "come back" for a woman, making the expression thus dimly
+familiar in her mind? Who? Laetitia? No, Laetitia was always
+associated with another phrase: striking because in terms identical
+with accusation previously delivered against her. Well she remembered
+it! On the day following Harry's visit to the house to take his
+deserts from poor Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke, she also had gone
+there, following his high idea of what was right. She had been
+refused admittance. There had come for her as the last voice out
+of that house a quivering letter from Aunt Belle, seeming to quiver
+in the hand with the passionate upbraiding that had indited it,
+and a forlorn sentence from Laetitia. "I have done everything for
+you, everything, everything, and this is how you have rewarded me,"
+had pulsed the pages of Aunt Belle; Laetitia only had written:
+
+"Oh, Rosalie! You could have had any one you liked to love you,
+but you took my Harry and I shall never, never have another."
+
+Miss Salmon's cry again! Twice identically accused. Once grotesquely
+accused; once, on the surface, rightly accused. Both times aware
+how poignant and pathetic was the cry; not moved the first time,
+not moved the second. Recurring to her now, she knew again how
+broken-hearted sad it was, and knew again it ought to move, but
+did not. Well, not strange now. She was a long way out of those too
+soft compassions. No, not Laetitia had made "come back" familiar
+to her. The phrase, as she seemed to recollect its context, was
+too profoundly practical for the Laetitia sort; and that was why,
+of course, it moved her nothing. She had learnt, jostling off corners
+in the market place, what formerly she had only conjectured,--that
+there was in life no room for sentiment, it clogged; it hampered;
+it brought sticky unreality into that which was sharply real.
+"Come back?" No, not Laetitia. Who? Keggo? Yes, it was Keggo; and
+immediately with the name's recovery was recovered the phrase's
+context. This very matter! "Rosalie, a woman can't--come back."
+
+Absurd! But, yes, how she remembered it now! "Very dangerous being
+a woman," Keggo had said. "Men go into dangers but they come out
+of them and go home to tea. That's what it is with men, Rosalie.
+They can always get out. They can always come back. They never
+belong to a thing, heart and soul, body and mind. Rosalie, women
+do. That's why it is so very, very dangerous being a woman. Women
+can't come back. They take to a thing, anything, and go deep
+enough, and they're its; they never, never will get away from it;
+they never, never will be able to come back out of it. Rosalie, I
+tell you this, when a woman gives herself, forgets moderation and
+gives herself to anything, she is its captive for ever. She may
+think she can come back but she can't come back. For a woman there
+is no comeback. They don't issue return tickets to women. For women
+there is only departure; there is no return."
+
+Poor Keggo!
+
+Poor Keggo had of course founded her theory upon her own bitter
+plight. How she had given her case away when she had said, "Look
+at me!" It applied to her, of course, or to any woman--or man for
+that matter--who drank or drugged. It applied not in the least to
+such a case as this of her own. Keggo had tried to apply it. She
+had said, "You have a theory of life. You are bent upon a career
+in life. Suppose you ever wanted to come back?"
+
+She had laughed and declared she never would want to come back.
+Well, look how absurd all poor Keggo's idea was now being proved!
+It had suddenly occurred to her that it might at some future time
+be required of her to come back; and all she had to do was just--to
+come back. No difficulty about it whatsoever! No struggle! Indeed,
+and fondly she touched that by her side which had called up these
+thoughts, she would come back joyously. Of course she would! Field
+and Company, ambition, that for if and when her darlings called
+her! Yes, wrong every way, that poor Keggo. Dangerous being a woman,
+she had said, and it was not dangerous. It could be, and she had
+proved it, a state that could be lived full in every aspect,--full
+in freedom, full in endeavour, full in love, full in motherhood.
+Dangerous! A week ago, inimical to this advent, injurious; now, in
+this advent's presence, and with this resolution gladly dedicated
+to it, only and wholly glorious.
+
+This one! Come after connection, come in contrition, come to call
+her back when she should need to be called, the little tiny one,
+the belovedest one, the Benjamin one--her Benji!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+
+
+Those children were brought up with every modern advantage. Wisdom
+is judged by the age in which it flourishes, and everything that
+the day accounts wise for children those children had. Their father
+was of considerable and always increasing means; their mother was
+of great and untrammelled intelligence: anything that money could
+provide for children, and that intelligent principles of upbringing
+said ought to be provided for children, those children enjoyed. When
+they were out of the care of Muffet, who was everything that a nurse
+ought to be, they passed into the care of a resident governess,
+Miss Prescott, who was a children's governess, not for the old
+and fatuous reason that she "loved children," but for the new and
+intelligent reason that she was attracted by the child-mind as a
+study and was certificated and diplomaed in the study of children
+as an exact science,--Child Welfare as she called it. Miss Prescott
+had complete charge of the children while they were tiny and while
+they were growing up to eleven and nine and Benji to seven years
+old. She taught them their lessons (on her own, the new, principles)
+and on the same principles their habits and the formation of their
+characters. It might roundly be said that everything troublesome
+in regard to the children was left to Miss Prescott, and, left to
+her, came never between the children and their mother. Their mother
+only enjoyed her children, presented to her fresh, clean and happy
+for the purpose of her enjoyment; and the children only enjoyed
+their mother, visiting them smiling, devoted, unworried, for the
+purpose of their happiness.
+
+It was a perfect, and a mutually beneficial arrangement. As there
+had been, before the children came, two independent lives behind
+the gamboge door, so, with the occupation of the nurseries, there
+were, as it might be, three independent households, mingling, at
+selected times, only for purposes of happiness.
+
+It was perfect. In the summer a house was taken at Cromer by the sea
+and there, all through the fine weather, Miss Prescott was installed
+with her charges. Their mother had three weeks from Field's in the
+summer and she and their father would spend the whole of it, and
+often week-ends, at Cromer idling and playing with their darlings.
+That was jolly. The children associated nothing whatever but
+happiness with their parents.
+
+In the other months of the year their mother was immensely occupied
+with her work at Field's, developing beyond expectation; and their
+father early and late with his work in the Temple, his esteem
+by solicitors and by litigants almost beyond his time to satisfy.
+Their father was much paragraphed in the social journals, and their
+mother also. The paragraphs said their father was making a "princely
+fortune" at the Bar and never told of him without telling also of
+his wife. They described her as "of Field's Bank" and always drove
+the word "unique" hand in hand with every mention of her parts.
+"Unique personality"; "unique position"; "unique among professional
+women"; "unique," said one, "in combining notable beauty and rare
+business acumen; an office which she attends daily and a charming
+home; a profession, three beautiful children, and a brilliant
+husband."
+
+The syntax is weak, but the truth is in it and those children were
+to be envied in their mother.
+
+Miss Prescott, when she came, did not displace the Muffet. She
+was installed additional to the Muffet; and as touching the modern
+principles relating to children she very soon told Muffet a thing
+or two not previously dreamt of in the Muffet philosophy but having,
+thence forward, occasional place in the Muffet nightmares.
+
+The Muffet, however, was of lymphatic character, with, as her most
+constant desire, the desire not to be "plagued." She was one of
+those people who are for ever declaring that they never eat anything,
+who at meals, indeed, appear to eat very little, but who between
+meals, are eating all day long. At all hours of the day the Muffet
+jaws, like the jaws of a ruminant, were steadily munching, munching.
+When Benji was three Muffet was getting distinctly fat. On a corner
+of the night nursery mantelpiece she had a photographic group of
+her parents and of an uncle and aunt who lived with her parents.
+These four were very fat and one evening the children's father made
+a remark about this portrait that made their mother laugh delightedly.
+
+Benji was in his cot. Huggo had just come from his bath and was
+having his toes wiped by his mother because he declared Muffet had
+not dried them properly. He said Muffet groaned when she stooped.
+
+His mother said, "You know, Harry, Muffet is getting fat. Have you
+noticed it?"
+
+Their father was bent almost double swinging Doda between his legs,
+the stomach of Doda reposing on the palms of his joined hands and
+Doda squealing ecstatically.
+
+Their father said, "I have. Go and look at that photograph, Rosalie,
+and you'll see why. Look at what her people are. Muffet's broadening
+down from precedent to precedent."
+
+It made their mother laugh. The children didn't know why it made
+her laugh, but they laughed with her. They always did, or with
+their father when he laughed. And there was always lots of jolly
+laughter when their father and mother came up to the nurseries.
+
+Those children, as they passed through early childhood, never saw
+their parents but happy and good-spirited. They never saw them
+worried nor ever saw them sad. That was, as one might say, Rosalie's
+chief offering to her darlings. It was splendid to Rosalie that
+her way of life, far from causing her (as prejudice would have
+prophesied) to neglect her children, enabled her to consider them
+in their relations with herself as, by their mothers, children in
+her childhood never were considered. That they should associate
+nothing--nothing at all--but happiness with her was the basis of
+it. Children, she held, ought not to see their parents bad-tempered
+or distressed or in any way out of sorts or out of control. For
+a child to do so has in two ways a bad effect on the child mind.
+In the first place, it is harmful for children to come in contact
+with the unpleasant things of life; in the second, parents should
+always be to their children models of conduct and of disposition.
+They should in themselves present ideals to their children. A man
+should be a hero to his son; a woman an ideal to her daughter.
+Why is no man a hero to his valet? It is simply because his valet
+sees him, as do not those whose esteem he desires to win, in his
+off moments. Children should never see their parents in their off
+moments.
+
+This principle was not Rosalie's alone. It is the modern principle.
+The point, to Rosalie, was that, by her way of life, she was able
+to apply it. Children were too much with their parents. That was
+the fault; in her childhood the universal fault, even now the fault
+among the unenlightened. Parents, being human, must have off moments;
+are not off moments, indeed, in the total of the day, of greater
+sum than moments of circumspection? It follows that if children are
+always with their parents, the more unlovely side cannot fail to be
+perceived, and, arising out of it, must follow injury by example,
+harm by environment, smirching of idealism, loss of respect. In
+those homes where the mother (in Rosalie's phrase) is the children's
+slave, why has the father the children's greater respect? Why is
+it fine to do what father does? Why jolly and exciting to be with
+father? It is only because the father commonly is away all day,
+only seen by them when, shedding other affairs, he comes to see
+them specially.
+
+Her life--oddly how well for everything and every one her attitude
+to life fell out!--obtained for her and for them the same wise and
+happy restriction from too free familiarity. She was able to come
+to her children only when all her undivided attention and whole
+hearted love could be given to them. They never saw her vexed,
+they never saw her angry, they never saw her sad. It was not a
+commonplace to them to see their mother. It was an event. A morning
+event and an evening event--and unfailingly a completely happy
+event. She looked back upon her own childhood with her own mother
+and reflected, fondly but clearly, affectionately but not blinded
+by affection, how very different was that. She was always with
+her mother. Her mother was often sad, often worried, often, in
+distraction of her worries, irritable in speech. Often sad! Why,
+she could remember time and again when her dear mother, hunted by
+her cares, was broken down and crying. She would go to her mother
+then and cry to see her crying, and her mother would put her arms
+around her and hug her to her breast and declare she was her "little
+comfort." Was it good for a child to suffer scenes like that? She
+used to be with her mother all day long, from early morning till
+last thing at night. With what result? That she saw and suffered
+with her, or suffered of her, all that her mother suffered; that
+she was sometimes desolated to feeling that her heart was broken
+for her mother. Could that be good for a child? Her Huggo, her Doda
+and her Benji never saw her anything but radiant; and because that
+was so (as she told herself) she never saw them cry, either on her
+account or on their own.
+
+Therein--grief in her presence on their own account--another point
+arose. With as her ideal that only happiness should be associated
+with her, she found her way of life beneficial to the preservation
+of that ideal in that it prevented her from being the vessel that
+should convey the restrictions, the reproofs and the instruction
+that are troublesome to small minds. All that was left to Miss
+Prescott. She remembered lessons with her mother; she remembered
+the irksome learning of a hundred "don'ts" from her mother; and
+though they were tender and pathetic memories she remembered also
+the reverse of the picture,--being glad to escape from her mother,
+resentful against her mother when stood in the corner by her
+mother, when stopped doing this that and the other by her mother,
+when made to learn terribly hard lessons by her mother and to go on
+learning them till she had learnt them. Only childish resentment,
+of course, swept up and forgotten as by the sun emerging out of
+clouds the shadow from a landscape. But why should children ever
+have the tiniest frown against their mother? There must be frowns,
+there must be tears. Let others bear the passing grudge of those.
+Let Miss Prescott.
+
+Miss Prescott was willing and able to bear anything like that. She
+delighted in such. She told Rosalie, when Rosalie engaged her, and
+after she had seen the children, that her only hesitation in accepting
+the post was that the children were too normal. "By normal," said
+Miss Prescott, speaking, as she always spoke, as if she were a
+passage out of a book given utterance, "By normal, Mrs. Occleve, I
+do not, of course, mean commonplace. Any one can see how attractive
+they are, how gifted; any one can know how distinguished, with,
+if I may say so, such talented parents, their inherited qualities
+must be. No, when I say normal, I mean showing no disquieting
+signs, constitutionally tractable, not refractory. In that sense of
+normality it is much more the abnormal child to whom I would have
+liked to devote myself. I have specialised in children. The harder
+the case the more I should be interested in it. That's what I mean.
+But I never could have hoped to find a household where, though
+there can be no difficulties, I should have such opportunities of
+helping children to be perfect men and women; nor a mother to whose
+children I would more gladly, proudly, devote myself; nor a place
+with which I should feel myself so entirely in sympathy. If you feel,
+on reflection, that I should suit you, it will be, I am sure--why
+should I not say so--an auspicious day for those little ones."
+
+How happy was Rosalie thus by provision to destiny her darlings!
+
+Miss Prescott was thirty when engaged by Rosalie. She had a way
+of looking at people which, if described, can best describe her
+appearance. She was once in an omnibus in London and the conductor,
+standing against her, and about to serve a ticket to a passenger
+seated next her, had some trouble with his bell-punch. It would not
+work and he fumbled with it, angry. Everybody in the bus watched him.
+It is not nice to be watched when baffled and heated in bafflement
+but the only gaze to which attention was given by the conductor was
+the gaze of Miss Prescott. He glanced constantly from the obdurate
+machine to the face of Miss Prescott. Suddenly he said: "'Ere,
+suppose you do it, then," and pushed the bell-punch at her. Miss
+Prescott took it, did it, astoundingly and instantaneously, and
+handed it back with no word. The conductor seemed more angry than
+before.
+
+It was like that that Miss Prescott looked at people.
+
+There is right way of doing everything. Miss Prescott had an uncanny
+instinct for finding it; and, applying this faculty to her training
+of the child-mind, she presented herself as a notable exponent of
+the system in which, as has been said, she was certificated and
+diplomaed. She taught children how to play in the right way, how
+to learn in the right way, and above all how, in every way and
+at every turn, to reason. By the old, ignorant plan children were
+instructed, speaking broadly, by love or by fear. It was by pure
+reason that Miss Prescott instructed them. The child was treated as
+an earnest physician treats a case. Ill temper or wrong behaviour
+in a child was neither vexing nor sad. It was profoundly interesting.
+There was a right and scientific way to treat it and that right and
+scientific way was thought out and administered. The child was "a
+case."
+
+It was taught nothing but truths and facts. Its mind was not
+permitted to be befogged with fairy stories, with superstitions,
+with Father Christmases and the like, nor yet with religious
+half-truths and misty fables. These entailed not only befogging
+at the time, but disillusionment thereafter. Disillusionment was
+wicked for a child. It further was taught nothing at all (in the
+matter of lessons) at the grotesquely early age at which children
+used to be taught. It was taught first to reason.
+
+In general the whole system lay in developing the child's
+reasoning powers and then, at every turn and particularly at every
+manifestation of indiscipline, appealing to its reason. "I am here
+to be happy"--that was the first, and surely the kindest and easiest,
+knowledge to fix in the child. From that foundation everything
+was worked. It never was necessary to punish a child. It only was
+necessary to reason with it. In the old phraseology a child meet
+to be punished was a naughty child. In the terminology of Miss
+Prescott such a child was a sick child or an unreasoning child:
+a case presenting an adverse symptom. But take the older term,--a
+naughty child. A naughty child was an unhappy child. The treatment
+went like this, "I am here to be happy. I am not happy. Why am I
+not happy? Because I have done so and so and so and so...."
+
+Kind, wise, simple, effective, easy. Rosalie in her childish
+misdemeanours would have been prevailed upon by the unhappiness her
+conduct caused her mother. All wrong! A faulty process of reasoning;
+indeed not a process of reasoning at all: a crude appeal to the
+emotions. Those three children who on the one part never saw their
+mother sad and were constrained to comfort her, on the other never
+were bribed to good behaviour by the thought of grieving her. They
+only associated happiness with her and they enjoyed happiness simply
+by reasoning away unhappiness.
+
+Kind, wise, simple, effective, easy.
+
+Happy Huggo, happy Doda, happy Benji, happy Rosalie!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+
+
+It has been said of Time, earlier in these pages, the cloak-and-dagger
+sort he is, that stalks and pounces. One seeks only to record him
+when he thus assails, and there is this result; that it is necessary
+to pare away so much. In instance, there's to be inserted now a note
+on Rosalie's advance in her career. It's cut to nothing. This is
+because all that career ultimately was known to her never to have
+really mattered. And so with other things. That girl, all through,
+pressing so strong ahead, rises to the eye not cumbered with other
+importance than her own. There might be asked for (by a reader)
+presentation of Harry's parents; of what was doing all this time
+to her own parents in the rectory, to Harold, Robert, Flora, Hilda;
+of friends that Rosalie and Harry had. That girl's passage is not
+traced in such. Whose is? The chart where such are marked is just
+a common public print, stamped for the public eye. They're not set
+down upon that secret chart all carry in the cabin of their soul,
+and there, in that so hidden and inviolable stateroom, poring over
+it by the uncertain swinging lamp of conscience, prick out their
+way.
+
+Her installation in the bank had been a notable success. She dealt
+with all the insurance advice and with income-tax advice and business;
+and it was remarkable to her, at first, how many of Field's clients
+were as children in the mysteries of income tax, and as children
+alike in their ignorance of the possibilities of life insurance
+and in their pleasure at the discoveries she set before them. But
+further than this (and more important, said Mr. Sturgiss and Mr.
+Field) was the quick response of the clients to the various domestic
+advice that it was Rosalie's business to give. Husbands and wives
+from the East, or returned thither from London and writing from the
+East, consulted her on innumerable matters. When, in instance, an
+army officer wrote to her from India, very diffidently wondering
+if she could help him in the matter of some Christmas presents for
+his wife and children at home, Mr. Sturgiss was uncommonly pleased.
+
+"I knew it!" said Mr. Sturgiss. "That's the kind of thing. You watch
+how side-lines like that will develop. That's what these people
+want--some one at home they can rely on. I tell you, Mrs. Occleve,
+you, that is to say your department of Field's, is what the
+Anglo-Eastern has been wanting ever since Clive and Warren Hastings
+went out--a link with home. You see."
+
+She did see. Mr. Field saw. The clients saw. The friends of the
+clients saw--and became clients.
+
+All of her position reposed, and was developed by her, on the
+cruel disabilities of those who earn their bread in the East. For
+all such, married, comes, in time, the sad and the costly business
+of the divided home,--the two establishments, the sundering of
+children and parents, of husband and wife. By the age of seven at
+latest, the children have to be sent home for health and education.
+Then the sundering, the losing of touch, the compulsion upon the
+man, that those at home may be promptly supported, to deny himself
+year after year the longed-for visit home. The losing of touch....
+Invaluable to them to have in Field's, in "that Mrs. Occleve" a link,
+known personally or by reputation, that was useable as relations
+(capricious, "touchy," interfering) often are not useable; and
+dependable as relations, unpractical, certainly are not always
+dependable. Invaluable to the clients; declared by Mr. Field and by
+Mr. Sturgiss to be invaluable to the bank; absorbing and splendid
+to Rosalie. "And still," Mr. Sturgiss was always saying, "still
+capable of much bigger development."
+
+He sketched one day a development that would be a stride indeed.
+It began to be discussed by the three. It connoted so absolute
+a recognition of Rosalie's worth that she decided--lest it should
+fall through--she would not mention it to Harry till either it was
+fallen through or was afoot. Then!
+
+It made her busy. She told Harry once, when they'd been talking
+of how much at office she was kept, of her work, and of the place
+she was making for herself, "Well, it's not bad, Harry," she told
+him. "It's not bad. I'll admit that. What pleases me is that it's
+only a beginning; well as it's going, and long as I've now been at
+it, only a beginning. I can't, as I've often said to you, be doing
+all this without getting a long insight into the actual banking
+business. Oh, don't you remember my telling you about that appalling
+evening when I told poor Uncle Pyke that I wanted to be a banker?
+How outraged he was! Poor person, how rightly outraged! The ridiculous
+notion that I ever could be a banker! A grotesque dream!" She gave
+a small laugh as if tenderly smiling at image before her of that
+innocent, eager girl at the Pyke Pounce table. She said softly, "A
+grotesque dream. Now, with patent limitations--not a dream."
+
+It was like that that Time (disguised as triumph) kept out of the
+way; and similarly disguised, showed no sign either on the children's
+side. All splendid there! Growing up! Huggo set to school!
+
+Huggo learnt with Miss Prescott till he was nine, then attended
+daily a first-rate school for little boys in Kensington, at eleven
+started as a boarder at a preparatory school for Tidborough. Next
+he was to go to the great public school itself, afterwards to Oxford
+and the Bar. All's well! Time had nothing at all to say during the
+first two stages of the programme. It was in Huggo's first holidays
+from the preparatory school that Time whipped out his blade and
+pounced.
+
+On a day that was a week before the end of that holidays the great
+new scheme for Rosalie at Field's rose to its feet and walked. It
+was a special mission on behalf of the bank.
+
+It necessitated.. . .
+
+She came once or twice to a bit of a stop like that while waiting
+their evening talk together in which she should tell Harry. It
+necessitated a departure from the established order of things; but
+what of that? Was not the way bill of her life all departures from
+things established, and all successful, and were not all contingencies
+of this particular departure fully insured against? She very easily
+cantered on, on this rein. That bit of a stop was scarcely a check
+in the progression of her thoughts.
+
+Seated with Harry in Harry's room that night she was about to tell
+him her great news when, "I'd an unusual offer made to me today,"
+said Harry.
+
+Almost the very words herself had been about to use!
+
+"Why so had I to me!" she cried.
+
+They both laughed. "Tell on," said Harry.
+
+"No, you. Yours first."
+
+"Toss you," cried Harry; and spun a coin and lost and went ahead:
+"Well, mine doesn't exactly shake the foundations of the world with
+excitement because I refused it. It was to go out to defend in a
+big murder case in Singapore!"
+
+She exclaimed, "In Singapore!"
+
+"Yes, Singapore. Why do you say it like that?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+The prisoner, Harry went on, was a wealthy trader, immensely wealthy,
+and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had
+native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman
+with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour.
+"A wretched, unsavoury business," said Harry, and went on to say
+that, though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had
+declined the proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more
+money over it than in his normal round at home, more than that
+it went against the grain to be defending a man of native origins
+who had pretty obviously seduced a white woman if not murdered her
+husband. "No, no ticket to Singapore for me, thanks," said Harry.
+
+Rosalie turned to him with a sudden, direct interest. "Harry,
+suppose you had accepted, how long would you have been away?"
+
+"Not less than six months in all. Certainly not less. That's another
+point against--"
+
+"Yes, against the idea, because in any case you don't want to go.
+But suppose the circumstances had been different; suppose it was
+a case that for various reasons very much attracted you; would you
+have gone?"
+
+Harry said indifferently, "Oh, no doubt, no doubt."
+
+"Although it would have taken you from home six months--or more?
+You'd not have minded that?"
+
+He laughed delightedly. "Ah, ha! I was beginning to wonder what
+you were driving at. You're a regular lawyer, Rosalie; you led me
+on and then caught me out properly."
+
+His amusement was not reflected by her. She said with a certain
+insistence, "But you wouldn't have minded?"
+
+He laughed again. "The judge ruled that the question was admissible
+and must be answered. Well, minded--I'd have minded, of course, very
+much in a way. I'm a home bird. I'd have hated being away the best
+part of a year. But there you are. If the call was strong enough,
+there you are; it would have been business."
+
+She indrew a long breath. "That's it. It would have been business."
+
+There was then a pause.
+
+Harry, who had been talking lightly, then said slowly, "Rosalie,
+is there something behind this?"
+
+She turned towards him with a very nice smile. "Harry, I've been
+doing a very shocking thing. I've been making you commit yourself."
+
+"Commit myself?"
+
+She nodded. "Been taking down your statement without warning you
+that it may be used in evidence against you."
+
+He said gravely, "Somehow I don't like this."
+
+She told him, "Ah, stupid me! I'm making a small thing seem big.
+Listen, Harry. It was curious to me this about you and Singapore--"
+
+"Yes, I noticed that. Why?"
+
+"Because there's an idea of my going out to Singapore."
+
+He was astounded. She might have said to Mars. "You? To Singapore?"
+
+"To the East generally. To Bombay, to Rangoon, to Singapore. For
+about a year."
+
+He was all aback. "For about a year? Rosalie, I can't--Why on
+earth--?"
+
+She did not like this. The great scheme! Her special mission! It
+necessitated.... Here was the necessity at which she had checked
+but confidently ridden on, and Harry was pulled right up by it. His
+astonishment was not comfortable to her. Was there to be a check
+then? He said again, "You? A year? But, Rosalie, what on earth--"
+
+She pronounced a single word, his own word:
+
+"Business."
+
+He was standing before her on the hearthrug. He made a turn and at
+once turned back. "Are you thinking of this seriously?"
+
+"Most seriously."
+
+"Of going?"
+
+"Of going. It's business."
+
+"For a year?"
+
+"Harry, yes."
+
+He began to fill his pipe with very slow movements of his fingers,
+his eyes bent down upon her. "And you called this--just now--a
+small thing?"
+
+She said with a sudden eagerness, "Harry, it's a very big thing
+for me, for Field's. I meant a small thing in the sense not to be
+made a fuss about."
+
+He made very slowly a negative movement with his head. "I don't
+see it like that."
+
+"Let me tell you, Harry."
+
+She told him how the great possibilities of the department she had
+established in the bank rested on the personal touch established
+between herself and the clients. The scheme was that those
+possibilities should be developed to their fullest extent. While
+she was in London that personal touch could be established with
+clients by dozens. If she visited the branches in the East, at
+Bombay, at Rangoon, at Singapore, it was by hundreds that the touch
+could be established. That was it. Field's customers would talk to
+her, and when she was returned they would talk of her, and would
+tell others of her, as one met, not during the jolly freedom of
+leave when the impulse was to feel that, after all, nothing mattered
+much, but met out there when they were in the yoke and the harness
+of the thing,--met as one fresh out from home in their particular
+interests and shortly, charged with their special interests,
+returning home. That was it! A novel mission, a valuable mission,
+her mission. About a year. To start in about six weeks. "There,
+Harry, that's the plan."
+
+"And you are going?"
+
+"I have agreed to go."
+
+He said slowly, "It astonishes me."
+
+There was then a pause.
+
+She spoke. "I think I do not like your astonishment, Harry."
+
+"It is justified."
+
+"No, no; not justified. When you told me of a possibility of
+Singapore for you I was not astonished. I made no difficulty."
+
+"Different," he said. "Different."
+
+"Not different, Harry. The same. How different? If you could go,
+I can go. The same. Aren't things with us always the same?"
+
+He shook his head. "Not this. If I had to go--"
+
+"Yes, yes. It's the point. If you had to go you'd have to go. Well,
+I have to go."
+
+"Rosalie, if I had to go I could go. A man can."
+
+She cried, "But, Harry, that--This isn't us talking at all. You
+mean a man can leave his home because his home can go on without
+him. But our home--it's just the same for me in our home. We've
+made it like that. It runs itself. The kitchen--I don't know when
+I last gave an order. The children--there's never a word. The
+thing's organised. I'm an organiser." She laughed, "Dear, that's
+why they're sending me. Isn't it organised?"
+
+He assented, but with an inflexion on the word "It's--organised."
+
+She did not attend the inflexion. "Well, that's no organisation
+that can't, in necessity, run by itself. This can. You know, quite
+well, this will. You know, quite well, that you will not be put
+about a jot."
+
+"Oh, I know that," he said.
+
+"Well, then. Astonished--why astonished?"
+
+He looked at her. "Let's call it," he said, "the principle of the
+thing."
+
+Oh, now astonishment between them. Her voice, astounded, had an echo's
+sound--faint, faint, scarcely to be heard, gone. "The prin-ci-ple!"
+
+This room was lit, then, only by a standard lamp remote from where
+they were beside the fire. She was in a deep armchair; its partner,
+Harry's chair, close by. He sat himself on the arm, looking towards
+her. The firelight made shadows on his face.
+
+She presently murmured, her voice as though that echo, lost, was
+murmuring back, "Oh, it is I that am astonished now. The principle!
+It's like a ghost. Harry, how possibly can there come between us
+the principle?"
+
+His voice was deep, "Are we afraid of it, old girl?"
+
+She put out a hand and touched him and he touched her hand. They
+were such lovers still. That was the thing about it. There never
+had been an issue between them, not the smallest; the bloom of
+their first union never had dissipated, not a rub. But there was
+in Harry the intention now to take her, and there was in her the
+apprehension now of being taken, to a new dimension of conversation,
+not previously trod by them. As they proceeded it was seen not to
+be light in this place; a place where touch might be lost.
+
+She said, "But to bring up the principle in this! It can't be
+possible you've changed. It isn't conceivable to me that you have
+changed. Then how the principle?"
+
+"It is the situation that has changed, Rosalie. It never occurred
+to me; I never dreamt or imagined that a thing like this could
+arise."
+
+She moved in her chair. "Oh, this goes deep...."
+
+He put a hand on her shoulder. "We're not afraid."
+
+"But I'm so strong in this. So always certain. In our dear years
+together so utterly assured. Nothing within the principle could
+touch me. I am steel everywhere upon the principle. I might hurt
+you, Harry."
+
+"I'll not be hurt."
+
+"Well, say it, Harry."
+
+He was silent a moment. "There isn't really very much to say. To
+me it's so clear."
+
+She murmured, "And to me."
+
+He said, "We've made this home--eleven years. It's been ideal. You
+have combined your work with your--what shall I call it?--with your
+domestic arrangements--your business with your domesticity--You've
+done it wonderfully. We've never had to discuss the subject since
+we agreed upon it."
+
+She murmured, "That is why--agreed."
+
+"Agreed in general. But when you take the home as between a man and
+a woman, there are bound to be responsibilities which, however much
+you share, cannot be divided. The woman's are the--the domesticity."
+
+"What are the man's?"
+
+"To maintain the home."
+
+"I share in that."
+
+"Well, grant you do. I do not claim to share the other."
+
+"You are not asked to, Harry."
+
+"No, but, Rosalie, I've the right to ask you to provide the other."
+
+Her murmur said, "Oh, do not let us bring up rights. I am so fixed
+on rights."
+
+"Rosalie, let's keep the thing square. A man can leave his home;
+he often has to. I think not so a woman; not a mother; not as you
+wish now to leave it. It can't, without her, go on--not in the same
+way."
+
+"Yes, ours. Ours can."
+
+"Not in the same way. You can't take out the woman and leave it
+the same,--the same for the man, the same for the children. We're
+married. The married state. With children. Doesn't the whole fabric
+of the married state rest on the domesticity of woman?"
+
+She murmured, "No, on her resignation, Harry."
+
+As if he had touched something and been burnt he very sharply drew
+in his breath.
+
+She said, "Ah, you'd be hurt, I told you. Dear, I can't be other than
+I am on this. Upon her resignation, Harry. Men call it domesticity.
+That's their fair word for their offence. It's woman's resignation
+is the fabric of the married state. She lets her home be built
+upon her back. She resigns everything to carry it. She has to. If
+she moves it shakes. If she stands upright it crashes. Dear, not
+ours. I've stood upright all the time. I've proved the fallacy.
+A woman can stand upright and yet be wife, be mother, make home.
+Dear, you are not to ask me now--for resignation."
+
+Therein, and through all the passage of this place where the footway
+was uneven, the light not good, the quality of her voice was low
+and noteless, sometimes difficult to hear. There is to say it was
+by that the more assured, as is more purposeful in its suggestion
+the tide that enters, not upon the gale, but in the calm and steady
+flow of its own strength.
+
+The quality of Harry's voice was very deep and sometimes halting,
+as though it were out of much difficulty that he spoke. He
+said, deeply, "That you stand upright does not discharge you from
+responsibilities."
+
+She said, "Dear, nor my responsibilities discharge me from my
+privileges."
+
+There was then a silence.
+
+He spoke, "But I am going to press this, Rosalie. I say, with all
+admitted, this thing--this 'I could go but you should not go'--is
+different as between us. I am a man."
+
+She made a movement in her chair. "Ah, let that go. I have a reply
+to that."
+
+"What reply?"
+
+"I am a woman."
+
+He began--"It's nothing--."
+
+She said, "Oh, painful to give you pain. To me--everything."
+
+He got up from his position beside her and went to his chair and
+seated himself. He sat on the edge of the chair, bowed forward, his
+forearms on his knees, his hands clasped; not smoking; his pipe
+between his fingers, his eyes upon the fire. Once or twice, his hands
+close to his face, he slightly raised them and with his pipe-stem
+softly tapped his teeth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+
+
+He had called it the principle. She watched him. That attitude in
+which he sat was of a profundity of meditation not to be looked
+upon without that sense of awe, of oppression, of misgiving that
+is aroused by the suggestion in man or nature of brooding forces
+mysteriously engrossed. There came to her, watching him, a thought
+that newly disturbed her thoughts. He had called it the principle.
+She had been astonished but she had not been perturbed. Upon the
+principle as between man and woman, husband and wife, she was, as
+she had said, so strong, so confident, accustomed and assured, that
+there was nothing could be said could touch her there. But it was
+not the principle. This was the knowledge brought to her by the
+new thought suddenly appeared in her mind, standing there like
+a strange face in a council of friends, unbidden and of a suspect
+look. What if she communicated that knowledge to Harry brooding
+there? He had called it the principle. What if she put across the
+shadowed room the sentence that should inform him it was not the
+principle but was an issue flying the flag of ships whose freights
+are dangerous? What if she put across the shadowed room the sentence,
+"Men that marry for a home"?
+
+Ay, that was it! The thing she had always known and never told.
+Those are keepsakes of our secret selves, those observations, vows,
+conspiracies with which romantically we plot towards our ideals.
+This the sole keepsake of her treasury she never had revealed to
+Harry. Significant she had not. Some instinct must have stayed her.
+Yes, significant! He had called it the principle. It was not the
+principle. He was sincere upon the principle and in the examination
+of eleven years had proved his sincerity. It was not the principle.
+It was that herein, in her intention to exercise her freedom in a
+new dimension, she had touched him, not through the principle, but
+upon the instinct that led him, as she believed men to be led, to
+marry for a home, a settling-in place, a settling-down place, a
+cave to enter into and to shut the door upon.
+
+Oh, this was dangerous! There were no lengths to which this might
+not lead! If at her first essay at that which countered his idea
+of home she was to be asked to pause, what, in the increasing
+convolutions of the years, might not she be asked to abandon? Let
+him attempt restriction of her by appeal to principle and she could
+stand, and win, unscathed. Let him oppose her by his wish within
+his home to shut the door, and that was to put upon her an injury
+that only by giving him pain could be fought. Oh, dangerous! Not
+less an injury because by sentiment and not by reason done! Much
+more an injury because so subtly done! Much more! Dangerous! Ah,
+from this the outset to be withstood!
+
+He spoke and his first words were confirmation of her fears.
+
+"Rosalie, do you feel quite all right about the children?"
+
+Yes, she could see where this was set to lead. He could leave her
+with the children; but she--men that married for a home--could not
+leave him with the children.
+
+She said gently, "Dear, there'll not be the least difficulty.
+Everything's perfectly arranged. Everything will perfectly well go
+on."
+
+He had not moved his pose and did not move it. His voice presented
+in tone the profound meditation that his pose presented. He said,
+"I don't quite mean that. I mean, do you always feel everything's
+quite all right with them?"
+
+How setting now? She answered, "Dear, of course I do."
+
+His eyes remained upon the fire. "Rosalie, d'you know I sometimes
+don't."
+
+Her motion--a lifting of her face, a questing of her brows--was of
+a helmsman's gesture, suspicious to catch before it set a shifting
+of the breeze. "Harry, in what way? They're splendid."
+
+"You feel that?"
+
+"Dear, you know they are."
+
+He put his pipe to his mouth and with that meditative tapping tapped
+his teeth. "Splendid, yes, in health, in appearance, in development,
+in all that kind of thing. I don't mean that." He turned his face
+towards her and spoke directly. "Rosalie, have you ever thought
+they're not quite like other children?"
+
+Oh, setting from what quarter this? She said, "They're better--miles
+and miles."
+
+He got up. "Well, that's all right. If you have noticed nothing,
+that's all right."
+
+"But, Harry. I am at a loss, dear. Of course it's all right. But
+what have you noticed, think you've noticed?"
+
+He was standing before her, his back against the mantelpiece,
+looking down at her. "Just that--not quite like other children."
+
+"But in what way?"
+
+"It's hard to say, old girl. If you've not noticed it, harder still.
+Not quite so childish as at their age I seem to remember myself
+with my brothers and sisters being childish. A kind of--reserve.
+A kind of--self-contained."
+
+She shook her head, "No, no."
+
+"You think it's fancy?"
+
+"I'm sure it is."
+
+He was silent a moment. "It's rather worried me. And of course
+now--If you are going to be away--"
+
+Stand by! She had the drift of this!
+
+She said simply, "Harry, this can't be."
+
+"You can't give up the idea?"
+
+Her hand upon the helm that steered her life constricted. "It is
+not to be asked of me to give it up." She paused. She said softly,
+"Dear, this is a forward step for me. You are asking me to make a
+sacrifice. I would not ask you."
+
+He began, "There are sacrifices--"
+
+"They are not asked of men."
+
+He said, "Rosalie, you said once, when Benji was born, that, if
+at any time need be, you would give up, not a thing like this, but
+your work entirely."
+
+As if to shield or to support her heart she drew her left hand to
+it. "Would you give up yours, Harry?"
+
+He said quickly, "I'm not suggesting such a thing. It is ridiculous.
+I'm only showing you--"
+
+She began to say her say, her voice reflective as his own had been.
+"But you have shown me frightful things, shown me how far and oh,
+how quick, a thing that starts may go. Oh, my dear, know the answer
+before it ever is suggested. Sacrifices! It is sacrifice for the
+children that you profess to mean. Well, let us call it that. Have
+you ever heard of a father sacrificing himself for his children?
+There's no such phrase. There's only the feminine gender for that.
+'Sacrificed himself for his wife and children.' It's a solecism. If
+grammar means good sense, it isn't grammar because it's meaningless.
+It can't be said. It's grotesque. But 'Sacrificed herself for her
+husband and her children,'--why, that the commonest of cliches.
+It's written on half the mothers' brows; it should be carved on
+half the mothers' tombs--upon my own dear mother's." She stood up
+and faced him. "Harry, not on mine." She put a gentle hand on his.
+"I love you--you know what our love is. I love the children--with
+a truer love that they have never been a burden to me nor I on
+a single occasion out of mood with them. But, Harry, I will not
+sacrifice myself for the children. When I ask that of you, ask it
+of me. But I never will ask it of you."
+
+She was trembling.
+
+He put an arm about her shoulders. "It's over. It's over. Let's
+forget it, Rosalie."
+
+Of course she did not forget it. Of course she knew that Harry could
+not. Men that marry for a home! Already in his mind the thought
+that for his home she should give up, not only this present forward
+step, but--everything! Oh, man-made world! Oh, man-made men! "It's
+over. It's over," he had said. Of course she knew it was not over.
+Men that marry for a home! Secret she had kept it and in the same
+moment that she had realised the significance of her secrecy it
+had been enlarged. Now it stalked abroad.
+
+But what is to be observed is the quality of the love between them.
+It was through the children that he had made this claim that he
+had sought to impose upon her. She had told him, as she believed,
+that what he thought he saw was fancy. It never occurred to her to
+imagine so base a thing as that he, to give himself grounds, had
+invented or even exaggerated his fancy; but it had been excusable
+in her (threatened as she saw herself) to avoid, in the days that
+followed, discussion of that fancy, much less herself to bring it
+forward. Her love for Harry was never in that plane. It could admit
+no guile. It happened that within the week she was herself a little
+pained by a matter with the children. She took her pain straight
+to her Harry.
+
+On his last day of the holidays before he returned for his second
+term at his preparatory school, Huggo was noisy with excitement
+at the idea of returning. It rather pained Rosalie that he showed
+not the smallest sign of regret at leaving home. Miss Prescott had
+done all the necessary business of getting his clothes ready for
+school, but Rosalie took from Field's this last afternoon to do some
+shopping with her little man (as she termed it) in Oxford Street;
+to buy him some little personal things he wanted,--a purse of pigskin
+that fastened with a button, a knife with a thing for taking stones
+out of horses' hoofs, and a special kind of football boots. Since
+there had come to her the "men that marry for a home" significance,
+that mirage in her face had much presented that mutinous and
+determined boy it often showed. Only the mother was there when she
+set out with Huggo. And then the sense of pain.
+
+Oxford Street appeared to be swarming with small boys and their
+mothers similarly engaged. All the small boys wore blue overcoats
+with velvet collar and looked to Rosalie most lovably comic in
+bowler hats that seemed enormously too big for their small heads.
+Huggo was dressed to the same pattern but his hat exactly suited
+his face which was thin and, by contrast with these others, old for
+his years. Rosalie wished somehow that Huggo's hat didn't suit so
+well; the imminent extinguisher look of theirs made them look such
+darling babies. And what really brought out the difference was that
+all these other small boys invariably had a hand stretched up to
+hold their mothers' arms and walked with faces turned up, chattering.
+Huggo didn't. She asked him to. He said, "Mother, why?"
+
+"I'd love you to, darling."
+
+He put up his hand and she pressed it with her arm to her side,
+but she noticed that he was looking away into a shop window while
+he did as he was asked, and there came in less than a dozen paces
+a congestion on the pavement that caused him to slip behind her,
+removing his hand. He did not replace it.
+
+In the shop where the knife was to be bought an immense tray of every
+variety of pocketknife was put before them. Huggo opened and shut
+blades with a curiously impatient air as though afraid of being
+interfered with before he had made his choice. Immediately beside
+Rosalie was another mother engaged with another son upon another
+tray.
+
+"It's got to have a thing for levering stones out of horses' hoofs,"
+said Huggo, brushing aside a knife offered by the assistant and
+rummaging a little roughly.
+
+Rosalie said, "Darling, I can't think what you can want such a
+thing for."
+
+The lady beside her caught her eye and laughed. "That's just what
+I'm asking my small man," she said.
+
+Her small man, whose face was merry and whose hat appeared to be
+supported by his ears, looked up at Rosalie with an engaging smile
+and said in a very frank voice, "It's jolly useful for lugging up
+tight things or to hook up toffee that's stuck."
+
+They all three laughed. Huggo, busily engaged, took no notice.
+
+He found the knife he wanted. Rosalie showed him another. "Huggo,
+I'm sure that one's too heavy and clumsy."
+
+The voice of the little boy with the hat on his ears came, "Mummie,
+I'd rather have this one because you chose it."
+
+Rosalie said to Huggo, "It will weigh down your pocket so."
+
+"This one! This one!" cried Huggo and made a vexed movement with
+a foot.
+
+Rosalie, sitting with Harry before the fire in Harry's room that
+night said, "Harry, tell me some more of what you said the other
+day about the children."
+
+He looked up at her. He clearly was surprised. "You've been thinking
+about it?"
+
+"I've been with Huggo shopping for him this afternoon and been at
+little things a little sad. Harry, when you said 'not like other
+children' did you mean not--responsive?"
+
+He said intensely, "Rosalie, it is the word. It's what I meant. I
+couldn't get it. I wonder I didn't. It's my meaning exactly--not
+responsive. You've noticed it?"
+
+"Oh, tell me first."
+
+"Rosalie, it's sometimes that I've gone in to the three of them
+wanting to be one with them, to be a child with them and invent
+things and imagine things. Somehow they don't seem to want it. They
+don't--invite it. Your word, they don't--respond. I want them to
+open their hearts and let me right inside. Somehow they don't seem
+to open their hearts."
+
+She said, "Harry, they're such mites."
+
+He shook his head. "They're not mites, old girl. Only Benji. And
+even Benji--It was different when they were wee things. It's lately,
+all this. They don't seem to understand, Rosalie--to understand
+what it is I want. That's the thing that troubles me. It's an
+extraordinary thing to say, but it's been to me sometimes as if
+I were the child longing to be--what shall I say?--to have arms
+opened to me, and they were the grown-ups, holding me off, not
+understanding what it is I want. Not understanding. Rosalie, why
+don't they understand?"
+
+She had a hand extended to the fire and she was slowly opening and
+shutting her fingers at the flames. This, coming upon the feeling
+she had had that afternoon with Huggo, was like a book wherein was
+analysed that feeling. But, "I am sure they do understand, dear,"
+she said. "I'm sure it's fancy."
+
+"I think you're not sure, Rosalie."
+
+"Oh, yes, I am. If it's anything it's just perhaps their way--all
+children have their ways. What I thought about Huggo this afternoon
+might perhaps be something what you mean. Harry, if it is, it's
+just the little man's way."
+
+"What was it you thought?"
+
+She maintained that movement of the fingers of her hand. "Why, only
+things I noticed; tiny things; nothings, I'm sure. Out shopping
+with me, Harry. Well, it was his last day and I would have expected
+somehow he would have been fonder for that. He wasn't and I rather
+felt it. Things like that. I would so like him to have held my arm.
+He didn't want to. Not very grateful for the things we bought. But
+there, why should he be, dear Huggo? But just his way; that's what
+one ought to think. But I felt it a little."
+
+Harry said, "I know. I know. It's that that I have felt--not
+responsive. It's what I've thought I've noticed in them all."
+
+Telling him perhaps enlarged, as telling does, her sensibilities.
+She said very quickly, "Not Benji!"
+
+"Well, Benji's so very young. But even--But in the other two--"
+
+She said as quickly as before, "Ah, Doda's responsive!"
+
+"You've seen it, dear, in Huggo."
+
+"Oh, Harry, nothing, just his way. I'm sorry now I mentioned it."
+
+He had been watching the flexion of her hand. He said, "I'm glad
+you have. When I spoke of it the other day you said you didn't see
+it. I think it's generous in you to admit you have."
+
+She murmured, "Generous?"
+
+"It brings up--Rosalie, does this affect a little, alter perhaps,
+your decision?"
+
+She shut her fingers sharply. "No." She kept them shut. "There's
+nothing at all could alter that, Harry."
+
+He turned aside and began to fill his pipe, with slow movements.
+
+It has been warned that it was in this holidays of Huggo's from his
+preparatory school that Time, that bravo of the cloak-and-dagger
+school, whipped out his-blade and pounced. These, since that warning,
+were but the doorways and the lurking posts he prowled along.
+
+He now was very close to Rosalie.
+
+Rosalie and Harry both were home to lunch next day. In the afternoon
+they were to take Huggo to Charing Cross to see him off in the
+saloon specially reserved for his school. All the children were at
+lunch for this occasion. Benji in a high chair just like the high
+chair that had been Rosalie's years back--what years and years!--at
+the rectory. Huggo was in boisterous spirits. You would think,
+you couldn't help thinking, it was his first day, not his last day
+home. Rosalie observed him as she had not before observed him. How
+he talked! Well, that was good. How could Harry have thought him
+reserved? But he talked a shade loudly and with an air curiously
+self-opinionated. But he was such a child, and opinions were
+delightful in a child. Yes, but something not childish in his way
+of expressing his opinions, something a shade superior, self-satisfied;
+and she particularly noticed that when anything in the way of
+information was given him by Harry or by herself he never accepted
+it but always argued. She grew very silent. She felt she would have
+given anything to hear him, in the long topic of railways with his
+father, and then of Tidborough School, say, "Do they, father?" or,
+"Does it, father?" He never did. He always knew it before or knew
+different. Once on a subject connected with the famous school Harry
+said, a shade of rebuke in his voice, "My dear old chap, I was at
+Tidborough. I ought to know." Rosalie felt she would have given
+anything in the world for Huggo to reply, "Sorry, father, of
+course you ought." Instead he bent upon his plate a look injured
+and resentful at being injured. But in a minute she was reproaching
+herself for such ideas. Her Huggo! and she was sitting here
+criticising him. Different from other children! Why, if so, only
+in the way she had affirmed to Harry--miles and miles better.
+Opinionated? Why, famously advanced for his years. Superior? Why,
+bright, clever, not a nursery boy. She had been wronging him, she
+had been criticising him, she had been looking for faults in him,
+her Huggo! Unkind! Unnatural!
+
+Listen to him! The meal was ended. His father was bantering him
+about what he learnt, or didn't learn, at school; was offering him
+an extra five shillings to his school tip if he could answer three
+questions. The darling was deliciously excited over it. How his
+voice rang! He was putting his father off the various subjects
+suggested. Not Latin--he hadn't done much Latin; not geography--he
+simply hated geography. Listen to him!
+
+"Well, scripture," Harry was saying. "Come, they give you plenty
+of scripture?"
+
+"Oh, don't they just! Tons and tons!" Listen to him! How merry
+he was now! "Tons and tons. First lesson every morning. But don't
+ask scripture, father. Father, what's the use of learning all that
+stuff, about the Flood, about the Ark, about the Israelites, about
+Samuel, about Daniel, about crossing the Red Sea, about all that
+stuff: what's the use?"
+
+Time closed his fingers on his haft and took a stride to Rosalie.
+
+She sat upright. She stared across the table at the boy.
+
+Harry said, "Here, steady, old man. 'What's the use of Scripture?'"
+
+"Well, what is the use? It's all rot. You know it isn't true."
+
+Time flashed his blade and struck her terribly.
+
+She called out dreadfully, "Huggo!"
+
+"Mother, you know it's all made up!"
+
+She cried out in a girl's voice and with a girl's impulsive gesture
+of her arm across the table towards him, "It isn't! It isn't!"
+
+Her voice, her gesture, the look upon her face could not but startle
+him. He was red, rather frightened. He said mumblingly, "Well,
+mother, you've never taught me any different."
+
+She was seen by Harry to let fall her extended arm upon the table
+and draw it very slowly to her and draw her hand then to her heart
+and slowly lean herself against her chair-back, staring at Huggo.
+No one spoke. She then said to Huggo, her voice very low, "Darling,
+run now to see everything is in your playbox. Doda, help him. Take
+Benji, darlings. Benji, go and see the lovely playbox things."
+
+When they had gone she was seen by Harry to be working with her
+fingers at her key-ring. In one hand she held the ring, in the other
+a key that she seemed to be trying to remove. It was obstinate. She
+wrestled at it. She looked up at Harry. "I want to get this"--the
+key came away in her hand--"off."
+
+He recognised it for her office pass-key.
+
+Caused by that cry of hers to Huggo and by that ges-ture with her
+cry, and since intensifying, there had been a constraint that he
+was very glad to break. He remembered how childishly proud she had
+been of that key on the day it was cut for her. They had had a
+little dinner to celebrate it, and she had dipped it in her champagne
+glass.
+
+He said, "Your pass-key? Why?"
+
+She said, "I'm coming home, Harry."
+
+"Coming home?"
+
+She was sitting back in her chair. She tossed, with a negligent
+movement of her hand, the key upon the table. "I have done with
+all that. I am coming home."
+
+He got up very quickly and came around the table to her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+
+
+There is a state wherein the mind, normally the court of pleas where
+reason receives and administers the supplications of the senses,
+is not in session. Reason is sick, suspends his office, abrogates
+his authority, withdraws to some deep fastness of the brain,
+and suffers the hall of judgment to be the house of license or of
+dreams: of dreams, as sleep, as vanity of reverie; of license when
+there is tumult in the body politic, as fever, as excesses of the
+passions, as great shock. Reason is sick, withdraws, and there is
+strange business in that place.
+
+If that is just the way one writes, not susceptible of easy
+comprehension, and not enough explanatory of Rosalie's condition,
+it goes like this in Rosalie's own words. Drooped back there in her
+chair before that littered disarray of lunch, and that key lying
+there, and Harry stooping over her and holding both her hands, she
+said, "Oh, Harry! Oh, Harry! I feel deathly sick."
+
+She said it had been a most frightful shock to her, what Huggo had
+declared. She said, "Oh, Harry, I feel all undone."
+
+Undone! We'll try to feel her mind with that; to let that explain
+her when she said this else, and when she wrote some things that
+shall be given.
+
+She said she had suffered, in that moment of crying out to Huggo
+and of stretching out her arm to him, the most extraordinary--what
+was the word?--the most extraordinary hallucination. "Harry, when
+Huggo said that frightful thing! Oh, Harry, like an extraordinary
+dream, I was a child again. It wasn't here; it was happening; it
+was the rectory; and not you and the children but all us children
+that used to be around the table there. No, not quite that. More
+extraordinary than that. Robert was there; Robert, I think, in
+Huggo's place; and all the rest were me--me as I used to be when
+I was ten; small, grave, wondering, staring. And yet myself me too
+as I was then--oh, horrified as I'd have then been horrified to
+hear the Bible stories called untrue; jumped up and crying out,
+'It isn't! It isn't!' as I would then have jumped up and cried out;
+and all the other Rosalies staring in wonder as I'd have stared.
+Oh, extraordinary, extraordinary! Within this minute, I have been
+a child again. The strangest thing, the strangest thing!
+
+"I was a child again, Harry, in a blue frock I used to wear and
+in a pinafore that had a hole in it; and all those other Rosalies
+the same. Those other Rosalies! To see them! Harry, I've not seen
+that Rosalie I used to be--not years and years. That tiny innocent!
+It is upon me still. I feel that small child still. Oh, I feel it!
+I remember--dear, did I ever tell you?--when my father once... had
+been talking about Cambridge... and suddenly cried out, it was at
+breakfast, 'Cambridge! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!' There
+was coffee from a cup that he'd knocked over came oozing, and I
+just sat there huge-eyed, staring, a small, grave wondering child....
+
+"Oh, Harry, my youth, my childhood--and now the children's! The
+difference! The difference!"
+
+Harry talked to her. He ended, "The teaching, all the ideas, dear
+girl, you mustn't worry, it's all different nowadays."
+
+"Harry, to hear it from a child like that!"
+
+"It's startled you. It needn't. We'll talk it out. We'll fix it.
+It's just what he's been taught, old girl."
+
+She said, "Oh, it is what he's not been taught!"
+
+Then there were things that, while was still upon her this shock,
+this sense of being again the small, grave child in the blue frock
+and in the pinafore with the hole in it, she wrote down. She dismissed
+Miss Prescott. She thought, when the interview of dismissal opened,
+that she would end by upbraiding Miss Prescott, but she was abated
+all the time in any anger that she might have felt by Huggo's other
+frightful words, "Well, mother, you never taught me any different."
+She did not want to hear Miss Prescott tell her that. She told Miss
+Prescott simply that she was giving up her business and coming now
+to devote herself to the children. She thought, she said, their
+education had in some respects been faulty, and told Miss Prescott
+how. Miss Prescott, speaking like a book, told her it had not been
+faulty and told her why. "Truth, knowledge, reason," said Miss
+Prescott. "Could it conceivably be contested that these should not
+be the sole food and the guiding principle of the child mind?"
+
+It was after that interview that Rosalie, sitting long into the
+night, wrote down some things. She is to be imagined as wrenched
+back, as by a violent hand, across the years, and in the blue frock
+and the pinafore with a hole in it again, and awfully frightened,
+terribly unhappy, at the thing she'd heard from Huggo. That was
+the form her shock took. Beneath it she had at a blow abandoned
+all her ambitions as when a child she would instantly have dropped
+her most immersing game and run to a frightening cry from her
+mother; as once, in fact (and the incident and the parallel came
+back to her), she had been building a house of cards, holding her
+breath not to shake it, and her mother had scalded her hand and
+had cried out to her, frighteningly. "Oh, mummie, mummie!" she had
+cried, running to her; and flap! the house of cards had gone. Her
+inward cry was now, "The children! The children!" and what amiss
+the leaving of her work? Her work! Oh, house of cards!
+
+Her state of mind, the imaginings in which that shock came to her,
+is better seen by what she wrote down privately, to relieve herself,
+than by the talk about it all that she had with her Harry. She wrote
+immediately after Miss Prescott had stood up for "truth, knowledge,
+reason," and by combating truth, knowledge, and reason more clearly
+expressed herself than in her talk with Harry. It was in her diary
+she wrote--well, it wasn't exactly a diary, it was a desultory
+journal in which sometimes she wrote things. As she wrote, her
+brow, in the intensity of her thought, was all puckered up. She
+still felt "deathly sick; all undone." She wrote:
+
+"Of course it's as she says (Miss Prescott). That is the kind of
+thing to-day. Knowledge, stark truth--children must have in stark
+truth all the knowledge there is on all the things that come about
+them. It's strange; yes, it is strange. No parent would be such
+a fool as to trust a child with all the money she has nor with
+anything superlatively precious that she possesses; but knowledge,
+which is above all wealth and above all treasure, the child is
+to have to play with as it likes. Oh, it is strange. Where is it
+going to stop? If you bring up a child on the fact that all the Old
+Testament stories are untrue, a bundle, where they are miraculous,
+of obviously impossible fairy tales, what's going to happen to the
+New Testament? The Immaculate Conception, the Resurrection, the
+Ascension--what's your child-mind that knows the old stories for
+inventions going to say to those? Are they easier to believe? The
+Creation or the Conception? The Flood or the Resurrection? God
+speaking out of a burning bush or the Ascension to Heaven? The
+pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire or the Three in One of the
+Trinity? Oh, I wonder if Modern Thought has any thought to spare
+for that side of the business--or for its results in a generation
+or two?"
+
+Then she wrote:
+
+"I've never taught them any different."
+
+Then she wrote:
+
+"Mother, I am a child again to-night. Darling, in that blue frock
+I used to wear. Darling, all that I to-night am thinking is what
+you taught me. Oh, look down, beloved! I've been so wrong. I thought
+everything was infinitely better for them than you made it, beloved
+mother, for me. I didn't realise."
+
+Then she wrote:
+
+"It just means losing everything in God that's human. It must mean
+that. All our intelligence, if materialism may be called intelligence;
+all modern teaching, if this new stuff that they pontificate
+may be called teaching, offers us God the Spirit but, as it seems
+to me to-night, denies us God the Father and God the Son. It may
+be--reasonable. But things spiritual demand for their recognition
+emotions spiritual, and there's a pass that thousands reach when
+the spirit is a dead thing. If they are to believe in God only as
+a Spirit, a Force, a Power; an Essence to be felt but not seen; an
+Element to be absorbed into but not to be visualised--if this, if
+these, there needs in them some spirit, some force, some power of
+themselves to lift themselves to meet it. They must be of themselves
+responsive as hath the sea within itself that which respondeth to
+the sublimation of the sun. Well, there are thousands (am I not
+one?) that have it not. It once was theirs. Now it is not theirs.
+If there is for them only God the Spirit then is there for them
+only that to which they have no more power to reach than has one
+bedridden power to rise and find a mile away what may restore him.
+They have only that, their breaking heart, which would cast itself,
+ah, with what bliss of utter abandonment, before God the Father,
+a human and a personal Father, quick to succor, and before God the
+Son, a human and a personal Son, ardent to intercede. And that is
+denied them. That God that existed and that was taught to exist
+for my mother and for her day to this day may not exist. It may
+be--reasonable. Oh, it is offering a stone where bread was sought."
+
+She also wrote:
+
+"Oh, mother, if you could have been here, how you would have loved
+my darlings, and how you would have given them all that you gave
+to me! I will now, mother. Mother, I've come back home to them, in
+the blue frock, and in the pinafore with a hole in it."
+
+That was the spirit in which she came back home to the children,
+that and all that went with it and that arose out of it. It was
+nothing at all to her when she did it, the frightful break with
+Field's. Harry was distressed for her, but there was no need at
+all for him to be distressed, she told him. There wasn't a sigh in
+her voice, nor in her inmost thoughts a sigh, when, telling him of
+the interview with Mr. Field and with Mr. Sturgiss at her resignation
+of her post, she said with a smile, "Carry on? Of course the
+department can perfectly well carry on. Dear, it's just the words
+I said to you a fortnight back on the matter so very different. 'The
+thing's organised. It runs itself. That is why it is the success
+it is, because it's organised. That's why I can come away and leave
+it, because I'm an organiser. Aren't I an organiser?"
+
+He held her immensely long in his arms. "You are my Rosalie," he
+said.
+
+Immensely long he held her, immensely close; oh, men that marry for
+a home! Until, come home, she saw Harry's tremendous happiness in
+the home that now she gave him, she never had realised the longing
+that must have been his for the home for which he had married, and
+never till now had had. It was poignant to her, the sight of his
+tremendous happiness. "Always to find you here!" he would cry, in
+the first weeks of the new life, coming home to tea and coming in
+to her in the drawing-room where she would be, all ready for him,
+with Doda and with Benji. "Always to leave you here!" he would
+say, taking leave of her in the morning, and she and Doda and Benji
+coming with him to the hall door to see him off. "Mice and Mumps,"
+he used to add in codicil, "Mice and Mumps, I'm a happy chap!" and
+was for ever bringing home trifles for her and for the children,
+or plans and passes for how and where the Saturday and the weekend
+should be spent, all four together. "Mice and Mumps, I'm gorged
+with happiness! And you, Rosalie?"
+
+"Oh, happy!" she used to say.
+
+And was. It was poignant to her, his tremendous happiness, and it
+brimmed up the cup of her own happiness. She was doing virtuously
+and she had of her virtue that happiness which, as the pious old
+maxims tell us, comes of being good.
+
+That should have been well; but virtue is a placid condition and
+the happiness arising out of it placid. It brims no cups, flushes
+no cheeks, sparkles no eyes. It is of the quality of happiness
+that one, loving a garden, has from his garden, the happiness of
+tranquillity, not of stir; of peace, not of thrills; of the country,
+not of the town. There was more heady stuff than this that Rosalie
+had out of her new condition, and that was dangerous. She was
+doing virtuously and she had out of her virtue an intoxication of
+joy that, in so far as it is at all concerned with virtue, arises,
+not from virtue's self, but from the consciousness of virtue. That
+was dangerous. The danger point in stimulants is when they are
+resorted to, not as concomitant of the pleasures of the table,
+but be-cause they stimulate. Rosalie, come to her children and her
+Harry and her home, to the thought of her renunciation and of her
+happiness constantly was turning for the enormous exhilaration of
+happiness that there she found. "How glad I am I gave it up! How
+glad! How glad! How right I'm doing now! How right! How right! How
+happy I am in this happiness! How happy! How happy!"
+
+Is it not perceived that thus it was not well assured, this great
+joy that she had, this cup of hers that brimmed? She started from
+that danger point at which the drug is drunk for stimulant. On the
+very first day of her new life she was saying, "How glad I am! How
+glad I am!" and going on radiant from her gladness. But she, in her
+resort to this her stimulant, suffered this grave disparity with
+the drinker's case: he must increase his doses--and he can. She,
+living upon her stimulant, equally was compelled--but could not.
+The renunciation that brimmed her happiness on the first day was
+available to her in no bigger dose on the succeeding days, the
+hundredth day and the three hundredth and the five hundredth. It
+never could increase. It had no capacity of increase. Is it not
+perceivable that it had, on the contrary, a staling quality?
+
+It would have been all right if it had been all right. It would
+have been all right if it had not been all wrong. If these absurd
+premises can be understood, her case can be understood. She used
+them herself in after years. "It would have been all right," she
+used to say to herself, twisting her hands together, "if it had
+been all right." "It would have been all right," she used to say to
+herself, "if it had not been all wrong." What she meant, and what
+here is meant, requires it to be recalled that it was in that
+spirit of that glimpse of herself back a child again in the blue
+frock and in the pinafore with a hole in it that she came back to
+the children, came back home to them. Shocked by the thing that
+had come to pass, penitential by influence of the old childhood
+influences that had stirred within her, most strangely and most
+strongly transported back into that childhood vision of herself,
+it was in the guise of that child and with that child's guise as
+her ideal for them that passionately she desired to take up her
+children's lives. Her Huggo, her man child, her first one! Her
+Doda, her self's own self, her woman-bud, her daughter! Her Benji,
+her littlest one, her darling! She longed, as it were, to throw
+open the door, and in that blue frock and in the spirit of that blue
+frock most ardently to run in to them and hug them, blue frocked,
+to her breast, and be one with them and tell them the things and
+the things and the things that were the blue frock's mysteries and
+joys, and hear from them the things and the things and the things
+that were the blue frock's all-enchanted world again.
+
+That was what most terribly she wanted and with most brimming
+gladness set about to do--and there was borne, in upon her, hinted
+in weeks, published in months, in seasons sealed and delivered to
+her, that there was among her children no place for that spirit.
+They did not welcome the blue frock; they did not understand the
+blue frock; they were not children as she had been a child. It
+was what Harry had said of them, they somehow were not quite like
+other children; it was what she herself had noticed in Huggo; they
+did not respond. They'd gone, those children, too long as they'd
+been left to go. She came to them ardently. They greeted her--not
+very responsively. They didn't understand.
+
+What happened was that, coming to them great with intention,
+she was, by what she did not find in them, much dispirited in her
+intention. What followed from that was that she turned the more
+frequently to the stimulation of the thought of her renunciation,
+to the sensation of happiness that arose in her by consciousness
+that she was doing what she ought to be doing. She would be puzzled,
+she would be a little pained, she would be a little tired at the
+effort, fruitless, to call up in the children those lovely childish
+things that as a child had been hers. She then would feel dispirited.
+She then would think, "But how glad I am that I gave it all up; but
+how right I am to be at home with them; but how happy I am that I
+am now doing that which is right." That stimulated her. That made
+her tell herself (as before she had told Harry) that it was just
+fancy, this apparent difference, this indifference, in the children.
+
+But the more she found necessary that stimulus, the less that
+stimulus availed; and she began to feel, then, the first faint
+gnawings after that which had been stimulus indeed, her work, her
+career.
+
+Of course this is making a case for her, this is special pleading
+for her, but who so abandoned that in the ultimate judgment a case
+will not for him be prepared? Try to consider how it went with
+her. First intoxication of happiness; and must not intoxication in
+time wear off? Then immense intention and then dispirited in her
+intention. Then frequent resource to the stimulus of her realisation
+of virtue and then the natural diminution of that cup's effect. Is
+she not presented prey for her life's habit's longings? Is she not
+shown dejected and caused by that dejection (as caused by depression
+the reclaimed victim of a drug) to desire again that which had been
+to her the breath of life?
+
+That was how it went with her.
+
+Doda was nine when she began; Huggo, when he was home for his
+holidays, eleven, rising twelve; Benji only seven. They seemed to
+her, all of them, wonderfully old for their years and, no getting
+over that, different. She tried to read them the stories she used
+to love. They didn't like them. Doda didn't like "The Wide Wide
+World" and didn't like "Little Women." Huggo thought "The Swiss
+Family Robinson" awful rot, and argued learnedly with her how
+grotesque it was to imagine all that variety of animals and all
+that variety of plants in one same climate. "But, Huggo, you needn't
+worry whether it was possible. It was just written as a means of
+telling a family of children natural history things. They didn't
+have to believe it. They only enjoyed it. I and your uncle Robert
+never worried about whether it was possible; we simply loved the
+adventure of it."
+
+"Well, I can't, mother," said Huggo. "It's not possible, and if it
+isn't possible, I think it's stupid."
+
+And Doda thought Ellen in the "Wide Wide World" silly, and Beth
+and Jo and the others in "Little Women" dull.
+
+She read them Dickens, but it was always, "Oh, leave out that part,
+mother. It's dull." And so was Scott Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"
+never had a chance at all. They had heard from Miss Prescott, or
+Huggo had heard at school, that Shakespeare was a lesson. "Oh, not
+a thing out of lessons, mother." What they liked were what seemed
+to Rosalie the crudely written stories, and the grotesque and usually
+rather vulgar comic drawings, in the host of cheap periodicals for
+children that seemed to have sprung up since her day. They called
+these exciting or funny and they revelled in them. They were different.
+Benji was no more than a baby, but he was extraordinarily devoted
+to Doda, liked only the things that Doda liked, and did not like
+the things that Doda didn't like, or, in the language sometimes a
+little unpleasantly emphatic that always was Doda's and Huggo's,
+that Doda "simply loathed." Rosalie had some old bound numbers
+of treasured juvenile periodicals of the rectory days. Even Benji
+didn't like them. They were markedly different from the books the
+children did like. Their illustrations were mainly of children in
+domestic scenes. "Don't they look stupid?" was Doda's comment; and
+Benji, copying, thought they were stupid too.
+
+All this was a very small thing and of itself negligible; even,
+as Rosalie told herself, natural--naturally children of succeeding
+generations changed in their tastes. It only is introduced
+as conveniently showing in an obscure aspect what was noticeable
+to Rosalie, and felt by her, in many aspects, whose effect was
+cumulative. "A kind of reserve," Harry had said of them: "a kind
+of--self-contained." It was what she found. She wanted to be a child
+with the children; they didn't seem to understand. She wanted to
+open her heart to them and have their hearts opened to her; they
+didn't seem to understand. She was always seeing that vision of
+Rosalie in the blue frock among them, rather like Alice, the real
+Alice, Tenniel's Alice. She was always feeling that Rosalie, thus
+guised, was held off from their circle, not welcomed, not understood,
+as certainly they did not care for the demure, quaint Alice of
+Tenniel.
+
+She began to have sometimes when she was with the children
+an extraordinary feeling (just what Harry had said) that she was
+younger than the children, that it was she who was the child, they
+that were the grown-ups.
+
+When the step of her renunciation was first taken, ardent to devote
+herself to them in every moment of the day, she began to give their
+lessons to Doda and to Benji. It was not a success. The methods
+of teaching, as the text-books, had changed since she was a child.
+The Prescott methods were here and to her own methods the children
+did not respond. There it was again--did not respond. There was
+obtained a Miss Dormer who came in daily and who confined herself,
+Rosalie saw to that, solely to lessons; the walks and all the other
+hours of the day were Rosalie's.
+
+That's all for that. The picture has been overdrawn if has been
+given the suggestion that Rosalie was unhappy with the children
+or the children openly indifferent to her. All of that nature that
+in fact arose was that, whereas Rosalie had expected an immense
+and absorbing occupation with the children, she found instead an
+occupation very loving and very happy but not relieving her of all
+the interest and all the affection she had desired to pour into
+it. It was rather like to a hungry person a strange dish that had
+looked substantial but that, when finished, was found not to have
+been substantial; still hungry. She had thought the children would
+have been entirely dependent on her. She found them in many ways
+independent and wishing to be independent. It would have been all
+right if it had been all right. That was it. It would have been
+all right if it had not been all wrong. That was it.
+
+She began to think of Field's.
+
+When first she began to think of Field's, which was when she had
+been nine months away from Field's, she would let her mind run
+upon it freely, as it would. One day, thus thinking upon it, she
+brought up her thoughts as it were with a round turn. She must not
+think so much about Field's--not like that. She sighed, and with
+the same abruptness of mental action checked her sigh; she must
+not regret Field's--not like that.
+
+It was a fateful prohibition. It was the discovery to herself, as
+to Eve of the tree by the serpent, of a temptation seductive and
+forbidden. Thereafter "like that" her mind, missing no day nor no
+night, was often found by her to be there. The quality that made
+"like that" not seemly to her, increased, at each return, its
+potency.
+
+It became very difficult to drag her mind away. It became impossible
+to drag her mind away.
+
+Her governance of her mind became infected and it became not
+necessary to think it necessary to drag her mind away.
+
+She had not visited Field's since she had left. Mr. Sturgiss and
+Mr. Field had written to her reproaching her for carrying to such
+lengths of neglect her desertion of them, and she had responded
+banteringly but without a call. One day (she had lain much awake
+on the previous night) she at breakfast told Harry she had the idea
+of going that afternoon to see how Field's was getting on.
+
+She was surprised at his supplement to his reply. The children had
+left the room. He first agreed with her that the idea was good.
+"Yes, rather; why not?" was the expression he used. He then said,
+surprising her, "Rosalie, you've never, have you, regretted?"
+
+Her surprise framed for her her reply. "Why ever should you ask
+that?"
+
+"I've thought you've not been looking very well lately."
+
+"But what's the connection, Harry?"
+
+"Fretting?"
+
+She smiled. "I'm not the fretting sort."
+
+He was perfectly satisfied. "I knew you'd tell me if you were.
+Everything going well?"
+
+"Fine."
+
+He shot out his arms with a luxurious stretching gesture. "Mice
+and Mumps, it's been fine for me, I can tell you. Fine, fine!"
+
+How happy he looked! How handsome he looked! Her thought was "Dear
+Harry!"
+
+He got up and began to set about his departure. She went with him
+into the hall and she called up the stairs, "Children, father's
+going." They came bounding down. He joked and played with them. He
+loved this custom, now long established. She brushed his hat, also
+a rite she knew he loved. He kissed her with particular affection.
+"Yes, you go up to Field's and give old Sturgiss and old Field my
+love. You'll almost have forgotten the way there. I say, it's funny,
+isn't it, how time changes things and how it goes? We couldn't have
+imaged this once, and here it is the most established thing in the
+world. Do you know, it's almost exactly a year since you chucked
+it?"
+
+"Chucked it!" The light expression smote her. O manlike man that
+thus could phrase divorce that from her heart's engrossment had
+cut her life asunder!
+
+In the afternoon she set out upon her intention. It meant nothing,
+her visit, she assured herself. It had no purpose beyond the exchange
+of courtesies. But when she was leaving the house she paused. Should
+she go? She went down the steps and through the gate, then paused
+again. She returned to the house. She had an idea. She would take
+the children with her. She called them, and while they gleefully
+dressed for the outing she repeated to herself the word in which
+the idea of taking them with her had come to her.
+
+"A bodyguard!" she said.
+
+The note of laughter she gave at the word had a tremulous sound.
+
+Tremulous would well have described her manner when they were at
+Field's. She was asking herself as they went towards the City what
+it was that she wanted to hear--that Field's was doing very well
+without her? That her department was not doing very well without
+her? Which?
+
+She would not let her mind affirm which it was that she desired.
+
+It appeared, when they arrived, that it was neither, nor anything
+at all to do with the Bank. Her first words to the partners were
+of smiling apology at bringing to precincts sacred to business, "a
+herd of children." That was a natural introduction of herself; it
+was an unusual thing to do. But not natural the way in which she
+maintained the subject of the children. It seemed that she had come
+to talk of nothing else. Tremulous she was; talking, of the children,
+with the incessant eagerness, and with the nervous eagerness, of
+one either clamant to establish a case or frightened of a break in
+the conversation lest a break should cause appearance of a subject
+most desperately to be avoided.
+
+Her bodyguard!
+
+Mr. Field and Mr. Sturgiss were delighted to see her and expressed
+themselves delighted to see the children. There was plenty in the
+bank, coffers and strong-rooms and all sorts of exciting things,
+said Mr. Field, that would amuse the small people, and when tea was
+done they should be taken around to see them. In an inner holy of
+holies, behind the partners' parlour, a very exciting tea was made.
+A clerk was sent out for a parcel of pastries and returned with an
+enormous bag, and there was no tablecloth, nor no proper tea-table,
+and the children, much excited, were immensely entertained.
+
+Easy, while they were there, to make them the conversation's centre.
+But the meal ended and then became most evident her anxiety to
+keep the chatter on the children. They became impatient to be off
+on the promised exploration. She delayed it. Twice the clerk who
+was to conduct the tour was about to be summoned. By a new gathering
+of general attention, she stopped his coming. When at last he
+came she said she would be of the party. The partners did not want
+that. The children did not want it. "Mother, it will be much more
+exciting by ourselves." She insisted. She was aware for the first
+and only time in her life of a feeling of nerves, of not being
+quite in control of herself, of making of her insistence rather
+more than should be made.
+
+"Well, stay," said Mr. Sturgiss, "at least for a minute's chat
+before you join them."
+
+That was not possible, unless she was going to become hysterical,
+to resist. The children trooped away. Her bodyguard!
+
+She turned aside and it is to be remembered for her that, her
+face concealed from the partners, she gave the tiniest despairing
+gesture with her hands.
+
+When, with the children, she was returning home, she was trying to
+determine whether, while it was in suspense, she had or had not
+desired to hear of the partners that which she had heard from them.
+They had talked with her generally of the business. They had talked
+particularly of the work of her department of the business. There
+was approaching all the time the thing that sooner or later they
+must say. She was trembling all the time to know how she would
+receive it. In whichever of its two ways it came would she be
+glad or would she be sorry? She simply did not know. She suddenly
+herself projected the point. She could not endure any longer its
+delay. "And Miss Farmer," she said. "How's Miss Farmer doing?"
+Miss Farmer, formerly one of her assistants, had on her resignation
+taken her place.
+
+Miss Farmer, replied Mr. Sturgiss, was estimable but--he opened his
+hands and made with them a deprecatory gesture. "She's not you. How
+could she be you, or any one be you? We could replace Miss Farmer.
+What's the good? It's you we've got to replace. We can't replace
+you."
+
+Her heart had bounded.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+
+
+That happened in the Christmas holidays, in January. In February was
+Doda's eleventh birthday. The child had friends rather older than
+herself, neighbours, who for a year had been boarders at a school
+in Surrey. She was desperately eager to join them there and it
+was a promise from Rosalie that she should go when she was twelve,
+earlier if she were good. On this eleventh birthday, which brought
+birthday letters from the neighbours at the school and thus again
+brought up the subject, "Oh, haven't I been good?" cried Doda at
+the birthday breakfast. "Oh, do let me go next term, mother. Father,
+do say I may." Her eagerness for school had been much fostered
+by Huggo's holiday stories of school life; and Huggo, as Doda now
+adduced, was leaving his preparatory and starting at Tidborough
+next term; couldn't she, oh, couldn't she make also her start then?
+
+Harry said, "O grown-up woman of enormous years, think of your
+sorrowing parents. How will you like to leave your weeping mother,
+Doda? How will you like to leave your heart-broken old father?"
+
+"Oh, I'd love to!" cried Doda.
+
+The ingenuousness of it made her parents laugh.
+
+"She'll have her way, won't she?" said Harry, when Doda, conscious,
+by that laugh, of tolerance, had danced out of the room.
+
+"I think she'd better," said Rosalie.
+
+The school was very well known to Rosalie. It was exclusive and
+expensive; was limited to seventy girls, of whom twenty, under the
+age of thirteen, were received in the adapted Dower House of the
+ancient estate which was its home; and the last word in modernity
+was, in every point of administration, its first word. It had been
+established only eight years. The motto of its founders and of its
+lady principal was "Not traditions--precedents!"
+
+The subject came up again between Rosalie and Harry that evening
+and it was decided that Doda should be placed there after the next
+holidays, at the opening of the summer term. Harry declared himself,
+"in my bones" as he expressed it, against boarding schools for girls,
+"But that's my old fogeyism," said he. "It's the modern idea that
+girls should have the same training and the same chances in life
+as their brothers, and there's no getting away from the right of
+it."
+
+Rosalie said in a low voice, "To what end?"
+
+He did not hear her. She had got out from the accumulation of papers
+of her business life prospectuses and booklets of the school and he
+was amusedly browsing over the refinements and advantages therein,
+not by traditions but by precedents, set forth. "Mice and Mumps,
+Rosalie," said he, "they not only do riding as a regular thing
+but 'parents are permitted, if they wish, to stable a pupil's
+own pony (see page 26).' Oh, thanks, thanks! 'Mr. Harry Occleve,
+barrister-at-law, availing himself of your gracious permission on
+page twenty-six, is sending down for his daughter a coach and four
+with 'ostlers, grooms, coachmen, and outriders complete.' Ha!"
+
+She was just watching him.
+
+He said after an interval: "Yes, there's a lot of sound stuff here,
+Rosalie. It's convincing. Not that any one needs convincing on the
+point less than you and I." He quoted again. "'And advance them
+towards an independent and a womanly womanhood.' And it talks
+further back about how 'Idle women' will soon be recognised as
+great a term of reproach as 'an idle man.' It's sound. I like this
+booklet here that each girl's given, 'To the Girl of the Future.'
+It tells them all about an independent career, makes no fancy
+picture of it, tells 'em everything. Did you read that?"
+
+"A long time ago. It probably doesn't tell them one thing."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That they can always--chuck it."
+
+He looked up quickly. "Hull-o!"
+
+She gave him no response to his expressed surprise and he laughed
+and said, "D'you know, Rosalie, I don't believe I've ever before
+heard you use slang."
+
+"You taught me that bit, Harry."
+
+"Oh, I sling it about. When did I?"
+
+"One day last holidays when it was just on a year since I'd left
+Field's. Just a year, you said, since I'd--chucked it. O Harry--"
+
+There was a quality in her voice that might, from what she saw
+upon his face, have been a tocsin's roll. His face was as a place
+of assembly into which, as it might be a people alarmed, there came
+crowding in emotions.
+
+He said, "What's up?"
+
+She said, "O Harry, you look out for yourself!"
+
+There was much movement in his face. "Look out for myself?"
+
+She said, "That came out of me. I didn't know I was going to say
+it. It's a warning. It shows the fear I have."
+
+"Rosalie, of what, of what?"
+
+"Harry, for you."
+
+"You're going to say something you think will hurt me?"
+
+"No, something you'll have to fight--if you want to fight it. Harry,
+perhaps I can't go on like this. I want to go back to my work."
+
+He expired a breath he had been holding. "I was guessing it."
+
+"Before just now?"
+
+"No, while you've been speaking. Only now. I asked you weeks ago
+if you ever felt you regretted--"
+
+She leant forward from the couch whereon she sat, and with
+an extended hand interrupted him. She said intensely, "Look here,
+Harry, if it was just regret I'd not mind and I would tell you No
+a hundred times, just not to disturb you, dear. But when you asked
+me that you spoke, a minute afterwards, of my having--chucked it,
+as if it was giving up sugar or stopping bridge. Well, that's why
+I'm warning you to look out for yourself. Because, Harry, I don't
+regret it. I'm craving to go back to it, craving, craving, craving!"
+She stopped. She said, "Do you want me not to go back, Harry?"
+
+He looked steadily at her. "Rosalie, it would be a blow to me."
+
+She said, "Well, then!" and she leaned back in the couch as though
+all now was explained.
+
+He very gravely asked her, "Are you going back, Rosalie?"
+
+"Would it be a crime, Harry, to go back?"
+
+He said to her, "I believe in my soul it would be a disaster."
+
+She got up. "Come over here to me, Harry."
+
+He went to her and took the hands that she extended to him. "If you
+think that, a disaster, and if to you it would be what you said,
+a blow; then that's what I mean by saying, Harry, you look out for
+yourself. I don't know if I'm going back. I want to go terribly,
+oh, terribly. There was a woman I once knew told me that if a woman
+once gives herself to a thing, abandons all else and gives herself
+to it, she never never can come back from it. 'They don't issue
+return tickets to women,' she said to me. 'If you give yourself,'
+she said, 'you're its. You may think you can get away but you never
+will get away. You're its.' She was right, Harry. I believe I've
+got to go back. If you don't want me to, well, you look out for
+yourself." She drew herself towards him by her hands. "Harry, when
+I went down to Field's with the children that day last holidays I
+took them to be a bodyguard to me, to prevent me from being captured.
+When they left me there alone for a few minutes, I turned away and
+wrung my hands because I knew I was going to be terribly tempted.
+I am terribly tempted. I'm being dragged." She went into his arms.
+"Harry, hold me terribly tight and say you don't want me to go
+back."
+
+He most tenderly embraced her. "Don't go back, Rosalie."
+
+She disengaged herself, and made a sound, "Ah!" as if, while he had
+held her body, herself had held the fort of her solicitude for his
+desires against the horde of her own cravings that swarmed about
+its walls.
+
+How long?
+
+There was a mirage in her face. While Easter came and Doda, in huge
+spirits, made her start at school, and Huggo, boisterously elated,
+his start at Tidborough, and Benji, much dejected at Doda's going,
+his start at Huggo's former day school; and while the long summer
+term and the holidays passed on, there was never again seen nor
+heard by Harry the tenderness that had been in her face and in
+her voice when she had warned him, "Well, Harry, you look out for
+yourself," and when she had asked him, "Harry, hold me terribly
+tight in your arms and say you do not want me to go back." There
+thenceforward did fill up her countenance the boy, mutinous and
+defiant, that was her other self. It was almost upon the morrow of
+that passage with him (whose poignancy the written word has failed
+to show) that she had a revulsion from the attitude she had then
+exposed to him. Avid now to go back to the life she had abandoned,
+she was ferocious to herself when she remembered she had asked
+him, "Would it be a crime, Harry, to go back?" A crime! "Horrible
+traitor to myself that I was" (her thoughts would go) "to question
+it a crime just to take up my life again! A crime! Horrible fool that
+I was to be able, with no sense of humour, to give to so natural a
+desire an epithet so ludicrous as crime! A crime! A right, a right!"
+
+Worst of all, she had invited, she had implored, Harry when her
+longings were manifest to reason with her. Her longings now always
+were manifest; but when he reasoned with her it was out of the
+scorpions of her revulsion that she answered him.
+
+He once said, "It appears to me that your attitude is changed from
+the night you first mentioned this."
+
+She said, "Harry, what's disturbing me when we talk about it is
+not my own case, it's the general case. Here's a woman--never mind
+that it's me--here's a woman that has made a success in life, that
+has abandoned it and that wants to go back to it. You argue she
+mustn't. I could say it's monstrous. I don't say that. I choose
+to say it's pitiful. If it was a man, he'd go. He wouldn't think
+twice about it. And if he did think twice about it, every opinion
+and every custom that he consulted would tell him he was right to
+go. It happens to be a woman, therefore--well, that's the reason!
+It's a woman--therefore, No. That's the beginning of the reason and
+the end of the reason. A woman--therefore, No. Oh, it's pitiful--for
+women."
+
+Harry questioned: "Every opinion and every custom would tell a
+man to go? No, no. You're taking too much for granted, Rosalie. He
+wouldn't go, necessarily, and he wouldn't be advised to go, if he
+had duties that pulled him the other way."
+
+She gave a note of amusement. "But that's the point. He never would
+have such duties. It's notable that a man always makes his duties
+and his ambitions go hand in hand. Yes, it's notable, that."
+
+"Well, put it another way. Suppose it wasn't necessary for him to
+go.... Suppose nothing depended on his going, much on his staying.
+That makes the parallel, Rosalie."
+
+She said to him, "Ah, I'll agree to that. Let that make the parallel.
+They'd tell a man in such a case, 'Man, take up your ambitions.
+You are a man. You have yourself to think of.' That's what they'd
+say. Well, that's what I'm saying. 'I am a woman. I have myself to
+think of.'"
+
+He asked, "And shall you, Rosalie?"
+
+She said, "I'm thinking--every day."
+
+The more she thought, the more she stiffened. This was the thought
+against whose goad she always came--Why should she be hesitant?
+What a position! What a light upon the case and upon the status
+of woman that, just because she was a woman, she must not consider
+her own, her personal interests! For no other reason; just that;
+because she was a woman!
+
+"I've shut a gate behind me," she on another day said to Harry.
+"That's what I've done. I've come out of a place and shut the gate
+behind me and because I am a woman I mustn't open it and go back.
+That's what a woman's life is--always shutting gates behind her.
+There aren't gates for a man. There're just turnstiles. As he came
+out so he can always go back--even to his youth. When he's fifty
+he still can go back and have the society of twenty and play the
+fool as he did at twenty. Can a woman?"
+
+"That's physical," said Harry. "A man much longer keeps his youth."
+
+She said then the first aggressively bitter thing he ever had heard
+her say. "Ah, keeps his youth!" she said. "So does a dog that's
+run free. It's the chain and kennel sort that age."
+
+She hardened her heart.
+
+She looked back upon the days when she had discovered for herself
+the difference between sentiment and sense, between sentimentality
+and sensibility. She then had made her life, and therefore then her
+happiness, by putting away sentiment and using sense for spectacles.
+She told herself she now was ruining her life, and certainly letting
+go her happiness, by suffering herself to bear the sentimental
+handicap.
+
+The summer holidays came. It had been her obvious argument to
+Harry that, now the elder children were at school, and Benji soon
+to be the same, that reason for her constant presence in the home
+no longer was advanceable. It had been Harry's argument to her
+that there were the holidays to remember. The holidays came. Huggo
+wrote that he wanted to go straight from school to a topping time
+in Scotland to which he had been invited by a chum; when that was
+over he had promised, and he was sure he would be allowed, to have
+the last three weeks with another friend whose people had a ripping
+place in Yorkshire. Doda came home and Doda's first excitement
+was that nothing arranged might interfere with an invitation from
+mid-August to a schoolfellow whose family were going to Brittany.
+So much for her holiday necessity! Rosalie thought. So much for
+Harry's idea of how the children would naturally long to spend
+the vacation all together! Doda did not seem to have a thought for
+Huggo, nor Huggo a thought for when he should see Doda. Neither of
+them, she could not help noticing, had the faintest concern to be
+with Benji. She and Harry with Benji went down to a furnished house
+in Devonshire, and the other two, their plans in part curtailed,
+were brought to join them. It was jolly enough. It would have
+been more truly jolly, she used to think, if Doda had not largely
+divided her time between writing to apparently innumerable school
+friends and counting the days to when she might be released for the
+Brittany expedition; and if Huggo had not for the first few days
+openly sulked at the veto on the Yorkshire invitation. How independent
+they were, how absorbed in their friends, how--different!
+
+She hardened her heart.
+
+The reopening of the schools drew on and return was made to London.
+Huggo and Doda were made ready for school and returned to school.
+The Law Courts reopened and Harry took up again his work. October!
+You could not take up a paper without reading of the inauguration
+of the new Sessions at all the universities and seats of education.
+October! The newspapers that for months had been padding out vapid
+nothings became intense with the activities of a nation back to
+the collar. October! The first brisk breath of winter in the air!
+She could not stand this! Could not, could not!
+
+She said suddenly one evening: "Harry, I was down at Field's to-day.
+They want me."
+
+Ever since, by that simile of hers of the dog chained and kenneled,
+she had put a bitter note into this matter between them, he had
+by this means or by that contributed no share to it when she had
+presented it. He once had referred to the dog incident. "I can't
+talk to you when you talk like that, old girl," he had said. "That's
+not us. We don't talk like that. You know how I feel about this
+matter. Talking only vexes it."
+
+"Harry, I was down at Field's to-day. They want me." It was now to
+be faced.
+
+He put down the paper he had been reading and began to fill his
+pipe. "This wants a smoke," he said and smiled at her; and he then
+told her that which the level quality of her voice, a note from
+end to end of purpose, had informed him. "I think we're getting to
+the end of this business," he said.
+
+Her voice maintained its quality. "Yes, near the end, Harry."
+
+"Field's want you. What are you going to do?"
+
+"Going back."
+
+"I want you."
+
+"I'm not leaving you. I am with you, as I came to you!"
+
+"The children want you."
+
+"I am not leaving the children."
+
+"It's a question of home, Rosalie. It's the home wants you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"What are you going to do?
+
+"Going back."
+
+"You've thought of everything?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"The children?"
+
+"Harry, the children don't want me in the way that children used
+to want their mothers when I was a child. They don't display the
+same affection, not in the same way, that we used to. I wish they
+did. I came back for it. It wasn't there. They're darlings, but
+they're self-reliant darlings, self-assured, self-interested."
+
+"They've a right to a home, Rosalie." He paused. "And, Rosalie, I
+have a right to a home."
+
+She said, "Have I no rights?"
+
+"There are certain things--" he slowly said and paused
+again--"established."
+
+She said quickly, "Yes, men think that. They always have. Well, I
+believe that nothing is."
+
+He looked steadily before him. "If it's not established that woman's
+part is the home part; if that is going to change, I wonder what's
+going to happen to the world?"
+
+She said, "Men always do. They always have--wondered, and the
+future always has changed right out of their wondering. I believe
+that the future is with woman. I believe that as empires have passed,
+Rome, Greece, Carthage, that seemed to their rulers the pillars of
+the world, so will pass man's dominion. Woman's revolt--it's no
+use talking of it as that, as a revolt. Women aren't and never will
+be banded. They're like the Jews. They're everywhere but nowhere.
+But the Jews have had their day; woman--not yet. They work,
+not banded, but in single spies. In every generation more single
+spies and more single spies. In time.... In every generation man's
+dominion, by like degree, decreased, decreased. In time.... I'm
+one of this day's single spies, Harry."
+
+He said with a sudden animation, "Look here, let's take it on that
+level, Rosalie. In your case what's the need? Call it dominion.
+I've never exercised nor thought to exercise dominion over you."
+
+"But you've not understood, Harry. I gave up what was my life
+to me. To you I'd only--chucked it. Oh, but that hurt! That man's
+supreme indifference, that is dominion."
+
+He said, "I'll know it, dearest, for your sacrifice."
+
+She put out a hand as if to hold that word away. "Oh, trust not
+that. They talk of the ennoblement of sacrifice. Ah, do not believe
+it. It can go too long, too far, and then like wine too long
+matured... just acid, Harry. I never said a bitter thing to you
+until--thus sacrificing. It is the kennel dog again. If I went on
+I'd grow more bitter yet, more bitter and more bitter. It's why
+women are so much more bitter than men. It's what they've sacrificed.
+I'm going back, Harry. I've got to. You ask me if I've thought of
+everything. I have; but even if I had not this outrides it all.
+I have gone too far. She was right, that woman I told you of, who
+said that for a woman, once she has given herself to a thing, there
+is no comeback from it. I have tried. It is not to be done."
+
+There was a very long silence. She said, "It's settled, Harry."
+
+He said, "Nothing's been said, Rosalie, that gets over what I have
+said. There's no home here while both of us are working. I have a
+right to a home. The children have a right to a home. Nothing gets
+over that."
+
+She answered, "Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children
+a home."
+
+He said, "I am a man."
+
+She answered, "I am a woman."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+
+
+The thing goes now at a most frightful pace for Rosalie. One hates
+the slow, laborious written word that tries to show it. There
+needs a pen with wings or that by leaping violence of script, by
+characters blotched, huge and run together, would symbolise the
+pace at which the thing now goes. There's no procession of the days.
+Immersed in work or lost in pleasure, there never is procession of
+the days, so hurtling fast goes life. They crowd. They're driven
+past like snow across a window pane. The calendar astounds. It is
+the first of the month, and lo, it is the tenth. It's the sixteenth--half
+gone!--while yet it scarcely had begun; a day after the twentieth
+is the date; it's next the twenty-fifth; it's next--the month has
+gone.... The month! It is a season that has flown. Here's Summer where
+only yesterday the buds of Spring; here's Winter, coming--gone!--while
+yet the leaves seem falling.
+
+It was like that the thing now went with Rosalie.
+
+They call it a race. It isn't a race, living like that. It's a
+pursuit. Engaged in it, you're not in rivalry, you are in flight.
+You're fleeing all the time the reckoning; and he's a sulky savage,
+forced to halt to gather up what you have shed, ordered to pause
+to note the things that you have missed, and at each duty cutting
+notches in a stick.
+
+That is his tally which, come up, he will present to you.
+
+Well, best perhaps to take that tally stick to try by it to show
+the pace at which the thing now went. Rosalie, when all was done,
+could run the tally over (you have to) in thought, that lightning
+vehicle that makes to crawl the swiftest agency of man's invention:
+runs through a lifetime while the electric telegraph is stammering
+a line; reads memory in twenty volumes between the whiff and passing
+of some remembered scent that's opened them; travels a life again,
+cradle to grave, between the vision's lighting on and lifting from
+some token of the past.
+
+All's done; some years rush on; she sits in retrospection, that
+tally stick in hand; and thought, first hovering, would always start
+for her from when, returned to her career, the thing at frightful
+pace began to go; and then, from there, away! from scene to scene
+(the notches cut by reckoning in his stick) rending the womb of
+memory in dread delivery, as it were flash on flash of lightning
+bursting the vault of night from east to west across the world.
+
+Her thoughts first hovering: There's Huggo and there's Doda and
+there's Benji! Her children! Her darling ones! Her lovely ones!
+Love's crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons of those
+darling joys of hers in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of
+precedent to the contrary, that woman might be mother and yet live
+freely and unfettered by her home, precisely as man is father but
+follows a career. Ah....
+
+Away! The womb of memory is rent, and rent, delivers.
+
+Look, there they are! She's down with one or other at some gala at
+their schools. It's Founders' Day at Tidborough, or it's at Doda's
+school on Prize Day. Aren't they just proud to be with her and
+show her off, their lovely, brilliant mother so different from the
+other rather fussy mothers that come crowding down! All the masters
+and all the mistresses know the uncommon woman that she is. The
+children, growing older, know it. "You must be very proud of your
+mother." It has been said (the self-same words) to each of them
+by their respective principals. Nice! Nice to have your children
+proud of you!
+
+Look, there's Huggo telling her how the headmaster had said the
+thing to him (she's just walking with her Huggo across the cricket
+ground on Founders' Day). "And a sloppy young ass that heard him,"
+says Huggo, "oh, an awful ass, asked me why the Head had said
+I must be proud of you, and I told him, and I said, 'I bet you're
+not proud of your mother.' And he said, 'Of my father, I am. He
+got the V. C. in South Africa.' So I said, 'Yes, but proud of your
+mother?' So this frightful ass said--what do you think he said?
+'No, I'm not proud of my mother. I don't think I'd want to be. I
+only love her.'"
+
+Huggo mimicked the voice in which the frightful ass had said this;
+and Rosalie, at the words and at his tone, had across her body
+a sudden chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something.
+But it was the kind of thing you couldn't, somehow, say to Huggo,
+at fifteen. But she said it. "Huggo, you do love me, don't you?"
+
+He turned to her a face curiously thin-lipped. "Oh, I say, mother,
+do look out, some one might hear you!"
+
+Her Huggo! (She wants to stop the passing scenes and to stretch out
+to him across the years her arms.) Her Huggo! The one that first
+along her arm had laid; the scrap that first within her eyes
+adoring tears had brimmed; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny
+hugging one, her first born! It is in retrospection that she sits
+and there's expelled for ever from her face that aspect mutinous,
+intolerant, defiant, that used to visit there. That, when she
+housed it, was the aspect of the young man Ishmael whose hand was
+against every man. She is like Hagar now to be imagined, sitting
+over against these things a good way off, as it were a bowshot.
+
+Strike on!
+
+Her Huggo! Look, that's the day they got that bad report of him
+from school. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post
+and, naming the headmaster of Tidborough, "Yes, it's from Hammond,"
+he had answered her.
+
+"About Huggo?"
+
+"Yes, it's about Huggo."
+
+Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that.
+
+She said presently, "I suppose it would interest me, wouldn't it?"
+
+His face was very hard. "Do you want to know the answer I feel like
+giving to that?"
+
+"I've asked for it, haven't I, Harry?"
+
+"You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says
+implicates you."
+
+She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving
+her composure. "What's the matter, Harry?"
+
+"Hammond says--as good as says--that Huggo will have to be withdrawn
+from Tidborough."
+
+She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something.
+"May I hear?"
+
+"You may." He took up the letter and read from it. "'Apart from
+that, and it would of course be the reason given--the other, I am
+confident, is susceptible of change--apart from that, the boy has
+now twice failed to keep his place in the school. If he does not
+get his remove in the coming term I shall be compelled to ask you
+to remove him.'" He put down the letter and looked at her. "That'll
+be nice, won't it?"
+
+She made an appeal. "Harry, don't. I mean, don't talk like that.
+It won't happen."
+
+He softened in no degree. He said sternly: "It will happen."
+
+She persevered. "I'm quite sure it won't. You've only got to talk
+seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some
+coaching. He's got brains."
+
+There was a steely note in Harry's voice: "Oh, he's got brains. He
+can have coaching. It's what he hasn't got and what he can't get
+that's going to get Huggo withdrawn."
+
+"What is it you mean?"
+
+"A home."
+
+She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This
+subject!
+
+Harry said: "Hammond says more than I've told you."
+
+"I supposed he did. 'Apart from that.' Apart from what?"
+
+"It's Huggo's character he's writing to me about. This is what he
+says. 'The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house.
+If I may suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough
+of his home.'"
+
+He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. "Does it
+strike you that is going to be easy for me to answer?"
+
+"It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us
+to discuss it."
+
+He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his
+voice: "Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley,
+Rosalie."
+
+She said sombrely, "And I."
+
+"Will you suggest how the letter is to be answered?"
+
+She said: "It's plain. If you agree with Mr. Hammond, it's plain.
+You can say you will stop Huggo's invitations. Harry, we're not
+by any means the only family that doesn't spend the whole of its
+holidays together. It's rather the practice nowadays, young people
+visiting their friends. If you think Huggo shouldn't--you can say
+so."
+
+"Yes, I can say that. Tell me this. Is it going to give him a home?"
+
+Her voice sprung from a sudden higher note. "Oh, you insist, you
+insist!" she cried. "You speak of blind alleys, but you insist."
+
+He touched the letter. "This gives me ground for my insistence.
+This is an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live. This is
+my son, at my old school, condemned by how we live."
+
+She interjected, "A schoolmaster's primeval animosity--blame the
+parent."
+
+"Rosalie, a parent's primeval duty. We are responsible for the
+children. We have a duty towards them."
+
+She softly struck her hands together. "Ah, how often, how often, and
+always worse! You said just now that I am implicated. It's always
+I. You say we have a responsibility towards the children. But
+you don't mean us, you mean me. Why I more than you? Why am I the
+accused?"
+
+He began, "Because you--"
+
+"Ah, don't, don't!"
+
+But he concluded. "Because you are a woman."
+
+Her voice that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as
+to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of
+weariness with this thing, "Ah, my God, that reason!"
+
+Strike on!
+
+Look, there's Huggo, failing again to get his remove, superannuated,
+withdrawn. There's Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought
+to be tears. There are tears. But they're in Harry's voice and
+twice he wipes his eyes. They're not in Huggo's.
+
+Harry says to Huggo: "I say, I'm not going to be harsh; but, I say,
+can't you understand the disgrace; can't you understand the shame,
+old man? You've been at the finest school in England and you've
+had to leave. You're sixteen. Old man, when I was sixteen I got my
+footer colours. I was the youngest chap in the team. You're sixteen
+and you've never even got a house cap and you've had to leave.
+Huggo, I've never missed going down to a Founders' Day since I went
+to Oxford. It's always been the day of the year for me. I don't
+say I've ever done much in life, but every time I've been down to
+Founders' Day I've thought over, in the train, any little thing I
+may have pulled out in the year and I've felt, I've felt awfully
+proud to be taking it down to the old school, so to speak. Old
+chap, the proudest, far the proudest of all, was the year I went
+down when first you were there. I was proud. I'd given a son to
+the place. I'd got a boy there. Another Occleve was going to write
+the name up on the shields and rolls and things. It was the year
+Garnett first came down as a Cabinet Minister. Huggo, I looked old
+Garnett in the face with a grin. Whatever he'd done I'd got this
+much up on him--he hadn't given a son to the place. He hadn't got
+a boy there. That's how I always felt. Well, old man, it's all over.
+I can't go down to Founders' Day ever again. I've never missed.
+Now--I've had to withdraw my boy. I can't go again. I couldn't face
+it."
+
+He wiped his eyes. No tears in Huggo's eyes. On Huggo's face only
+a look sullen and aggrieved; and sullen and aggrieved his mutter,
+"Well, perhaps it was different for you. I couldn't stick the
+place."
+
+She gasped out, "Huggo!" but Harry had heard, and Harry, perhaps
+in offset to the emotion he had displayed, smashed his hand down
+on the table before him and cried out, "Well, keep your mouth shut
+about it then! Couldn't stick it! What can you be? What can be the
+matter with you? Couldn't stick it! Tidborough! The finest school
+in the world! Couldn't stick it!"
+
+She interposed, "Harry, dear! Huggo; Huggo, tell your father you
+didn't mean that."
+
+Huggo's mumble: "I'm sorry, father."
+
+Harry's deep, kind voice: "I'm sorry too, old man. It rather
+jarred. Look here, this is all over. It's just been a side-slip.
+I've forgotten it. So has your mother. You just think over sometimes
+what I've said, my boy. We're fixing up this tutor's for you. You
+start in fresh and go like steam. Finest thing in the world a fresh
+start. Makes a side-slip worth while. I'm going to be--I am--prouder
+of you than anything on earth. My eldest boy! Like steam from now,
+old chap, eh?"
+
+Strike on!
+
+After that interview and when the boy had left the room--shambled
+out of the room in that sullen, aggrieved air he would always
+assume under correction--after that she and Harry had talked, most
+fondly. It was all, the talk, that poignantly affecting "fresh
+start" business that he'd begun with Huggo. Poignantly affecting
+because Harry, piling upon his love for Huggo and his pride in
+Huggo, which she shared, his love for his old school and his pride
+in it, which she could understand but could not share, had been
+so bravely, cheerfully earnest and assured about the future. "One
+who never turned his back but marched breast forward." The boy would
+be all right. Mice and Mumps, old lady, he'd be all right! It was
+just a mistake, just a side-slip. He'd got the right stuff in him,
+Huggo had, eh, old lady? They must just pull together to help the
+boy, eh?
+
+He paused the tiniest space at that and pressed her hand and looked
+at her. She knew his meaning. If only....
+
+He went on: This was a good place, this tutor's down in Norfolk
+they were sending him to, Harry was sure it was. It was a pity, of
+course, he couldn't go to another public school; but of course he
+couldn't; they wouldn't take him; no use worrying about that. This
+tutor, this man they were sending him to, was a first-class chap.
+Only took six pupils. Was a clergyman. Understood boys and youths
+who hadn't quite held their own and wanted special coaching and
+attention. Huggo was keen on the idea. After all, why shouldn't
+he have disliked Tidborough? There were such boys who didn't like
+public-school life. There, there! Perhaps it was the best thing that
+could have happened. Bet your life this was going to be the making
+of old Huggo, this change. This tutor and the quiet, self-reliant
+life there, each chap with his own jolly little bed-sitting room,
+would prop him up and get him into Oxford when the time came and
+make him no end happy and splendid.
+
+"There, there, old lady," said Harry, and patted her and kissed
+her (she'd been affected). "There, there, it's going to be fine.
+The rest is just up to us, eh? We know the boy's weaknesses. We
+know what Hammond's told us about him--home life and home influences
+and all that stuff, and that's easy; we'll see the boy gets that,
+won't we?"
+
+She used to wring her hands at that, and crying "If only!" cry
+again in desperation of excuse: "If only the war hadn't come! If
+only the war hadn't come!"
+
+The war was on then. It was 1915. "You see," she used to appeal
+to the arbitrament before which, watching these pictures, she
+found herself, "you see, the war made everything so difficult, so
+impossible, so frightful, so confused, so blinding. Sturgiss had
+left the Bank to do war service in the Treasury. More than half the
+clerks had gone. We were understaffed and badly staffed at every
+turn. How could I give it up then? I don't say I would have. I'm
+on my knees. I've thrown in my hand. I'm not pretending anything
+or anyway trying to delude myself. I don't say I would have given
+it up and come home to make home life for the boy and for them
+all. I don't say I would. I'm only saying how infinitely harder,
+how impossibly harder, the war conditions made it. There was the
+understaffing--that alone. There was the cry about releasing a man
+for the front--that alone. I was releasing half a dozen men. Field
+said I was. I knew I was. How could I go back and be one of the
+women sitting at home? That alone! How could I? And there was more
+than that. It wasn't only the understaffing. It was Sturgiss going.
+I'd been absorbing the banking business for years. It was meat and
+drink to me. I'd had a bent for it ever since the Bagehot 'Lombard
+Street' days. I'd nourished my bent. I'd been encouraged to nourish
+my bent. The work was just a passion with me. Sturgiss went. I went
+practically into his place. I'd a position in banking that no woman
+had ever held, nor no banker ever imagined a woman ever holding,
+before. It was Sturgiss, a partner, I'd released for war service.
+It was Sturgiss's, a partner's, place I'd got. How could I give
+that up? How could I? How could I? If only the war hadn't come. If
+only...." Strike on!
+
+It isn't all going as it should with the boy at the tutor's. But
+wasn't it impossible to observe, at the time, that it wasn't all
+going as it should? Of course (her thoughts would go) it was her
+fault; but was not the world, spiritual and material, in conspiracy
+against her, and against Huggo, and against her other darlings,
+to make easy her fault? Ah, that war, that war! Didn't it unsettle
+everybody and everything? Naturally it unsettled the boy down at
+the tutor's. Naturally one did not notice or foresee the trend of
+his unsettlement. Naturally it made plausible the excuses that he
+made.
+
+There he is, down there at the tutor's. He wanted to do war work,
+not sitting there grinding lessons. All the tutor's pupils did.
+Naturally they did. The boy couldn't go in the army. He was too
+young. He was in a rural district. He got doing land-work. They
+all did. It was supposed to be done in leisure hours. Naturally it
+encroached on, and unfitted for, work hours. "After all," as the
+tutor wrote, "how can you blame the boys? After all, it's very hard
+to seem to try to check this patriotic spirit." After all! Oh, why
+do people say "after all" when they mean quite the contrary? This
+was before all, this seductive escape from uncongenial duties,
+precedent of all, influencing to all that happened--after all.
+Naturally it interfered with scholastic work. That was condoned.
+As naturally it interfered with discipline. That was not mentioned
+by the tutor. If he was cognisant of it was not domestic discipline
+everywhere relaxed "on account of the war"?
+
+There Huggo is. These are his holidays. After the setback at
+Tidborough he was to have spent all his holidays at home. He was
+not, for the future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never
+spent any of his holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down
+in London with this war on? He made his land-work his excuse, most
+plausible. He spent all his holidays with friends whose homes were
+in rural districts.
+
+Then it turned out that he had not, as he had given out, been always
+at the house of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living
+with a friend, a fellow-pupil at the tutor's; on land-work truly,
+but in gross deception, and in worse.
+
+It came out quite by chance and in a way very horrible. Harry
+discovered it. Harry, early in 1915, had been absorbed into the
+Home Office. His work was very largely in connection with a special
+secret service body dealing with spies. He examined in private
+arrested suspects. He advised and he directed on criminal matters
+therewith connected. He was working, under immense pressure,
+terrible hours. He was hardly ever in to dinner. He often was away
+all night. He frequently was away travelling for days together.
+When he was seen he showed signs of strain to Rosalie.
+
+He came in one evening about nine o'clock. It was early in 1916.
+Huggo was then seventeen. Rosalie heard him in the hall and heard
+that some one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-room door,
+say, "You'd better go in there and get something to eat. I'll attend
+to you presently."
+
+His voice was iron hard. Who was with him? What was the matter?
+
+He came in to her. His face was iron hard. He shut the door. "Do
+you know who I've got here with me? Do you know where I've been?
+Do you know what's happened?"
+
+His manner was extraordinary. His voice was like heavy axes, thudding.
+His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were
+always happening in these appalling days. She said, "Oh, what is
+it, Harry?"
+
+"It's Huggo."
+
+"Huggo?"
+
+"Huggo!"
+
+Like axes! It seemed that, of his passion (and she never before
+had seen passion in his face), he scarcely could speak. He fought
+for words. When they came out they thudded out.
+
+"Do you know where Huggo's been this past month?"
+
+"With the Thorntons, his friends."
+
+"He's not. He's lied. He's been living with some blackguard friend
+in rooms in Turnhampton, in Buckinghamshire."
+
+"Harry! Doing what? Land-work?"
+
+"Land-work! Loafing! Drinking!"
+
+"Drinking? Huggo?"
+
+"Listen to me. This is what I've come to. This is what that boy's
+come to. I had to go down to this place Turnhampton about a spy
+they'd arrested. He was to come up in the police court there this
+morning. They took the other cases first. Court going to be cleared
+for my man. I sat there, waiting. The second case--this is what
+I've come to--was my son, my boy, Huggo, brought up from the cells
+where he'd spent the night. My son! Drunk and disorderly. He didn't
+see me. The police gave him a character. I sat there and listened
+to it. My son! A visitor, the police described him. Supposed to
+be working on some farm. Not a desirable character in the village.
+My son! Always loafing about. Always in the inn. Last night drunk.
+Assaulted the landlady. My son! Arrested. My son!"
+
+He turned away.
+
+She cried, "Harry! What happened?"
+
+He turned on her in a violence renewed. "I declare to you that if
+he had gone to prison I would not have raised a hand to stop him.
+He'd had the grace--or he'd all the time had the guile--to give an
+assumed name. Would I have confessed, to save him, that he was my
+son? I believe I couldn't. He got off with a fine. I got hold of
+him. I've brought him back. He's here."
+
+She went to the bell. "I must get you some food."
+
+He stayed her. "Food! I'll tell you what to get me. I'll tell you
+what to get that boy. Get me a home. Get him a home. That's what's
+caused this. Do you know what he said to me coming up in the
+train? I said to him, 'Why are you always away like this? Why, in
+the holidays, are you never at home?' He said, 'What home is there
+for me to come to? Who's ever there?' He's right. Who is? Are you?"
+
+She said quietly, "Harry, not now. Dear, you are not yourself."
+
+He was not and continued not to be. "Well, answer my question. Are
+you ever in the home?"
+
+She implored, "Oh, my dear!"
+
+He was not to be placated. "Where is the home?"
+
+"Harry!"
+
+"Where's Doda?"
+
+She began in her spirit to move. "Staying with friends."
+
+"Where's Benji?"
+
+"You perfectly well know. Staying with friends."
+
+"Where are you?"
+
+She put her hand to her bosom. "Oh, beware me, Harry. Here."
+
+"For the night. Are you ever in the children's home?"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"That sophistry! I have my work!"
+
+"I've mine."
+
+He smote his hand upon the mantelshelf by which he stood and turned
+and left the room.
+
+Strike on!
+
+Of course it healed and was obliterated and all passed over. Of
+course Harry forgave the boy. Of course he was handsome to the boy's
+excuses. Drunk! Of course it was just a slightly tipsy ebullition.
+Had been in the hot sun in the fields all day and was affected by
+a too long slake of beer. Assaulted the landlady! She'd been rough
+mannered and objected to his noise and got in the way and he had
+pushed her. "The boy's all right," Harry said to Rosalie after,
+the boy forgiven, he sat and talked with her. "He's got no vice.
+How could he have? It was wrong, it was deceitful, going off like
+that to that place without telling us. But he meant no harm. He's
+explained. He's genuinely sorry. He's just got out of hand a bit.
+They all have, the young people, in this war time. The boy's all
+right. He's eighteen in a few months. I'll see if I can speed it
+up a bit getting him into the army. He's magnificently keen. He'll
+do fine, God bless him. Think no more about it, old lady. In the
+whole business I'm only sick with myself that I lost my temper with
+him as I did--and with you, my dear, and with you." And he put out
+his hand to her.
+
+"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward."
+
+"And with you." Of course he was distressed he had been violent
+with her. Of course that painful outbreak was healed, obliterated,
+put away. He had expressed his utter regret. He'd been badly
+rattled with this infernal war all that week; this business on the
+top of it had been a most frightful shock to him. What had he said?
+Forgive, Rosalie, forgive! Of course she had nothing to forgive.
+Forgiveness also was for her to ask. As to the point thus violently
+raised, he saw, didn't he, the clear impossibility of her giving up
+her work, war work as much as his own, at such a time? Not to say
+the unnecessity of it--the children were growing up... it clearly
+could be done now. The position she held...
+
+He said, "I know, old lady." He said, "I know, I know," and sighed.
+
+Ah, from that vision of him saying, "I know," and sighing, and from
+the mute appeal that then was in his eyes, from that--strike on!
+
+Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo's share in all
+that episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo
+had not come away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry.
+She put before the boy how terribly his father had felt the shame
+of it, how almost broken-hearted he had been. "He idolises you,
+Huggo. You're always his eldest son. He thinks the world of you."
+
+Huggo took it all with that familiar air of his of being the
+party that was aggrieved. He listened with impatience that was not
+concealed and he had no contrition to display. "Well, mother, it's
+all over. What is the good of going on and on about it? I've had
+it by the hour from father. He's understood. What is the good?"
+
+She very lovingly talked to him. He all the time had an argument.
+He kept up his own case. He presently said, "And I do wish, mother,
+especially now I'm going into the army soon, I do wish you'd drop
+that 'Huggo.' You can't tell how I hate it. You might just as well
+call me Baby. It's a baby's name."
+
+"Oh, Huggo, it was the name we loved you by."
+
+"Well, I can't stick it. My name's Hugh."
+
+Strike on!
+
+There he is. He's in the army. He's utterly splendid in his uniform.
+How proud of him she is! They no longer gave commissions direct
+from civil life; but he'd been in the cadet corps at Tidborough and
+Harry was able to get him direct into an officer cadet battalion.
+He's off to France in what seems next to no time. He's home on leave
+and there's nothing that's too good for him and her purse at his
+disposal when he's run through Harry's generous allowance. He seems
+to get through an immense amount of money on leave. He's never at
+home. He's often out all night. Well, he's on leave. He's fighting
+for his country. You can't be anything but utterly lenient with
+a boy that's fighting for his country. He went back. Three days
+after he was supposed to have gone back Rosalie came face to face
+with him in Piccadilly. He was with some flapper type of girl, in
+the detestable phrase (as she thought it) by which the detestable
+products of the war (as she thought them) were called. He was just
+getting into a cab. She called out to him, astounded. She heard him
+swear and he jumped into the cab and was driven away. She didn't
+tell Harry. Harry found out. It came out that the boy for overstaying
+his leave was to be court-martialled. She did not know what Harry
+did. She noticed in those days what a beaten look Harry's face was
+getting. It was, of course, the war strain; but it only was first
+evident to her in that time of the court-martial. He scarcely spoke
+to her. She did not know what he did, but she knew he had much
+influence and exerted it at no sparing of himself. The boy got off
+with a severe reprimand and was returned to France. And to be in
+France, out there, in that ever-present shadow of death, was to be
+excused everything and to be forgiven everything.
+
+Miraculously the war ended. The boy had had rather more than
+two years of it. He applied for immediate demobilisation as being
+a student, and he was one of the batch that got away immediately
+on that ground. He was nearly twenty then. Now what was he going
+to do? Oxford, of course, Harry said, and then the Bar, as always
+intended. Huggo, larking about in uniform long after he ought to
+have been out of it, was in immense feather with himself. He didn't
+say No and he didn't say Yes to the Oxford idea. All he said was
+that he voted all that wasn't discussed the very day he got back
+(it was more than six weeks since he had got back). He surely, he
+said, was entitled to a bit of a holiday first, after all he had
+been through. London seemed to be swarming with thousands of young
+men who claimed they were entitled to a bit of a holiday first
+after all they had been through. Huggo was never in the house. He
+had picked up with a man, Telfer, whom he had met in France, a big
+business man, Huggo described him as, and he seemed to spend all
+his time with this man. Telfer was a much older man than Huggo.
+Huggo brought him to dinner one night. It was rather a shock to
+Rosalie, meeting the man of whom she had heard so much. Huggo had
+never said anything about his age. He must have been quite forty.
+He had dull, cloudy eyes and a bad mouth. He called Huggo "Kid,"
+using the word in every sentence, and it was easy to see from
+Harry's manner that Telfer was repellent to him. Easy, also, and
+not nice, to see Telfer's dominion over Huggo. Not nice to hear
+Huggo's loud, delighted laughter at everything addressed to him
+by Telfer. Harry spoke less and less as the meal advanced. The two
+left early; they were going to a music hall. When they had gone
+Rosalie and Harry looked at one another across the table and by
+their look exchanged a great deal.
+
+"That's a detestable companion for Huggo," Harry said. "Rosalie,
+there's been enough of this. The boy must get to work."
+
+It appeared, in interviews following that evening, that Huggo was
+not a bit keen on the Oxford idea. He wanted to go into business.
+He was not clear as to precisely what kind of business, but he
+wanted the freedom and the excitement of earning his own living,
+not to be cooped up at the "Varsity" like back at school again.
+Harry took a firm line. The boy resented the firm line. Well, anyway,
+he argued, he couldn't go till October, it was only June now; all
+right, he'd go in October--if he had to. Harry made arrangements
+for some reading through the summer preparatory to Oxford. It upset
+plans made by Huggo. He thought it "uncommonly hard" that he should
+have to spend the whole summer "swotting." Oh, well, if he had to,
+he had to. He had an invitation for a month for that immediate time
+to Scotland. The reading was arranged to start a month ahead. He
+didn't in the least want to be out of London just when there was so
+much going on and all his pals here; but anything was better than
+sticking this kind of life at home, father always at him; so he'd
+go to Scotland; he supposed he was entitled to a bit of country
+holiday before they cooped him up? He went to Scotland.
+
+Twice during that month Rosalie thought she saw Huggo in the West
+End. But London was full of young men of the Huggo type. It wasn't
+likely.
+
+It turned out to have been very likely. It turned out that Huggo
+had never been in Scotland at all but in London all the time. And
+much worse than that. One evening, towards the end of the so-called
+Scotland month, Huggo unexpectedly walked into the house. Rosalie
+was sitting with Harry in the dining-room over the end of dinner.
+Doda was upstairs putting last touches to herself before going out
+to a dance. Doda was eighteen then (it was 1919), had left school,
+and, with a large circle of friends, was going out a great deal.
+Benji was still at school, at Milchester. Harry had never resumed
+relations with beloved Tidborough.
+
+The door opened and Huggo walked in. His face was very flushed and
+his articulation a little odd. When, after greetings, he sat down,
+he sat down with a curiously unsteady thud and gave a little laugh
+and said, "Whoa, mare, steady!"
+
+It appeared, after explanations, that he had come to talk about
+"this Oxford business." "I really can't very well go to Oxford now,
+father. I really ought to start in some money-making business now,
+and I've got a jolly good opening promised me. I really ought to
+take it."
+
+The decanters were on the table. He had already taken a glass of
+port. He filled another and drank it.
+
+"The fact is, I'm--married."
+
+There were some hard and bitter things said between his father and
+the boy. The boy fumbled--he obviously had been drinking--between
+would not or could not say very much as to who it was that he had
+married.
+
+Harry said, "Who are her people? That's a plain question, isn't
+it?"
+
+Huggo, very red, increasingly difficult to understand, said, "It's
+a plain enough question. It's a plain enough question. I've come
+here to be perfectly frank and plain and plain enough question.
+The fact is I don't know very much about her plain enough people."
+
+Rosalie broke out of the frozen stupefaction that had numbed her.
+"Huggo, you must know. You must know who her people are."
+
+Huggo turned a very slow gaze around from his father to his mother.
+He looked at her. He said with astonishing violence, "Well, I
+tell you I don't. People! What have her people got to do with it?
+I haven't married her people. She's my little girl and I've married
+her, not her people. Isn't that enough for you?"
+
+Harry got up and went over to him. "Look here, you'd better run
+along. You're not in a fit state to talk to your mother. I'm not
+sure you're in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what
+you're saying. You'd better go, my boy. We'll go into this in the
+morning. Come round early in the morning. We'll settle it then."
+
+He was passing with Huggo through the door when Doda, equipped
+for her dance, came running down the stairs. "Hull-o, Huggo! Why,
+I haven't seen you for weeks. Where have you been?"
+
+Huggo, standing unsteadily, unsteadily regarded her. "Point is,
+where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet
+you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't
+seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching
+you at the Riddle Club the other night told me some pretty fierce--"
+
+"Oh, dash, I've left my fan," cried Doda, and turned and ran back
+up the stairs.
+
+Huggo called, "I say, Dods. I'm in a row. So'll you be one day, if
+you don't look out for yourself."
+
+Doda's voice: "Oh, dry up--you fool!"
+
+Strike on!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+
+
+
+Her Doda! The one that was her baby girl, that was her tiny daughter!
+The one that was to be her woman treasury in which she'd pour her
+woman love; that was to be her self's own self, her heart's own
+heart, her tiny woman-bud to be a woman with her in the house of
+Harry and of Huggo! Her Doda!
+
+Look, there she is! There's lovely Doda! She's fourteen. It's early
+in 1915, in the first twelve months of the war. (That war!) She's
+at that splendid school. She's been there nearly three years. She
+loves it. She's never so happy as when she's there, except, judging
+by her chatter, when she's away in the holidays at the house of
+one of her friends. It's at home--when she is at home--that she's
+never really happy. She's so dull, she always says, at home. She
+always wants to be doing something, to be seeing something, to be
+playing with somebody. She can't bear being in the house. She can't
+bear being, of an evening, just alone with Rosalie. "Oh, dear!"
+she's always saying. "Oh, dear, I do wish it would hurry up and be
+term time again."
+
+"Darling, you are a restless person," Rosalie says.
+
+"Well, mother, it is dull just sticking here."
+
+"You know how Benji loves to have you home, Doda. Benji simply
+lives for you. I've never known a brother so devoted. You ought to
+think of Benji sometimes, Doda."
+
+"Well, I can't be always thinking of Benji. I'm surely entitled to
+be with my own friends sometimes. I don't ask Benji to be devoted
+to me."
+
+She's strangely given to expressions like that: "I didn't ask
+for"--whatever circumstance or obligation it might be that was
+irksome to her. "Not traditions--precedents!" The watchword of the
+school was strangely to be traced in her attitude, still in her
+childish years, towards a hundred commonplaces of the daily life.
+She was always curiously older than her years. She seemed to have
+a natural bent away from traditionally childish things and towards
+attractions not associated with childhood. She did excellently
+well at the school. She was, her reports said, uncommonly quick
+and vivid at her lessons. She was always in a form above her years.
+Her friends, while she was smallish, were always the elder girls,
+and the elder girls gave her welcome place among them. "Perhaps a
+shade precocious," wrote the lady principal in one of the laconic,
+penetrating sentences with which, above her signature, each girl's
+report was terminated: and, in a later term, "Has 'Forward!' for
+her banner, but should remember 'not too fast'."
+
+"Gripes! I know what she's referring to," said Doda, seeing it,
+and laughed, obviously flattered.
+
+"Your expressions, Doda!"
+
+"Huggo uses it."
+
+"They're wretched even in Huggo. But Huggo's a boy. You're a girl."
+
+"Well, mother, I didn't ask to be a girl."
+
+"Doda, that's merely silly."
+
+"A lot of us say it, that's all I know."
+
+"Then, darling, a lot of you are silly."
+
+"Oh, I shall be glad when next week I go to the Fergussons. It is
+dull."
+
+Look, there she is. She's sixteen. She's beautiful. She's pretty
+as a picture, and she knows she is. She's grown out of the rather
+early fullness of figure that had been hers. She's slim and tall
+and straight and supple and slender as a willow wand. If she had her
+hair up and her skirts lengthened (skirts then were only starting
+on their diminution to the knees), she'd pass for twenty anywhere,
+and a twenty singularly attractive, curiously self-possessed,
+strikingly suggestive in her pale and beautiful countenance, and
+in an alternating sleepiness and glinting in her eyes; strikingly
+suggestive of, well, strikingly suggestive according to the
+predilictions and the principles of the beholder.
+
+This was in 1917. She was beginning rather to hate school now. She
+wanted to be out and doing some war work of some kind. Oh, those
+sickening scarves and things they were eternally knitting, that
+wasn't war work. It was fun at first. They were fed to death with
+doing them now. She didn't much want to go into a hospital or into
+any of these women's corps. They were a jolly sight too cooped up
+in those things from what she'd heard. She wanted to go into one of
+the Government offices and do clerical work. Several of the school
+Old Girls who had been there with her were doing that and it was
+the most ripping rag. Of course you had to work, and of course it
+was jolly good patriotic work, but you had a topping time in many
+ways. That was what she wanted to do. Oh, mother, do let her chuck
+school now and get to it! Not till she was seventeen? Well, it was
+sickening. Well, it was only another term, thank goodness.
+
+It was in the holidays--in her brief days at home of the holidays--in
+which these wishes were expressed, that Rosalie found Doda was
+corresponding with officers at the front.
+
+Doda was appallingly untidy in her habits. She was out one evening
+to a party--she managed to get a considerable number of parties
+into her dull days at home. Rosalie, come in from Field's, peeped
+into her bedroom to find her. She had not known that Doda was going
+out. The bedroom cried aloud that Doda had gone out. Drawers were
+open and articles of dress hanging out of them. One drawer, no
+doubt stubborn in its yieldings, was bodily out in the middle of the
+room. Clothes were on the floor. Clothes strewed the bed. Powder
+was all over the mirror. It was as if a whirlwind had passed through
+the room.
+
+"Powder!" murmured Rosalie.
+
+The state of the room dismayed her. The intense orderliness of
+her own character forbade her ringing for a maid. She simply could
+not look at untidiness like that without tidying it. She started
+to tidy. Doda's box was open. Its contents looked as if a dog had
+burrowed in it, throwing up the things as he worked down. If anything
+was to go in, everything must first come out. Rosalie lifted out
+an initial clearance.
+
+There lay scattered beneath it quite half a dozen photographs of
+officers in khaki.
+
+There were all inscribed. "To the school kid." "Wishing you were
+here." "With kisses." "Till we meet." And with slangy nicknames of
+the writers. There lay with them a number of letters, all in their
+envelopes. There lay also a sheet of paper covered in Doda's bold
+handwriting. It began "Wonderful Old Thing."
+
+Rosalie had not touched these evidences of an unknown interest in
+Doda's life. She stooped, staring upon them, the lifted bundle of
+clothes in her hand. The stare that took in "Wonderful Old Thing"
+took in also the first few lines. They were not nice. But she
+oughtn't to read it. One didn't do that kind of thing. She replaced
+the bundle and closed the box. Then she tidied the room and wiped
+the mirror.
+
+Early next morning, immediately on coming out of her bath, she went
+in to Doda. She opened the door softly and she distinctly saw the
+lids of Doda's eyes flash up and close again.
+
+"Doda!"
+
+Doda pretended to be asleep. Rosalie had sat up for Doda the
+previous night but had said nothing to her either of her discovery
+or of going to an invitation without having told her. Doda wasn't
+pretending to be asleep because she feared trouble. She was
+pretending to be asleep just because she had no wish for an early
+talk with her mother.
+
+There was a little pang at the heart of Rosalie.
+
+But it was just that the child wasn't demonstrative of her affections.
+None of them were. Even Benji not really what you would call
+demonstrative. How beautiful the child was! Her Doda! How little
+she ever saw of her!
+
+She called her again.
+
+Doda opened her eyes. "Hullo, mother."
+
+Just that. No more. They were different, the children.
+
+She sat down on Doda's bed and began to talk to her. Tidiness!
+"Doda, your room as you left it last night when you went out was
+simply terrible. How can you?"
+
+"Oh, I can't be tidy," said Doda. "I simply can't. It's no good
+trying."
+
+"Darling, you ought to try. It's so odd. I'm so fearfully tidy.
+It's almost a vice with me. One would have thought you'd have had
+it too."
+
+Doda said indifferently, "I don't see why." She said, "Oh, I am
+sleepy. It's a matter of teaching when you're a kid, that sort of
+thing. You're tidy, but you never taught me to be tidy."
+
+Rosalie said some more of encouragement to tidiness. She then said,
+"And there's another thing, Doda. I think you ought not to have
+rushed off like that to the Trevors last night without telling me."
+
+"Mother, you knew where I was. I told the maids."
+
+"You should have consulted me, Doda."
+
+The child assumed the Huggo look. "Mother, how could I? They only
+asked me on the telephone at tea-time. How could I have consulted
+you?"
+
+"In the same way as you were invited. On the telephone."
+
+"Well, I never thought about it. Why should I if I had? I knew
+you'd have agreed. You wouldn't have stopped me, would you? It's
+dull enough, goodness knows."
+
+"Doda, what I've come in to talk about is this. When I was tidying
+your room last night--"
+
+Doda sat up. "Did you tidy my room?"
+
+"I couldn't possibly leave a room like that. Well, I went to tidy
+your box--"
+
+"I'll get up," said Doda. She jumped very quickly out of bed and
+put on a wrapper and her slippers. "Yes, well?"
+
+"Are you writing to men at the front, Doda?"
+
+"Every girl is. It's a thing to do. It helps them."
+
+"Are they friends of yours, dear? Personal friends."
+
+"They're brothers of girls I've stayed with."
+
+"All?"
+
+"Practically all. There're not more than two or three. Lonely
+soldiers, they're called. They used to advertise. It helps them.
+There's no harm in it, is there?"
+
+"I haven't suggested there is, Doda."
+
+"I can see you're going to, though. If you ask me--" She stopped.
+
+"I don't think I like the idea, quite. I never did when I heard of
+it being done. Why should they send you their photographs?"
+
+"But what's the harm? Why shouldn't they?"
+
+"Darling, it's I am asking you. I'm your mother."
+
+"Well, if you ask me--" Doda walked over to the window. She stood
+there a moment looking out. She suddenly turned. "If you ask me, I
+don't think it's right to--Of course if you think it right to--if
+you've been reading my letters--"
+
+"Doda, I haven't. I just saw them there. But I'd like to read them,
+Doda. May I?"
+
+"They're private letters. I don't see how you can expect me to show
+you private letters."
+
+Rosalie went over to Doda and stood by her and stroked her hair.
+"Doda, I think we'll look at it like this. Let me read the letters
+and we'll talk about them and see if it's nice to go on writing
+to the men, in each individual case. That certainly you shall do,
+continue writing, if it all seems nice to us, together, Doda. If
+you won't show them to me--well, let us say if you'd rather not show
+them to me--then I'll ask you just to burn them and we'll forget
+it."
+
+Doda stepped violently away from the hand that stroked her hair.
+"No. I won't show them."
+
+"Then it's to burn them, Doda."
+
+Doda looked slowly around the room. Her face was not nice. She said
+sullenly, "There's no fire here."
+
+"Bring them down with you to the breakfast-room. Your father will
+have gone. We'll see Benji's not there."
+
+She went to Doda and kissed her on the forehead. Doda shut her
+eyes. Her hand on Doda's shoulder could feel Doda quivering. She
+went to the door and at the door said, "And the photographs, dear.
+I should bring them too."
+
+She had long finished breakfast when at last Doda came down. The
+tall, slim, beautiful and pale creature appeared in the doorway.
+She walked towards the fire, her head held high, her brown hair in
+a thick tail to her waist. She had a packet in her hands. As she
+began to stoop over the fire she suddenly uprighted herself and
+turned upon her mother. She said violently, "Perhaps you'd like to
+count them?"
+
+Rosalie said very softly, "Doda!"
+
+Doda bent to the flames and pressed the packet down upon them. She
+stood watching them mount about it. A half-burnt photograph slid
+onto the hearth. She gave a sound that was a catching at her breath
+and swiftly stooped and snatched the burning fragment up and cast it
+on its fellows. The leaping flames died down. She turned violently
+towards Rosalie, seated at the table watching her, her heart
+sick. That tall, slim, beautiful creature whose face had been pale
+and was habitually pale was in her face crimson, her slight young
+bosom heaving, her eyes, so often sleepy, flashing, her young hands
+clenched. "I call it a shame!" Her voice was high and raw. "I call
+it a shame! I call it wicked! I call it abominable! I call it an--an
+outrage!"
+
+Rosalie said, "Doda! Doda, I haven't reproached you. I haven't
+reproved you. If they had been letters you could have shown me,
+yes, then a shame--"
+
+The child called out, "I'm nearly seventeen! I call it an outrage!"
+
+Rosalie got up and went to her. "Darling, they couldn't be shown.
+They're just burnt. They're forgotten." She put out inviting arms.
+"My poor Doda!"
+
+That child, almost touched by her arms, brushed herself from the
+arms. "Why should I have things like this done to me by you?"
+
+"Doda, I am your mother. You have a duty--"
+
+"Well, I won't have a duty! Why should I have a duty? I didn't
+ask to be born, did I? You chose for me to be born, didn't you? I
+didn't choose it. I'll never forget this. Never, never, never!"
+
+Tears rushed into her eyes and leapt from her eyes. She gave an
+impassioned gesture. She rushed from the room.
+
+Strike on!
+
+Look at her. There she is. She's only eighteen but she's woman
+now. Grown-up. "Out," as one would have said in the old and stupid
+days, but out much wider than the freest budding woman then. It's
+1919. They've caught, the rising generation, the flag of liberty
+that the war flamed across the world; license, the curmudgeons
+call it; liberty, the young set free. It's 1919. She's been a year
+war-working in one of the huge barracks run up all over London for
+the multitudes of women clerks the Government departments needed
+and, the war over, not too quickly can give up. She loves it. She's
+made a host of friends. Her friends are all the girls of wealthy
+parents, like herself, or of parents of position if not of means;
+and all, like her, are far from with complaint against the war
+that's given them this priceless avenue away from home. She loves
+it. Of course she doesn't love the actual work. Who would? What
+she loves is the constant titillation of it. The titillation of
+getting down there of a morning and of the greetings and the meetings
+and the rapt resumptions of the past day's fun; the titillation
+of watching the clock for lunch and of those lunches, here to-day,
+to-morrow there, and of the rush to get back not too late. The
+titillation of watching the clock for tea, and of tea, and then,
+most sharpest titillation of them all, watching the clock for--time!;
+for--off!; for--out!; away! That is the charm of it in detail. The
+charm in general, as once expressed to Rosalie by one of Doda's
+friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, "You see, it gets you
+through the day."
+
+That's it. The night's all right. There's nearly always something
+doing for the night. It's just the day would be so hopeless were
+there not this lively way of "getting through the day." That's it,
+for Doda.
+
+Until she found her feet--not in her office, but at home at first
+emergence from her school--until she found her feet she often used
+to be kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she
+found her feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every
+girl of Doda's association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda
+very much easier, at that, than for the generality, to establish
+her position in the house. By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was
+conducting her life as she pleased, as nineteen manifestly should.
+In 1921, when she was twenty, the war work was over and she was
+"getting through the day" much as she lived the night. It was pretty
+easy to get through the day in 1921. That which the curmudgeons
+called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921 held by charter
+and by right prescriptive.
+
+Look at her. There she is. She's lovelier yet, if that which was
+her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue. She's always out
+somewhere, or she's always off somewhere, or she's always coming
+in from somewhere. Her eyes, in presentation more pronounced, have
+always got that sleepy look or got that glinting look. She never
+talks much at home. She seems to keep her talking for her friends
+and she never brings her friends home. She's on good terms with
+Rosalie. That's the expression for it. She was to have been a woman
+treasury into which was to be poured by Rosalie all her woman love.
+She was to have been a woman with her mother in the house of Harry
+and of Huggo. But that's all done. She's not a daughter to her
+mother. She never asked to be born to her mother, as once she told
+her mother, and though that never now again is said it is the basis
+of her stand. She owes no obligations. They just meet. They get on
+very pleasantly. She's on good terms with Rosalie.
+
+It is odd--or else it isn't odd but only natural--that in all the
+pictures seen by Rosalie there scarcely is a picture that ever shows
+the children all together. They hardly ever, within the compass of
+her pictures, were together. As in their schoolhood, so much more
+in adolescence, they never showed a least desire for one another's
+company. They had their friends, each one, and much preferred
+their friends. You'd not, it's true, say that of Benji; but Benji
+in fraternal wish had to take what was offered him and there was
+nothing offered him by Doda; by Huggo less than nothing.
+
+Benji!
+
+Look, here's the Benji one; the good, the quiet, gentle one; the
+one that never gave a thought of trouble, Benji.
+
+Her Benji! The one that came after disfavour, after remorse; that
+came with tears, with thank God, charged-with-meaning tears. The
+littlest one. The one that was so tiny wee beside the big and sturdy
+others. Her last one! Her Benji!
+
+Look, there he is. Always so quiet, gentle, good. Always, though
+snubbed, so passionately fond of Doda. Look, there he is. He's
+at Milchester, in his spectacles, the darling! He's always in his
+books. He isn't good at games. He does so well at school. Oh, isn't
+Harry proud of him and fond of him! Oh, doesn't Harry often sigh
+and wish he could have gone to Tidborough to win those prizes and
+those honours there. But Tidborough's closed to Harry, Harry says.
+Look, there goes Benji! It's 1919. He's sixteen. It's Speech Day
+at Milchester. He's in the Sixth. He's won all those prizes. She's
+holding two and Harry's holding three, and there he goes to take
+the Heriot Gold Medal. All the great hall is simply cheering Benji!
+The Head is saying that he's the youngest boy that's ever won the
+Heriot. Look, there's the Bishop handing it, and shaking Benji by
+the hand, and patting Benji on the back, and saying something to
+him. You can't possibly hear what it is, every one is cheering so.
+Look, here he comes with the medal, in his spectacles, the darling!
+She can scarcely see, her eyes are brimming so. Harry's quite
+shameless. Harry's got tears standing on his cheeks and he's set
+down the prizes and is stretching both his hands out to the boy.
+Feel, that's his hand--her Benji's hand--snuggled a moment in hers,
+and then he turns to his father and is eagerly whispering to his
+father, his spectacles rubbing his father's head, the darling! He's
+more demonstrative to his father than he is to her. She feels it
+rather sometimes. He's awfully sweet to her, but, you can't help
+noticing it, it's more his gracious manner than the outpouring she'd
+give anything to have. It's funny how he always seems the tiniest
+atom strange with her as if he didn't know her very well or hadn't
+known her very long. It sometimes pains a little. He's different
+with his father. He loves being with his father. And doesn't Harry
+love having the boy with him! Harry idolises the boy. Of course
+Huggo is Harry's eldest, and whatever Huggo's disappointments,
+these men--at least these perfect Harry type of men--have for their
+eldest boy within their hearts a place no other child can quite
+exactly fill. There's some especial yearning that the eldest seems
+to call. There's some incorporation of the father's self, there's
+some reflection that he sees, there's some communion that he seems
+to find, that makes "My eldest son" a thing apart. But, with that
+reservation, and that's ingrained in men, it's Benji that's the world
+to Harry. He's going to Ox-ford. He's going to have the Bar career
+that Huggo wouldn't take. But Harry thinks there's some especial
+wonders going to come to Benji. He says the boy's a dreamer. He
+says the boy's a thinker. "Benji's got something rare about him,
+Rosalie," he says. "That boy's got a mark on him that genius has.
+You wait and see, old lady. It's Benji's going to make the old name
+shine!" Strike on!
+
+It is odd, sad, significant, that there is scarcely a picture that
+shows together those three children, or even two of them. It's 1921
+now and drawing very close to Finis; but always the old detachment,
+the seeming want of mutual love, appears to hold the three apart.
+Doda is sometimes glimpsed, no more, with Benji, always putting off
+or chilling off her brother for her friends; sometimes she's seen
+with Huggo, meeting him and he her, more like an acquaintance of
+their sets than like fruit of the same parents; familiar, apparently,
+with one another's lives: referring to places of amusement by both
+frequented, as had been done, in instance, on that night of Huggo's
+announcement of his marriage when with a note that rung sinister
+he had bantered Doda and she had turned and run upstairs. But no
+more than that. The children seem to have no mutual love. They're
+different.
+
+It's 1921. Huggo was scarcely ever seen now. He had married in haste
+and had in haste repented. He also had played a trick, involving
+a sum of money, on his father. His wife, as it appeared, had been
+met at some dancing club and the brief courtship had continued
+anywhere but at her home. Of her home Huggo knew only what she
+told him; and what she told him was only what she could invent. She
+was then, at their first meeting, in the uniform of a war service
+corps to which she belonged. She said her father was a clergyman.
+
+"A clergyman's daughter!" cried Huggo bitterly, acquainting Rosalie
+only three months after his marriage of his marriage's failure. "A
+clergyman's daughter! That's what they all say--those! Wasn't I a
+fool to be caught out by that! Oh, wasn't I a fool! If you want to
+know what she really was, she was a teashop waitress, in the city
+somewhere. If you want to know what her reverend father in the country
+was, is, he doesn't live in the country; he lives in Holloway, and
+he doesn't live in a rectory in Holloway, he lives in a baker's
+shop. That's what he is, a baker! That's what I've done for
+myself, married a waitress! Yes, and then you, you and father, when
+she comes whining here and complains I ill-treat her and keep her
+without money, you two take her part and send her back to me with
+your championship and get me here to pijaw me about my duty to my
+pretty young wife! Well, now you know, now you know, and you can
+tell father what my pretty young wife is--how she deceived me.
+Deceived me! Now you know."
+
+Rosalie said, "Huggo, you deceived her."
+
+Huggo had been leaving and now very violently went. "That's your
+tone, is it? I might have known! That's all you can say, is it? To
+see me ruin my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It's not
+I that's ruined my life. It's you. There, now I've told you! I can
+see things now. What sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort
+of a home have I ever had? Have I ever had a mother? When I was a
+kid did I ever have a mother like other kids have? I can see things
+now. A mother! I can't ever remember a time when I wasn't in the
+charge of some servant or governess or other. You said this afternoon
+before father that I didn't love you. Did you ever teach me to love
+you? By God, I can't remember it. By God, I can't."
+
+Strike on!
+
+Also that trick, touching a sum of money, upon his father. When
+he first made known his marriage, and it was obvious he must have
+his way and be set up to start in life, he had also, as he had said,
+the chance of a lucrative business. It was the kind of thing he
+liked. It was the kind of thing he was keen on. It was a motor-car
+business. There was a little syndicate that was putting a new car
+on the market. They'd got works, just outside London somewhere.
+They'd got show-rooms in the West End. And they'd got an absolutely
+first-class article. That chap Telfer was one of the directors; a
+first-class chap called Turner was another; they'd let him in for
+eight thousand pounds and he'd be absolutely set up for life and
+be pulling in an immense fortune in no time. You will, won't you,
+father?
+
+Of course Harry forgave the boy, his eldest son. The marriage was
+done, what was the use of being unkind or stupid about it? Of course
+Rosalie welcomed the wife, Lucy, the prettiest creature, a tiny
+shade common, perhaps, but a sweet little soul with always about
+her a pathetic air of being afraid of something (of when it should
+come out precisely what she was, as the event proved). Of course
+Harry paid over the eight thousand pounds. Huggo took, "to start
+with," as he said, a tiny furnished flat in Bayswater. Rosalie
+installed him and his bride therein and left him, on their first
+night there, ever so gay, so confident, so happy. Her Huggo!
+
+In two months it all came out. Lawyers are notoriously lax in making
+their own wills. Harry, who could master a case quicker than any
+man at the Bar, and could see to the soul and beyond it of a hostile
+witness a minute after getting on his feet to cross-examine, was
+fooled blind by the syndicate that was going to put the absolutely
+first-class article on the market. Whether it was that there never
+had been a business, and that Harry's inspection of works, visits
+to show-rooms, and examination of books, was all part of an elaborate
+swindle carried out with the aid of some one who possessed these
+accessories; or whether it was that the whole thing was bought up
+cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never clearly known to Harry
+and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue the shock. "I'll
+take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie," Harry said. "I
+can't bear to find the boy out deeper. It's done. There's no sense
+in being stupid or unkind about it."
+
+What happened was that the car enterprise never was an enterprise
+at all except an enterprise to get eight thousand pounds into the
+possession of the syndicate. Nothing ever was properly announced
+by Huggo. It just "came out." It "came out" that the syndicate
+was not established in the West End show-rooms but in three rather
+dingy offices in the city. It "came out" that the syndicate was not
+running a motor-car business but a business cryptically described
+as "Agents." Huggo said disaster had overtaken the car enterprise
+and that the syndicate, rescuing what remained of the smash, had
+pluckily set up on another line. He thought he could scrape along.
+It was a knockout of course, but he thought he could scrape along.
+
+"But what I can't make out, old man," said Harry, when Huggo had
+stumbled through an entirely non-explanatory explanation of the
+syndicate's business in its new capacity as agents, "What I can't
+make out, old man, is why you should trade under another name. Why,
+'So-and-So, and So-and-So, and So-and-So, Agents'--I can't ever
+remember the names? Why not 'Telfer, Occleve and Turner'?"
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact, father--I want you to know everything
+without any concealment--"
+
+"I know you do, old man. I know you do."
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact, that's just a bit of useful swank. The
+names we're trading under are swagger names and we think it sounds
+better."
+
+"Occleve sounds pretty good to me, Huggo. We've been a good long
+way on Occleve, the Occleves."
+
+"Well, that's what they think, father, and of course, as I've told
+you, they know infinitely more about business than I do. They'll
+explain the whole thing to you any time you like. It's all absolutely
+above-board, father."
+
+"My dearest old boy, don't talk like that. Of course it is. We're
+only so grieved, your mother and I, that you should have had such
+a setback so early. But remember, old man, the great thing is not
+to let your wife suffer. No pinching or screwing for her, Huggo.
+Always your wife first, Huggo. We'll give you at the rate of three
+hundred a year just until all's going swimmingly, and that's to
+keep Lucy merry and bright, see?"
+
+It was shortly after that it all came out that the thing was a
+ramp, the motor-car business never in existence; shortly after that
+it came out Huggo was neglecting his wife; shortly after that the
+high words to Rosalie, telling her how his wife had deceived him;
+shortly after that that the syndicate, amazingly prosperous, moved
+into offices better situated and handsomely appointed; shortly
+after that it came out that the business of the syndicate was in
+some way connected with company promotion.
+
+Harry, seen among these developments, was not the man he used to
+be. He was at the crest of his career at the Bar, working enormously
+and earning richly, but the old bright, cheery way had gone from
+Harry. There was permanently upon his face, and there was intensified,
+the beaten look that Rosalie first had seen on that night, in the
+war, when there had been the Huggo drinking business and when for
+the first and only time he had spoken passionately to Rosalie. When
+he now was at home he used to sit for long periods doing nothing,
+just thinking. When sometimes, home earlier than he, Rosalie saw
+him coming up the street towards the gamboge door she noticed,
+terribly, the bowed shoulders, the weary gait, the set, careworn
+face. She used to run down then to the famous gamboge door and open
+it and greet him and his face used to light up in the old way, but
+it was not the same face, and the effect of its radiation therefore
+not the same. It was not that the face was older. It was that its
+aspect was changed.
+
+He used to look up from that chair where he sat just thinking, when
+Doda, butterflied for the evening, butterflied across the room, and
+used to say, "Out again, Doda?" He then would relapse back into
+his thoughts. He had a habit of getting up suddenly and rather
+strangely wandering about from room to room of all the principal
+rooms of the house, just standing at the door of each, and looking
+in (they were all empty of inhabitants), and then coming back and
+sitting again in the chair and just sit, thinking.
+
+It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.
+
+She said more than once when he returned from such a tour, "Dear
+Harry, looking for anything?"
+
+He'd say rather heavily, "No; no, dear. Just having a look around."
+
+It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.
+
+But he used to be enormously brightened up when Benji came home.
+Benji was just at Oxford then, eighteen. He was a different man
+when Benji was at home. He used to say, "Rosalie, that boy's going
+to make a name for himself in the world. My heart's wrapped round
+that boy, Rosalie. Ay, me! I wish he'd been our eldest, Rosalie."
+
+That was because he couldn't tear away the wrappings of his heart
+from about his eldest. Men can't.
+
+It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.
+
+Of course, with everything now known, Huggo was forgiven. Huggo was
+prosperous now, almost aggressively prosperous. He kept a car. The
+syndicate, whatever it actually did, was obviously doing enormously
+well. What was the good of being stupid and unkind to the boy
+now that, at last, he had found his feet? But Huggo scarcely ever
+came to the house. He had virtually left Lucy. Lucy lived on in
+the originally-taken furnished flat in Bayswater. Huggo had rooms
+somewhere, no one quite knew where, and lived there. Rosalie used
+to get Lucy to the house sometimes, but Lucy was never at her ease
+on these visits, and Doda, who sympathized entirely with Huggo in
+the matter, very much disliked her and would not meet her. Lucy
+was in bad health and she was going to have a baby. Her health and
+her condition made her look much more common than she used to look.
+
+Then the baby was born; a little girl. Poor, grateful Lucy called
+it Rosalie. She told Rosalie that Huggo said he didn't care what
+the baby was called. He was very angry about the baby. "He was
+worse than usual when he was here last week," said Lucy. "I think
+he's got something on his mind. I think he's worrying about something.
+Oh, he was sharp."
+
+Lucy was very ill with the birth of her baby. She didn't seem able
+to pick up again from her confinement. She kept her bed. Then,
+suddenly, she developed pneumonia. The maternity nurse, paid by
+Rosalie, was still in attendance. Rosalie sent in another nurse,
+and on that same night, going straight to the sick bed from Field's,
+and then coming home very late, told Harry, who was waiting up for
+her, that the worst was feared for Lucy. She then said, "Harry,
+if anything happens, I think we'll have that baby here. It will
+practically be a case of adopting the child."
+
+Harry agreed.
+
+"I'd get in a nurse for her, the new little Rosalie." She sighed.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Harry.
+
+She said after a little, "Harry, the nurseries in use again!"
+
+He sat there as he was always sitting, thinking.
+
+She went over to him. "Dear, won't you like the nurseries to be in
+use again?"
+
+He said slowly, "I will, very much, Rosalie. It's lonely, these
+empty rooms. I will very much--in some ways."
+
+Rosalie knew what Harry meant. She touched his hand. "Dear, I think
+it can be made different."
+
+Harry knew what Rosalie meant. He pressed the hand that touched
+his own. "That's all right, Rosalie. That's all right, dearest."
+
+Rosalie was down early next morning. She desired an early breakfast
+and to go on to see Lucy before Field's. It might be necessary to
+stay the day with Lucy. There was also Huggo. What was Huggo doing?
+Overnight Rosalie had seen Doda, come in late from an evening with
+a very intimate friend of hers always known, through some private
+joke of Doda's, as "the foreign friend." The foreign friend, not
+in the least foreign but English, was a young married woman living
+apart from her husband. Doda had brought her to the house once.
+She was very pretty and a cheery soul. She would have been called
+fast when Rosalie was a girl. In 1921 she would almost, in the
+manner she presented to Rosalie, have been called slow. Doda and
+she were greatly attached.
+
+Doda, overnight, going straight upstairs to bed, had said, "Have
+you seen Huggo to-day? He's in a scrape of some sort."
+
+"Oh, Doda, what kind of a scrape?"
+
+"He didn't tell me. I ran into him quite by chance coming away from
+a theatre with the foreign friend. We both thought he was rather
+badly rattled."
+
+"Was he going on to Lucy? Did he know Lucy was very ill indeed?"
+
+Doda said, "I don't know. He didn't tell me. Is she?" and indifferently
+passed upstairs.
+
+Rosalie at her early breakfast was thinking what news the day would
+give of Lucy and of Huggo. She was suddenly, by Huggo in person,
+brought intelligence of both. She heard the door bell ring and in
+a minute Huggo surprisingly broke into the room. He had kept his
+hat on. He looked white, drawn and very agitated. He shut the door
+behind him. "Lucy's dead."
+
+Tears sprang into the eyes of Rosalie, "Oh, my poor Huggo!"
+
+He made a gesture. "Oh, that's no good! Look here, mother, will
+you look after things over there for me? That's all I've come in
+to say. Will you see to everything and will you take the kid? I
+can't stop."
+
+He made to go.
+
+"Huggo, of course I will. But you'll be there? Are you going there
+now?"
+
+"I'm not. I'm going away."
+
+"Going away?"
+
+His hand was on the door. "Yes, going away. Look here, there's another
+thing. If any one comes here for me will you say you haven't seen
+me? It's important. It's vital."
+
+"Huggo, what is the matter?"
+
+"You'll jolly soon know. You may as well know now. Then you'll
+realise. If you want to know--the police are after me."
+
+He was gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+
+In the Book of Job it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass
+of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated
+by recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to
+Rosalie that it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed
+no interval. It seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation upon
+visitation, judgment upon judgment.
+
+It seemed to her that she was no sooner come down out of the
+Old Bailey--her hand touching at things for support, her vision
+vertiginous, causing the solid ground to be in motion, her ears
+resonant, crying through her brain the words she saw in Huggo's look
+as they removed him; it seemed to her she was no sooner out from
+there than she was at the telephone and summoned by the foreign
+friend and was there with Doda and was in process of "Oh, Doda!"--"Oh,
+mother!"; it seemed to her she was no sooner out from that than
+she was with that burly messenger, going with him, returning from
+him. There were days and nights walled up in weeks and months
+between these things, but that is how they seemed to Rosalie.
+
+The syndicate was laid by the heels, one here, one there, Huggo
+in France, very shortly after the warning that had put Huggo in
+flight. The syndicate went through the police court where was unfolded
+a story sensational with surprising sums of money, captivating with
+ingenuity of fraud covered up by fraud to help new fraud again.
+The syndicate stood in the dock at the Old Bailey. Those two of
+the syndicate described by the prosecution and by the judge as the
+principals were sentenced to three years' penal servitude. "You,"
+said the judge, addressing with a new note in his voice the third
+prisoner, "You, Occleve, stand in a different--"
+
+Rosalie began to pray.
+
+Harry would not attend the trial. He had done all that could be
+done, and of his position there was very much that he was able to
+do, and had attended the police court during the initial proceedings.
+He would not go to the Old Bailey. He would not go out. He would
+not read the papers. He used to sit about the house. "My son a
+felon.... My boy a felon. My son.... My eldest son...."
+
+Rosalie was given a seat in the floor of the court on the first
+days of the hearing. On the day when the verdict was to be given
+and sentence passed she could not bear that. An usher, much pitying,
+obtained her a place in the gallery. She looked down immediately
+upon her Huggo. Her hands, upon the ledge before her, were all the
+time clasped. Her eyes alternately were in her hands and on her
+Huggo. Her heart moved between her Huggo and her God.
+
+"You, Occleve, stand in a different position. . . ."
+
+She began to pray. All of her being, all of her soul, all of her
+life, with a spiritual and a physical intensity transcending all
+that her body and her mind had ever known, was in apotheosis of
+supplication. "O God the Father! O God the Father! O God the Father!"
+
+Her Huggo! Those words that only in snatches she heard were being
+addressed to her Huggo.
+
+"... Your counsel has most eloquently pleaded for you.... You bear
+an honoured name.... You bear a name held in these precincts in
+honour, in esteem, in love, in admiration.... You have had a good
+home, a great and a noble father, a distinguished and devoted
+mother...."
+
+That suppliant crouched lower in her supplication.
+
+"... You have been the dupe, you have been the tool, you have been
+in large part, as your counsel has pleaded, and as I believe, the
+unsuspecting agent.... Nevertheless, the least sentence I can pass
+on you--"
+
+"O God the Father, the Father!"
+
+"... is six months' imprisonment."
+
+That boy, whose head had been hung and eyes downcast, lifted his
+head and raised his eyes and gave one look into the eyes of that
+suppliant for him that sat above him. There was recalled by that
+suppliant a look that had passed from the place of accusation to
+the place of assembly in the place called the Sanhedrin.
+
+Her Huggo!
+
+They took him away.
+
+Doda didn't stop going out. She seemed to go out more. The pain
+within that house, brought there by Huggo, seemed to make that house
+more than before unbearable to Doda. She often spent the night, or
+the week end away, staying with the foreign friend, she generally
+said. She would have nothing whatever to do with the baby now
+installed in the house. She never would go near it. Once she passed
+it in the hall in its perambulator. She stopped and stooped over
+the face of lovely innocence that lay there and gazed upon it with
+an extraordinary intensity. She drew back with a sharp catch at her
+breath and sharply stepped away and turned and ran very quickly
+upstairs. After that. when she chanced to pass the child, she
+turned aside and would not look upon the child. She began not to
+look well, Rosalie thought. There often was upon her lovely face a
+pinched and drawn expression, disfiguring it. On the rare occasions
+when she was in to dinner she sat strangely moody. There only was
+a moodiness about that table then; but the moodiness of Doda was
+noticeable to Rosalie. She ate hardly at all. She sometimes would
+get up suddenly before a meal was ended and go away, generally
+to her own room. Very many times Rosalie would seek anxiously to
+question her, but apart from the independence which commonly she
+maintained towards Rosalie, Doda seemed very much to resent solicitude
+upon her health. "What should be the matter? I look perfectly well,
+don't I?"
+
+"Doda, you don't. I've noticed it a long time."
+
+"Well, I am perfectly well. If I wasn't I'd say so."
+
+Strike on!
+
+Rosalie was called up on the telephone by the foreign friend.
+It was the evening, about ten o'clock. Doda was away for a week
+at Brighton with the foreign friend. She was due back to-morrow.
+Harry was out with Benji. Benji was nineteen then and was home on
+vacation from Oxford. Harry never could bear Benji out of his sight
+when Benji was home. In the affliction that had come upon them, he
+seemed to cling to Benji. Rosalie had persuaded him that evening
+to go with Benji to a concert. Harry said the idea of anything like
+that was detestable to him, but Rosalie had pleaded with him. Just
+a little chamber concert was different. It would do him so much
+good to have an evening away and to hear a little music and Benji
+would love it. Harry allowed himself to be persuaded and went off
+arm-in-arm with Benji. He always put his arm in Benji's when he
+walked with Benji.
+
+Rosalie was waiting for them when the telephone bell rang and she
+was spoken to by the foreign friend.
+
+It then happened like this.
+
+The voice of the foreign friend was very alarmingly urgent. "Would
+she come and see Doda at once, at once, at once?"
+
+The voice struck a chill to the heart of Rosalie. "But where are
+you? You're at Brighton, aren't you? Are you speaking from Brighton?"
+
+"No, no. At my flat. At my flat."
+
+"But what is it? What is it? Why don't you tell me what it is?"
+
+"It's an--it's an--." The voice stammered and hesitated.
+
+"Oh, speak! Oh, speak."
+
+She could hear the voice gulping.
+
+"Oh, please do speak!"
+
+"Doda isn't very well. Doda's very ill. It's an--it's an accident."
+
+"I'll come. I'll come."
+
+"Is Mr. Occleve there?"
+
+"He isn't. He's out."
+
+"Can you get him?"
+
+"No. Yes. I don't know. I can't think. Oh, tell me. Tell me."
+
+"Will you leave a message for him to come at once?"
+
+"At once. At once."
+
+She wrote a message for Harry and she picked up a wrap and she ran
+out hatless to find a cab.
+
+She found a cab and went to Doda.
+
+This all happened as quickly as bewilderingly. It was not like a
+dream, and it was not like a nightmare. It was like a kind of trance
+to Rosalie.
+
+The foreign friend was not seen at the flat. She was in some other
+room and did not appear. She said afterwards, and proved, that she
+had been away the previous night, leaving Doda at the flat, and had
+returned to find her--as she was found; and had immediately called
+the nearest doctor and then Doda's mother.
+
+It was the doctor that opened the door to Rosalie. He was a
+Scotchman; a big and rugged man, all lines and whiskers and with
+a rugged accent.
+
+He said, "You'rre her mother, arren't ye? Where's her father?"
+
+"He's coming. Where is my child?"
+
+The doctor jerked his head towards a wall. "She's yon."
+
+"Tell me, please."
+
+He pushed a chair towards her but she shook her head. "Please tell
+me."
+
+"Ye'll want your courage." He again indicated the chair. She again
+shook her head. "It'll try ye. She's dying."
+
+The lips of Rosalie formed the words: "Tell me." There was no sound
+in her.
+
+The doctor said, "I cannot tell ye. It is for your husband to hear."
+
+The heart of Rosalie stood still. She put both her hands upon her
+heart and she said to the doctor, "Tell me. I am strong."
+
+The doctor looked upon Rosalie intently and he said: (he was perhaps
+dexterously giving her time that she might weld herself) he said,
+"Ye'll need be strong. Ye look sensible. Ye'll need be sensible."
+He said, "There's been before me here another--There's been a
+creature here before me. There's been blackguarrd work here. There's
+been--that poor child there..." He told her.
+
+She moaned: "O God, be merciful!"
+
+That child, as that night went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie
+upon a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self,
+of what is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for
+pleasure, and of the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them.
+You that have tears to shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you
+have no tears, but for emotion only sneers, do stop and put the
+thing away. It is intolerable to think to have beside that bed,
+beside that child, beside that Rosalie, your sneers. It's not for
+you, and you do but exacerbate the frightful pain there's been in
+feeling it with them.
+
+Rosalie was all night with that child. Harry was there upon the
+other side upon his knees and never raised his head. Benji was
+there that loved his sister so. Across the unblinded window strove
+a moon that fought with mass on mass of fierce, submerging clouds
+as it might be a soul that rose through infinite calamity to God.
+That child was in much torment. That child was in delirium and
+often cried aloud. That child burned with a fever, incredible, at
+touch of her poor flesh, to think that human flesh such flame could
+hold and not incinerate. That child in her delirium moaned often
+names and sometimes cried them out. Nicknames that in the sexless
+jargon of her day and of her kind might have been names of women
+and might be names of men. Darkie, Topsy, Skipper, Kitten, Bluey,
+Tip, Bill, Kid. Names, sometimes, more familiar. Once Huggo; once
+father; once loud and very piteously, "Benji, Benji, Benji, Benji,
+Benji!"
+
+She never once said mother.
+
+She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed,
+stood high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, "She's passing."
+That child raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers.
+
+Rosalie cried, "Oh, Doda!"
+
+That child sighed. "Oh, mother!"
+
+There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There
+only was in that child's sigh a deathly weariness. "Oh, mother!"
+That child passed out.
+
+They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working
+room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of
+her resignation from Field's Bank. She only wrote two lines. They
+ended, "This is Final. I have done."
+
+She sealed that letter and she moved about the room unlaying and as
+she unlaid, destroying, all evidences, all treasures, all landmarks,
+all that in any way referred to or touched upon her working
+life. There were cherished letters, there were treasured papers.
+She destroyed them all. From one bundle, not touched for years,
+dust-covered and time-discoloured, there came out a battered volume.
+She turned it over. "Lombard Street." She opened it and saw the
+eager underlinings and saw the eager margin notes, and ghosts...
+(it's written earlier in these pages). She rent the book across its
+perished cover and pressed it on the fire and on to the flames in
+the fire. "I have done."
+
+But she was not done with and she had the feeling that she was not
+done with. She said to Harry, "This is not the children's tragedy.
+This is my tragedy. These were not the children's faults. These
+were my transgressions. Life is sacrifice. I never sacrificed.
+Sacrifice is atonement. It now is not possible for me to atone."
+
+She was on her knees beside his chair. He stroked her hair.
+
+There was an inquest. Harry went. She stayed at home and Benji
+stayed with her to be with her. Benji was not to be consoled. His
+mood was very dreadful. A report was printed in the evening paper
+before Harry came home. Benji read it and told Rosalie a witness,
+a man, had been arrested on the coroner's warrant. Benji said, "I
+think I'll go out now, mother, for a little."
+
+Later in the afternoon when Rosalie was with Harry a maid came into
+the room and looked at Harry and saw how sunk he was in his chair
+and so went to Rosalie and whispered to her. Rosalie went out. There
+was a man wished to see the master. Rosalie spoke to him. He was
+a large, burly man with a strong face. He looked like, and was,
+a police officer in plain clothes. Rosalie heard what he began to
+say and said she would go with him. In the cab, the man told her
+about it. All his sentences began with or contained "The young
+gentleman."
+
+"The young gentleman... the prisoner, when the young gentleman
+came rushing in, happened to be in the charge-room writing out a
+statement.... The young gentleman, before any one could stop him,
+rushed at this prisoner and caught him by the throat and threw him
+and the table over and banged the man's head against the floor, fair
+trying to kill him. They got the young gentleman off. They ought
+to have arrested the young gentleman, and they did most earnestly
+wish they had of arrested him, and blamed themselves properly that
+they didn't arrest him. But they felt cruelly sorry for the young
+gentleman and they got him outside and let him go and no more said.
+Of course, as madam knew, the police office wasn't very far from
+Gower Street station, the underground station with them steep
+stairs leading straight down from the street to the platform, as
+madam might be aware.... The young gentleman was seen by witnesses,
+whose names were took, to come rushing down these stairs on to the
+platform as if some one was after him.... The young gentleman come
+rushing down and there was a train just coming in, and whether he
+couldn't stop or whether he.... There's some say one thing and some
+say the other.... Whichever way it was the young gentleman...."
+
+Rosalie did her errand with the man and then came back to Harry.
+She had to tell Harry.
+
+He was sitting in his chair. He had an open book on his knees. She
+saw, as one notices these things, it was a Shakespeare. She stood
+up there at the door before him and she said, "Harry--Benji!"
+
+He saw it in her face.
+
+He groaned.
+
+He took the book off his knees and fumbled it, and with a groaning
+mutter dropped it: "'Unarm, Eros, the long day's work is done.'"
+
+She came to him and saw, as one sees things, above his head the picture
+he had hung when raven was his hair and radiant his face, and had
+hit his thumb, and jumped, and cried out, "Mice and Mumps!" and
+had laughed and wrung his hands, and cried out, "Mice and Mumps!"
+and laughed again. She came to him and saw him wilt and crumple
+in his chair, and could have sworn she saw the iron of his head,
+that had been raven, go grey anew and greyer yet. She came to him
+and she said, "Harry--Benji--an accident--not an accident--on the
+railway--killed."
+
+His voice went, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one
+agrope, in sudden darkness, befogged, betrayed. "My God, my God,
+my God, my God, my God!"
+
+She fell on her knees; and on her arms and on his lap she buried
+then her face.
+
+He suddenly stooped to her, and caught his arms about her, and raised
+her to him, and pressed his face to hers, and held her there; and
+his cry was as once before, passionately holding her, his cry had
+been; then from his heart to her heart, now from the abysses of
+his soul to her soul's depths, "Rosalie! Rosalie!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+
+
+
+There was to have been some more of it; but there, they're in each
+other's arms, and one has suffered so with them one cannot any
+more go on. One's suffered so! One has looked backward with her.
+The heart must break but for a forward glimpse:--
+
+They're all right now. Huggo's in Canada. He writes every week.
+They're all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is
+looking after them. She's looking after them, that elf, that sprite,
+that tricksy scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and
+Rosalie she calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There's
+no nurse. It's breakfast she loves best. She's on the itch all
+breakfast. When breakfast's done she's off her chair and hopping.
+She trumpets in her tiny voice, "Lessons! Lessons!" She trumpets
+in her tiny voice, "Lessons, lessons! On mother's knee! On mother's
+knee!"
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of This Freedom, by A. S. M. Hutchinson
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